"Ah, I see! Some turkey bones!" He nodded approvingly, indulgently. "And what were you doing with these particular turkey bones?"

"Putting them in a garbage can."

"Ah! You were putting some turkey bones in a garbage can. And as you were about to do this?"

"I caught sight of another man also trying to get rid of a parcel."

"Turkey bones, of course."

A butterball's bosom was no more impervious to slough water than the rapt-eyed youth to the older man's irony.

"When I opened his parcel I found it held mortar and stone and some steel cuttings."

"And this led you to infer?"

"This led me to follow him. He had a basement, I found, directly in the rear of a bank building."

"What bank building?"