ASTONISHING RESULTS
Contrary to Mr. Cane's expectations the odor of the liniment had not
evaporated when he came home for the evening meal. It seemed to be
stronger than ever, although Sube truthfully insisted that he had not
put any more on his injured leg since the first application.
An immediate bath was prescribed, and duly administered, and Sube sat
down at the table spotless and germless--but far from odorless. He
smelled, it seemed to his family, even worse than before. And in spite
of the various heroic processes of deodorization and fumigation through
which he was put during the ensuing days, he invariably emerged
smiling--and smelling.
The long strain began to tell on Mr. Cane. He became more nervous and
irritable than ever, and seemed constantly to wear a look of nasal
suspicion. Sube's treatment was in only its third day when his father
began to eat his lunch down town. The next day he failed to come home to
dinner; and thereafter during the rest of the fateful week he ate no
meals at home with the exception of breakfast, and that he managed to
get before the other members of the family were out of bed.
As the week of germination drew towards a close the boys became
restless. "We ought to begin to do some'pm," Sube suggested as he sat
rubbing the Boon into the pores of his long-suffering upper lip. "My
week will be up to-morrow morning at five minutes of ten, and yours will
be up at about quarter after."
"I'll bet mine'll be up before quarter after," predicted Gizzard
enthusiastically. "I'll bet I have my whiskers by ten minutes after.
Gee, but I'll be glad when I don't have to use this ol' Boon any longer.
It certainly is bad!"
"Oh, it ain't so bad," replied Sube; "anyway, not for those that use it.
I'm glad we didn't have to go to school this week. Sunday School was bad
enough. But as I tol' you, we got to be doin' some'pm. We want to pick
up that party jus' about as quick as we can after we get our whiskers."
"Well," suggested Gizzard briskly, "let's go and get her 'bout ha' pas'
ten to-morrow morning."
Sube shook his head dubiously. "Not by daylight," he drawled
professionally. "That's too easy. That's the way policemen do it. We'll
have to trick her."
"Trick her?" muttered Gizzard. "What for? How we goin' to trick her?"
"Very sim-ple," drawled Sube. "We'll pin a note on her door to-night
tellin' her to come to the Prespaterian Church steps to-morrow night at
a certain time--and when she shows up, we'll pinch her."
And so it was arranged. The note was prepared and in due time affixed to
the front door of the suspect's house in so conspicuous a place that she
found it early the next morning.
But the hours that followed the finding of the note were tragic ones for
Sube and Gizzard. They had repaired to the roof of the barn, there to
await the accomplishment of the days when their whiskers should be
delivered. And as the time drew near and no pin-feathers appeared, they
began to have visions of a sudden bursting forth of hair not unlike the
eruption of a small volcano. But the time came, and passed; and nothing
happened to change the youthful character of their hopeful faces.
They allowed fully an hour of grace during which time the word "Fake"
passed Gizzard's lips with increasing frequency as Sube sought to
bolster up their faith by reading and re-reading the guarantee on the
bottle.
"Astonishin' results, hey?" sneered Gizzard. "I should say they are
astonishin'."
"Don't be in so much of a hurry," growled Sube. "We might of made a
mistake in the time. Ol' Doc Richards, he said--"
An immediate adjournment was taken for the purpose of inspecting the
side of the house. But, alas! It was hairless. And more, it didn't even
smell.
Then the boys gave up.
They threw their pocket phials as far as they could, and stoned the
large bottle with a vengeance that would have startled a Christian
martyr. Gizzard's disgust was evidenced by a great deal of careless
language feelingly delivered. But Sube was silent. His disappointment
was beyond the reach of mere words. The pleasant vision in which he had
reveled for a week burst with a result similar to that of over-inflating
a bubble. And during the brief period while Gizzard was relieving
himself with pleasing combinations of adjectives, Sube contemplated and
rejected suicide, flight, old bachelorhood, and becoming an anarchist so
that he might dynamite the Boon for Baldness factory. He was considering
some sort of legal proceedings based on fraud and misrepresentation,
when Gizzard nudged him to ascertain why they couldn't "catch her
without whiskers."
After all, Sube had his life to live. There were other affairs besides
those of the heart. And perhaps a brilliant piece of detective work
might give him a standing that even a mustache would not have been able
to effect.
"We _gotta_ do some'pm," Gizzard rattled on. "She'll be at the church
to-night, and here we ain't got any whiskers and can't do a thing."
Sube began to pull himself together. "We'll do some'pm all right," he
muttered.
"Well, what?"
"Oh, some'pm; and don't you forget it." Sube did not yet know what it
was to be himself; but an idea soon sprouted. He went into the house for
a sheet of paper and an envelope. Then with the aid of Gizzard and the
stump of a lead pencil he wrote the following letter to the sheriff:
Dear Sherriff
Disgise yourself like an old women and sit on the prebsytearean
church steps at 9 oclock tonight if you want to catch the mother of
the founding baby. When a women comes up and says suffer littel
childern arrest her shes the mother.
yours trully
Two Freinds.
"What's he got to disguise himself like a ol' woman for?" asked Gizzard.
"If we make it too easy," Sube explained, "he wouldn't pay any 'ttention
to it. And besides, a _man_ there on the church steps might scare her
away."
The boys had no way of knowing how much of an uproar the receipt of
their letter precipitated in the sheriff's office. And they would have
been decidedly uneasy if they had known with what celerity the sheriff
exhibited their letter to Mr. Cane, who was acting as Mr. Whiting's
counsel. But they remained in a state of beatific ignorance; and shortly
after nine o'clock that evening, cramped and uncomfortable from their
two hours' vigil among the branches of a large evergreen tree in front
of the Presbyterian Church, they were silent witnesses of a scene that
for a time baffled everybody, not excepting themselves.
They saw a heavily veiled woman dressed all in black who came slowly
down the street and seated herself on the church steps. Shortly
afterwards they heard hurried footsteps and a second woman came into
view. She turned in at the church and went directly up to the silent
figure on the steps. For a moment all was still. Then a bass voice cried
out:
"I _got_ y'u!"
A woman screamed. Men seemed to rise out of the ground on all sides. The
boys had a suspicion that the Resurrection was at hand, until the
sheriff flashed a light in the face of the prisoner and exclaimed in
chorus with several others:
"Good heavens! It's Miss Lester!"
The silence that followed was shattered by Miss Lester's voice. She had
recognized Mr. Cane, and at once began to accuse him of being the author
of a plot to compromise her. The boys were not clear as to the exact
nature of her charges, but it was apparent to them that she was very
angry at Sube's father.
[Illustration: THE SHERIFF FLASHED A LIGHT]
When she stopped at last, all out of breath, Mr. Cane, the sheriff and
several of the deputies took advantage of the lull to explain the
situation to her, each one telling the others to listen a minute while
_he_ told her all about it. The confusion finally became so great that
the sheriff ordered them all to be taken to his office some three blocks
away, where he hoped in a loud voice that he should be able to hear them
one at a time.
The boys dropped excitedly from the tree and followed, forgetting for
the moment that there was any such thing as a foundling.
Sube's heart went out to his father. "I know jus' how he felt," he
declared. "She bawled me out like that once before the whole Sunday
School."
"What do you s'pose he done to her?" asked Gizzard.
"Dern'd if I know," replied Sube. "But maybe if we hurry up we'll find
out all about it."
And they did. They arrived as the sheriff was explaining that he and his
deputies and Mr. Cane went to the church in answer to an anonymous
letter, and he'd like very much to have Miss Lester tell just what _she_
was doing there at that time of night.
Miss Lester's explanation was tense but straightforward. She had gone in
answer to a note she had found pinned on her front door that morning.
"You don't happen to have that note along with you, I suppose,"
suggested the ever-skeptical sheriff.
"Indeed I do!" retorted Miss Lester, fumbling in her bosom and producing
a folded paper which she handed to the officer.
He read it aloud.
Miss Lester.
Somebody who knows something importent will be at the prebsytearean
church front steps Saterday night at nine oclock if you whisper
suffer littel childern they will know its you.
your trully
Two Freinds
When he had finished reading it he passed to Mr. Cane. The lawyer
compared it with the other letter. "Huh!" he snorted. "Identical! Same
person wrote both of them! It's nothing but a dastardly hoax!"
The sheriff said nothing, and began to fumble in the drawers of his desk
while Mr. Cane and Miss Lester were exchanging apologies and
reestablishing friendly relations. At length he turned around in his
swivel-chair and announced:
"It may be a hoax, all right; but I've got other evidence against this
here party."
"Evidence against _me_!" gasped Miss Lester.
The sheriff nodded gravely and consulted several crumpled sheets of
paper he held in his hand. They were the pages torn from the Boon for
Baldness diary.
"Ain't you took a lot of int'rest in this here foundling?" he asked
suspiciously.
"Indeed I have!" she responded with spirit.
"Went to see it las' Monday, didn't y'u?"
"I believe I did. I went there the moment I heard about it."
"Went again Tuesday, didn't y'u?"
"Why, I presume--"
"And y'u bought a bottle of something at Westfall's drug store Tuesday
afternoon, didn't y'u?"
Miss Lester blushed uncomfortably. "I cannot see what possible
connection my going to the drug store could have with this matter," she
parried.
"Well, anyhow, y'u went to see this here child again on Wednesday,
didn't y'u?" the sheriff persisted.
"Mr. Sheriff," Miss Lester burst forth at last, "you do not seem to
understand my position at all. I want to adopt the little darling. I
haven't a chick or child in the world that belongs to me. I have been
trying to find her parents for days so as to get their consent. That
was why I went to the church this evening. When I found the note I had
hopes that the mother had in some way learned of my interest in the baby
and wanted to talk to me about her. Oh, I am so disappointed! Who could
have been cruel enough to do such a thing for a _joke_?"
The sheriff succumbed as gracefully as possible and allowed that he had
been "barkin' up the wrong tree." As he tossed the crumpled sheets on
the table, Mr. Cane picked them up.
"You didn't tell me about these, Sheriff," he said. "Where did they come
from?"
"They come by mail late this afternoon," the sheriff replied. "I thought
I told you about it."
"Hum,-- Same handwriting as the letters," observed the
lawyer as he ran through the littered pages. "Our 'Two Friends' wanted
to be sure that their hoax was going to work--"
He stopped abruptly and sniffed at the crumpled pages with an expression
of mistrust--of something reminiscent. And suddenly, with an
unintelligible exclamation, he caught up his hat and started for the
door.
"Wait a minute, Judge," invited the sheriff affably. "I'll send you
folks home in an auto."
"Can't wait!" called Mr. Cane over his shoulder. "An automobile couldn't
get me there fast enough!"
Mr. Cane lost no time in getting home. But Sube was there ahead of him,
and already in bed and apparently asleep.