"Oh, all right," said he. "You don't have to come out flat with it if you don't want to. I ain't one of the kind that you've got to hit with a mallet to make them catch on to a thing." Here the wooden pipe seemed to clog; he took a straw from behind his ear and began clearing the stem carefully. At the same time he added: "As I was saying, I've been thinking."
"That," said Ashton-Kirk, giving another tug at the unanswered bell, "is very commendable."
"And queer enough, it's been about visitors—here," and the man pointed with the straw toward the doorway. "Funny kind of people too, for a house like this."
"Take a cigar," said Ashton-Kirk. "That pipe seems out of commission." Then, as the man put the pipe away in the pocket of his jumper and lighted the proffered cigar, he added: "What do you mean by 'funny kind of people?'"
The cigar well lighted, the man in the overalls drew at it with gentle relish.
"There's a good many kinds of funny people," said he. "Some of them you laugh at, and others you don't. These that I mean are the kind you don't. Now, Mrs. Marx, the woman that keeps this place, is all right in her way, but it ain't no swell place at that. Her lodgers are mostly fellows that canvass for different kinds of things; they wear shiny coats and their shoes are mostly run down at the heels. So when I see swell business looking guys coming here I got to wondering who they were. That's only natural, ain't it?"
Ashton-Kirk nodded, but before he could reply in words there came a clatter upon the rickety stairs at the far end of the entry. A thin, slipshod woman with untidy hair and a sharp face paused on the lower step and looked out at them.
"What do you want?" she demanded, shrilly.
Ashton-Kirk, followed by Pendleton, stepped inside and advanced down the entry.
"Are you Mrs. Marx?" he inquired.