few minutes Mr. Beech, Mr. Cross, and Mr. Green returned with Mrs.
Phillipetti, on whose head again towered the turban with the Dragon's
Eye gleaming in it, making her "ongsomble" thoroughly "apropos."
"Gubb," said Mr. Beech, "I want Mrs. Phillipetti to meet you. You
certainly are a wizard."
"Yes, indeed!" said Mrs. Phillipetti. "The wizardry of your whole
ongsomble is completely apropos to your detective ability."
THE PROGRESSIVE MURDER
When Philo Gubb paid Mr. Medderbrook the one hundred dollars he had
received for retrieving the Dragon's Eye, Mr. Medderbrook was not
extremely gracious.
"I'll take it on account," he said grudgingly, "but it ought to be
more. It only brings what you owe me for that Utterly Hopeless
Gold-Mine stock down to eleven thousand nine hundred dollars and, at
this rate, you'll never get me paid up. I can't tell when there'll
come along another dividend of ten cumulative per cents on that stock,
that I will have to charge up against you. Unless you can do better I
have half a mind not to let you see the telegram I got from my
daughter Syrilla this morning."
"Was the news into it good?" asked Mr. Gubb eagerly.
"As good as gold," said Mr. Medderbrook. "As good as Utterly Hopeless
Gold-Mine stock."
"What did Miss Syrilla convey the remark of?" asked the lovelorn
paper-hanger detective.
"Well, now," said Mr. Medderbrook, "I went and paid two dollars and
fifty cents for that telegram. For one dollar and twenty-five cents
I'll give you the telegram, and you can read it from start to finish."
Mr. Gubb, his heart palpitating as only a lover's heart can palpitate,
paid Mr. Medderbrook the sum he asked and eagerly read the telegram
from Syrilla. It said:--
Grand news! Have given up all fish diet. Have given up
codfish, weak fish, sole, flounder, shark's fins, bass,
trout, herring (dried, kippered, smoked, and fresh), finnan
haddie, perch, pike, pickerel, lobster, halibut, and stewed
eels. Gross weight now only nine hundred and thirty pounds
averdupois. Sweet thoughts to Gubby-lubby.
"You are touched," said Mr. Medderbrook as Mr. Gubb put the dear
missive to his lips, "but unless I am mistaken you will be still more
deeply touched when you pay for--when you read Syrilla's next
telegram."
"I so hope and trust," said Mr. Gubb, and he returned to his office in
the Opera House Block with a light heart.
* * * * *
With the increase of fame that came to him as a detective Mr. Gubb's
paper-hanging business had grown, and he had left Mrs. Murphy's house
and taken a room on the second floor of Opera House Block, near the
offices of ex-Judge Gilroy, attorney-at-law, and C. M. Dillman, loans
and real estate. The door now bore the sign
PHILO GUBB
DETECKATIVE
Also Paper-hanging
On this morning Detective Gubb had hardly reached his office when
Uncle Gabriel Hostetter, a shrewd smile on his face, opened Mr. Gubb's
door.
Uncle Gabriel Hostetter was a round-shouldered old man with a long
white beard that came to a thin point. He wore old-fashioned
gold-rimmed spectacles, the rims forming irregular octagons, and on
his head he wore one of the grandest old silk hats that ever saw the
light of day in 1865. His principal garment was a frock coat, once
black, but now grayish green. He was the wealthiest man in town, and
it was said that when he once got his hands on a silver dollar he
squeezed it so hard that the bird of freedom on it uttered a squawk.
He opened Philo Gubb's door hesitatingly. He expected to see an array
of mahogany desks and filing cabinets for which he would have to pay
every time the detective turned around. When he peered into the room
he saw a tall, thin man in white overalls with a bib, sitting on an
up-ended bundle of wall-paper, stirring a pail of paste with one hand
while he ate a ham sandwich by means of the other.
"I guess I got in the wrong place," said Uncle Gabe. "Thought this was
a detective office. All right! All right!"
"I'm him," said Philo Gubb, swallowing a hunk of sandwich with a gulp
and wiping his hand on his overalls.
"You're who?" asked Uncle Gabe.
"I'm the deteckative," said Philo Gubb.
"You are, hey?" said Uncle Gabe. "All disguised up, I reckon."
"Disguised up?" said Philo questioningly. "Oh, this here paper-hanging
and decorating stuff? No, this ain't no disguise. Even a deteckative
has got to earn a living while his practice is building up."
"Humph!" said old Gabe. "Detecting ain't very good right now?"
"It ain't, for a fact," said Philo.
"Well, if that's so," said old Gabe, "maybe you and me could do
business. If you want to do a little detective work to sort of keep
your hand in, maybe we can do business."
"I ought to git paid something," said Philo doubtfully.
"Pay!" exclaimed old Gabe. "Pay for bein' allowed to sharpen up and
keep bright? Why, you'd ought to pay me for lettin' you have the
practice. It ain't goin' to do me no good, is it?"
"I don't know what you want me to detect yet," said Philo. "I might
pay some if it was a case that would do me good to practice on. I
might pay a little."
"I knew it," said old Gabe. "Now, this case of mine--What sort of a
case _would_ you pay to work on?"
"Well," said Philo thoughtfully, "if I was to have a chance at a real
tough murder case, for instance."
"Humph!" said old Gabe. "How much might you pay to be let work on a
case like that?"
"Well, I dunno!" said Philo Gubb thoughtfully. "If it looked like a
mighty hard case I might pay a dollar a day--if it was a murder case."
"This case of mine," said old Gabe, coming farther into the room, "is
just that sort of a case. And I'll let you work on it for a dollar and
a quatter a day."
"Well, if it's that kind of a case," said Philo slowly, "I'll give you
a dollar a day, and I'll work on it hard and faithful."
"A dollar and a quatter a day," insisted old Gabe.
"No, sir, a dollar is all I can afford to pay," said Philo.
"All right, I won't be mean," said old Gabe. "Make it a dollar an'
fifteen cents and we'll call it a go."
"One dollar a day," said Philo.
"A dollar, ten cents," urged old Gabe.
"One dollar," said Philo.
"Tell you what let's do," said old Gabe. "We ain't but ten cents
apart. You add on a nickel and I'll knock off a nickel, and we'll make
it a dollar five. What say? That's fair enough. You ain't come up any.
I come all the way down."
"All right, then," said Philo. "It's a go. Now, who was murdered, and
when was he murdered, and why was he murdered? Them's the things I've
got to know first."
"You pay me a dollar five for the first day's work, and I'll tell
you," said old Gabe.
Philo dug into his pocket and drew out some money. "There," he said.
"There's two dollars and ten cents. That pays for two days. Now, go
ahead."
He drew out his notebook and wet the end of a pencil and waited.
"The reason this is such a hard case," said old Gabe slowly, and
choosing his words with care, "is because the murder ain't completed
yet. It's being did."
"Right now?" exclaimed Philo excitedly. "Why, we oughtn't to be
sitting here like this. We ought--"
"Now, don't be in such a hurry," said old Gabe. "If you mean we ought
to be where the victim of the murder is, we are. He's right here now.
I'm him. I'm the one that's being murdered. I'm being murdered by slow
murder. I'm liable to drop down dead any minute. But I don't want to
be murdered and not have the feller that murders me hang like he
ought. I can't be expected to. It ain't human nature."
"No, it ain't," agreed Philo. "A man can't help feeling revengeful
against the man that murders him. If anybody murdered me I'd feel the
same way. How's he killing you? Slow poison?"
"Gun-shot," said old Gabe. "Shootin' me to death with a gun."
The correspondence school detective looked at old Gabe with amazement.
"Shootin' you to death with a gun!" he exclaimed. "Ain't you told the
police?"
"I come to you, didn't I?" asked old Gabe. "If I was to set the police
on the feller he might rouse up and shoot me to death all at once."
"How is he shootin' you to death?" asked Philo.
"By inches, b'gee," said old Gabe. "Yes, sir, by inches. Every once in
a while he takes a shot at me. Sometimes through the window of my
house, and sometimes when I'm walkin' on the street."
"And he ain't ever hit you yet?" asked Philo Gubb.
"Hit me?" exclaimed old Gabe. "Why, he don't ever miss me. He hits me
every time. There ain't a day he don't shoot and hit me, and some days
he hits me two or three times. I dare say I'm almost dead now, if I
knowed it."
Philo Gubb fondled his notebook uncertainly.
"What--what does he shoot you with?" he asked.
"Well, I dunno exactly," said old Gabe. "With a pea-shooter."
Philo Gubb closed his notebook, and slipped it into his pocket.
"If all you was after was to get that two dollars and ten cents, you
might have got it without wastin' so much of my time," he said
reproachfully.
But old Gabe did not move.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
"Maybe I'm a fool," Gubb said bitterly, "but I ain't no such fool as
to think anybody is murdering nobody with a pea-shooter."
"Was you ever shot with a cannon?" asked old Gabe calmly.
"No, nor nobody ever tried to murder me with a pea-shooter," said
Philo Gubb.
"If you ever _was_ shot by a thirteen-inch cannon ball," said old
Gabe, "you'd know it. When a thirteen-inch cannon ball hits you, there
ain't nothin' left of you at all. But when a one-inch cannon ball hits
you, you've got a chance to live a minute or two, maybe. That's the
difference between a thirteen-inch cannon ball shootin' you, and a
one-inch cannon ball shootin' you. And a rifle ball is different,
too."
"I got a job of paper-hangin' as soon as I can get away from here,"
said Philo Gubb meaningly.
"You got a job of detectin' on hand now," said old Gabe. "And, as I
was sayin', a rifle ball acts different. Maybe it kills you the first
shot, and maybe you can hold three or four rifle bullets before you
die, but if they keep on shootin' at you, you get killed sooner or
later. Probably five shots is all any man could stand. I guess that's
about it.
[Illustration: "THERE AIN'T A DAY HE DON'T SHOOT AND HIT ME"]
"And then you come down to one of them little twenty-two caliber
revolvers. If he don't hit you in the heart, a murderer could easy
enough shoot at you twenty-five times with one of them little
twenty-two's before he killed you dead. But you'd be dead sooner or
later. It's just a matter of what a man shoots you with that makes the
difference in time.
"Of course," he continued agreeably, "you don't expect no pea-shooter
to kill me as quick as a thirteen-inch gun would. If you expect that
you're unreasonable. But the principle is just the same. Shootin' is
shootin'. You know how that pome goes--
'The constant drip of water
Wears away the hardest stone--'
and that's just as true of murderin' a man with a pea-shooter.
"And the beauty of it is that nobody knows you're committin' a murder.
If anybody catches you and asks you what you're doin' you just say,
'Oh, nothin'. Just shootin' peas.'"
"Maybe that's so," agreed Philo Gubb. "It sounds reasonable. But the
thing for me to do is to wait until you're dead and then catch the
feller. It ain't a murder until you're dead."
"It ain't, ain't it?" sneered old Gabe. "You'd wait until I am dead, I
suppose, and then start out to catch the feller. And you'd lose all
the help I can give you. It ain't often a detective can get the corpse
to help him like this."
"No, it ain't," agreed Philo Gubb.
"I got a suspicion who the feller is," said Gabe.
"Who?" asked Philo Gubb.
"You'll go ahead with the case? On the terms we settled on?" asked old
Gabe.
Philo Gubb considered this carefully.
"Why, yes," he said at length, "I will. Who is the feller you think is
doin' it?"
"Farrin'ton Pierce, the cashier of the Farmers' and Citizens' Bank,"
said old Gabe, his eyes shining with malice and shrewdness, as he
leaned forward and whispered the words. "My own son-in-law, he is. An'
I'll tell you why he's tryin' it. For my money. So his wife'll get it,
an' he can be president of the bank in my place."
"You've seen him have a pea-shooter?" asked Philo Gubb.
"No, sir!" said old Gabe. "And I never seen one of the peas. All I
ever felt was the sting of it when it hit me."
"Maybe," said Philo Gubb eagerly, "maybe it ain't a pea-shooter. Maybe
it's a twenty-two short pistol with a silencer onto it. Maybe it's
only because he's been afraid to come nigh enough to you that he ain't
killed you yet. It don't seem to me that any man would try to murder
any one with a pea-shooter."
"Humph!" said old Gabe. "Maybe you are right, at that. That's
something I never thought of. It sounds likely, too."
"A deteckative has to think of all them things," said Philo simply.
"If I was you I'd be more careful."
"I will!" said old Gabe. "See here, if he's shootin' at me like that,
it ain't no joke, is it? Tell you what I'll do. I'll let you off from
payin' me that dollar five a day. Just you hustle onto this case and
keep at it, and I'll leave you work on it for nothin'. All I want is
that you should send me word reg'lar of what you find out."
"It is the custom of all the graduates of the Rising Sun
Correspondence School deteckatives to make reg'lar reports in
writing," said Philo Gubb. "I'll start right in shadowing and trailing
Mister Farrington Pierce, according to Lessons Three and Four, and
I'll report reg'lar every day."
"Everything you find out," said old Gabe. "Don't leave out a thing.
And particularly at night. That's when he shoots me the most."
"I won't leave him a minute," said Philo Gubb. "I've got a man I hire
to help me on my paper-hangin', and I'll get him to finish up this
job. I'll start trailin' and shadowin' Farry Pierce right away."
Old Gabe shook hands with Philo and went out. When the door was closed
behind him he chuckled, and all the way home his face was creased in a
grin. He felt that he had done a good bit of business and saved
himself a good sum of money. Philo Gubb, in the meantime, having put a
false beard and a wig in his pocket, went out.
Across the street from the bank was Grammill's Cigar Store, where the
idler men of the town loafed when they had nothing better on hand,
and Philo Gubb entered and bought a cigar and took an easy loafing
position near the front window. He commanded a view of the only
entrance to the bank, and here he waited. At fifteen minutes after
three Farry Pierce came out of the bank.
"There's a man with an easy job," said one of the loafers. "That Farry
Pierce. Nothing to do till to-morrow."
"Too much time on his hands, I guess," said another, who--by the
way--had more spare time than Farry Pierce. "From what I hear he'd be
better off if he had to work all day _and_ all night."
"The widow?" asked the first speaker.
"That's what they say," said the second. "They tell me he's blowing
all his salary and more on that widow. Must make old Gabe crazy to see
any of his kin spend money that way. Or any way. He's a close one, old
Gabe is."
"What you hear about Farry and the widow?" asked the first.
"Makes old Gabe crazy, they tell me. He wants his girl to get a
divorce."
"Who told you that?"
"My girl. My girl is workin' for his girl. Fr'm what she tells me old
Gabe is pretty well worked up about it. Said he'd get a spotter to
foller Farry and get some evidence on him if it didn't cost so blame
much. I bet the' won't be any divorces in that family if old Gabe has
to pay out any money."
"I bet they won't. And the' ain't no detectives workin' for nothin' so
far as I hear. Not this year."
"No, nor next year, neither," said the other; and as this was in the
nature of a joke they both laughed.
But Philo Gubb did not join their laughter. He felt his face grow red.
His lean hands folded and unfolded as he watched Farry Pierce
disappear around the corner of the bank building. If any one felt like
murdering old Gabe with a pea-shooter at that moment, Philo Gubb did.
Shadow and trail Farry Pierce! The old skin-flint, coming with a fairy
tale and getting the only fully graduated deteckative in Riverbank to
shadow and trail a son-in-law and report daily! Divorce case evidence,
hey? Talking murderer and working a deteckative into doing scandal
sleuthing free of charge! Philo Gubb's face reddened again with new
anger as he put his hand in his pocket and touched the beard and wig
he had placed there. But for this chance conversation he would have
been following Farry Pierce now, and making a fool of himself. But for
this chance conversation he would not have lost sight of Farry Pierce
by day or by night. He went back to his office, put on his overalls,
and went to his work on a paper-hanging job.
At six he started for home. A block down the street he met one of the
loafers he had heard speaking in Grammill's Cigar Store.
"What do you think about it?" he asked Philo Gubb.
"About what?" asked Philo in return.
"Ain't you heerd?" asked the man. "Why, it's all over town by now.
Farry Pierce murdered old Gabe Hostetter not more'n twenty minutes
after we seen him comin' out of the bank. Shot him. Killed him first
shot. Yes, sir! Killed him instantly with a little mite of a pistol
with about as much carry as a pea-shooter. Must have hit him in just
the right spot."
"Did you see the pistol?" asked Philo Gubb nervously.
"No, I didn't," said his informant, "but that's what the feller told
me. 'Killed him instantly with one of these here little pea-shooters,'
was what he said. What you lookin' so funny about?"
"If you insist to wish to know," said Philo Gubb, "Mr. Gabe Hostetter
wasn't murdered instantly at all. He was progressively murdered by
inches over a long considerable period of time, like little drops of
water."
For a minute the loafer stared at Mr. Gubb. Then he laughed.
"Crazy!" he scoffed. "Crazy as a loon!" and he walked away and left
Mr. Gubb struggling for a suitably crushing retort.
THE MISSING MR. MASTER
That evening Mr. Gubb received a short note from Mr. Medderbrook that
was in the form of a bill or statement. It read: "Due from P. Gubb to
J. Medderbrook, $11,900. Please remit,"--so he put on his hat and
walked to Mr. Medderbrook's elegant home.
"I want you to hurry up with what you owe me," said Mr. Medderbrook,
when Mr. Gubb explained that he could pay nothing on the Utterly
Hopeless Gold-Mine stock at the moment, "because I know you are soft
on Syrilla, and from a telegram I got from her to-day it looks as if
it would be no time at all before she reduced her weight down to seven
hundred pounds and Mr. Dorgan of the side-show broke his contract with
her. And if you want to read the telegram you can do so by paying half
what it cost me, which was three dollars."
Mr. Gubb paid Mr. Medderbrook one dollar and a half, as any lover
would, and read the telegram from Syrilla. It said:--
Love is triumphing. Have given up all cereal diet. Have
given up oatmeal, rice, farina, puffed wheat, corn flakes,
hominy, shredded wheat, force, cream of wheat, grapenuts,
boiled barley, popcorn, flour paste, and rice powder. Weigh
now only nine hundred and twenty-five pounds. Soft thoughts
to dearest Gubby.
Mr. Gubb hesitated a moment and then said:--
"Far be it from me to say aught or anything, Mr. Medderbrook, but I
would wish the cost of telegrams would reduce themselves down a
little. This one is marked onto its upper corner 'PAID'--"
"Yes, the telegraph boy said that was a mistake," said Mr. Medderbrook
hastily.
"And very likely so," said Mr. Gubb, "but for a reduction of five
pounds one dollar fifty is a highish price to pay. Thirty cents a
pound is too much."
"Well," said Mr. Medderbrook, "I don't want to have any quarrel with
you, so I'll do this for you: I will make you a flat price of
twenty-five cents per pound."
"Which is a fair and reasonable price for glad tidings to a fond
heart," said Mr. Gubb, and this matter having been amicably settled,
he returned to his office.
That evening he sat on the edge of his cot bed minus his coat, vest,
and trousers, with his bare feet comfortably extended. At his back a
pillow made a back-rest, and a bundle of wall-paper served as a rather
lofty footstool. He was deeply immersed in Lesson Eleven, his
bird-like face screwed into tensity. From time to time he wiggled one
toe or another as a fly alighted on it. Sometimes, when more than one
fly alighted on his toes at once, he wiggled all ten toes
simultaneously.
A trunk, a varnished oak washstand and a cot showed that the room was
not only a decorator's shop, but a living-place; and that this was
the office of Philo Gubb, detective, was shown by a row of hooks from
which hung various disguises used by the celebrated detective, by a
portrait of William J. Burns, cut from a magazine and pasted on the
wall, and by a placard which read, "P. Gubb, Graduate and Diploma-ist
of the Rising Sun Detective Agency's Correspondence School of
Detecting. Detecting done by the Day or Job. Terms on Application."
On the cot at Philo Gubb's side lay a copy of that day's morning
Chicago paper, with a two-column spread headline reading, "Wife Offers
$5000 Reward," and it was this that had driven Philo Gubb, the
paper-hanger detective, to renewed study of Lesson Eleven--"Procedure
in Abduction and Missing Men Cases."
Mr. Custer Master, of Chicago, had mysteriously disappeared. One
paragraph in the article had caught Mr. Gubb's particular attention:--
Mrs. Master feels that her husband is still alive, and
insists that Mr. Master will be found in one of the Iowa
towns on the Mississippi River. The police of these towns
have been notified, and detectives have gone to investigate.
The Masters stand high in South-Side society. Mr. Master, it
is understood, recently inherited $450,000 from a maternal
uncle. At the time the will was probated considerable
interest was aroused by the fact that the legacy was to go
to Mr. Master only on condition that he carried out certain
provisions contained in a sealed envelope, to be read only
by the executors and Mr. Master.
And so on. The paper pointed out that Mr. Master had been a sufferer
from dyspepsia for many years, but this had not had a permanently
depressing effect on his mind. His home relations were most
satisfactory. His own business--he was a dealer in laundry supplies
and laundry machinery--was doing well, and no trace of outside
troubles could be discovered.
On the morning of his disappearance, Mr. Master had shown some signs
of mental eccentricity. A neighbor, happening to be at her window, saw
Mr. Master come hurriedly from the door of his house. An hour later a
friend passed him as he was standing on a corner six blocks from home.
Mr. Master seemed greatly distressed.
"I can't do it! It kills me; I can't do it!" he was muttering to
himself. "I never could do it. I said so."
The next news of Mr. Master was gained from the keeper of a bath-house
and swimming-pool known as the Imperial Natatorium. About ten o'clock,
Mr. Master entered the Natatorium hurriedly, asked the price of baths,
and chose to pay for a plunge in the big swimming-pool. He paid in
advance, removed his garments in one of the small dressing-rooms, put
on a swimming-suit and went to the edge of the big pool. Here he
grasped the rail and extended one foot until his toes touched the cold
water, when he uttered a cry, rushed to the dressing-room, and, as
soon as he had thrown on his clothes, dashed from the building. That
was the last seen of Mr. Master.
Philo Gubb, having finished reading Lesson Eleven for the third time,
had picked up the Chicago paper when the silence of the Opera House
Building was disturbed by the sound of feet ascending the brass-clad
stairs.
The nocturnal visitors seemed unacquainted with the building, for,
after two or three steps had been taken, one lighted a match. It was
evident to the detective that these visitors were reading the names on
the doors as they progressed along the corridor, and he was about to
extinguish his lamp and prepare for the worst, when the two men
stopped again, struck a match, and, after an instant's hesitation,
rapped sharply upon his door.
"Come in!" called Philo Gubb, at the same time drawing his bed-sheet
over his scantily clad legs. He knotted the sheet behind, like an
apron, and arose to greet the comers. They were two. One of them Mr.
Gubb recognized at once; he was Billy Gribble, proprietor of the Gold
Star Hand Laundry, just across the way on Main Street. The other man
was a stranger.