“I suppose you are in trouble?” said Gilmore, and his genial mood seemed to chill suddenly.

“You’re right, boss, I’m in a heap of trouble!”

“Well, then, clear out of here!” said Gilmore.

“Hold on, boss, it ain’t that kind of trouble” interposed the handy-man hastily.

“What do you want?”

“Advice.”

Gilmore leaned back in his easy-chair and crossed his legs.

“Go on!” he ordered briefly.

“A handy-man like me doin’ all kinds of jobs for all kinds of people is sure to see some curious things, ain’t he, boss?”

“Well?”

“I’m here to tell you what I seen, boss; and every word of it will be God A’mighty’s truth!”

“It had better be!” rejoined Gilmore quietly, but with significant emphasis.

“I don’t want no better friend than you been to me,” said Montgomery in a sudden burst of grateful candor.  “You’ve paid two fines for me, and you done what you could for me that time I was sent up, when old man Murphy said he found me in his hen-house.”

Gilmore nodded.

“I was outrageous put upon!  The judge appointed that fellow Moxlow to defend me!  Say, it was a hell of a defense he put up, and I had a friend who was willin’ to swear he’d seen me in the alley back of Mike Lonigan’s saloon cleaning spittoons when old man Murphy said I was in his chicken house; Moxlow said he wouldn’t touch my case except on its merits, and the only merit it had was that friend, ready and willin’ to swear to anything!” Montgomery shrugged his great slanting shoulders.  “He’s too damn perpendicular!”

“He is,” agreed Gilmore.  “But what’s this got to do with what you saw?”

“Not a thing; but it makes me sweat blood whenever I think of the trick Moxlow served me,—­it ain’t as if I had no one but myself!  I got a family, see? I can’t afford to go to jail,—­it ain’t as if I was single!”

“Get back to your starting-point, Joe!” said Gilmore.

“Who do you think killed old man McBride, boss?”

“How should I know?”

“You ain’t got any ideas about that?” asked Montgomery.

Gilmore shot him a swift glance.

“I don’t know whether I have or not,” he replied.

“I have, boss.”

“You?” His tone betrayed neither eagerness nor interest.

“That’s what fetches me here, boss!” Joe replied, sinking his voice to a whisper.  “I got a damn good notion who killed old McBride; I could go out on the street and put my hand on the man who done it!”

“You mustn’t come here with these pipe dreams of yours, Joe; you have been drunk and all this talk about the McBride murder’s gone to your head!” retorted Gilmore contemptuously.

“I hope I may die if I ain’t as sober as you this minute, boss!” returned the handy-man impressively.

“Well, what do you know—­or think you know?” asked Gilmore with affected indifference.