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“Well, now,” said Mr. Gubb, “I don’t know but what I might as well make a little that way as any other. I got a friend–” He stopped short. “You don’t aim to sell the gold-brick to him, do you?”

Mr. Critz’s eyes opened wide behind their spectacles.

“Land’s sakes, no!” he said.

“Well, I got a friend may be willing to help out,” said Mr. Gubb. “What’d he have to do?”

“You or him,” said Mr. Critz, “would be the ‘come-on,’ and pretend to buy the brick. And you or him would pretend to help me to sell it. Maybe you better have the brick, because you can look stupid, and the feller that’s got the brick has got to look that.”

“I can look anyway a’most,” said Mr. Gubb with pride.

“Do tell!” said Mr. Critz, and so it was arranged that the first rehearsal of the gold-brick game should take place the next evening, but as Mr. Gubb turned away Mr. Critz deftly slipped something into the student detective’s coat pocket.

It was toward noon the next day that Mr. Critz, peering over his spectacles and avoiding as best he could the pails of paste, entered the parlor of the vacant house where Mr. Gubb was at work.

“I just come around,” said Mr. Critz, rather reluctantly, “to say you better not say nothing to your friend. I guess that deal’s off.”

“Pshaw, now!” said Mr. Gubb. “You don’t mean so!”

“I don’t mean nothing in the way of aspersions, you mind,” said Mr. Critz with reluctance, “but I guess we better call it off. Of course, so far as I know, you are all right–“

“I don’t know what you’re gettin’ at,” said Mr. Gubb. “Why don’t you say it?”

“Well, I been buncoed so often,” said Mr. Critz. “Seem’s like any one can get money from me any time and any way, and I got to thinkin’ it over. I don’t know anything about you, do I? And here I am, going to give you a gold-brick that cost me fifteen hundred dollars, and let you go out and wait until I come for it with your friend, and–well, what’s to stop you from just goin’ away with that brick and never comin’ back?”

Mr. Gubb looked at Mr. Critz blankly.

“I’ve went and told my friend,” he said. “He’s all ready to start in.”

“I hate it, to have to say it,” said Mr. Critz, “but when I come to count over them bills I lent you to cap the shell game with, there was a five-dollar one short.”

“I know,” said Gubb, turning red. “And if you go over there to my coat, you’ll find it in my pocket, all ready to hand back to you. I don’t know how I come to keep it in my pocket. Must ha’ missed it, when I handed you back the rest.”

“Well, I had a notion it was that way,” said Mr. Critz kindly. “You look like you was honest, Mr. Gubb. But a thousand-dollar gold-brick, that any bank will pay a hundred dollars for–I got to get out of this way of trustin’ everybody–“

Mr. Critz was evidently distressed.

“If ’twas anybody else but you,” he said with an effort, “I’d make him put up a hundred dollars to cover the cost of a brick like that whilst he had it. There! I’ve said it, and I guess you’re mad!”

“I ain’t mad,” protested Mr. Gubb, “‘long as you’re goin’ to pay me and Pete, and it’s business; I ain’t so set against puttin’ up what the brick is worth.”

Mr. Critz heaved a deep sigh of relief.

“You don’t know how good that makes me feel,” he said. “I was almost losin’ what faith in mankind I had left.”

Mr. Gubb ate his frugal evening meals at the Pie Wagon, on Willow Street, just off Main, where, by day, Pie-Wagon Pete dispensed light viands; and Pie-Wagon Pete was the friend he had invited to share Mr. Critz’s generosity. The seal of secrecy had been put on Pie-Wagon Pete’s lips before Mr. Gubb offered him the opportunity to accept or decline; and when Mr. Gubb stopped for his evening meal, Pie-Wagon Pete–now off duty–was waiting for him. The story of Mr. Critz and his amateur con’ business had amused Pie-Wagon Pete. He could hardly believe such utter innocence existed. Perhaps he did not believe it existed, for he had come from the city, and he had had shady companions before he landed in Riverbank. He was a sharp-eyed, red-headed fellow, with a hard fist, and a scar across his face, and when Mr. Gubb had told him of Mr. Critz and his affairs, he had seen an opportunity to shear a country lamb.