s on deteckative matters until I'm sure," said
Mr. Gubb. "She seems nice enough to the naked eye. I don't want to get
you to suspicion her or nobody, Miss Scroggs, but about the only clue
I can grab hold of is that first letter you got. It said to look on
page fourteen, and all the pages by that number was torn out of your
books--"

"Except my cook-book," said Miss Petunia.

"And a person naturally wouldn't go to think of a cook-book as a real
book," said Mr. Gubb. "If you stop to think, you'll see that whoever
wrote that letter must have beforehand tore out all the page fourteens
from the books into your house, for some reason."

"Why, yes!" exclaimed Miss Scroggs, clapping her hands together. "How
wise you are!"

"Deteckative work fetches deteckative wisdom," said Mr. Gubb modestly.
"I don't want to throw suspicion at Mrs. Canterby, but Letter Number
One points at her first of all."

"O--h, yes! O--h my! And I never even thought of that!" cried Miss
Petunia admiringly.

"Us deteckatives have to think of things," said Philo Gubb. "And so we
will say, just for cod, like, that Mrs. Canterby got at your books and
ripped out the pages. She'd think: 'What will Miss Petunia do when she
finds she hasn't any page fourteens to look at? She'll rush out to
borrow a book to look at.' Now, where would you rush out to borrow a
book if you wanted to borrow one in a hurry?"

"To Mrs. Canterby's house!" exclaimed Miss Petunia.

"Just so!" said Mr. Gubb. "You'd rush over and you'd say, 'Mrs.
Canterby, lend me a book!' And she would hand you a book, and when you
looked at page fourteen, and read the first full sentence on the page,
what would you read?"

"What would I read?" asked Miss Scroggs breathlessly.

"You would read what she meant you to read," said Mr. Gubb
triumphantly. "So, then what? If I was in her place and I had written
a letter to you, meaning to give you a threat in a roundabout way, and
it went dead, I'd write some foolish letters to you to make you think
the whole thing was just foolishness. I'd write you letters about
weather and tacks and cats and lime and trout, and such things, to
throw you off the scent. Maybe," said Mr. Gubb, with a smile, "I'd
just copy bits out of a newspaper."

"How wonderfully wonderful!" exclaimed Miss Petunia.

"That is what us deteckatives spend the midnight oil learning the
Rising Sun Deteckative Agency's Correspondence School lessons for,"
said Mr. Gubb. "So, if my theory