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Then she resumed: "I tried, in various ways, to gain a knowledge of the relationship between my fiancé and this sneering shopkeeper; but they were all ineffectual. Mr. Ashton-Kirk, this occurred fully three months ago, and the situation remains the same as it was upon that night."
But I could not find him. No one seems to know anything of his whereabouts." For some time after Miss Vale had gone, Ashton-Kirk stood at one of the windows and looked down at the sordid, surging, dirty crowd in the street.
And just then Ashton-Kirk stumbled rather heavily against Haines; the lantern dropped to the ground and was extinguished. "I beg your pardon," said the investigator in a rueful tone; then he began to rub his shins. "That was rather hard, whatever it was."
"Each of them forms itself into a wild note of interrogation," said Pendleton. "They are fairly screaming questions at you." Ashton-Kirk smiled even more agreeably at Locke and shook his head. Then he went through the pantomime of one writing, and finished by pointing to the house.
"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.
"As I had to take Edyth home last night, and you went bravely away with the police and Sagon, I find myself, as usual, trailing some distance in the rear." Ashton-Kirk regarded the litter of newspapers ruefully: "I gave them the heads of the case very plainly," said he, "but as it was almost the hour for going to press, I suppose they did not get the finer points of my meaning.
"And as I must have a good unrestricted look at Hume's apartments before everything is hopelessly changed about, suppose we go there now. We can get a taxi in the next street." "Just a moment," said Pendleton. "Before we take another step in the matter, Kirk, I must ask a question." Ashton-Kirk put his hand upon his friend's shoulder. "Don't," said he.
A great fellow, Poe. His peculiar imagination gave him a marvelous grasp of criminal possibilities." Ashton-Kirk took up the "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" and turned the leaves until he came to "Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts." "In some things I have detected an odd similarity in the work of De Quincey and Poe. Mind you, I say in some things.
Morris could not fail to see it when he called." "A clever plan," commented Ashton-Kirk, admiringly. "He saw it when he entered the room and greeted me. He was smiling; and the smile froze on his lips, his face went pale, and he turned a look upon me that filled me with fear, it was so wan and startled. "I had intended telling him the full truth if my ruse succeeded.
Ashton-Kirk rang the bell here, and while they waited a man who had been seated in the open door of the machine shop got up and approached them. 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.
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