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“What you hear about Farry and the widow?” asked the first.

“Makes old Gabe crazy, they tell me. He wants his girl to get a divorce.”

“Who told you that?”

“My girl. My girl is workin’ for his girl. Fr’m what she tells me old Gabe is pretty well worked up about it. Said he’d get a spotter to foller Farry and get some evidence on him if it didn’t cost so blame much. I bet the’ won’t be any divorces in that family if old Gabe has to pay out any money.”

“I bet they won’t. And the’ ain’t no detectives workin’ for nothin’ so far as I hear. Not this year.”

“No, nor next year, neither,” said the other; and as this was in the nature of a joke they both laughed.

But Philo Gubb did not join their laughter. He felt his face grow red. His lean hands folded and unfolded as he watched Farry Pierce disappear around the corner of the bank building. If any one felt like murdering old Gabe with a pea-shooter at that moment, Philo Gubb did. Shadow and trail Farry Pierce! The old skin-flint, coming with a fairy tale and getting the only fully graduated deteckative in Riverbank to shadow and trail a son-in-law and report daily! Divorce case evidence, hey? Talking murderer and working a deteckative into doing scandal sleuthing free of charge! Philo Gubb’s face reddened again with new anger as he put his hand in his pocket and touched the beard and wig he had placed there. But for this chance conversation he would have been following Farry Pierce now, and making a fool of himself. But for this chance conversation he would not have lost sight of Farry Pierce by day or by night. He went back to his office, put on his overalls, and went to his work on a paper-hanging job.

At six he started for home. A block down the street he met one of the loafers he had heard speaking in Grammill’s Cigar Store.

“What do you think about it?” he asked Philo Gubb.

“About what?” asked Philo in return.

“Ain’t you heerd?” asked the man. “Why, it’s all over town by now. Farry Pierce murdered old Gabe Hostetter not more’n twenty minutes after we seen him comin’ out of the bank. Shot him. Killed him first shot. Yes, sir! Killed him instantly with a little mite of a pistol with about as much carry as a pea-shooter. Must have hit him in just the right spot.”

“Did you see the pistol?” asked Philo Gubb nervously.

“No, I didn’t,” said his informant, “but that’s what the feller told me. ‘Killed him instantly with one of these here little pea-shooters,’ was what he said. What you lookin’ so funny about?”

“If you insist to wish to know,” said Philo Gubb, “Mr. Gabe Hostetter wasn’t murdered instantly at all. He was progressively murdered by inches over a long considerable period of time, like little drops of water.”

For a minute the loafer stared at Mr. Gubb. Then he laughed.

“Crazy!” he scoffed. “Crazy as a loon!” and he walked away and left Mr. Gubb struggling for a suitably crushing retort.