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.
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