“But it can’t be, I tell you!” almost shrieked the little Irishman. “Where could he have come from? Oh, Lord,” he wailed, “to think that sich a thing should have happened in this building! We only take the most iligant people; yes, sir, and now they’ll lave shure, see if they don’t. It’ll give the house a bad name; and me as worked so hard to keep it genteel.”
A commotion on the landing announced the arrival of a stout, florid individual, who turned out to be the Coroner, and a quiet, middle-aged man in plain clothes, whom I inferred, from the respect with which he was treated, to be no other than the “gen’l’man” from headquarters. After looking at the corpse for some moments, the Coroner turned to us and demanded:
“Who is this man?”
The little Irishman stepped forward. “We don’t none of us know, sor.”
“How came he here then?”
“The Lord only knows!”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, sor, it’s this way. This apartment is being re-fixed, and five men were working here till six o’clock yistidy evening, and when they left they locks the door, and it has a Yale lock; and they brought me the key and I locks it away at once; and this morning at seven they come while I was still half asleep, having slept bad on account of the heat, and I gets up and opens the safe myself and takes out the key and gives it to this gintleman,” pointing to the foreman; “and he come up here, and a few minutes afterwards I hear a great hue and cry and the workmen and elevaytor-boy come ashrieking that a body’s murthered upstairs. How the fellow got in here, unless the Divil brought him, I can’t think; and now here’s the doctor that says he’s been dead twenty-four hours!”
At my mention the Coroner turned towards me with a slight bow. “You are a doctor?”