“Maybe that’s so,” agreed Philo Gubb. “It sounds reasonable. But the thing for me to do is to wait until you’re dead and then catch the feller. It ain’t a murder until you’re dead.”
“It ain’t, ain’t it?” sneered old Gabe. “You’d wait until I am dead, I suppose, and then start out to catch the feller. And you’d lose all the help I can give you. It ain’t often a detective can get the corpse to help him like this.”
“No, it ain’t,” agreed Philo Gubb.
“I got a suspicion who the feller is,” said Gabe.
“Who?” asked Philo Gubb.
“You’ll go ahead with the case? On the terms we settled on?” asked old Gabe.
Philo Gubb considered this carefully.
“Why, yes,” he said at length, “I will. Who is the feller you think is doin’ it?”
“Farrin’ton Pierce, the cashier of the Farmers’ and Citizens’ Bank,” said old Gabe, his eyes shining with malice and shrewdness, as he leaned forward and whispered the words. “My own son-in-law, he is. An’ I’ll tell you why he’s tryin’ it. For my money. So his wife’ll get it, an’ he can be president of the bank in my place.”