“I can look anyway a’most,” said Mr. Gubb with pride.
“Do tell!” said Mr. Critz, and so it was arranged that the first rehearsal of the gold-brick game should take place the next evening, but as Mr. Gubb turned away Mr. Critz deftly slipped something into the student detective’s coat pocket.
It was toward noon the next day that Mr. Critz, peering over his spectacles and avoiding as best he could the pails of paste, entered the parlor of the vacant house where Mr. Gubb was at work.
“I just come around,” said Mr. Critz, rather reluctantly, “to say you better not say nothing to your friend. I guess that deal’s off.”
“Pshaw, now!” said Mr. Gubb. “You don’t mean so!”
“I don’t mean nothing in the way of aspersions, you mind,” said Mr. Critz with reluctance, “but I guess we better call it off. Of course, so far as I know, you are all right—”
“I don’t know what you’re gettin’ at,” said Mr. Gubb. “Why don’t you say it?”
“Well, I been buncoed so often,” said Mr. Critz. “Seem’s like any one can get money from me any time and any way, and I got to thinkin’ it over. I don’t know anything about you, do I? And here I am, going to give you a gold-brick that cost me fifteen hundred dollars, and let you go out and wait until I come for it with your friend, and—well, what’s to stop you from just goin’ away with that brick and never comin’ back?”
Mr. Gubb looked at Mr. Critz blankly.
“I’ve went and told my friend,” he said. “He’s all ready to start in.”