e 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."

"We'll look at his room, if you please," said the investigator.

Complainingly, the woman led the way up the infirm staircase. At the
fourth floor she pushed open a door and showed them into a long
loft-like room with high ceiling and mansard windows. There came a
squawking and fluttering from somewhere above as they entered.

"Them's the cockatoos," said the landlady. "They miss Mr. Spatola very
much. When I go to feed them with the stale bread and seed he has here
for them, would you believe it, they'll hardly eat a thing."

The room was without a floor covering. Upon some rough shelves, nailed
to the wall, were heaps of music. A violin case also lay there. There
were a few chairs, a cot-bed, and a neat pile of books upon a table.
Ashton-Kirk ran over these quickly; they were mostly upon musical
subjects, and in Italian. But some were Spanish, English, German and
French.

"He was the greatest hand for talking and reading languages," said
Mrs. Marx, wonderingly. "I don't think there was any kind of a
nationality that he couldn't converse with. Mr. Sagon that lives on
the floor below says that his French was elegant, and Mr. Hertz, my
parlor lodger, used to just love to talk German with him. He said his
German was so _high_."

Ashton-Kirk opened the violin case and looked at the instrument
within.

"Spatola always carried his violin in this when he went out, I
suppose?" he said, inquiringly.

"Oh, yes; _that_ one he did. But the one on the wall there," pointing
to a second instrument hanging from a peg, "he never took much care of
that. It's the one he played on the street, you see."

Her visitors followed the gesture with interest.

"That was just to clinch a point I made with Fuller this morning,"
said the investigator to Pendleton, in explanation. Then to Mrs. Marx
he continued: "Mr. Spatola had visitors from time to time, had he
not?"

But the