und asleep in her cozy corner, set up such a screaming for the
police that our meeting broke up. Nor would Mr. Holcombe explain any
further.

CHAPTER XVI

Mr. Holcombe was up very early the next morning. I heard him moving
around at five o'clock, and at six he banged at my door and demanded
to know at what time the neighborhood rose: he had been up for an hour
and there were no signs of life. He was more cheerful after he had had
a cup of coffee, commented on Lida's beauty, and said that Howell was
a lucky chap.

"That is what worries me, Mr. Holcombe," I said. "I am helping the
affair along and--what if it turns out badly?"

He looked at me over his glasses. "It isn't likely to turn out badly,"
he said. "I have never married, Mrs. Pitman, and I have missed a great
deal out of life."

"Perhaps you're better off: if you had married and lost your wife--" I
was thinking of Mr. Pitman.

"Not at all," he said with emphasis. "It's better to have married and
lost than never to have married at all. Every man needs a good woman,
and it doesn't matter how old he is. The older he is, the more he
needs her. I am nearly sixty."

I was rather startled, and I almost dropped the fried potatoes. But
the next moment he had got out his note-book and was going over
the items again. "Pillow-slip," he said, "knife _broken_, onyx
clock--wouldn't think so much of the clock if he hadn't been so
damnably anxious to hide the key, the discrepancy in time as revealed
by the trial--yes, it is as clear as a bell. Mrs. Pitman, does that
Maguire woman next door sleep all day?"

"She's up now," I said, looking out the window.

He was in the hall in a moment, only to come to the door later, hat in
hand. "Is she the only other woman on the street who keeps boarders?"

"She's the only woman who doesn't," I snapped. "She'll keep anything
that doesn't belong to her--except boarders."

"Ah!"

He lighted his corn-cob pipe and stood puffing at it and watching me.
He made me uneasy: I thought he was going to continue the subject of
every man needing a wife, and I'm afraid I had already decided to take
him if he offered, and to put the school-teacher out and have a real
parlor again, but to keep Mr. Reynolds, he being tidy and no bother.

But when he spoke, he was back to the crime again: "Did you ever work
a typewriter?" he asked.

What with the surprise, I was a little sharp. "I don't play any
instrument except an egg-beater," I replied