--all right! It's all right!
It's all right, Cross. All right, Green. All right, Chief!" Then he
turned to Gubb. "We've been wanting you, detective. Put up placards
for you. Now, listen! Mrs. Phillipetti had a turban stolen from her
booth, and that infernal ton and a half or so of ruby was in it. The
Dragon's Eye, she calls it. Well, that turban was stolen--"

"I am quite well acquainted with that fact," said Philo Gubb.

"Well, why don't you hunt for it, then?" asked Mr. Beech crossly. "I
thought you were going to be of some use. Fooling around here with
your silly ten-cent fortune-telling, having the time of your life
while all of us are worrying about that Dragon's Eye. Why don't you
hunt for it?"

"It ain't hardly necessary to engage in deteckative exertions at the
present moment on account of that ruby," said Philo Gubb slowly,
"because when I want it, all I got to do is to consult the magic
deteckative tube."

"You're crazy!" said Mr. Beech. "You're crazy as a loon!"

"The usual price for consulting the oracle is ten cents," said Philo
Gubb, "but I'll make a special exception out of this time."

He put the end of the magic tube to his ear and listened.

"The genyi of the tube says I've got the Dragon's Eye into my pocket,
and if you ask this yellow negro black-man he'll tell you where the
turban is at."

"Honest!" exclaimed Mr. Beech. "Gubb, you're a wonder!"

The negro, thus trapped, told where he had hidden the turban, and in a
few minutes Mr. Beech, Mr. Cross, and Mr. Green returned with Mrs.
Phillipetti, on whose head again towered the turban with the Dragon's
Eye gleaming in it, making her "ongsomble" thoroughly "apropos."

"Gubb," said Mr. Beech, "I want Mrs. Phillipetti to meet you. You
certainly are a wizard."

"Yes, indeed!" said Mrs. Phillipetti. "The wizardry of your whole
ongsomble is completely apropos to your detective ability."

THE PROGRESSIVE MURDER

When Philo Gubb paid Mr. Medderbrook the one hundred dollars he had
received for retrieving the Dragon's Eye, Mr. Medderbrook was not
extremely gracious.

"I'll take it on account," he said grudgingly, "but it ought to be
more. It only brings what you owe me for that Utterly Hopeless
Gold-Mine stock down to eleven thousand nine hundred dollars and, at
this rate, you'll never get me paid up. I can't tell when there'll
come along another dividend of ten cumulative per cents on that stock,
that I will have to charge up against y