“Are you Mrs. Marx?” he inquired.

“Yes,” snapped the woman.  “What do you want?”

“A little information.”

“You’re a reporter!” accused the sharp-faced woman.  “And let me tell you that I don’t want nothing more to say to no reporters.”

But Ashton-Kirk soothingly denied the accusation.

“I dare say you’ve been bothered to death by newspaper men,” spoke he.  “But we assure you that—­”

“It don’t make no difference,” stated the woman, rearing her head until her long chin pointed straight at them.  “I ain’t got nothing to say to nobody.  I don’t want to get into no trouble.”

“The only way you can possibly get into trouble in this matter,” said the investigator, “is to conceal what you know.  An attempt to hide facts is always considered by the police as a sort of admission of complicity.”

The woman at this lifted a corner of a soiled apron and applied it to her eyes.

“Things is come to a nice pass,” she said, vainly endeavoring to squeeze a tear from eyes to which such things had long been strangers, “when a respectable woman can’t mind her own business in her own house.”

At this point, Pendleton, who looked discreetly away, caught the rustle of a crisp bill; and when Mrs. Marx spoke again, her tone had undergone a decided change.

“But of course,” she said, “if the law asks me anything, I must do the best I can.  I’ve kept a rooming house for a good many years now, gentlemen, and this is the first time I have had any notoriety.  It is, I assure you.”

As Ashton-Kirk had seen at a second glance, Mrs. Marx was a lady fully competent to confront any situation that might arise; so he wasted no time in soothing her injured feelings.

“We desire any information that you can give us regarding your lodger, Antonio Spatola,” said he.  “Tell us all you know about him.”

“He wasn’t a bad-hearted young man,” said the landlady, “but for all that I wish I’d never seen him.  If I hadn’t then I’d never had this disgrace come on me.”

Here she made another effort with the corner of her apron; but it was even more unsuccessful than the first.  She gave it up and went on acidly.

“Mr. Spatola came here almost three years ago.  He was engaged in one of the vaudeville theaters near here—­in the orchestra—­and he rented my second story front at six dollars a week.  Except for the fact that he would play awfully shivery music at all hours of the night, I was glad to have him.  He was quiet and polite; he paid regularly and,” smoothing back the untidy hair, “he gave a kind of tone to the house.

“But then he lost his position.  Had a fight, I understand, with somebody.  For a long time he had no work; he moved from the second story-front at six dollars a week into the attic at two.  When he could get no place, he went on the street and played; afterwards he got the trained birds.  I didn’t like this much.  It didn’t do the house no good to have a street fiddler living in it; and then the birds were a regular nuisance with their noise.  But he paid regular, and after a while he took to keeping the birds in a box in the loft, so I put up with it.”