“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Dusenberry. “He stood ’Tunie as long as he could, and then he threw up his job and went back to Derlingport. They tell me she don’t do nothin’ much now but set around the house and think up new ways to git acquainted with men that ain’t heard enough of her to stay shy of her. Sorry I ain’t got no ink, Mr. Gubb.”
“It’s a matter of no consequential importance, thank you,” said Mr. Gubb, and he went out. He was distinctly troubled. He recalled now that Miss Scroggs had smiled in a winning way when she spoke to him, and that she had quite warmly pressed his hand when she departed. With a timid bachelor’s extreme fear of designing women, Mr. Gubb dreaded another meeting with Miss Scroggs. Only his faithfulness to his Correspondence School diploma had power to keep him at work on the Anonymous Wiggle case, and he walked thoughtfully toward the home of Mrs. Canterby. He went to the back door and knocked gently. Mrs. Canterby came to the door.
“Good-afternoon,” said Mr. Gubb. “I been a little nervous about that paper I hung onto your walls. If I could take a look at it—”
“Well, now, Mr. Gubb, that’s real kind of you,” said Mrs. Canterby. “You can look and welcome. If you just wait until I excuse myself to Miss Scroggs—”
“Is she here?” asked Mr. Gubb with a hasty glance toward his avenues of escape.
“She just run in to borrow a book to read,” said Mrs. Canterby, “and she’s having some trouble finding one to suit her taste. She’s in my lib’ry sort of glancing through some books.”
“Does—does she glance through to about near to page fourteen?” asked Mr. Gubb nervously.
“Now that you call it to mind,” said Mrs. Canterby, “that’s about how far she is glancing through them. She’s glanced through about sixteen, and she’s still glancing. She thinks maybe she’ll take ‘Myra’s Lover, or The Hidden Secret,’ but she ain’t sure. She come over to borrow ‘Weldon Shirmer,’ but I had lent that to a friend. She was real disappointed I didn’t have it.”
Mr. Gubb wiped the perspiration from his face. He too would have liked at that moment to have seen a copy of “Weldon Shirmer,” and to have read what stood at the top of page fourteen.
“If it ain’t too much trouble, Mrs. Canterby,” he said, “I wish you would sort of fetch that Myra book out here without Miss Scroggs’s knowing you done so. I got a special reason for it, in my deteckative capacity. And I wish you wouldn’t mention to Miss Scroggs about my being here.”