"The other 's a young lawyer chap; calls himself Royal Maillot. I can't pry out of either of 'em what he was doing here."
"And nobody else, you say?" I asked when he paused.
"Nope—so they say. Either one of 'em might have done it. They 're down on each other for something; glare at each other like—like—you know—cat and dog."
"Go on."
"Well, this fellow Burke—Alexander Stilwell—he comes to our shack some time after two this A. M. Told the desk-sergeant old Page 'd been croaked; wouldn't say anything more. Dippy? Say! Acted like somebody 'd slipped him a round o' knockout-drops. Sure thing, he did. Would n't budge till old Grimes sent me back with him. I 'm only a license inspector, too. This is what I—h'm-m—I butted into. Dev'lish cold, ain't it?"
He had opened the front door and ushered me into a deep, wide hall. A broad stairway, with carved oak balusters, rose on one side to a landing which formed a sort of balcony over the rear end of the hall, and thence continued up to the second story.
With his concluding words, Stodger pointed up to the landing, through whose balusters I could see a hand and a part of a motionless human form stretched out at full length upon the floor.
"Felix Page—b'r-r—dead as a door-nail," Stodger now added. "Slugged over the head with a heavy iron candlestick; find it lying there by him. Think of all that wheat—and them ships crunching through the ice. Say, it's pretty tough, ain't it? He was—but would you rather make an examination first? Or shall I go on?"
I smiled at the man's air of vast importance, which discriminated not at all between grave matters and light. With his queer "hum's" and "haw's," his funny little exclamatory noises and quick, jerky manner of speech, he reminded me of a jolly diminutive priest who had just dined well. Never was mortal freer of affectation. And his cheerfulness? It was as expansive and as volatile as ether. His buoyancy was a perpetual, never-failing tonic for doubt and discouragement, and I have yet to witness him confronted with a situation that could in the least dash his spirits.
He awaited my reply to his question with an air which suggested that nothing less important than the well-being of his very existence was at stake.