ened Hen Smitz--that he hated Hen Smitz with the
hatred of a man who has been threatened with the loss of his job. Mr.
Gubb learned that Hen Smitz had been the foreman for the entire
building--a sort of autocrat with, as Wiggins's crew informed him, an
easy job. He had only to see that the crews in the building turned out
more work this year than they did last year. "'Ficiency" had been his
motto, they said, and they hated "'Ficiency."

Mr. Gubb's gallery was awaiting him at the gate, and its members were
in a heated discussion as to what Mr. Gubb had been doing. They ceased
at once when he appeared and fell in behind him as he walked away from
the packing house and toward the undertaking establishment of Mr.
Holworthy Bartman, on the main street. Here, joining the curious group
already assembled, the gallery was forced to wait while Mr. Gubb
entered. His task was an unpleasant but necessary one. He must visit
the little "morgue" at the back of Mr. Bartman's establishment.

The body of poor Hen Smitz had not yet been removed from the bag in
which it had been found, and it was to the bag Mr. Gubb gave his
closest attention. The bag--in order that the body might be
identified--had not been ripped, but had been cut, and not a stitch
had been severed. It did not take Mr. Gubb a moment to see that Hen
Smitz had not been sewed in a bag at all. He had been sewed in
burlap--burlap "yard goods," to use a shopkeeper's term--and it was
burlap identical with that used by Mr. Wiggins and his crew. It was no
loose bag of burlap--but a close-fitting wrapping of burlap; a cocoon
of burlap that had been drawn tight around the body, as burlap is
drawn tight around the carcass of sheep for shipment, like a mummy's
wrappings.

It would have been utterly impossible for Hen Smitz to have sewed
himself into the casing, not only because it bound his arms tight to
his sides, but because the burlap was lapped over and sewed from the
outside. This, once and for all, ended the suicide theory. The
question was: Who was the murderer?

As Philo Gubb turned away from the bier, Undertaker Bartman entered
the morgue.

"The crowd outside is getting impatient, Mr. Gubb," he said in his
soft, undertakery voice. "It is getting on toward their lunch hour,
and they want to crowd into my front office to find out what you've
learned. I'm afraid they'll break my plate-glass windows, they're
pushing so hard against them. I don't want to hurry you, but if yo