mined it carefully.

"Never had any like that," he said.

"Now, if," said Philo Gubb,--"if the bulb that was sewed up into the
burlap with Henry Smitz wasn't a new bulb, and if Mr. Wiggins had
given the new bulb to Henry, and if Henry had changed the new bulb for
an old one, where would he have changed it at?"

"Up in his room, where he was always tinkering at that machine of
his," said the stock-keeper.

"Could I have the pleasure of taking a look into that there room for a
moment of time?" asked Mr. Gubb.

The stock-keeper arose, returned the remnants of his luncheon to his
dinner-pail and led the way up the stairs. He opened the door of the
room Henry Smitz had used as a work-room, and P. Gubb walked in. The
room was in some confusion, but, except in one or two particulars, no
more than a work-room is apt to be. A rather cumbrous machine--the
invention on which Henry Smitz had been working--stood as the murdered
man had left it, all its levers, wheels, arms, and cogs intact. A
chair, tipped over, lay on the floor. A roll of burlap stood on a
roller by the machine. Looking up, Mr. Gubb saw, on the ceiling, the
lighting fixture of the room, and in it was a clean, shining
thirty-two-candle-power bulb. Where another similar bulb might have
been in the other socket was a plug from which an insulated wire,
evidently to furnish power, ran to the small motor connected with the
machine on which Henry Smitz had been working.

The stock-keeper was the first to speak.

"Hello!" he said. "Somebody broke that window!" And it was true.
Somebody had not only broken the window, but had broken every pane and
the sash itself. But Mr. Gubb was not interested in this. He was
gazing at the electric bulb and thinking of Part Two, Lesson Six of
the Course of Twelve Lessons--"How to Identify by Finger-Prints, with
General Remarks on the Bertillon System." He looked about for some
means of reaching the bulb above his head. His eye lit on the fallen
chair. By placing the chair upright and placing one foot on the frame
of Henry Smitz's machine and the other on the chair-back, he could
reach the bulb. He righted the chair and stepped onto its seat. He put
one foot on the frame of Henry Smitz's machine; very carefully he put
the other foot on the top of the chair-back. He reached upward and
unscrewed the bulb.

The stock-keeper saw the chair totter. He sprang forward to steady it,
but he was too late. Philo Gubb, grasping the air, fell