Philo Gubb, Correspondence-School Detective
“I should think not,” said P. Gubb.
“No, sir!” said Chi Foxy. “So I was as safe as a babe unborn. I skipped up the river to Minneapolis, and nobody thought of lookin’ for me, because I wasn’t suspected. And then I did a fool thing.”
“Murderers ’most always does,” said P. Gubb.
“Sure!” said Chi Foxy. “I thought I’d go to New Orleans. It was all right – nice trip – until we got to Dubuque, and then what happened? The old steamboat blew up. I went sailin’ up in the air like one of these here skyrockets, I did, and when I come down I lit head first.”
“It is a remarkable wonder it didn’t kill you to death,” said P. Gubb.
“Ain’t it?” said Chi Foxy. “But it did worse than kill me. It knocked my senses out of me. When I come to I didn’t know what had happened. I didn’t remember a thing out of my past – not a thing. I was like a newborn babe. I didn’t have an idea or a memory left in me. When they picked me up and I opened my eyes I could just say ‘Ah-goo’ and ‘Da-da’ and things like that, and I didn’t know who I was or where I’d been or anything. So some kind folks took me and sent me to kinder-garden, and I started in to learn my A-B-C’s and things like that. I learned fast, and pretty soon I was in the high school, and pretty soon I graduated, and the name I graduated under was Mike Higgs, Higgs being the name of the family that adopted me.”
“Mike Higgs?” repeated P. Gubb, trying to remember a celebrated detective of that name.
“Yes,” said Chi Foxy, “they named me Mike after the old gran’pa of the family. He was a butcher, and they wanted me to be a butcher, but I wanted to be a detective. So Gran’pa Higgs he lent me enough money to go to London and take lessons in detecting from Shermlock Hollums, and I did. He says to me, when I’d finished the course, ‘Mike, I hate to say it, but I can’t call you a rival. You’re so far ahead of me in detective knowledge that I’m like a half-witted child beside you.’ That’s what my old friend and teacher, Shermlock Hollums, says to me.”
“That was exceedingly high praising from one so great,” said P. Gubb.
“You bet it was!” said Chi Foxy, “So one day Shermlock says to me, ‘Mike you’re so good at this detecting work, why don’t you try to solve The Great Mystery?’
“‘What’s that?’ I says.
“‘Why, the greatest unsolved mystery of the world,’ he says. ‘The mystery of the Riverbank, Iowa, miser.’
“So he told me what he knew about it,” continued Chi Foxy, “and I set to work. I come here to Riverbank to hunt up a clue, and I found just one clue.”
“What was it?” asked Philo Gubb.
“It was a speck of red pepper no bigger than the point of a pin,” said Chi Foxy, “crushed into the carpet by the old miser’s bed, where he had been killed. I picked up the speck of red pepper and microscoped it, and I saw that along one edge it was sort of brown, where it had been burned a little.”
“Have you got it now?” asked P. Gubb.
“Got it?” said Chi Foxy. “I should say not. While I was lookin’ at it a breeze come and blowed it away, and I never saw it again, but that was enough for me. ‘Red pepper,’ I says, ‘partly burned,’ and I began to tremble. ’Cause why? ’Cause I never was able to get smoking tobacco strong enough to suit me, and to make it taste snappy I always put a little red pepper in my pipe. I turned as white as a sheet. ‘Red pepper partly burned!’ I says to myself. ‘Nobody in the world but me puts red pepper in his tobacco.’
“Well, sir, I started tracing myself back and I found out I was the murderer. And I was the detective after the murderer. I was everybody concerned. In a moment I was overcome by criminal fear and I fled. I fled all over Europe, Asia, and Africa, and wherever I went I was right after myself, ready to arrest me.”
Chi Foxy paused and glanced at P. Gubb questioningly. With a solemn face the great Correspondence School detective blinked his bird-like eyes at Chi Foxy.
“So now arrest me,” said Chi Foxy.
Philo Gubb rubbed his chin. “I’d like to favor you by so doing, Mr. Jones,” he said, “for I can easy see, Mr. Higgs, that you can’t arrest yourself, but it is against the instructions in Lesson Six of the Rising Sun Correspondence School of Deteckating for a graduate to arrest a man without a good clue, and the only clue you had was blowed away.”
For a moment this seemed to annoy Chi Foxy, but his face suddenly brightened.
“Clue?” he said. “Say, friend, I wouldn’t ask you to arrest me on any such clue as a speck of red pepper. No, sir! But I’ve got a clue that’ll mean something. I can tell you right where I buried that old miser’s bones, I can. You go up the river road until you come to a tool-house on the railway, and just back of the tool-house is a dwellin’-house – old and unpainted. All right! Right in that yard, close to the railway fence, the bones is buried. Now, you turn me over to the law, and you go up there – ”
“We’d best go up there immediately first before anything else,” said Philo Gubb, starting to remove his paper-hanger’s apron. “Putting off clues until sometime else is against Paragraph Four, Lesson One. If you come up there with me – ”
“Look here,” said Chi Foxy, “will you buy me a feed on the way up if I go with you?”
“Quite certainly sure,” said P. Gubb, and so it was agreed.
The paper-hanger detective and the criminal-detective stopped at Hank’s restaurant and Chi Foxy ate a heavy meal, and then led the way to the tool-house, and pointed over the wire fence to the spot where the bones of the murdered miser were supposed to repose.
“Right there!” he said, but when P. Gubb had climbed the fence and had turned to look for Chi Foxy, the late detective-criminal was gone. Mr. Gubb’s face turned red, but as he hung his head in shame he noticed that the ground at his feet had lately been spaded. He stooped to look at it, and then walked to the weather-beaten house and knocked. A lanky, loose-jointed man came to the door, and a woman peered at Mr. Gubb from behind the man.
“I hope you’ll pardon,” said Mr. Gubb politely, “but my name is P. Gubb, deteckative and paper-hanger, and I’m looking up a case. Might I trouble you for the loan of a spade or shovel?”
“What you want with it?” asked the man gruffly.
“To dig,” said Mr. Gubb.
The man reluctantly handed Mr. Gubb a spade on which there were still traces of soft, sandy soil. Mr. Gubb walked to the rear of the yard and jabbed the spade into the soft soil. It struck something hard. In a moment or two Mr. Gubb had the evidences of crime completely uncovered. There were bones buried there – many bones. Mr. Gubb looked up and wiped his brow. Then he looked down at the bones. One was a skull. Mr. Gubb stared at it. It was indeed a skull, but it was the skull of a calf. All the bones were calf bones – not bones of the human calf, but bones of the veal calf. Mr. Gubb turned his head and saw the long lanky man approaching.
“All right,” said the long, lanky man, “I give up. You’ve got me. I surrender. When a detective gets that close, a man hasn’t any chance. I own up. I did it.”
“You did what?”
“Now, quit!” said the long, lanky man. “No use rubbin’ it in after I’ve owned up. You know as well as I do – I’m the man that stole Farmer Hopper’s calf. I give up. I surrender.”
“I’m much obliged to you,” said Philo Gubb.
“Well, I ain’t obliged to you,” said the lanky man, “but I wish you’d tell me how you found out I was the calf thief.”
Mr. Gubb smiled an inscrutable smile.
“A deteckative acquires dexterity in the way of capturing up the criminal classes,” he said with oracular yet modest simplicity.
The next day, when Mr. Gubb returned to his paper-hanging job he found Chi Foxy waiting for him.
“Boss,” he said with a laugh, “I showed you where that murdered man’s bones was buried, won’t you stake me to a meal?”
“Are you hungry again?” asked Mr. Gubb.
“Hungry?” said Chi Foxy. “I’m so hungry that I feel like a living skeleton. I’m so hungry that a square meal would make me feel like Syrilla, that Fat Lady I seen at Derlingport a couple of days ago.”
“What’s that you remarked about?” asked Mr. Gubb, pinning Chi Foxy with his eye. “Did I understand the meaning of what you said was that you saw a Fat Lady named Syrilla?”
“At Derlingport,” said Chi Foxy. “A swell guy named Medderbrook give me a meal and a ticket to the big show. It was a performance de luxe, so to say. Special attraction, bo. You’d have laughed your head off. This here Syrilla Fat Lady got married to the Living Skeleton in the middle ring, and she had the Snake Charmer for a bridesmaid. Say! you’d have laughed – ”
But Mr. Gubb did not laugh. He never laughed again.
PHILO GUBB’S GREATEST CASE
Philo Gubb, wrapped in his bathrobe, went to the door of the room that was the headquarters of his business of paper-hanging and decorating as well as the office of his detective business, and opened the door a crack. It was still early in the morning, but Mr. Gubb was a modest man, and, lest any one should see him in his scanty attire, he peered through the crack of the door before he stepped hastily into the hall and captured his copy of the “Riverbank Daily Eagle.” When he had secured the still damp newspaper, he returned to his cot bed and spread himself out to read comfortably.
It was a hot Iowa morning. Business was so slack that if Mr. Gubb had not taken out his set of eight varieties of false whiskers daily and brushed them carefully, the moths would have been able to devour them at leisure.
P. Gubb opened the “Eagle.” The first words that met his eye caused him to sit upright on his cot. At the top of the first column of the first page were the headlines.
MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF HENRY SMITZBody Found In Mississippi River By Boatman Early This A.MFoul Play SuspectedMr. Gubb unfolded the paper and read the item under the headlines with the most intense interest. Foul play meant the possibility of an opportunity to put to use once more the precepts of the Course of Twelve Lessons, and with them fresh in his mind Detective Gubb was eager to undertake the solution of any mystery that Riverbank could furnish. This was the article: —
Just as we go to press we receive word through Policeman Michael O’Toole that the well-known mussel-dredger and boatman, Samuel Fliggis (Long Sam), while dredging for mussels last night just below the bridge, recovered the body of Henry Smitz, late of this place.
Mr. Smitz had been missing for three days and his wife had been greatly worried. Mr. Brownson, of the Brownson Packing Company, by whom he was employed, admitted that Mr. Smitz had been missing for several days.
The body was found sewed in a sack. Foul play is suspected.
“I should think foul play would be suspected,” exclaimed Philo Gubb, “if a man was sewed into a bag and deposited into the Mississippi River until dead.”
He propped the paper against the foot of the cot bed and was still reading when some one knocked on his door. He wrapped his bathrobe carefully about him and opened the door. A young woman with tear-dimmed eyes stood in the doorway.
“Mr. P. Gubb?” she asked. “I’m sorry to disturb you so early in the morning, Mr. Gubb, but I couldn’t sleep all night. I came on a matter of business, as you might say. There’s a couple of things I want you to do.”
“Paper-hanging or deteckating?” asked P. Gubb.
“Both,” said the young woman. “My name is Smitz – Emily Smitz. My husband – ”
“I’m aware of the knowledge of your loss, ma’am,” said the paper-hanger detective gently.
“Lots of people know of it,” said Mrs. Smitz. “I guess everybody knows of it – I told the police to try to find Henry, so it is no secret. And I want you to come up as soon as you get dressed, and paper my bedroom.”
Mr. Gubb looked at the young woman as if he thought she had gone insane under the burden of her woe.
“And then I want you to find Henry,” she said, “because I’ve heard you can do so well in the detecting line.”
Mr. Gubb suddenly realized that the poor creature did not yet know the full extent of her loss. He gazed down upon her with pity in his bird-like eyes.
“I know you’ll think it strange,” the young woman went on, “that I should ask you to paper a bedroom first, when my husband is lost; but if he is gone it is because I was a mean, stubborn thing. We never quarreled in our lives, Mr. Gubb, until I picked out the wall-paper for our bedroom, and Henry said parrots and birds-of-paradise and tropical flowers that were as big as umbrellas would look awful on our bedroom wall. So I said he hadn’t anything but Low Dutch taste, and he got mad. ‘All right, have it your own way,’ he said, and I went and had Mr. Skaggs put the paper on the wall, and the next day Henry didn’t come home at all.
“If I’d thought Henry would take it that way, I’d rather had the wall bare, Mr. Gubb. I’ve cried and cried, and last night I made up my mind it was all my fault and that when Henry came home he’d find a decent paper on the wall. I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Gubb, that when the paper was on the wall it looked worse than it looked in the roll. It looked crazy.”
“Yes’m,” said Mr. Gubb, “it often does. But, however, there’s something you’d ought to know right away about Henry.”
The young woman stared wide-eyed at Mr. Gubb for a moment; she turned as white as her shirtwaist.
“Henry is dead!” she cried, and collapsed into Mr. Gubb’s long, thin arms.
Mr. Gubb, the inert form of the young woman in his arms, glanced around with a startled gaze. He stood miserably, not knowing what to do, when suddenly he saw Policeman O’Toole coming toward him down the hall. Policeman O’Toole was leading by the arm a man whose wrists bore clanking handcuffs.
“What’s this now?” asked the policeman none too gently, as he saw the bathrobed Mr. Gubb holding the fainting woman in his arms.
“I am exceedingly glad you have come,” said Mr. Gubb. “The only meaning into it, is that this is Mrs. H. Smitz, widow-lady, fainted onto me against my will and wishes.”
“I was only askin’,” said Policeman O’Toole politely enough.
“You shouldn’t ask such things until you’re asked to ask,” said Mr. Gubb.
After looking into Mr. Gubb’s room to see that there was no easy means of escape, O’Toole pushed his prisoner into the room and took the limp form of Mrs. Smitz from Mr. Gubb, who entered the room and closed the door.
“I may as well say what I want to say right now,” said the handcuffed man as soon as he was alone with Mr. Gubb. “I’ve heard of Detective Gubb, off and on, many a time, and as soon as I got into this trouble I said, ‘Gubb’s the man that can get me out if any one can.’ My name is Herman Wiggins.”
“Glad to meet you,” said Mr. Gubb, slipping his long legs into his trousers.
“And I give you my word for what it is worth,” continued Mr. Wiggins, “that I’m as innocent of this crime as the babe unborn.”
“What crime?” asked Mr. Gubb.
“Why, killing Hen Smitz – what crime did you think?” said Mr. Wiggins. “Do I look like a man that would go and murder a man just because – ”
He hesitated and Mr. Gubb, who was slipping his suspenders over his bony shoulders, looked at Mr. Wiggins with keen eyes.
“Well, just because him and me had words in fun,” said Mr. Wiggins, “I leave it to you, can’t a man say words in fun once in a while?”
“Certainly sure,” said Mr. Gubb.
“I guess so,” said Mr. Wiggins. “Anybody’d know a man don’t mean all he says. When I went and told Hen Smitz I’d murder him as sure as green apples grow on a tree, I was just fooling. But this fool policeman – ”
“Mr. O’Toole?”
“Yes. They gave him this Hen Smitz case to look into, and the first thing he did was to arrest me for murder. Nervy, I call it.”
Policeman O’Toole opened the door a crack and peeked in. Seeing Mr. Gubb well along in his dressing operations, he opened the door wider and assisted Mrs. Smitz to a chair. She was still limp, but she was a brave little woman and was trying to control her sobs.
“Through?” O’Toole asked Wiggins. “If you are, come along back to jail.”
“Now, don’t talk to me in that tone of voice,” said Mr. Wiggins angrily. “No, I’m not through. You don’t know how to treat a gentleman like a gentleman, and never did.”
He turned to Mr. Gubb.
“The long and short of it is this: I’m arrested for the murder of Hen Smitz, and I didn’t murder him and I want you to take my case and get me out of jail.”
“Ah, stuff!” exclaimed O’Toole. “You murdered him and you know you did. What’s the use talkin’?”
Mrs. Smitz leaned forward in her chair.
“Murdered Henry?” she cried. “He never murdered Henry. I murdered him.”
“Now, ma’am,” said O’Toole politely, “I hate to contradict a lady, but you never murdered him at all. This man here murdered him, and I’ve got the proof on him.”
“I murdered him!” cried Mrs. Smitz again. “I drove him out of his right mind and made him kill himself.”
“Nothing of the sort,” declared O’Toole. “This man Wiggins murdered him.”
“I did not!” exclaimed Mr. Wiggins indignantly. “Some other man did it.”
It seemed a deadlock, for each was quite positive. Mr. Gubb looked from one to the other doubtfully.
“All right, take me back to jail,” said Mr. Wiggins. “You look up the case, Mr. Gubb; that’s all I came here for. Will you do it? Dig into it, hey?”
“I most certainly shall be glad to so do,” said Mr. Gubb, “at the regular terms.”
O’Toole led his prisoner away.
For a few minutes Mrs. Smitz sat silent, her hands clasped, staring at the floor. Then she looked up into Mr. Gubb’s eyes.
“You will work on this case, Mr. Gubb, won’t you?” she begged. “I have a little money – I’ll give it all to have you do your best. It is cruel – cruel to have that poor man suffer under the charge of murder when I know so well Henry killed himself because I was cross with him. You can prove he killed himself – that it was my fault. You will?”
“The way the deteckative profession operates onto a case,” said Mr. Gubb, “isn’t to go to work to prove anything particularly especial. It finds a clue or clues and follows them to where they lead to. That I shall be willing to do.”
“That is all I could ask,” said Mrs. Smitz gratefully.
Arising from her seat with difficulty, she walked tremblingly to the door. Mr. Gubb assisted her down the stairs, and it was not until she was gone that he remembered that she did not know the body of her husband had been found – sewed in a sack and at the bottom of the river. Young husbands have been known to quarrel with their wives over matters as trivial as bedroom wall-paper; they have even been known to leave home for several days at a time when angry; in extreme cases they have even been known to seek death at their own hands; but it is not at all usual for a young husband to leave home for several days and then in cold blood sew himself in a sack and jump into the river. In the first place there are easier ways of terminating one’s life; in the second place a man can jump into the river with perfect ease without going to the trouble of sewing himself in a sack; and in the third place it is exceedingly difficult for a man to sew himself into a sack. It is almost impossible.
To sew himself into a sack a man must have no little skill, and he must have a large, roomy sack. He takes, let us say, a sack-needle, threaded with a good length of twine; he steps into the sack and pulls it up over his head; he then reaches above his head, holding the mouth of the sack together with one hand while he sews with the other hand. In hot anger this would be quite impossible.
Philo Gubb thought of all this as he looked through his disguises, selecting one suitable for the work he had in hand. He had just decided that the most appropriate disguise would be “Number 13, Undertaker,” and had picked up the close black wig, and long, drooping mustache, when he had another thought. Given a bag sufficiently loose to permit free motion of the hands and arms, and a man, even in hot anger, might sew himself in. A man, intent on suicidally bagging himself, would sew the mouth of the bag shut and would then cut a slit in the front of the bag large enough to crawl into. He would then crawl into the bag and sew up the slit, which would be immediately in front of his hands. It could be done! Philo Gubb chose from his wardrobe a black frock coat and a silk hat with a wide band of crape. He carefully locked his door and went down to the street.
On a day as hot as this day promised to be, a frock coat and a silk hat could be nothing but distressingly uncomfortable. Between his door and the corner, eight various citizens spoke to Philo Gubb, calling him by name. In fact, Riverbank was as accustomed to seeing P. Gubb in disguise as out of disguise, and while a few children might be interested by the sight of Detective Gubb in disguise, the older citizens thought no more of it, as a rule, than of seeing Banker Jennings appear in a pink shirt one day and a blue striped one the next. No one ever accused Banker Jennings of trying to hide his identity by a change of shirts, and no one imagined that P. Gubb was trying to disguise himself when he put on a disguise. They considered it a mere business custom, just as a butcher tied on a white apron before he went behind his counter.
This was why, instead of wondering who the tall, dark-garbed stranger might be, Banker Jennings greeted Philo Gubb cheerfully.
“Ah, Gubb!” he said. “So you are going to work on this Smitz case, are you? Glad of it, and wish you luck. Hope you place the crime on the right man and get him the full penalty. Let me tell you there’s nothing in this rumor of Smitz being short of money. We did lend him money, but we never pressed him for it. We never even asked him for interest. I told him a dozen times he could have as much more from us as he wanted, within reason, whenever he wanted it, and that he could pay me when his invention was on the market.”
“No report of news of any such rumor has as yet come to my hearing,” said P. Gubb, “but since you mention it, I’ll take it for less than it is worth.”
“And that’s less than nothing,” said the banker. “Have you any clue?”
“I’m on my way to find one at the present moment of time,” said Mr. Gubb.
“Well, let me give you a pointer,” said the banker. “Get a line on Herman Wiggins or some of his crew, understand? Don’t say I said a word, – I don’t want to be brought into this, – but Smitz was afraid of Wiggins and his crew. He told me so. He said Wiggins had threatened to murder him.”
“Mr. Wiggins is at present in the custody of the county jail for killing H. Smitz with intent to murder him,” said Mr. Gubb.
“Oh, then – then it’s all settled,” said the banker. “They’ve proved it on him. I thought they would. Well, I suppose you’ve got to do your little bit of detecting just the same. Got to air the camphor out of the false hair, eh?”
The banker waved a cheerful hand at P. Gubb and passed into his banking institution.
Detective Gubb, cordially greeted by his many friends and admirers, passed on down the main street, and by the time he reached the street that led to the river he was followed by a large and growing group intent on the pleasant occupation of watching a detective detect.
As Mr. Gubb walked toward the river, other citizens joined the group, but all kept a respectful distance behind him. When Mr. Gubb reached River Street and his false mustache fell off, the interest of the audience stopped short three paces behind him and stood until he had rescued the mustache and once more placed its wires in his nostrils. Then, when he moved forward again, they too moved forward. Never, perhaps, in the history of crime was a detective favored with a more respectful gallery.
On the edge of the river, Mr. Gubb found Long Sam Fliggis, the mussel dredger, seated on an empty tar-barrel with his own audience ranged before him listening while he told, for the fortieth time, the story of his finding of the body of H. Smitz. As Philo Gubb approached, Long Sam ceased speaking, and his audience and Mr. Gubb’s gallery merged into one great circle which respectfully looked and listened while Mr. Gubb questioned the mussel dredger.
“Suicide?” said Long Sam scoffingly. “Why, he wan’t no more a suicide than I am right now. He was murdered or wan’t nothin’! I’ve dredged up some suicides in my day, and some of ’em had stones tied to ’em, to make sure they’d sink, and some thought they’d sink without no ballast, but nary one of ’em ever sewed himself into a bag, and I give my word,” he said positively, “that Hen Smitz couldn’t have sewed himself into that burlap bag unless some one done the sewing. Then the feller that did it was an assistant-suicide, and the way I look at it is that an assistant-suicide is jest the same as a murderer.”
