e is working up a case,
and has a sign on his door 'Out--Back at Midnight,' he generally means
he ain't receiving callers on no account."

"That's all right," said Higgins briskly, "but this is business. I've
got a real job for you."

"I am engaged upon a real job now," said Philo Gubb.

"This is a detective job," said Mr. Higgins. "We want you to find a
man, and if you find him, there's two hundred dollars in it for you.
What sort of a job is it you have on hand?"

"I am searching out the whereabouts of a lost party," said Gubb
earnestly. "I'm investigating clues at the present time and moment."

Higgins stepped inside the door. He walked to where Philo Gubb sat at
an elaborate mahogany desk, and looked at the apparatus Mr. Gubb was
using.

"What the dickens?" he asked.

On the slide of the desk were grouped a number of small articles, and
a large and powerful microscope. Through the lens of the microscope
Mr. Gubb was inspecting something that looked like frayed yellow-brown
wool yarn.

"You don't expect to find your missing party in that wad of wool, do
you, Gubb?" asked Mr. Higgins jestingly.

"Maybe I do, and maybe the operations of the deteckative mind are none
of your particular affair when conducted in the private seclusion of
my laboratory," said Gubb.

"Now, don't get mad," said Higgins. "It just struck me as funny. Looks
as if you were hunting for fleas in a wisp of dog hair."

Philo Gubb looked up quickly. As a matter of fact, he had but a
moment before found a flea in the wool he was examining, and the
wool was indeed a wisp of dog hair. The party Mr. Gubb had been
engaged to find was a dog, and Mr. Gubb was--by the inductive method
of detecting--trying to reason out the location of the dog. By the aid
of the microscope, Mr. Gubb was searching for the slight indications
that mean so much to detectives. Unfortunately, however, Mr. Gubb had
not yet found anything from which he could deduce anything whatever,
unless the flea in the wool might lead to the conclusion that the dog
now, or once, had fleas.

"Tell you what I want," said Mr. Higgins: "I want you to find
Mustard."

Detective Gubb swung suddenly in his chair and faced Mr. Higgins.

"I don't want nothing more to do with that will!" he said.

"I'm with you there!" said Higgins, laughing. "When O'Hara made his
will so that my client couldn't get her rights at once he did a mean
trick, and I dare say Mrs. Doblin will think so when she