hman there stood aside to let him enter.

"Good-morning, Mr. Gubb," he said pleasantly. "I been sort of
expecting you. Always right on the job when there's crime being done,
ain't you? You'll find Merkel and Brill and Jokosky and the rest of
Wiggins's crew in the main building, and I guess they'll tell you just
what they told the police. They hate it, but what else can they say?
It's the truth."

"What is the truth?" asked Mr. Gubb.

"That Wiggins was dead sore at Hen Smitz," said the watchman. "That
Wiggins told Hen he'd do for him if he lost them their jobs like he
said he would. That's the truth."

Mr. Gubb--his admiring followers were halted at the gate by the
watchman--entered the large building and inquired his way to Mr.
Wiggins's department. He found it on the side of the building toward
the river and on the ground floor. On one side the vast room led into
the refrigerating room of the company; on the other it opened upon a
long but narrow dock that ran the width of the building.

Along the outer edge of the dock were tied two barges, and into these
barges some of Wiggins's crew were dumping mutton--not legs of mutton
but entire sheep, neatly sewed in burlap. The large room was the
packing and shipping room, and the work of Wiggins's crew was that of
sewing the slaughtered and refrigerated sheep carcasses in burlap for
shipment. Bales of burlap stood against one wall; strands of hemp
twine ready for the needle hung from pegs in the wall and the posts
that supported the floor above. The contiguity of the refrigerating
room gave the room a pleasantly cool atmosphere.

Mr. Gubb glanced sharply around. Here was the burlap, here were
needles, here was twine. Yonder was the river into which Hen Smitz had
been thrown. He glanced across the narrow dock at the blue river. As
his eye returned he noticed one of the men carefully sweeping the dock
with a broom--sweeping fragments of glass into the river. As the men
in the room watched him curiously, Mr. Gubb picked up a piece of
burlap and put it in his pocket, wrapped a strand of twine around his
finger and pocketed the twine, examined the needles stuck in
improvised needle-holders made by boring gimlet holes in the wall, and
then walked to the dock and picked up one of the pieces of glass.

"Clues," he remarked, and gave his attention to the work of
questioning the men.

Although manifestly reluctant, they honestly admitted that Wiggins had
more than once threat