"If it was under his coat, how do you know it was his fiddle?"

The German scratched his head in a reflective way.

"I don't know it," said he at last. "But he somedimes takes his
instrument inside there, und I just get the notion that it was so.
Yes?"

"When did he come out?"

The man shook his head.

"I don'd know," he said.

"Do you mean that you saw no one come out?"

"No; I _did_ see someone come out. But first I see me someone else go
in."

"Ah! And who was that?"

"I don't know his name; but I had seen him often before. He is a kind
of svell feller. He had a cane und plendy of style."

"And later you saw someone come out. Now, your use of the word
'someone' leads me to think that you do not know whether it was
Spatola or the stranger."

"I don'd," said Berg. "I was busy then. I just heard me someone rush
down the stairs, making plendy noise, und I heard that drunken Hume
lift up a window, stick out his head and call some names after him. My
customers laugh und think it's a joke; but I am ashamed such a
disgracefulness to have around my business yet."

"If Hume called after the person who left," said Stillman, acutely, to
Ashton-Kirk, "that eliminates one of the callers. It proves that Hume
was still alive after the man had gone."

"That is undoubtedly a fact," replied the investigator.

Stillman turned upon Berg with dignity.

"Surely you must have noticed the man if all that uproar attended his
exit. You must have detected enough to mark a difference between an
exceptionally well-dressed man and an Italian street musician."

Berg shook his big head.

"It was aboud twelve o'clock in the night-dime, und my customers
besides I had to pay some attention to," stated he.

The coroner was baffled by the man's positiveness.

"Well," said he, resignedly. "What else did you see?"

Berg shook his head once more.

"Nothing else. Putty soon I closed up and went home." Then a flash of
recollection came into his dull face. "As I went down the street I saw
some lights in Hume's windows. One of them windows was open--maybe the
one he sticked his head out of to call the man names--und I could hear
him laughing like he used to do when he was trying to make a jackass
of some peoples."

The coroner pondered. At length he said:

"This object that Spatola carried under his coat, now. Could it have
been a bayonet?"

"No, no," said Berg with conviction. "It vos too big. It vos bigger as
a half dozen b