handing him the twenty-five dollars, "I give you this money as my
share of the fund that is to pay you for the work you do for Snooks
Turner. I make no request, because of the money. It is yours. But if
you love justice, for Heaven's sake, send word to him to come out of
jail!"
"Won't he come out?" asked Philo Gubb, puzzled.
"No, he won't!" said Attorney Mullen. "I begged him to, but he said,
'No! Not until Philo Gubb gets to the bottom of this case.' But should
we, as citizens, and as members of the Prohibition Party, permit you,
Mr. Gubb, to land Aunt Martha Turner in the calaboose?"
"Well, if what I find out, when I get down from this ladder and start
to work, sends her there, I don't see that I can help it," said Philo
Gubb. "Deteckative work is a science, as operated by them that has
studied in the Rising Sun Deteckative Agency's Correspondence School
of Deteckating--"
"Snooks says he don't know anything about any beer," said Nan
Kilfillan, entering hastily, and then pausing, as she saw Mr. Mullen.
"Did you tell him it was upstairs, in bed?" asked Philo Gubb.
"In his room? In his bed?" said Attorney Mullen eagerly. "Why, that
puts an entirely different aspect on the matter! That gives me, as
City Attorney, all the proof I shall need to convict the respectable
Miss Martha Turner and her honorable nephew of the 'Eagle.' And, by
the gods! I _will_ convict them!"
He glared at Mrs. Wilmerton. Nan broke into sobs.
"Unless," he added gently, "this whole matter is dropped."
Philo Gubb took out all the money he had received and counted it,
sitting cross-legged on the ladder.
"I guess," he said thoughtfully, "you had better run up to the jail
and tell Snooksy I want to see him right away, Miss Kilfillan. Maybe
he can stretch the jail that much again. Tell him I'm just going to
get down from this ladder and start to work, and I want to ask his
advice."
"What do you want to ask him?" inquired Attorney Mullen, as Nan
hurried away.
"I want to ask him about those seven bottles of beer and that
beer-opener," said Philo Gubb.
"Mr. Gubb," said the City Attorney, "I can tell you about those
bottles of beer. If those bottles of beer came from my house Aunt
Martha Turner goes to the penitentiary. If she does not go to the
penitentiary, there are no bottles of beer and there is no
beer-opener. And never were!"
"I told her she had done a foolish, foolish thing!" exclaimed Mrs.
Wilmerton.
"Just so! And it _was_ foolish," said Attorney Mullen, "_If_ it was
done. And, if it was done, and Snooks Turner telephoned, and I thought
he meant the burglary, I would, naturally, assault him."
"You hurt him bad," said Philo Gubb.
"And I meant to!" said Attorney Mullen.
All turned toward the door, where Policeman Fogarty entered with
Snooksy and Nan.
"I've done ivrything I cud t' quiet th' matter up," said Fogarty to
Mullen, thus explaining his interest in the affair.
"I like jail," said Snooks cheerfully. "I'm going to stay in jail."
Aunt Martha Turner interrupted him. She came into the kitchen like a
gust of wind, scattering the others like leaves, and threw her arms
around her nephew Snooksy.
"Oh, my Snooksy! My Snooksy!" she moaned. "Don't you love your old
auntie any more? Won't you be a good boy for your poor old auntie?
Don't you love her at all any more?"
"Sure," said Snooks happily. "A fellow can love you in jail, can't
he?"
"But won't you come out?" she pleaded. "Everybody wants you to come
out, dear, dear boy. See--they all want you to come out. Every last
one of them. Please come out."
"Oh, I like it in jail," said Snooks. "It gives me time for
meditation. Well, good-bye, folks, I'll be going back."
His aunt grasped him firmly by the arm and wailed. So did Nan.
"But, Snooksy," begged Mrs. Turner, "don't you know they'll send me to
the penitentiary if you go back to that old jail?"
"Yes, but don't you care, auntie. They say the penitentiary is nicer
than the jail. Better doors. Nobody can break in and steal things from
you."
"Snooks Turner!" said his aunt. "You know as well as I do that Mr.
Mullen will forgive and forget, if you will. Would you rather see me
go to prison--suffer?"
"No, of course not, auntie," said Snooks, laughing. "But you see, I've
hired Detective Gubb to work on this case, and if there's no case, it
will not be fair to him. He's all worked up about it. He's so eager to
be at it that he has almost come down from the top of that ladder. In
another day or two he would come all the way down, and then there's
no telling what would happen. No, I'm a newspaper man. I want Philo
Gubb to discover something we don't know anything about."
"I might start in trailing and shadowing somebody that hasn't anything
to do with this case," suggested Philo Gubb. "That wouldn't discommode
none of you folks, and I'd sort of feel as if I was giving you your
money's worth. Somebody has been writin' on the front of the Methodist
Church with black chalk. I might try to detect who done that."
"But that would be a very difficult job," said Snooks.
"It would be some hard," admitted Philo Gubb.
"Then you ought to have more money," said Snooks. "Aunt Martha ought
to contribute to the fund. If Aunt Martha contributes to the fund,
I'll be good. I'll come out of jail."
Aunt Martha opened her shopping bag, and fumbled in it with her old
fingers. Philo Gubb took from his pocket the bills he had been given
during the morning. He counted them. He had exactly one hundred
dollars, just enough to send to Mr. Medderbrook.
"How much should I give you, Mr. Gubb?" asked Aunt Martha tremulously,
and Philo Gubb stared thoughtfully at the ceiling for a few minutes.
When he spoke, his words were cryptic to all those in the room.
"Well, ma'am," he said, "I guess ten cents will be about enough. I've
got a two-cent postage stamp myself."
"Ain't detectives wonderful?" whispered Nan, clinging to Snooks's arm.
"You can't ever tell what they really mean."
Nobody seemed to care what Philo Gubb meant, but a week later Snooks
stopped him on the street and asked him why he had asked for ten
cents.
"For to register a letter," said Philo Gubb. "A letter I had to send
off."
THE CHICKEN
Philo Gubb, with three rolls of wall-paper under his arm and a pail of
mixed paste in one hand, walked along Cherry Street near the
brick-yard.
On this occasion Mr. Gubb was in a reasonably contented frame of mind,
for he had just received his share of the reward for capturing the
dynamiters and had this very morning paid the full amount to Mr.
Medderbrook, leaving but eleven thousand six hundred and fifty dollars
still to be paid that gentleman for the Utterly Hopeless Gold-Mine
Stock, and upon the further payment of seventy-five cents--half its
cost--Mr. Medderbrook gave him a telegram he had received from
Syrilla. The telegram was as follows:--
Rapidly shrinking. Have given up all soups, including tomato
soup, chicken soup, mulligatawny, mock turtle, green pea,
vegetable, gumbo, lentil, consomme, bouillon and clam broth.
Now weigh only nine hundred and fifty pounds. Wire at once
whether clam chowder is a soup or a food. Fond remembrances
to Gubby.
Mr. Gubb was thinking of this telegram as he walked toward his work.
Just ahead of him a short lane led, between Mrs. Smith's house and the
Cherry Street Methodist Chapel, to the brick-yard. Mrs. Smith's
chicken coop stood on the fence line between her property and the
brick-yard!
[Illustration: "DETECKATING IS MY AIM AND MY PROFESSION"]
Philo Gubb had passed Mrs. Smith's front gate when Mrs. Smith waddled
to her fence and hailed him.
"Oh, Mr. Gubb!" she panted. "You got to excuse me for speakin' to you
when I don't know you. Mrs. Miffin says you're a detective."
"Deteckating is my aim and my profession," said Mr. Gubb.
"Well," said Mrs. Smith, "I want to ask a word of you about crime.
I've had a chicken stole."
"Chicken-stealing is a crime if ever there was one," said Philo Gubb
seriously. "What was the chicken worth?"
"Forty cents," said Mrs. Smith.
"Well," said Philo Gubb, "it wouldn't hardly pay me."
"It ain't much," admitted Mrs. Smith.
"No. You're right, it ain't," said Philo Gubb. "Was this a rooster or
a hen?"
"It was a hen," said Mrs. Smith.
"Well," said Mr. Gubb, "if you was to offer a reward of a hundred
dollars for the capture of the thief--"
"Oh, my land!" exclaimed Mrs. Smith. "It would be cheaper for me to
pay somebody five dollars to come and steal the rest of the chickens.
It seems to me, that you ought to make the thief pay. I ain't the one
that did the crime, am I? It's only right that a thief should pay for
the time and trouble he puts you to, ain't it?"
"I never before looked at it that way," said Mr. Gubb thoughtfully,
"but it stands to reason."
"Of course it does!" said Mrs. Smith. "You catch that thief and you
can offer yourself a million dollars reward if you want to. That's
none of my business."
"Well," said Philo Gubb, picking up his paste-pail, "I guess if there
ain't any important murders or things turn up by seven to-night, I'll
start in to work for that reward. I guess I can't ask more than five
dollars reward."
At seven the evening was still light, and Philo Gubb, to cover his
intentions and avert suspicion in case his interview with Mrs. Smith
had been observed by the thief, put a false beard in his pocket and a
revolver beside it and left his office in the Opera House Block
cautiously. He slipped into the alley and glided down it, keeping
close to the stables. A detective must be cautious.
The abandoned brick-kilns offered admirable seclusion. A brick-kiln is
built entirely, or almost so, of the brick that are to be burned, and
the kilns are torn down and carted away as the brick are sold. The
over-structure of the kilns was a mere roof of half-inch planks laid
on timbers that were upheld by poles.
A ladder leaning against one of the poles gave access to the roof. In
the darkness it was impossible for Philo Gubb to find a finger-print
of the culprit on the kilns, although he looked for one. He did not
even find the usual and highly helpful button, torn from its place in
the criminal's eagerness to depart. He found only an old horseshoe and
a broken tobacco pipe. As there were evidences that the pipe had been
abandoned on that spot several years earlier, neither of these was a
very valuable clue.
Mr. Gubb next gave his attention to the chicken coop. It was
preeminently a hand-made chicken coop of the rough-and-ready variety.
Philo Gubb entered the chicken-house and looked around, lighting his
dark lantern and throwing its rays here and there that he might see
better. The house was so low of roof that he had to stoop to avoid the
roosts, and the tails of the chickens brushed his hat. It needed
brushing, so this did no harm. The hens and the two roosters
complained gently of this interruption of their beauty sleep, and
moved along the roosts, and Mr. Gubb went outside again. It was quite
evident that the thief had had no great hardships to undergo in
robbing that roost. All he had to do was to enter the chicken-house,
choose a chicken, and walk away with it.
Why had he not taken ten chickens? Mr. Gubb, as he put the keg hoop
over the end board of the gate, studied this.
The theory that Mr. Gubb adopted was that the thief, coming for a raid
on the coop, had been surprised to find it so poorly guarded. It had
been so easy to enter the coop and steal the chicken that he had
decided it would be folly to take eight or ten chickens and thus
arouse instant suspicion and reprisal. Instead of this he had taken
but one, trusting that the loss of one would be unnoticed or laid to
rats or cats or weasels. Thus he would be able to return again and
again as fowl meat was needed or desired, and the chickens would be
like money in the bank--a fund on which to draw. This theory was so
sound that Mr. Gubb believed it would require nothing more than
patience to capture the criminal. The thief would come back for more
chickens!
Philo Gubb looked around for an advantageous position in which to
await the coming of the thief, and be unseen himself, and the loose
board roof of the brick-kiln met his eye. No position could be better.
He climbed the ladder inside the kiln, pushed one of the boards aside
enough to permit him to squeeze through onto the roof, and creeping
carefully over the loose boards, reached the edge of the roof. Here he
stretched himself out flat on the boards, and waited.
Nothing--absolutely nothing--happened! The mosquitoes, numerous indeed
because of the nearness of the pond, buzzed around his head and stung
him on the neck and hands, but he did not dare slap at them lest he
betray his hiding-place. Hour followed hour and no chicken thief
appeared. And when the first rays of the sun lighted the east he
climbed down and stalked stiffly away to a short hour of sleep.
The next night the Correspondence School detective wasted no time in
preliminary observations of the lay of the land. He kept out of sight
until the sun had set and dusk covered the land with shade, and then
he went at once to the roof of the brick-kiln. This time he was
disguised in a red mustache, a pair of flowing white side-whiskers,
and a woolen cap. And he wore two revolvers--large ones--in a belt
about his waist.
It was still too early for brisk business in chicken-stealing when
Philo Gubb climbed to the roof of the kiln and spread himself out
there, and he felt that he had time for a few minutes' sleep.
He was tremendously sleepy. Sleep fairly pushed his eyelids down over
his eyes, and he put his crooked arm under his head and, after
thinking fondly of Syrilla for a few minutes, went to sleep so
suddenly that it was like falling off a cliff into dreamland. He
dreamed, uneasily, of having been captured by an array of forty
chicken thieves, of having been led in triumph before the Supreme
Court of the United States, and of having been condemned as a
Detective Trust on the charge of acting in restraint of trade--as
injuring the Chicken Stealers' Association's business--and required to
dissolve himself.
The dream was agonizing as he tried one dissolvent after another
without success. Turpentine merely dissolved his skin; alcohol had no
effect whatever. He imagined himself in a long room in which stood
vast rows of vats bearing different labels, and in and out of these
he climbed, trying to obey the order of the court, but nothing seemed
capable of dissolving him, and he suddenly discovered that he was made
of rubber. He seemed to remember that rubber was soluble in benzine,
and he started on a tour of the vats, trying to find a benzine vat.
He walked many miles. Sometimes he arose in the air, with ease and
grace, and flew a few miles. Finally he found the vat of benzine,
immersed himself in it, and began to dissolve calmly and with a
blessed sense of having done his duty.
It was then that Philo Gubb entered the dreamless sleep of the utterly
weary, and, about the same time, two men slunk under the roof of the
brick-kiln and after looking carefully around took seats on the fallen
bricks, resting their backs against the partly demolished kiln. They
arranged the bricks as comfortably as possible before seating
themselves, and when they were seated, one of them drew a whiskey
bottle from his pocket and, after taking a good swig, offered it to
his partner.
"Nope!" said he. "I'm going to steer clear of that stuff until I know
where I'm at, and you're a fool for not doing the same, Wixy. First
thing you know you'll be soused, and if you are, and anything turns
up, what'll I do? I got all I can do to take care of you sober."
"Ah, turn up! What's goin' to turn up 'way out here?" asked Wixy.
"They ain't nobody follerin' us anyway. That's just a notion you got.
Your nerves has gone back on you, Sandlot."
"My nerve is all right, and don't you worry about that," said Sandlot.
"I've got plenty of nerve so I don't have to brace it up with booze,
and you ain't. That's what's the matter with you. You saw that feller
as well as I did. Didn't you see him at Bureau?"
"That feller with the white whiskers?"
"Yes, him. And didn't you see him again at Derlingport? Well, what was
he follerin' us that way for when he told us at Joliet he was goin'
East?"
"A tramp has as good a right to change his mind as what we have," said
Wixy. "Didn't we tell him we was goin' East ourselves? Maybe he ain't
lookin' for steady company any more than we be. Maybe he come this way
to get away from us, like we did to get away from--say!--Sandlot," he
said almost pleadingly, "you don't really think old White-Whiskers was
a-trailin' us, do you? You ain't got a notion he's a detective?"
"How do I know what he is?" asked Sandlot. "All I know is that when I
see a feller like that once, and then again, and he looks like he was
tryin' to keep hid from us, I want to shake him off. I know that. And
I know I'm goin' to shake him off. And I know that if you get all
boozed up, and full of liquor, and can't walk, and that feller shows
up, I'm a-goin' to quit you and look out for myself. When a feller
steals something, or does any little harmless thing like that, it's
different. He can afford to stick to a pal, even if he gets nabbed.
But when it's a case of--"
"Now, don't use that word!" said Wixy angrily. "It wasn't no more
murder than nothing. Was we going to let Chicago Chicken bash our
heads in just because we stood up for our rights? Him wantin' a full
half just because he put us onto the job! He'd ought to been killed
for askin' such a thing."
"Well, he was, wasn't he?" asked Sandlot. "You killed him all right.
It was you swung on him with the rock, Wixy, remember that!"
"Tryin' to put it off on me, ain't you!" said Wixy angrily. "Well, you
can't do it. If I hang, you hang. Maybe I did take a rock to him, but
you had him strangled to death before I ever hit him."
"What's the use gabbin' about it?" said Sandlot. "He's dead, and we
made our get-away, and all we got to do is to keep got away. There
ain't anybody ever goin' to find him, not where we sunk him in that
deep water."
"Ain't I been sayin' that right along?" asked Wixy. "Ain't I been
tellin' you you was a fool to be scared of an old feller like
White-Whiskers? Cuttin' across country this way when we might as well
be forty miles more down the Rock Island, travelin' along as nice as
you please in a box car."
"Now, look here!" said Sandlot menacingly. "I ain't goin' to take no
abuse from you, drunk or sober. If you don't like my way, you go back
to the railroad and leave me go my own way. I'm goin' on across
country until I come to another railroad, I am. And if I come to a
river, and I run across a boat, I'm goin' to take that boat and float
a ways. When I says nobody is goin' to know anything about what we did
to the Chicken, over there in Chicago, I mean it. Nobody is. But
didn't Sal know all three of us was goin' out on that job that night?
And when the Chicken don't come back, ain't she goin' to guess
something happened to the Chicken?"
"She's goin' to think he made a rich haul, like he did, and that he up
and quit her," said Wixy. "That's what she'll think."
"And what if she does?" said Sandlot. "She and him has been boardin'
with Mother Smith, ain't they? Ain't Mother Smith been handin' the
Chicken money when he needed it, because he said he was workin' up
this job with us? I bet the Chicken owed Mother Smith a hundred
dollars, and when he don't come back, then what? Sal will say she
ain't got no money because the Chicken quit her, and Mother Smith
will--"
"Well, what?" asked Wixy.
"She'll send word to every crook in the country to spot the Chicken,
and you know it. And when word comes back that there ain't no trace of
him--"
"You've lost your nerve, that's what ails you," said Wixy scornfully.
"No, I ain't," Sandlot insisted. "I've heard plenty of fellers tell
how Mother Smith keeps tabs on anybody that tries to do her out of ten
cents even. Why, maybe the Chicken promised to come back that night
and pay up. I bet he did! And I bet he _was_ sour on Sal. And I bet
Mother Smith knew it all the time, and that when he didn't come back
that night she sent out word to spot him or us. I bet you!"
"You've lost your nerve!" said Wixy drunkenly. "You never did have no
nerve. You're so scared you're seein' ghosts."
"All right!" said Sandlot, rising. "I'll see ghosts, then. But I'll
see them by myself. You can go--"
"Goo'-bye!" said Wixy carelessly, and finished the last drop in his
bottle. "Goo'-bye, ol' Sandlot! Goo'-bye!"
Sandlot hesitated a moment and then arose and, after a parting glance
at Wixy, struck out across the drying floor of the brick-yard, and was
lost in the darkness. Wixy blinked and balanced the empty bottle in
his hand.
"He's afraid!" he boasted to himself. "He's coward. 'Fraid of dark.
'Fraid of ghosts. Los' his nerve. I ain' 'fraid."
He arose to his feet unsteadily.
"Sandlot's coward!" he said, and threw down the empty bottle with a
motion of disgust at the cowardice of Sandlot. The bottle burst with a
jangling of glass.
On the loose board roof Philo Gubb raised his head suddenly. For an
instant he imagined he was a disembodied spirit, his body having been
dissolved in benzine, but as he became wider awake he was conscious of
a noise beneath him. Wixy was shifting twenty or thirty bricks that
had fallen from the kiln upon a truss of straw, used the last winter
to cover new-moulded bricks to protect them from the frost against
their drying. He was preparing a bed. He muttered to himself as he
worked, and Philo Gubb, placing his eye to a crack between the boards
of the roof, tried to observe him. The darkness was so absolute he
could see nothing whatever.
He heard Wixy stretch out on the straw, and in a minute more he heard
the heavy breathing of a sleeper. Wixy was not letting any cowardice
disturb his repose, at all events, and Philo Gubb considered how he
could best get himself off the roof.
The sleeping man was immediately beneath him; the ladder was a full
ten yards away; every motion made the loose boards complain. Looking
down, Mr. Gubb saw that the top of the kiln reached within a few feet
of where he lay, and that the partially removed sides had left a
series of giant steps.
Mr. Gubb loosened his pistols in his belt. Now that he had the chicken
thief so near, he meant to capture him. With the utmost care he slid
one of the boards of the roof aside and put his long legs into the
opening thus made, feeling for the kiln until he touched it, and when
he had a firm footing on it he lowered the upper part of his body
through the roof.
Five feet away a cross-timber reached from one pillar of the roof to
another, and just below that was one of the steps of the kiln. Philo
Gubb lighted his dark lantern, and casting its ray, saw this
cross-piece. If he could jump and reach it he could drop to the lower
step and avoid the danger of bringing the side of the kiln down with
him. He slipped the lantern into his pocket, reached out his hands,
and jumped into the dark.
For an instant his fingers grappled with the cross-piece; he struggled
to gain a firmer hold; and then he dropped straight upon the sleeping
Wixy. He alighted fair and square on the murderer's stomach, and the
air went out of Wixy in a sudden _whoof_!
Philo Gubb, in the unreasoning excitement of the moment, grappled with
Wixy, but the unresistance of the man told that he was unconscious,
and the Correspondence School detective released him and stood up. He
uncovered the lens of his dark lantern and turned the ray on Wixy.
The murderer lay flat on his back, his eyes closed and his mouth open.
Mr. Gubb put his hand on Wixy's heart. It still beat! The man was not
dead!
[Illustration: WITH ANOTHER GROAN WIXY RAISED HIS HANDS]
With the dark lantern in one hand and a rusty tin can in the other,
Mr. Gubb hurried to the pond and returned with the can full of water,
but even in this crisis he did not act thoughtlessly. He set the dark
lantern on a shelf of the kiln, so that its rays might illuminate
Wixy and himself alike, drew one of his pistols and pointed it full at
Wixy's head, and holding it so, he dashed the can of water in the face
of the unconscious man. Wixy moved uneasily. He emitted a long sigh
and opened his eyes.
"I got you!" said Philo Gubb sternly. "There ain't no use to make a
move, because I'm a deteckative, and if you do I'll shoot this pistol
at you. If you're able so to do, just put up your hands."
Wixy blinked in the strong light of the lantern. He groaned and placed
one of his hands on his stomach.