Philo Gubb, Correspondence-School Detective
“Yes?” queried Philo Gubb.
Mr. Guffins threw out both hands with a gesture of utter despair.
“A pig came under the curtains,” he groaned. “A pig – a great, fat, double-chinned, pinky-white pig, the kind you see at county fairs – came under the curtains and grunted twice. It stood there and raised its head and grunted twice.”
Mr. Guffins wrung his hands nervously.
“It – it surprised me,” he said, – “but only for a minute. I said, ‘Get out, you beast!’ and was going to kick it, but Mrs. Lippett rose slowly from her chair. She half-tottered for an instant, and then she covered her face with her hands. She began to weep. ‘I knew it!’ she sobbed; ‘I knew it! Oh, Henry, I knew you ate too much. I told you and told you again and again you were making a pig of yourself. Oh, Henry, if you had only been less of a pig when you were alive before!’ And what do you think that pig did?”
“What did it do?” asked Philo Gubb.
“It sat up on its hind legs and begged,” said Mr. Guffins, “begged for food. It was awful! Mrs. Lippett couldn’t stand it. She wept. ‘He was always so hungry in his other life,’ she said. ‘I can’t begin to be stern with him now. To-morrow, but not when he has just come back to me. Come, Henry!’
“She went into the dining-room,” continued Mr. Guffins, “and Henry – or the pig, for it couldn’t have been Henry – followed her. And what do you think it did?”
“What?” asked Mr. Gubb.
“It went right to the dining-room table and climbed into a chair. Pigs don’t do that, do they? But you don’t believe it could have been Henry, do you? It got up in the chair and sat in it, and put its front feet on the table and grunted. And Mrs. Lippett hurried about saying, ‘Oh, Henry! Oh, poor, dear Henry!’ and brought a plate of fried hominy and sliced apple and set it before him. And he wouldn’t touch it! He wouldn’t eat. So Mrs. Lippett wept harder and got a napkin and tied it around the pig’s neck. Then the pig ate. He almost climbed into the plate, and gobbled the food down. And then he grunted for more. And Mrs. Lippett wept and said: ‘It’s Henry! He always did tie a napkin around his neck – he spilled his soup so. It’s Henry! It acts just like Henry. He never did anything at the table but eat and grunt.’ And so,” said Mr. Guffins sadly, “she thinks it’s Henry. She’s fixed up the guest bedroom for him.”
“The idea of such a notion!” said Mr. Gubb.
“Well, that’s it,” said Mr. Guffins sadly. “I ain’t sure but it is Henry. Do you know, that pig walks on its hind feet like a man? She says it walks like Henry… Oh!”
“What is it?” asked Mr. Gubb.
“I told you Henry – ”
“Yes?”
“I told you Henry broke his neck. He fell down and broke his neck, in his store. He was coming down the back stairs in the dark, and his foot caught in a piece of rope and he fell. And – this pig came into the parlor with a piece of string on its leg! Here’s the string.”
Mr. Gubb took it. From his desk he took the string Mr. Greasy Gus had left. The two ends joined perfectly.
“I’ll get you out of this fix, and fix it so Mrs. Lippett won’t have that pig onto her hands,” he said. “I’ll go tell her what a fraud of a faker you are, and it won’t cost you but twenty-five dollars.”
“Willingly paid,” said Mr. Guffins, reaching into his pocket.
“And don’t you worry about that pig being Henry K. Lippett,” said Mr. Gubb. “That pig was a stranger into Riverbank. And,” he went on, as if reading the words from the end of the whipcord, “it was tied to the alley fence. Tied to an iron staple,” he said, “by a short, stoutish man with a ruddish face.” He took up the other piece of cord and looked at it closely. “And the pig jerked the cord in two and went into the yard and in at the open door and into the room. And what is moreover also, the pig is an educated show-pig, and its name is Henry, and – ”
“And what?” asked Mr. Guffins eagerly.
“If you want to get rid of the pig out of Mrs. Lippett’s house, all you have to do is to write to the Sheriff of Derling County, Derlingport, Iowa, and you needn’t trouble yourself into it no further.”
“Great Scott!” cried Mr. Guffins. “And you can tell all that from that piece of cord!”
Mr. Gubb assumed a look of wisdom.
“Us gents that is into the deteckative business,” he said carelessly, “has to learn twelve correspondence lessons before we get our diplomas. The deteckative mind is educated up to such things.”
BURIED BONES
When Mr. Gubb went to the house of Mr. Jonas Medderbrook to pay him the money he had received for solving the mystery of Henry, the Educated Pig, he found the house closed, locked and deserted, and on the door was pinned a card that said simply, and in a neat handwriting: —
Gone to Patagonia. Will be back in one hundred years. Please waitThis was signed “Jonas Medderbrook,” but not until the next day did Mr. Gubb learn from the “Riverbank Eagle” that Mr. Medderbrook had decamped after selling his friends and neighbors an immense amount of stock in the Utterly Hopeless Gold-Mine, of which Mr. Gubb had a very large and entirely worthless quantity.
The departure of Mr. Medderbrook was a great shock to Mr. Gubb, as it seemed to indicate that serious complications in his wooing of Syrilla might result from it, especially as he had only heard from Syrilla through Mr. Medderbrook, but, disturbed as he was by this fear, he was even more upset by a telegram that came to him direct that afternoon. It was from Syrilla herself —
Alas! [it read], the worst has happened. Weighed myself this morning and weighed only one hundred pounds. Later discovered scales were one hundred and five pounds out of balance, registering one hundred and five pounds too much. I cannot marry you, now or ever, Gubby dear, as cannot permit your faithful heart to wed one who weighs five pounds less than nothing. Good-bye forever.
Syrilla.The blow was a severe one to Mr. Gubb, as it would have been to any lover who loved a half-ton of beauty only to have her shrink to five pounds less than nothing. For several days he remained locked in his office, hardly touching food, and then, with a sad heart he resumed his customary occupations. He would never have learned the truth about Syrilla had it not been for a tramp called Chi Foxy.
Chi Foxy made the long walk from Derlingport, and night found him on the outskirts of Riverbank. He begged a hand-out from one of the small houses and hunted a place to spend the night. He found it underneath a tool-house alongside the railway tracks, and that it had been used as sleeping-quarters by other tramps was shown by the heap of crushed straw, the bread-crusts, and the remnants of a small fire.
Chi Foxy crawled in and stretched himself out for a comfortable night. He lighted his pipe, loosened the laces of his shoes, and settled back for a comfortable smoke.
Just outside the rear of his sleeping quarters ran the wire right-of-way fence, which was also the back fence of a small piece of property on which stood a rickety old house. The house was devoid of paint, but it was a cheerful sight from where Chi Foxy reclined. He had a clear view of the kitchen window, from which the light came in a yellow glow, and he could see a woman cooking something in a frying-pan on a kitchen stove. A man sat beside the stove, his elbows on his knees, waiting for supper.
Chi Foxy almost decided to climb the fence and knock at the door of the kitchen at the moment the woman took the frying-pan off the stove, but he was feeling well filled and comfortable, and he decided to wait and to use the house as his breakfasting-place. This required no little strength of character, for the perfume of fried veal chops was wafted to his nostrils, but he held himself in hand, and when he had burned his pipeful of tobacco he curled down and went to sleep.
He was awakened by the sound of voices near at hand, and peered out between the ties. The night was not dark. The voices had come from a man and a woman, and as Chi Foxy watched them the man began digging in the sandy soil with a spade. He made quite a hole in the soil and turned to the woman.
“Hand me the bag,” he said.
The woman dragged a heavy gunny-sack to the edge of the hole. The man untwisted the neck of the bag and up-ended it over the hole. There followed the rattle of bones, one striking against the other, and the man handed the bag back to the woman. Chi Foxy peered eagerly at the hole. He saw bones. He looked up at the stars and saw it must be well after midnight. He saw the man hastily spade the soft soil over the bones, saw him scatter loose dry top-sand over the completed job, and saw the man and woman hurry back to the dark house.
The next morning Chi Foxy left his resting-place and climbed over the wire fence. He looked curiously at the spot where the weird burial had taken place, and went on toward the house. He knocked on the door, and it was opened by the man – a tall, lanky, coarse-bearded specimen.
“Say, friend, how about givin’ a feller some breakfast?” asked Chi Foxy.
“How ’bout it, ma?” asked the man, turning his head. “Got some breakfast for this feller?”
The woman looked toward the tramp. She evidently decided in his favor.
“Let him set on the step and I kin hand him out some coffee and some meat, if that’ll do him,” she said, and Chi Foxy seated himself. The breakfast she brought him on a chipped plate was all he could have desired. There was a half of a veal cutlet, browned to a nicety, a portion of fried potatoes, a thick slice of bread without butter, and a cup of coffee. Chi Foxy ate and drank.
“Thanks, folks,” he said. “I won’t forgit you.” And he continued on his way toward Riverbank.
“So you’re here,” said the first policeman he met. “Right on time with the first frosty breeze, ain’t you? Well, my friend, you can blow out of town on the breeze, just like you blew in. No more free board and gentle stone-pile massage in this town. Drift along, bo!”
He turned up the first cross-street. He went from house to house begging a hand-out, but the residents were colder than the weather. At the twelfth house he knocked on the back door, but he was beginning to feel hopeless. A thin streamer of smoke was issuing from the kitchen chimney, and where there is smoke there is food; but here, instead of a hard-faced woman coming to the door, a man put his face to the kitchen window and looked out. It was the face of a tall, thin man with a long neck and prominent Adam’s-apple, and as the man peered out of the window he looked something like a flamingo. He opened the door.
“Come right into the inside,” said Philo Gubb pleasantly, “and heat yourself up warm. The temperature is full of cold weather to-day.”
Chi Foxy entered. He looked around the kitchen. There was a brisk fire in the stove, but no sign of food.
“Say, pard,” he said, “how about giving me a bite? I haven’t had a bite this morning. I ain’t too late, am I?”
His host looked at him.
“You are not too late,” he answered, “because it may be some days of time before there is any eats here, for what’s burning into that stove is the unvalueless trimmings off of wall-paper. I’m not the regular resider at this house by no means.”
Chi Foxy looked at his host again.
“You’re a paper-hanger, ain’t you?” he said.
“Paper-hanger and deteckative,” said his host proudly. “My name is Mister P. Gubb, graduate of the Rising Sun Deteckative Agency’s Correspondence School of Deteckating in twelve lessons. And paper-hanging done in a neat manner.”
Chi Foxy held out his hand eagerly.
“Shake, pard!” he asked. “That’s my line, too.”
“Paper-hanging?” asked Philo Gubb.
“Detecting,” said Chi Foxy promptly. “I’m one of the most famousest gum-shoe fellers in the world. Me and this here great detective feller – what’s his name, now? – used to work team-work together.”
“Burns?” suggested Philo Gubb.
“Holmes,” said Chi Foxy, “Shermlock Holmes. Me and him pulled off all them big jobs you maybe have read about in the papers.”
He pronounced the name of the celebrated detective of fiction “Shermlock Hol-lums.”
“Oh, yes,” said the tramp, “me and Shermlock is great chums. And me and the kid!”
“To what kid do you refer to?” asked Philo Gubb.
“Why, my old side partner’s little son, Shermlock Hollums the Twoth,” said Chi Foxy without a blink. “And a cunnin’ little feller he was – took after his father like a cat after fish, he did. Me and old Shermlock we used to hide things – candy and – and oranges – and let little Shermlock go and detect where they was. He was a great little codger, he was.”
He noticed that Mr. Gubb was looking at him sharply. He looked down at his ragged garments.
“Disguise,” he said briefly. “Nobody’d know a swell dresser like I am in this rig, would he? Say, pard, how about giving me a half-dollar to get breakfast? Us detectives ought to have es-spirit dee corpse, hey? We ought to stick by each other, hey?”
The celebrated paper-hanger detective considered Chi Foxy. It was evident that P. Gubb doubted the authenticity of the tramp-detective.
“In times of necessary need,” he said slowly, “I often assume onto me the disguise of a tramp, but I don’t assume it onto me so complete that I go asking for money to buy breakfast.”
“You don’t, hey?” said Chi Foxy scornfully. “Well, you must be a swell detective, you must. When I get into a tramp disguise I’m a tramp all through.”
“Most certainly,” said P. Gubb. “And so am I. But there’s a difference into the way you are doing it now. You ain’t deteckating now. You are coming at me as one deteckative unto another.”
Chi Foxy laughed.
“Say,” he said, “I’d like to see this here Correspondence School you graduated out of, I would. I’d like to see the lessons they learn you, I would. Why, the first thing my old pard Shermlock Hollums told me was never to be anything but what I was disguised to be as long as I was disguised to be it. That’s right. Maybe I’d be disguised as a tramp and I’d meet our old friend and college chum, the Dook of Sluff. He’d want to take me into some swell place and blow me off to a swell dinner. Would I let on? No, sir! I’d sort of whine at him and say, ‘Mister, won’t you give a poor feller a penny for to hire a bed?’ That’s how me and Shermlock stuck to a disguise. And Shermlock! Me and him was like twins, we was, and yet when I was in this tramp disguise and went up to his room to report, I’d knock at the door and say, ‘Mister, give a poor cove a hand-out, won’t you?’ and Shermlock would turn and say, ‘Watson, throw this tramp downstairs.’ And Watson would do it. Yes, sir! I’ve been so sore and bruised from being thrown downstairs when I went to report to Shermlock that sometimes I’d have to go to the hospital to get plastered up. That’s detecting!”
Chi Foxy looked at P. Gubb, but P. Gubb did not seem to have melted.
“That’s livin’ up to your disguise,” continued Chi Foxy. “Me and Shermlock, when we had on tramp disguises we were tramps. Why, I used to go home and my valet would throw me downstairs. I was so thoroughly disguised, and I kept actin’ so trampish while I had the disguise on, that he used to come at me with a golluf stick and whack me on the head. And when I got into my own room I kept right on being a tramp. Took off my clothes – still a tramp. Took off my false whiskers – still a tramp. I’d be there stark naked and I’d still be a tramp. Yes, sir. That’s the kind of detective disguising I did. And then I’d take a bath. Then I was myself again. Yes, sir. When I’d scrubbed myself in the bathtub I figured I’d got rid of the tramp disguise right down into the skin, and I’d be myself again – and not until then.”
He looked at P. Gubb out of the corner of his eye.
“Why, I remember one time,” he said briskly, “I was asked to the Dook’s palace to a swell party. Me and Shermlock was both asked, because they knew one of us wouldn’t go unless the other did. Well, sir, I had been out detecting in a tramp disguise that day – findin’ stolen jools and murderers and that sort of business – and I went and took my bath and rigged all up in swell clothes, and called my limmy-seen automobile, and when the feller I hired to drive the limmy-seen come to open the door of the car at the Dook’s palace I dodged. Yes, sir, I dodged like I thought he was going to hit me because I hadn’t no business in my own limmy-seen automobile. That was funny, wasn’t it? So I went up the steps into the Dook’s palace, and the gentleman he had to open the door opened the door, and he called out my name and up come the Dookess – Mrs. Dook of Sluff, as they call her, but I always called her Maggie, like she called me Mike. So she says to me, ‘Mike, I’m mighty glad to see you here. We’re going to have a swell party.’ And I started to say back something pleasant, but what I said was, ‘Please, missus, won’t you give a poor cove a hand-out?’”
“What seemed to be the reason you said that?” asked Philo Gubb with interest.
“That’s what worried me,” said Chi Foxy. “I didn’t mean to say it. I just said it against my will, as you might say. But I guess she thought I was tryin’ to be smart, for she just says, ‘Naughty, naughty, Mike,’ and whistled to the Dook to come and blow me off to the feeds. So the Dook come and led me into the dining-room, and stacked me up against the table for a stand-up feed. Swell feed, bo! Samwiches till you couldn’t rest – ham samwiches and chicken samwiches and tongue samwiches and club samwiches and – and all kinds of samwiches. And what did I do? I grabbed half a dozen of them samwiches and rammed them into my pants pocket, just like a tramp would do it. The Dook looked surprised, but he begun to haw-haw, and he slapped me on the back and said, ‘Good joke, ol’ chap, good joke!’ So that passed off all right. Then I went into the jool room, because the Dook had told me his son, the Dookette, or what you might call the little Dookerino, was in there. So in I went, and the first thing I knew I was hiding one of the Dook’s gold crowns inside my vest. In a minute in come the Dook to pick out a crown to wear at dinner – ”
“I thought you said they had a stand-up dinner at the table,” said Philo Gubb.
“Pshaw, that was nothing but the appetizer,” said Chi Foxy. “Well, in he come and began lookin’ through his crowns for the one he wanted, and all at once he saw how my vest bulged out, and he knew by the rough edges of the bulge it wasn’t samwiches because them dookal samwiches is all boneless. So he puts his hand on my shoulder and he says, ‘Mike, ain’t you carryin’ the joke a bit too far?’ That’s what he says, and I wish you could have heard how sad his voice was. He says, ‘You know me, Mike, and you know that anything I’ve got is yours —except that crown you’ve got inside your vest.’
“For a minute I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t in tramp disguise and I thought he would think I was a thief in real life, so I says, ‘Dook, search me!’ ‘I don’t have to search you,’ he says, ‘for I can see my favorite crown bulging out your vest.’ ‘I don’t mean that, Dook, old chap,’ I says; ‘I mean take me up to your bood-u-war or the bathroom and give me the twice-over. Something’s wrong with me, and I don’t know what, but some of my tramp disguise must be sticking to me somewhere.’ So we went up to the bathroom and he went over me with this one-eyed monocule he always wore, and then he went over me with a reading-glass, and then he went over me with a microscope, but he couldn’t see a speck of tramp disguise on me. Not a speck. ‘Keep lookin’!’ I says. ‘It must be there somewhere, Dook,’ I says, ‘or I wouldn’t act so pernicious.’ So he begun again, and all at once I hear him chuckle. He was lookin’ in my ear with the microscope.”
“What was it?” asked Philo Gubb eagerly.
“A hair,” said Chi Foxy. “Just one hair. It was a hair out of my tramp whiskers that had got in my ear, and the minute he pulled it out I was all right again and no more tramp than he was. So you see that’s the way I keep acting tramp as long as I have even one hair of tramp disguise about me. Come on, be a good feller and let me have half a dollar to get some feeds with.”
P. Gubb put his hand in his pocket and withdrew it again. “I much admire to like the way you act right up to the disguise,” he said, “and it does you proud, but of course when you ask for fifty cents it’s nothing but part of the disguise, ain’t it?”
“Now, see here, bo!” said Chi Foxy earnestly. “Don’t you go and misunderstand me. I didn’t mean to be mistook that way. I do want fifty cents. I’m hungry, I am.”
P. Gubb smiled approvingly. “Most excellent trampish disguise work,” he said. “Nobody couldn’t do it better. A real tramp couldn’t do it better.”
Chi Foxy frowned. “Say,” he said, “cut that out, won’t you, cully? Your head ain’t solid ivory, is it? I’m starvin’. Gimme fifty cents, mister. Gimme a quarter if you won’t give me fifty. Come on, now, be a good feller.”
“A deteckative like you are oughtn’t to need twenty-five cents so bad as that,” said P. Gubb. “A deteckative acquainted with the knowing of a Dook and of Sherlock Holmes don’t have to beg.”
Chi Foxy actually gritted his teeth. He was angry with himself. He had talked too well. He had proved so thoroughly that he was a detective that P. Gubb would not believe he was hungry.
“See here, bo,” he said suddenly, “is this straight about you being a detective, or is that a bluff, too?”
Philo Gubb showed Chi Foxy the badge he had received upon completion of his correspondence course of twelve lessons.
“I’m the most celebrated and only deteckative in the town of Riverbank, Iowa,” he said seriously, “and you can ask the Sheriff or the Chief of Police if you don’t believe me. I’m working right now onto a case of quite some importance, into which a calf was stolen, but up to now the clues ain’t what they should be. If you don’t think I’m a deteckative you can ask Farmer Hopper. He hired me for to get the capture of the guilty calf-stealer aforesaid.”
Chi Foxy studied P. Gubb’s simple face.
“And you can arrest a feller and lodge him in jail?” he asked.
“I’ve arrested many and lodged them into jail,” P. Gubb assured him.
“Well, bo,” said Chi Foxy frankly, “I’m the man you’re looking for. Arrest me.”
The tramp knew enough about arrests to know that even a suspect, when lodged in jail, would be fed, and he was hungry and getting hungrier every moment. P. Gubb looked at him with surprise.
“I thought you said you was a deteckative,” he said.
“I am,” said Chi Foxy. “Or I wouldn’t know I was a criminal. I detected it myself, because nobody else could. Even my old friend Shermlock Hollums couldn’t detect it, but I did. I’m a – a murderer, I am. There’s a thousand-dollar reward offered for me.”
“Then why don’t you arrest yourself and get the reward?” asked P. Gubb.
“Say,” said Chi Foxy with disgust. “It can’t be done. I know, for I’ve tried. I’m a fugitive, that’s what I am, and right behind me, no matter where I flee to, comes myself ready to grab me and arrest me. I’ve chased myself all over Europe, Asia and Africa, and I can’t get away from myself, and I can’t grab myself. It’s – it’s just awful.”
Chi Foxy wiped an imaginary tear from his eye.
“And I can’t keep away from the scene of my crime,” he said. “I come back here time after time – ”
“Did you do the murder here?” asked P. Gubb with increased interest.
“That’s what I did,” said Chi Foxy. “I did it here. Take me down to the lock-up. Me and you can hold me all right.”
“It’s somewhat out of the ordinary common run for a feller to be a deteckative and the criminal murderer he’s chasing both at once,” said P. Gubb doubtfully.
“That’s so, ain’t it?” agreed Chi Foxy. “It looks that way. But facts are facts, ain’t they?”
“Quite occasionally they are such,” agreed P. Gubb.
“That’s right,” said Chi Foxy. “And all you’ve got to do is to explain them. You see, bo, I was a young feller when I murdered this old miser – ”
“What did you say his name was?” asked P. Gubb.
“Smith,” said Chi Foxy promptly. “John J. Smith, and he lived right here in this town. And I murdered the old feller and got away. Nobody cared much whether the old feller was murdered or not, and nothin’ much might have been said of it except that the old feller had a nephew. His name was Smith – Peter P. Smith.”
“What did he do?” asked P. Gubb.
“He offered a reward of a thousand dollars,” said Chi Foxy. “It was one of them unsolved mystery cases – one of them cases that never get solved because no detective is smart enough to solve it. Nobody knew who killed old John J. Smith but me, and I wasn’t going around telling it.”
