"I don't want nothing more to do with that will!" he said.
"I'm with you there!" said Higgins, laughing. "When O'Hara made his
will so that my client couldn't get her rights at once he did a mean
trick, and I dare say Mrs. Doblin will think so when she gets my bill.
But, just the same, Gubb, you're in the detective business more or
less, and it strikes me you ought to take a job when it's offered to
you. You signed the will as a witness, and this man Bilton, commonly
known as Mustard on account of his yellow complexion and hair, was the
other witness, wasn't he? Now, if you can't give us the information we
want, and Mustard can, it looks to me as if it was your duty, as a
fellow witness, to hunt him up. But we don't ask that. We're willing
to pay you if you find him."
"Are you prepared to contract to say you'll pay me just for hunting
for him?" asked Mr. Gubb.
"We'll give you two hundred dollars if you can produce Mustard here in
Riverbank," said Higgins.
"The job I've took on to hunt up another missing party will occupy me
for quite a while, I guess," said Gubb, "but maybe I might put in what
extra time I can spare looking for your party."
"Do it!" said Higgins. "I don't say you're the best detective in the
world, Gubb, but you do have luck. You must have a magic talisman."
"The operation of the deteckative mind is always like magic to the
common folks," said Gubb gravely.
"All right, then," said Higgins. "Two hundred if you find him. And
now, will you just come across the hall for one minute?"
Gubb left his microscope reluctantly. He was sick and tired of the
O'Hara will, but he followed Mr. Higgins.
The second floor of the Opera House Block was laid out in small
offices arranged on two sides of a corridor. One of these offices had
been for many years the office of Haddon O'Hara, who specialized in
commercial law, collections, and jokes, and he had accumulated a snug
little fortune. It was said he could draw a contract no one could
break except himself.
On the streets and in his home and at his office--except when at work
on some especially difficult case--his face always wore a quizzical
smile. O'Hara seemed to enjoy himself every moment. Walking along the
street he would suddenly stop some citizen, enunciate a dozen or
twenty cryptic words, laugh, and proceed on his way, leaving the
citizen to puzzle over the affair, lose interest in it and forget it.
A week, a month, or a year later O'Hara would stop the same citizen
and utter ten more words, the key to the cryptic joke. Then,
chuckling, he would hurry away. He had a lot of fun. His keen brain
felt equal to making fun of the whole town and not letting the town
know it. Money came to him easily; he had no wife; his pleasure was in
his books--and he was probably a happy man. But he died. He died and
left a will.
For some years O'Hara lived with his niece, an orphan. She was
eighteen, and there might have been some gossip, but O'Hara
forestalled it by hiring old Mrs. Mullarky.
O'Hara bought his niece a pup and had a dog-house built and put in the
yard. He christened the pup himself, naming it Waffles, because, he
said, the minute he saw the pup it reminded him of Dolly. The pup was
just the color of the waffles Dolly baked--"baked" is O'Hara's word.
So he bought Waffles and brought him home to Dolly, and the girl loved
the dog from the first minute. Then, just as the dog had outgrown
puppyhood, O'Hara died.
His will was found in the safe in his office. Old Judge Mackinnon, who
shared the office with O'Hara, found the will the day after O'Hara
died. It was in a white legal envelope endorsed, "My Will, Haddon
O'Hara." The Judge opened the envelope--it was not sealed--and took
out the will. The will was not filled in on a printed form--it was a
holograph will, written in O'Hara's own hand. It began in the usual
formal manner and there were two bequests. The first read: "To my
niece, Dorothy O'Hara, since she is so extremely fond of her dog
Waffles, I give and bequeath the dog-house now on my property at 342
Locust Street, Riverbank, Iowa." The second read: "Secondly, to my
cousin Ardelia Doblin I bequeath the entire remainder and residue of
my estate," etc.
Judge Mackinnon frowned as he read these two bequests. He knew Ardelia
Doblin as a spiteful, scandal-mongering woman. To cut off Dolly O'Hara
with a dog-house and give his entire estate to Ardelia Doblin might be
O'Hara's idea of a joke, but the Judge did not like it. He read the
final clause, appointing him sole executor without bond. O'Hara's
signature was correctly appended. The will was dated July 1, 1913. It
was witnessed by Philo Gubb and Max Bilton. The Judge knew both
witnesses. Gubb was the eccentric paper-hanger who thought he was a
detective because he had taken a correspondence course, and Bilton was
a jaundiced loafer, commonly called Mustard. The good old man sighed
and was about to put the will back in the envelope when he noticed
three letters at the bottom of the sheet. They were "P.T.O." Now
"P.T.O." is an English abbreviation that means "Please Turn Over." The
Judge turned the paper over.
Suddenly he smiled. Then he looked grave again. And then he grinned.
After which he shook his head.
The reverse of the sheet contained a will exactly like that on the
obverse. Word for word it was the same. Line for line, punctuation
mark for punctuation mark, the two wills on the opposite sides of the
sheet were identical except for two words. In the will the Judge was
now reading, the name Sarah P. Kinsey was substituted for the name
Ardelia Doblin. The date was the same. The witnesses were the same.
There were two wills, one written on one side of the sheet and the
other written on the other side of the sheet, of the same date, with
the same signature, and with the same witnesses. O'Hara had joked to
the last.
"This is a dickens of a joke!" exclaimed Judge Mackinnon. "O'Hara
should not have done this!"
He saw the property of Haddon O'Hara being dissipated in lawsuits over
this remarkable will. He knew Sarah P. Kinsey as well as he knew
Ardelia Doblin, and she was just such another mean cantankerous
individual.
"A joke's a joke, but you shouldn't have done this, O'Hara!" said the
Judge.
There was nothing to do but notify the parties concerned. He went to
see Dolly O'Hara first and told her, as gently as he could, about the
will. She cried a little, softly, at first, and then she smiled
bravely.
"You mustn't worry about it, Judge Mackinnon," she said. "I--of course
I never thought what Uncle Haddon would do with his money. And--and we
used to joke about the dog-house. He always said he would leave it to
me in his will. Uncle Haddon loved to joke, Judge Mackinnon."
"He was a joking jackanapes!" said Judge Mackinnon angrily.
Ardelia Doblin and Sarah P. Kinsey took the matter in quite a
different spirit. Mrs. Doblin could hardly wait until Judge Mackinnon
was out of the house before she hurried down to see Lawyer Higgins,
and Mrs. Kinsey did not wait until the Judge was ready to go, but put
on her hat in his presence, so eager was she to hurry down to see
Lawyer Burch.
Ten hours later the O'Hara will was the one matter talked about in
Riverbank. Evidently there must be some clue leading to the solution
of the mystery--some well-hidden, cleverly planned key such as Haddon
O'Hara would undoubtedly have left in perpetrating such a joke. Common
sense was sufficient to tell any one that O'Hara could not have
written both wills simultaneously, that he had written one will on one
side of the paper, after which he had turned the paper over and had
written the other will on the other side of the paper. The difficulty
was to tell which side he had written last.
Lawyer Higgins, Lawyer Burch, and Judge Mackinnon went over both sides
of the paper with a microscope. The same ink had been used on both
sides. O'Hara's writing was the same on both sides. Often, in writing
as many words as occupied both sides of the paper in question, a man's
hand grows involuntarily weary. There was nothing of this sort. There
seemed to be absolutely nothing on which the greatest penmanship
expert could base a plea that either side was, in fact, the _last_
will of Haddon O'Hara. Either might be the last.
Nothing was left untested by Higgins and Burch. The two sides of the
paper on which the wills were written were subjected to the minutest
scrutiny.
Each will was witnessed by the same pair of witnesses, and these were
Philo Gubb and Max Bilton. It was no trouble to get Philo Gubb to tell
about signing the will. Judge Mackinnon crossed the hall and brought
Philo Gubb to the office.
"Yes, sir," said Mr. Gubb. "I signed my signature onto that document
two times as requested so to do by the late deceased. He come over to
my official deteckative headquarters and asked me to step across and
do him the pleasure of a small favor and I done so. Yes, sir, that's
my signed signature. And that's my signed signature also likewise."
"Did he say anything, Mr. Gubb?" asked the Judge.
"He says, 'Gubb, this is my last will and testament, and I wish you to
sign your signature onto it as a witness.' So he put the paper in
front of me. 'Where'll I sign it?' I says. 'Sign it right here under
Mr. Bilton's name,' he says. So I signed my signature like he told
me."
"Yes," said the Judge, "and Mr. O'Hara blotted it with a piece of
blotting-paper, did he not?"
"He so done," said Mr. Gubb.
"And then what?"
"Then he turned the paper over," said Mr. Gubb, "and he says, 'Now,
please sign this one.' So I signed it."
"Under Mr. Bilton's name again?" said the Judge.
"Why, no," said the paper-hanger detective. "Not under it, because it
wasn't located nowhere to have an under to it. Mr. Bilton hadn't
signed on that side yet."
There was an instant sensation.
"Bilton hadn't signed that side?" said Mr. Higgins. "Which side hadn't
he signed?"
"The other side from the side he had signed," said Mr. Gubb.
"Did you notice which side he had not signed?" insisted Mr. Higgins.
"Was it this side that mentions Mrs. Doblin, or this side that
mentions Mrs. Kinsey? Which was it?"
Mr. Gubb took the paper and examined it carefully. He turned it over
and over.
"Couldn't say," he said briefly.
"In other words," said Mr. Burch, "you signed one side before Mr.
Bilton signed and one side after he signed, but you don't know which?"
"Yes, sir, I don't," said Mr. Gubb.
"So," said Judge Mackinnon, with a smile, "you can swear you signed
both these wills as witness, but you have no idea which you signed
last, Mr. Gubb."
"E-zactly so!" said Mr. Gubb with emphasis.
"Now, just a minute," said Mr. Burch. "One of these Bilton signatures
is 'M. Bilton' and the other is 'Max Bilton.' You don't recall which
was on the paper when you signed, do you?"
"Mr. Burch," said Mr. Gubb, "I wasn't taking no extra time to find out
if a no-account feller like Mustard Bilton signed his name M. or Max
or Methuselah. No, sir."
"Do you know where Mustard Bilton is now?" asked Judge Mackinnon.
"Don't know," said Mr. Gubb.
The three lawyers consulted for a minute or two. Then the Judge turned
to Gubb again.
"And did Mr. O'Hara say anything more on the occasion when you signed
the will?" asked the Judge.
"He said, 'Thank you,'" said Mr. Gubb. "He said, 'Thank you, Sherlock
Holmes.'"
Higgins and Burch laughed, and even the Judge smiled, and they told
Mr. Gubb he could go.
An hour or three quarters of an hour after he had been called to
identify his signature to the wills, a gentle tap at Mr. Gubb's door
caused him to look up from the pamphlet--Lesson Four, Rising Sun
Detective Agency's Correspondence School of Detecting--he was reading.
"Come on right in," he called, and in answer the door opened and a
young woman entered. She was a sweet-faced, modest-appearing girl, and
when she pushed back her veil, Mr. Gubb saw she had been weeping, for
her eyes were red. Mr. Gubb hastily pulled out his desk chair.
"Take a seat and set down, ma'am," he said politely. "Is there
anything in my lines I can be doing for you to-day?"
"Are you Mr. Philo Gubb?" she asked, seating herself.
"Yes'm, paper-hanging and deteckating done," he said.
"It's about a dog, my dog," said the young woman. "He's lost, or
stolen, and--"
Emotion choked her words.
"I know it sounds foolish to ask a detective to look for a dog," she
said with a poor attempt at a smile, "but--"
"In the deteckative line nothing sounds foolish," said Mr. Gubb with
politeness.
"But Uncle Haddon told me once that if ever I needed a--a detective I
should come to you," the young woman continued. "You knew Uncle
Haddon, Mr. Gubb?"
"I had the pleasure of being known to and knowing of him," said Mr.
Gubb.
"My name is Dolly O'Hara! I am his niece."
"Glad to make your acquaintance, ma'am," said Philo Gubb, and he shook
hands gravely.
"He gave me my dog," said Miss O'Hara. "He gave him to me when the dog
was just a puppy, and he called him Waffles. He used to joke about my
loving the dog more than I loved him. He used to say--"
Miss O'Hara wiped her eyes. For a moment she could not speak.
"He used to say," she continued in a moment, "that I'd never break my
heart over a lost uncle, but that if I lost Waffles I'd die of grief.
It wasn't so, of course. But I'm heart-broken to have Waffles gone. He
is all I'll have to remember Uncle Haddon by. And then--to have
him--go!"
"I should take it a pleasure to be employed upon a case to fetch him
back," said Mr. Gubb.
"Oh, would you?" cried Miss O'Hara. "I'm so glad! I was afraid a--a
real detective might not want to bother with a dog. Of course I'll
pay--"
"The remuneration will be minimum on account of the smallness of the
crime under the statutes made and provided," said Mr. Gubb.
"But you must let me pay!" urged Miss O'Hara. "One of the things Uncle
Haddon said was, 'If you ever lose that dog, Dolly, hire Detective
Gubb. Understand? He's a wonderful detective. He'll leave no stone
unturned. He'll find your dog. He'll pry the roof off the dog-house to
find a flea, and when he's found the flea he'll hunt up a blond dog to
match it. Remember,' he said, 'if you lose the dog, get Gubb.'"
"I consider the compliment the highest form of flattery," said Mr.
Gubb.
"So I want you to try to find Waffles, please, if it isn't beneath you
to hunt a dog," said Miss O'Hara. "How much will you charge to find
Waffles, Mr. Gubb?"
"I'd ought to have five dollars--" Mr. Gubb began doubtfully.
"Of course!" exclaimed Miss O'Hara. "Why, I expected to pay far more."
"Well and good," said Mr. Gubb. "And now, how aged was the dog when he
was purloined away from you?"
Philo Gubb secured a complete history of the dog. Miss O'Hara had
brought, also, two photographs of Waffles in pleasing poses, and when
she left, Mr. Gubb accompanied her to the late home of Waffles. It was
there he gathered the clues over which he was poring with his
microscope when Mr. Higgins came to ask him to step across the hall
and to offer him two hundred dollars if he could produce Mustard
Bilton. Mr. Gubb went across the hall.
"Gubb," said Judge Mackinnon, when he had introduced the detective to
Mrs. Kinsey and Mrs. Doblin, "was Mustard Bilton in this office when
you signed your name to these wills?"
"No, sir, he was not present in person," said Mr. Gubb. "He was
elsewhere."
"Well, ladies," said the Judge, "it seems to me that until we can find
Mustard we cannot proceed. Mr. O'Hara's last will--whichever it
is--must be probated. If I took this will to the courthouse, whichever
side happened to be uppermost would be probated first and the other
side would naturally appear on the record as the latest will. It is a
responsibility I do not care to undertake. If you will not agree to
compromise and divide the estate--"
"Never!" said both ladies.
"We must find Mustard!" said the Judge.
Mr. Gubb went into the hall, but Lawyer Burch followed him.
"Gubb," he said, "just a word! Find Mustard for me. Now, don't
talk--find him. Bring Mustard to Judge Mackinnon's office and I'll put
two hundred dollars in your hand! That's all!"
Detective Gubb returned to his office and resumed his work on his lost
dog clues. One by one he submitted the clues to inspection under the
microscope. He tried the five processes of the Sherlock Holmes
inductive method on them. By some strange quirk, quite out of keeping
with the usual detective-story logic, he could make nothing of them.
Even the flea in the bit of dog hair did not point direct to the
location of the dog. They were blind clues. Mr. Gubb swept them into
an empty envelope, sealed the envelope, put on his hat and went out.
On the stair he met Judge Mackinnon.
"Well, if O'Hara meant to have a little joke--and he did--he's had
it," said the Judge with a chuckle. "You should have been in that room
just now. Cat fights? Those two women all but jumped on each other
with claws and teeth. I don't know why O'Hara wanted to worry them,
but he has paid them back well for whatever they ever did to him."
"And the dog has disappeared away, too," said Mr. Gubb. "I am
proceeding on my way at the present time to help discover where the
dog is."
"Hope you find the poor child's pet," said the Judge as he turned off
in the opposite direction.
Mr. Gubb proceeded to the late home of Haddon O'Hara. He followed the
brick walk to the back of the house. He was already familiar with the
premises.
The dog-house--the only recently painted structure in the
neighborhood--stood opposite the kitchen door. It was perhaps three
feet in height and four feet long, with a pointed roof. As a door it
had an open arch, and at one side of this was a staple to which a
chain could be attached. The grass in front of the dog-house was worn
away, leaving the soil packed hard. The detective, arriving at the
dog-house, walked around it, gazing at it closely.
The inductive method had failed--as it always failed for Mr. Gubb--and
he meant now to try following a clue in person, if he could find a
clue to follow. Mr. Gubb dropped to his hands and knees and crept
around the dog-house, seeking a clue hidden in the grass. When he
reached the front of the dog-house he paused.
"Ye look that like a dog I was thinkin' ye'd howl for a bone," said
Mrs. Mullarky suddenly from the kitchen door.
Mr. Gubb turned and eyed her with disapproval.
"The operations of deteckating are strange to the lay mind," he said
haughtily. "Those not understanding them should be seen and not
heard."
"An' hear the man!" cried Mrs. Mullarky. "Does a dog-house drive all
of ye crazy? T' see a human bein' crawlin' around on his four legs an'
callin' it detectin' where a dog is that ain't there! Go awn, if ye
wish! Crawl inside of ut!"
"I'm going to do so," said Mr. Gubb, and he did.
Inside, or as far inside as he could get, Mr. Gubb struck a match and
examined the floor of the house. There was straw on it, but nothing
even remotely suggesting a clue. No dog thief had left a glove there.
Mr. Gubb began to back out, and as he backed his head touched
something softer than a pine board. He craned his long neck and looked
upward. Tacked to the inside of the roof of the house was a long
envelope. Mr. Gubb put up his hand and pulled it loose. Then he backed
into the daylight. He sat on the bare spot before the dog-house and
examined the envelope.
The envelope was sealed, but on the face of it was written:--
To be delivered to Judge Mackinnon, after Waffles has been
returned to his house and home. Waffles will be found in the
old cattle-shed on the Illinois side of the river, north
from the turnpike at the far end of the bridge. H. O'H.
It was a clue! Without stopping to silence the scornful laughter of
Mrs. Mullarky, Philo Gubb jumped to his feet and made for the Illinois
side of the long bridge as rapidly as his long legs could carry him.
He reached the old cattle-shed and there he found Mustard Bilton
seated at the door, smoking a cob pipe in lazy comfort.
"Come for the dog?" asked Mustard carelessly. "Sort of thought you'd
come for him about now. Been expectin' you the last couple o' days."
"Expecting me?" said Philo Gubb. "I've been doing deteckative work on
this case--"
"Yes, Had' O'Hara reckoned you'd detect around awhile before you got
track of me," said Mustard without emotion. "He says, when I'd signed
that there will for him, 'Day or so after I kick the bucket, Mustard,
you go up and steal Waffles,' he says, 'and fetch him over to the
cattle-shed on the Illinoy side,' he says, 'and keep him there until
Gubb comes for him. Take a day or so, maybe,' he says, 'for Dolly to
remember I told her to get Gubb, and take Gubb a day or two to scrooge
round before he hits on the clue I've fixed up to point him to you,
but he'll come. He's a wonder, Gubb is,' says O'Hara, 'and no mistake.
If a feller was to steal the sardines out of a can,' he says, 'bet you
Gubb would want to see what was inside the empty can before he'd start
out to find the feller. You just sit quiet an' wait till Gubb snoops
round enough,' he says, 'and he'll come.'"
"You have possession of the Waffles dog at the present time?" asked
Detective Gubb.
"In yonder," said Mustard, pointing over his shoulder. "Say, what's
the joke O'Hara was cookin' up, anyway?"
"You accompany yourself with me to the office of Judge Mackinnon,"
said Mr. Gubb, "and you'll discover it out for yourself and I'll
remunerate you to twenty dollars also. Fetch the dog."
Mr. Gubb, quite properly, left Mustard and Waffles in his own office
while he visited Mr. Higgins and Mr. Burch, collecting two hundred
dollars from each. Then he turned Mr. Mustard Bilton over to them.
"You signed those wills of O'Hara's," said Mr. Burch when all had
gathered in Judge Mackinnon's office. "Do you know which you signed
last?"
"Sure, I do," said Mustard.
Mr. Burch handed him the double will.
"Which did you sign last?" asked Mr. Burch energetically.
Mustard took the document and looked at it. The Kinsey side was toward
him.
"It wasn't this one," he said positively.
"Ah, ha!" cried Lawyer Higgins, turning the paper over. "Then it was
this one you signed last!"
"No," said Mustard, glancing at the Doblin side of the paper. "I
signed this'n the same time as I signed the other side of it. I signed
both these the first day of the month. The one I signed last I signed
on the second of the month."
"Ah, yes!" said Judge Mackinnon, looking at a document he had taken
from the envelope Philo Gubb had handed him. "You mean this one:--
Last will and testament--and all else with which I may die
possessed--to my niece Dorothy O'Hara--and hope she can take
a joke--Haddon O'Hara.
You mean this one, Mr. Bilton?"
"Yep," said Mustard, looking at the document that gave to Dolly O'Hara
every jot and tittle of Haddon O'Hara's property. "That's the one.
That's the one I signed last. Me and old Sam Fliggis signed her--same
day O'Hara hired me to steal the dog. Well, I guess I'll be takin' the
dog back home. So 'long, gents. Old Had' was bound to have his joke,
wasn't he?"
"Mr. Gubb," said Judge Mackinnon suddenly, "would you be betraying a
professional secret if you told us how you found this document?"
"In the pursuit of following my deteckative profession," said
Detective Gubb, "according to Lesson Six, Page Thirty-two."
THE ANONYMOUS WIGGLE
Any one reading a history of the detective work of Philo Gubb, the
paper-hanger detective, might imagine that crime stalked abroad
endlessly in Riverbank and that criminals crowded the streets, but
this would be mere imagination. For weeks before he took on the case
of the Anonymous Wiggle, he had been obliged to revert to his
side-line of paper-hanging and decorating.
Four hundred of the dollars he had earned by solving the mystery of
the missing Mustard and Waffles he had paid to Mr. Medderbrook,
together with five dollars for a telegram Mr. Medderbrook had received
from Syrilla. This telegram was a great satisfaction to Mr. Gubb. It
brought the day when she might be his nearer, and showed that the fair
creature was fighting nobly to reduce. It had read:--
None but the brave deserve the thin. Have given up all
liquids. Have given up water, milk, coca-cola, beer,
chocolate, champagne, buttermilk, cider, soda-water, root
beer, tea, koumyss, coffee, ginger ale, bevo, Bronx
cocktails, grape juice, and absinthe frappe. Weigh eight
hundred ninety-five net. Love to Gubby from little Syrilla.