and lost your wife -- "' I was thinking of Mr. Pitman. [Page 214] "Not at all," he said with emphasis. "It's better to have married and lost than never to have married at all. Every man needs a good woman, and it doesn't matter how old he is. The older he is, the more he needs her. I am nearly sixty." I was rather startled, and I almost dropped the fried potatoes. But the next moment he had got out his note-book and was going over the items again. "Pillow-slip," he said, "knife broken , onyx clock -- wouldn't think so much of the clock if he hadn't been so damnably anxious to hide the key, the discrepancy in time as revealed by the trial -- yes, it is as clear as a bell. Mrs. Pitman, does that Maguire woman next door sleep all day?" "She's up now," I said, looking out the window. He was in the hall in a moment, only to come to the door later, hat in hand. "Is she the only other woman on the street who keeps boarders?" [Page 215] "She's the only woman who doesn't," I snapped. "She'll keep anything that doesn't belong to her -- except boarders." "Ah!" He lighted his corn-cob pipe and stood puffing at it and watching me. He made me uneasy: I thought he was going to continue the subject of every man needing a wife, and I'm afraid I had already decided to take him if