Ashton-Kirk looked at him inquiringly; there was expectancy in the investigator's eyes, but he said nothing.
"Perhaps you'll think that I'm all kinds of a fool," continued Pendleton, "and maybe I am. But here are the things that I'm trying to marshall in order. I'll take them just as they happened." He held up one hand and with the other began to check off the counts upon his fingers. "Yesterday you have a visit—a visit of a professional nature—from Edyth Vale. Last night she strangely disappears for a time. At a most unconventional hour this morning I find you at her door. Then I learn that you are on your way to look into the details of a murder that you had just heard of—somehow. Now I hear that Allan Morris, Edyth's fiancé, has been, in rather an odd way, upon familiar terms with the murdered man."
He paused as he checked this last count, still regarding his friend fixedly.
"I don't claim," he went on, after a moment, "that these things have anything to do with each other. But, somehow, they've got together in my mind, and I can't—"
Here the door re-opened and Stillman entered, followed by the big German.
"Just take a chair, Mr. Berg," said the coroner, seating himself at the desk and affixing his eyeglasses.
The German lowered his form into the chair indicated and folded his fat hands across his monstrous paunch.
"Your name in full—is what?" asked Stillman with formality.
"Franz Berg. I sell me delicatessen at 478 Christie Place. I haf been there for fifteen years."
"You were acquainted with the murdered man?"