you. Everybody knows you are a detective. I want you
to--to get on my trail."

"You want me to arrest you!" cried Mr. Gubb with surprise.

"I want you to be looking for me as if you wanted to arrest me," said
poor Mr. Guffins; "as if you had received word that I was a fraud, and
that you had traced me to Mrs. Lippett's. You can go there and say:
'Gone! I am too late! He has escaped.' And then you can tell her it
couldn't be."

"That what couldn't be?" asked Mr. Gubb.

"The room was darkish," said Mr. Guffins. "The lights were dim. I
stood in the light of the red globe, and it gave me a weird look. I
held the crystal globe in one hand and the jade talisman in the other.
The incense arose from the incense-burner. As if out of the empty air,
a sweet-toned bell rang three times. I bowed low three times as the
bell rang and muttered the magic words. I made them up as I said them,
but they sounded mystic. Mrs. Lippett was sitting on the edge of her
chair, breathless with emotion. The curtains were drawn across the
door at the back of the room. You could have heard a pin drop. We were
alone, just we two. I felt creepy myself. I turned toward the
curtains. I said, 'Henry, appear!'"

"Yes?" queried Philo Gubb.

Mr. Guffins threw out both hands with a gesture of utter despair.

"A pig came under the curtains," he groaned. "A pig--a great, fat,
double-chinned, pinky-white pig, the kind you see at county
fairs--came under the curtains and grunted twice. It stood there and
raised its head and grunted twice."

Mr. Guffins wrung his hands nervously.

"It--it surprised me," he said,--"but only for a minute. I said, 'Get
out, you beast!' and was going to kick it, but Mrs. Lippett rose
slowly from her chair. She half-tottered for an instant, and then she
covered her face with her hands. She began to weep. 'I knew it!' she
sobbed; 'I knew it! Oh, Henry, I knew you ate too much. I told you and
_told_ you again and again you were making a pig of yourself. Oh,
Henry, if you had only been less of a pig when you were alive before!'
And what do you think that pig did?"

"What did it do?" asked Philo Gubb.

"It sat up on its hind legs and begged," said Mr. Guffins, "begged for
food. It was awful! Mrs. Lippett couldn't stand it. She wept. 'He was
always so hungry in his other life,' she said. 'I can't begin to be
stern with him now. To-morrow, but not when he has just come back to
me. Come, Henry!'

"She went into the dining-room