He wore blue overalls and a jumper liberally discolored by plumbago and other lubricants; a short wooden pipe was held between his teeth, and a cloth cap sat upon the back of his head.

“Looking up the Dago?” asked he with a grin.  He jerked a dirty thumb toward the stairs.

Ashton-Kirk nodded; the man took the wooden pipe from his mouth, blew out a jet of strong-smelling smoke and said: 

“I knowed he’d put a knife or something into somebody, some day.  These people with bad tempers ought to be chained up short.”

“Do you know him well?” inquired the investigator.

“Been acquainted with him ever since he’s been living here—­and that’s going on three years.”

“Did he have many visitors, do you know?”

The man in the cloth cap pulled at his pipe reflectively.

“I can’t just say,” he replied.  “But I’ve been thinking—­” he paused here and examined both young men questioningly.  Then he asked:  “You’re detectives, ain’t you?”

“Something of that sort,” replied Ashton-Kirk.

The man grinned at this.

“Oh, all right,” said he.  “You don’t have to come out flat with it if you don’t want to.  I ain’t one of the kind that you’ve got to hit with a mallet to make them catch on to a thing.”  Here the wooden pipe seemed to clog; he took a straw from behind his ear and began clearing the stem carefully.  At the same time he added:  “As I was saying, I’ve been thinking.”

“That,” said Ashton-Kirk, giving another tug at the unanswered bell, “is very commendable.”

“And queer enough, it’s been about visitors—­here,” and the man pointed with the straw toward the doorway.  “Funny kind of people too, for a house like this.”

“Take a cigar,” said Ashton-Kirk.  “That pipe seems out of commission.”  Then, as the man put the pipe away in the pocket of his jumper and lighted the proffered cigar, he added:  “What do you mean by ’funny kind of people?’”

The cigar well lighted, the man in the overalls drew at it with gentle relish.

“There’s a good many kinds of funny people,” said he.  “Some of them you laugh at, and others you don’t.  These that I mean are the kind you don’t.  Now, Mrs. Marx, the woman that keeps this place, is all right in her way, but it ain’t no swell place at that.  Her lodgers are mostly fellows that canvass for different kinds of things; they wear shiny coats and their shoes are mostly run down at the heels.  So when I see swell business looking guys coming here I got to wondering who they were.  That’s only natural, ain’t it?”

Ashton-Kirk nodded, but before he could reply in words there came a clatter upon the rickety stairs at the far end of the entry.  A thin, slipshod woman with untidy hair and a sharp face paused on the lower step and looked out at them.

“What do you want?” she demanded, shrilly.

Ashton-Kirk, followed by Pendleton, stepped inside and advanced down the entry.