of his chair and pearls of
perspiration came upon his brow. He took out his silk handkerchief and
wiped his forehead.

"Go right on ahead and say whatever you've got upon your mind to say,"
said Mr. Gubb.

"Well, the fact is," said the false Mr. Burns nervously, "I'm short of
cash. I need just one dollar and eighty cents to get to Derlingport!"

"Why, of course!" said Philo Gubb heartily. "All of us get into
similar or like predicaments at various often times, Mr. Burns. It is
a pleasure to be able to help out a feller deteckative in such a time
and manner. Only--"

"Yes?" said the Bald Impostor nervously.

"Only I couldn't think of giving you only the bare mere sum to get to
Derlingport," said the graduate of the Rising Sun Detective Agency's
Correspondence School of Detecting, generously. "I couldn't think of
letting you start off away with anything less than a ten-dollar bill."

DIETZ'S 7462 BESSIE JOHN

Philo Gubb sat on an upturned bundle of rolls of wall-paper in the
dining-room of Mrs. Pilker's famous Pilker mansion, in Riverbank,
biting into a thick ham sandwich. It was noon.

Mr. Gubb ate methodically, taking a large bite of sandwich, chewing
the bite long and well, and then swallowing it with a wonderful up and
down gliding of his knobby Adam's apple. From time to time he turned
his head and looked at the walls of the dining-room. The time was
Saturday noon, and but one wall was covered with the new wall-paper, a
natural forest tapestry paper, with lifelike representations of leafy
trees. He had promised to have the Pilker dining-room completed by
Saturday night. It seemed quite impossible to Philo Gubb that he could
finish the Pilker dining-room before dark, and it worried him.

Other matters, even closer to his heart, worried Mr. Gubb. He had had
a great quarrel with Mr. Medderbrook, the father of the fair Fat Lady
of the World's Greatest Combined Shows. Judge Orley Morvis had paid
Mr. Gubb twenty dollars for certain detective work, but Mr. Gubb had
not turned all this over to Mr. Medderbrook, and Mr. Medderbrook had
resented this. He told Mr. Gubb he was a cheap, tank-town sport.

"I worked hard," said Mr. Medderbrook, "to sell you that Utterly
Hopeless Gold-Mine stock and now you hold out on me. That's not the
way I expect a jay-town easy-mark--"

"I beg your pardon, but what was that term of phrase you called me?"
asked Mr. Gubb.

"I called you," said Mr. Medderbrook, changing his