stood in the light of the red globe, and it gave me a weird look. I
held the crystal globe in one hand and the jade talisman in the other.
The incense arose from the incense-burner. As if out of the empty air,
a sweet-toned bell rang three times. I bowed low three times as the
bell rang and muttered the magic words. I made them up as I said them,
but they sounded mystic. Mrs. Lippett was sitting on the edge of her
chair, breathless with emotion. The curtains were drawn across the
door at the back of the room. You could have heard a pin drop. We were
alone, just we two. I felt creepy myself. I turned toward the
curtains. I said, 'Henry, appear!'"
"Yes?" queried Philo Gubb.
Mr. Guffins threw out both hands with a gesture of utter despair.
"A pig came under the curtains," he groaned. "A pig--a great, fat,
double-chinned, pinky-white pig, the kind you see at county
fairs--came under the curtains and grunted twice. It stood there and
raised its head and grunted twice."
Mr. Guffins wrung his hands nervously.
"It--it surprised me," he said,--"but only for a minute. I said, 'Get
out, you beast!' and was going to kick it, but Mrs. Lippett rose
slowly from her chair. She half-tottered for an instant, and then she
covered her face with her hands. She began to weep. 'I knew it!' she
sobbed; 'I knew it! Oh, Henry, I knew you ate too much. I told you and
_told_ you again and again you were making a pig of yourself. Oh,
Henry, if you had only been less of a pig when you were alive before!'
And what do you think that pig did?"
"What did it do?" asked Philo Gubb.
"It sat up on its hind legs and begged," said Mr. Guffins, "begged for
food. It was awful! Mrs. Lippett couldn't stand it. She wept. 'He was
always so hungry in his other life,' she said. 'I can't begin to be
stern with him now. To-morrow, but not when he has just come back to
me. Come, Henry!'
"She went into the dining-room," continued Mr. Guffins, "and Henry--or
the pig, for it _couldn't_ have been Henry--followed her. And what do
you think it did?"
"What?" asked Mr. Gubb.
"It went right to the dining-room table and climbed into a chair. Pigs
don't do that, do they? But you don't believe it could have been
Henry, do you? It got up in the chair and _sat_ in it, and put its
front feet on the table and grunted. And Mrs. Lippett hurried about
saying, 'Oh, Henry! Oh, poor, dear Henry!' and brought a plate of
fried hominy and sliced apple and set it before him. And he wouldn't
touch it! He wouldn't eat. So Mrs. Lippett wept harder and got a
napkin and tied it around the pig's neck. Then the pig ate. He almost
climbed into the plate, and gobbled the food down. And then he grunted
for more. And Mrs. Lippett wept and said: 'It's Henry! He always did
tie a napkin around his neck--he spilled his soup so. It's Henry! It
acts just like Henry. He never did anything at the table but eat and
grunt.' And so," said Mr. Guffins sadly, "she thinks it's Henry. She's
fixed up the guest bedroom for him."
"The idea of such a notion!" said Mr. Gubb.
[Illustration: "SHE THINKS IT'S HENRY. SHE'S FIXED UP THE GUEST
BEDROOM FOR HIM"]
"Well, that's it," said Mr. Guffins sadly. "I ain't sure but it _is_
Henry. Do you know, that pig walks on its hind feet like a man? She
says it walks like Henry.... Oh!"
"What is it?" asked Mr. Gubb.
"I told you Henry--"
"Yes?"
"I told you Henry broke his neck. He fell down and broke his neck, in
his store. He was coming down the back stairs in the dark, and his
foot caught in a piece of rope and he fell. And--this pig came into
the parlor with a piece of string on its leg! Here's the string."
Mr. Gubb took it. From his desk he took the string Mr. Greasy Gus had
left. The two ends joined perfectly.
"I'll get you out of this fix, and fix it so Mrs. Lippett won't have
that pig onto her hands," he said. "I'll go tell her what a fraud of a
faker you are, and it won't cost you but twenty-five dollars."
"Willingly paid," said Mr. Guffins, reaching into his pocket.
"And don't you worry about that pig being Henry K. Lippett," said Mr.
Gubb. "That pig was a stranger into Riverbank. And," he went on, as if
reading the words from the end of the whipcord, "it was tied to the
alley fence. Tied to an iron staple," he said, "by a short, stoutish
man with a ruddish face." He took up the other piece of cord and
looked at it closely. "And the pig jerked the cord in two and went
into the yard and in at the open door and into the room. And what is
moreover also, the pig is an educated show-pig, and its name is
Henry, and--"
"And what?" asked Mr. Guffins eagerly.
"If you want to get rid of the pig out of Mrs. Lippett's house, all
you have to do is to write to the Sheriff of Derling County,
Derlingport, Iowa, and you needn't trouble yourself into it no
further."
"Great Scott!" cried Mr. Guffins. "And you can tell all that from that
piece of cord!"
Mr. Gubb assumed a look of wisdom.
"Us gents that is into the deteckative business," he said carelessly,
"has to learn twelve correspondence lessons before we get our
diplomas. The deteckative mind is educated up to such things."
BURIED BONES
When Mr. Gubb went to the house of Mr. Jonas Medderbrook to pay him
the money he had received for solving the mystery of Henry, the
Educated Pig, he found the house closed, locked and deserted, and on
the door was pinned a card that said simply, and in a neat
handwriting:--
Gone to Patagonia. Will be back in one hundred years. Please
wait.
This was signed "Jonas Medderbrook," but not until the next day did
Mr. Gubb learn from the "Riverbank Eagle" that Mr. Medderbrook had
decamped after selling his friends and neighbors an immense amount of
stock in the Utterly Hopeless Gold-Mine, of which Mr. Gubb had a very
large and entirely worthless quantity.
The departure of Mr. Medderbrook was a great shock to Mr. Gubb, as it
seemed to indicate that serious complications in his wooing of Syrilla
might result from it, especially as he had only heard from Syrilla
through Mr. Medderbrook, but, disturbed as he was by this fear, he was
even more upset by a telegram that came to him direct that afternoon.
It was from Syrilla herself--
Alas! [it read], the worst has happened. Weighed myself this
morning and weighed only one hundred pounds. Later
discovered scales were one hundred and five pounds out of
balance, registering one hundred and five pounds too much. I
cannot marry you, now or ever, Gubby dear, as cannot permit
your faithful heart to wed one who weighs five pounds less
than nothing. Good-bye forever. SYRILLA.
The blow was a severe one to Mr. Gubb, as it would have been to any
lover who loved a half-ton of beauty only to have her shrink to five
pounds less than nothing. For several days he remained locked in his
office, hardly touching food, and then, with a sad heart he resumed
his customary occupations. He would never have learned the truth about
Syrilla had it not been for a tramp called Chi Foxy.
Chi Foxy made the long walk from Derlingport, and night found him on
the outskirts of Riverbank. He begged a hand-out from one of the small
houses and hunted a place to spend the night. He found it underneath a
tool-house alongside the railway tracks, and that it had been used as
sleeping-quarters by other tramps was shown by the heap of crushed
straw, the bread-crusts, and the remnants of a small fire.
Chi Foxy crawled in and stretched himself out for a comfortable night.
He lighted his pipe, loosened the laces of his shoes, and settled back
for a comfortable smoke.
Just outside the rear of his sleeping quarters ran the wire
right-of-way fence, which was also the back fence of a small piece of
property on which stood a rickety old house. The house was devoid of
paint, but it was a cheerful sight from where Chi Foxy reclined. He
had a clear view of the kitchen window, from which the light came in a
yellow glow, and he could see a woman cooking something in a
frying-pan on a kitchen stove. A man sat beside the stove, his elbows
on his knees, waiting for supper.
Chi Foxy almost decided to climb the fence and knock at the door of
the kitchen at the moment the woman took the frying-pan off the stove,
but he was feeling well filled and comfortable, and he decided to wait
and to use the house as his breakfasting-place. This required no
little strength of character, for the perfume of fried veal chops was
wafted to his nostrils, but he held himself in hand, and when he had
burned his pipeful of tobacco he curled down and went to sleep.
He was awakened by the sound of voices near at hand, and peered out
between the ties. The night was not dark. The voices had come from a
man and a woman, and as Chi Foxy watched them the man began digging in
the sandy soil with a spade. He made quite a hole in the soil and
turned to the woman.
"Hand me the bag," he said.
The woman dragged a heavy gunny-sack to the edge of the hole. The man
untwisted the neck of the bag and up-ended it over the hole. There
followed the rattle of bones, one striking against the other, and the
man handed the bag back to the woman. Chi Foxy peered eagerly at the
hole. He saw bones. He looked up at the stars and saw it must be well
after midnight. He saw the man hastily spade the soft soil over the
bones, saw him scatter loose dry top-sand over the completed job, and
saw the man and woman hurry back to the dark house.
The next morning Chi Foxy left his resting-place and climbed over the
wire fence. He looked curiously at the spot where the weird burial had
taken place, and went on toward the house. He knocked on the door, and
it was opened by the man--a tall, lanky, coarse-bearded specimen.
"Say, friend, how about givin' a feller some breakfast?" asked Chi
Foxy.
"How 'bout it, ma?" asked the man, turning his head. "Got some
breakfast for this feller?"
The woman looked toward the tramp. She evidently decided in his favor.
"Let him set on the step and I kin hand him out some coffee and some
meat, if that'll do him," she said, and Chi Foxy seated himself. The
breakfast she brought him on a chipped plate was all he could have
desired. There was a half of a veal cutlet, browned to a nicety, a
portion of fried potatoes, a thick slice of bread without butter, and
a cup of coffee. Chi Foxy ate and drank.
"Thanks, folks," he said. "I won't forgit you." And he continued on
his way toward Riverbank.
"So you're here," said the first policeman he met. "Right on time with
the first frosty breeze, ain't you? Well, my friend, you can blow out
of town on the breeze, just like you blew in. No more free board and
gentle stone-pile massage in this town. Drift along, bo!"
He turned up the first cross-street. He went from house to house
begging a hand-out, but the residents were colder than the weather. At
the twelfth house he knocked on the back door, but he was beginning to
feel hopeless. A thin streamer of smoke was issuing from the kitchen
chimney, and where there is smoke there is food; but here, instead of
a hard-faced woman coming to the door, a man put his face to the
kitchen window and looked out. It was the face of a tall, thin man
with a long neck and prominent Adam's-apple, and as the man peered out
of the window he looked something like a flamingo. He opened the door.
"Come right into the inside," said Philo Gubb pleasantly, "and heat
yourself up warm. The temperature is full of cold weather to-day."
Chi Foxy entered. He looked around the kitchen. There was a brisk fire
in the stove, but no sign of food.
"Say, pard," he said, "how about giving me a bite? I haven't had a
bite this morning. I ain't too late, am I?"
His host looked at him.
"You are not too late," he answered, "because it may be some days of
time before there is any eats here, for what's burning into that stove
is the unvalueless trimmings off of wall-paper. I'm not the regular
resider at this house by no means."
Chi Foxy looked at his host again.
"You're a paper-hanger, ain't you?" he said.
"Paper-hanger and deteckative," said his host proudly. "My name is
Mister P. Gubb, graduate of the Rising Sun Deteckative Agency's
Correspondence School of Deteckating in twelve lessons. And
paper-hanging done in a neat manner."
Chi Foxy held out his hand eagerly.
"Shake, pard!" he asked. "That's my line, too."
"Paper-hanging?" asked Philo Gubb.
"Detecting," said Chi Foxy promptly. "I'm one of the most famousest
gum-shoe fellers in the world. Me and this here great detective
feller--what's his name, now?--used to work team-work together."
"Burns?" suggested Philo Gubb.
"Holmes," said Chi Foxy, "Shermlock Holmes. Me and him pulled off all
them big jobs you maybe have read about in the papers."
He pronounced the name of the celebrated detective of fiction
"Shermlock Hol-lums."
"Oh, yes," said the tramp, "me and Shermlock is great chums. And me
and the kid!"
"To what kid do you refer to?" asked Philo Gubb.
"Why, my old side partner's little son, Shermlock Hollums the Twoth,"
said Chi Foxy without a blink. "And a cunnin' little feller he
was--took after his father like a cat after fish, he did. Me and old
Shermlock we used to hide things--candy and--and oranges--and let
little Shermlock go and detect where they was. He was a great little
codger, he was."
He noticed that Mr. Gubb was looking at him sharply. He looked down at
his ragged garments.
"Disguise," he said briefly. "Nobody'd know a swell dresser like I am
in this rig, would he? Say, pard, how about giving me a half-dollar to
get breakfast? Us detectives ought to have es-_spirit dee corpse_,
hey? We ought to stick by each other, hey?"
The celebrated paper-hanger detective considered Chi Foxy. It was
evident that P. Gubb doubted the authenticity of the tramp-detective.
"In times of necessary need," he said slowly, "I often assume onto me
the disguise of a tramp, but I don't assume it onto me so complete
that I go asking for money to buy breakfast."
"You don't, hey?" said Chi Foxy scornfully. "Well, you must be a swell
detective, you must. When I get into a tramp disguise I'm a tramp all
through."
"Most certainly," said P. Gubb. "And so am I. But there's a difference
into the way you are doing it now. You ain't deteckating now. You are
coming at me as one deteckative unto another."
Chi Foxy laughed.
"Say," he said, "I'd like to see this here Correspondence School you
graduated out of, I would. I'd like to see the lessons they learn you,
I would. Why, the first thing my old pard Shermlock Hollums told me
was _never_ to be anything but what I was disguised to be as long as I
was disguised to be it. That's right. Maybe I'd be disguised as a
tramp and I'd meet our old friend and college chum, the Dook of Sluff.
He'd want to take me into some swell place and blow me off to a swell
dinner. Would I let on? No, sir! I'd sort of whine at him and say,
'Mister, won't you give a poor feller a penny for to hire a bed?'
That's how me and Shermlock stuck to a disguise. And Shermlock! Me and
him was like twins, we was, and yet when I was in this tramp disguise
and went up to his room to report, I'd knock at the door and say,
'Mister, give a poor cove a hand-out, won't you?' and Shermlock would
turn and say, 'Watson, throw this tramp downstairs.' And Watson would
do it. Yes, sir! I've been so sore and bruised from being thrown
downstairs when I went to report to Shermlock that sometimes I'd have
to go to the hospital to get plastered up. That's detecting!"
Chi Foxy looked at P. Gubb, but P. Gubb did not seem to have melted.
"That's livin' up to your disguise," continued Chi Foxy. "Me and
Shermlock, when we had on tramp disguises we _were_ tramps. Why, I
used to go home and my valet would throw me downstairs. I was so
thoroughly disguised, and I kept actin' so trampish while I had the
disguise on, that he used to come at me with a golluf stick and whack
me on the head. And when I got into my own room I kept right on being
a tramp. Took off my clothes--still a tramp. Took off my false
whiskers--still a tramp. I'd be there stark naked and I'd still be a
tramp. Yes, sir. That's the kind of detective disguising I did. And
then I'd take a bath. Then I was myself again. Yes, sir. When I'd
scrubbed myself in the bathtub I figured I'd got rid of the tramp
disguise right down into the skin, and I'd be myself again--and not
until then."
He looked at P. Gubb out of the corner of his eye.
"Why, I remember one time," he said briskly, "I was asked to the
Dook's palace to a swell party. Me and Shermlock was both asked,
because they knew one of us wouldn't go unless the other did. Well,
sir, I had been out detecting in a tramp disguise that day--findin'
stolen jools and murderers and that sort of business--and I went and
took my bath and rigged all up in swell clothes, and called my
limmy-seen automobile, and when the feller I hired to drive the
limmy-seen come to open the door of the car at the Dook's palace I
dodged. Yes, sir, I dodged like I thought he was going to hit me
because I hadn't no business in my own limmy-seen automobile. That was
funny, wasn't it? So I went up the steps into the Dook's palace, and
the gentleman he had to open the door opened the door, and he called
out my name and up come the Dookess--Mrs. Dook of Sluff, as they call
her, but I always called her Maggie, like she called me Mike. So she
says to me, 'Mike, I'm mighty glad to see you here. We're going to have
a swell party.' And I started to say back something pleasant, but what
I said was, 'Please, missus, won't you give a poor cove a hand-out?'"
"What seemed to be the reason you said that?" asked Philo Gubb with
interest.
"That's what worried me," said Chi Foxy. "I didn't mean to say it. I
just said it against my will, as you might say. But I guess she
thought I was tryin' to be smart, for she just says, 'Naughty,
naughty, Mike,' and whistled to the Dook to come and blow me off to
the feeds. So the Dook come and led me into the dining-room, and
stacked me up against the table for a stand-up feed. Swell feed, bo!
Samwiches till you couldn't rest--ham samwiches and chicken samwiches
and tongue samwiches and club samwiches and--and all kinds of
samwiches. And what did I do? I grabbed half a dozen of them samwiches
and rammed them into my pants pocket, just like a tramp would do it.
The Dook looked surprised, but he begun to haw-haw, and he slapped me
on the back and said, 'Good joke, ol' chap, good joke!' So that passed
off all right. Then I went into the jool room, because the Dook had
told me his son, the Dookette, or what you might call the little
Dookerino, was in there. So in I went, and the first thing I knew I
was hiding one of the Dook's gold crowns inside my vest. In a minute
in come the Dook to pick out a crown to wear at dinner--"
"I thought you said they had a stand-up dinner at the table," said
Philo Gubb.
"Pshaw, that was nothing but the appetizer," said Chi Foxy. "Well, in
he come and began lookin' through his crowns for the one he wanted,
and all at once he saw how my vest bulged out, and he knew by the
rough edges of the bulge it wasn't samwiches because them dookal
samwiches is all boneless. So he puts his hand on my shoulder and he
says, 'Mike, ain't you carryin' the joke a bit too far?' That's what
he says, and I wish you could have heard how sad his voice was. He
says, 'You know me, Mike, and you know that anything I've got is
yours--_except_ that crown you've got inside your vest.'
"For a minute I didn't know what to do. I wasn't in tramp disguise and
I thought he would think I was a thief in real life, so I says, 'Dook,
search me!' 'I don't have to search you,' he says, 'for I can see my
favorite crown bulging out your vest.' 'I don't mean that, Dook, old
chap,' I says; 'I mean take me up to your bood-u-war or the bathroom
and give me the twice-over. Something's wrong with me, and I don't
know what, but some of my tramp disguise must be sticking to me
somewhere.' So we went up to the bathroom and he went over me with
this one-eyed monocule he always wore, and then he went over me with a
reading-glass, and then he went over me with a microscope, but he
couldn't see a speck of tramp disguise on me. Not a speck. 'Keep
lookin'!' I says. 'It must be there somewhere, Dook,' I says, 'or I
wouldn't act so pernicious.' So he begun again, and all at once I hear
him chuckle. He was lookin' in my ear with the microscope."
"What was it?" asked Philo Gubb eagerly.
"A hair," said Chi Foxy. "Just one hair. It was a hair out of my tramp
whiskers that had got in my ear, and the minute he pulled it out I was
all right again and no more tramp than he was. So you see that's the
way I keep acting tramp as long as I have even one hair of tramp
disguise about me. Come on, be a good feller and let me have half a
dollar to get some feeds with."
P. Gubb put his hand in his pocket and withdrew it again. "I much
admire to like the way you act right up to the disguise," he said,
"and it does you proud, but of course when you ask for fifty cents
it's nothing but part of the disguise, ain't it?"
"Now, see here, bo!" said Chi Foxy earnestly. "Don't you go and
misunderstand me. I didn't mean to be mistook that way. I _do_ want
fifty cents. I'm hungry, I am."
P. Gubb smiled approvingly. "Most excellent trampish disguise work,"
he said. "Nobody couldn't do it better. A real tramp couldn't do it
better."
Chi Foxy frowned. "Say," he said, "cut that out, won't you, cully?
Your head ain't solid ivory, is it? I'm starvin'. Gimme fifty cents,
mister. Gimme a quarter if you won't give me fifty. Come on, now, be a
good feller."
"A deteckative like you are oughtn't to need twenty-five cents so bad
as that," said P. Gubb. "A deteckative acquainted with the knowing of
a Dook and of Sherlock Holmes don't have to beg."
Chi Foxy actually gritted his teeth. He was angry with himself. He had
talked too well. He had proved so thoroughly that he was a detective
that P. Gubb would not believe he was hungry.
"See here, bo," he said suddenly, "is this straight about you being a
detective, or is that a bluff, too?"
Philo Gubb showed Chi Foxy the badge he had received upon completion
of his correspondence course of twelve lessons.
"I'm the most celebrated and only deteckative in the town of
Riverbank, Iowa," he said seriously, "and you can ask the Sheriff or
the Chief of Police if you don't believe me. I'm working right now
onto a case of quite some importance, into which a calf was stolen,
but up to now the clues ain't what they should be. If you don't think
I'm a deteckative you can ask Farmer Hopper. He hired me for to get
the capture of the guilty calf-stealer aforesaid."
Chi Foxy studied P. Gubb's simple face.
"And you can arrest a feller and lodge him in jail?" he asked.
"I've arrested many and lodged them into jail," P. Gubb assured him.
"Well, bo," said Chi Foxy frankly, "I'm the man you're looking for.
Arrest me."
The tramp knew enough about arrests to know that even a suspect, when
lodged in jail, would be fed, and he was hungry and getting hungrier
every moment. P. Gubb looked at him with surprise.
"I thought you said you was a deteckative," he said.
"I am," said Chi Foxy. "Or I wouldn't know I was a criminal. I
detected it myself, because nobody else could. Even my old friend
Shermlock Hollums couldn't detect it, but I did. I'm a--a murderer, I
am. There's a thousand-dollar reward offered for me."
"Then why don't you arrest yourself and get the reward?" asked P.
Gubb.
"Say," said Chi Foxy with disgust. "It can't be done. I know, for I've
tried. I'm a fugitive, that's what I am, and right behind me, no
matter where I flee to, comes myself ready to grab me and arrest me.
I've chased myself all over Europe, Asia and Africa, and I can't get
away from myself, and I can't grab myself. It's--it's just awful."
Chi Foxy wiped an imaginary tear from his eye.
"And I can't keep away from the scene of my crime," he said. "I come
back here time after time--"
"Did you do the murder here?" asked P. Gubb with increased interest.
[Illustration: "A DETECKATIVE LIKE YOU ARE OUGHTN'T TO NEED
TWENTY-FIVE CENTS SO BAD AS THAT"]
"That's what I did," said Chi Foxy. "I did it here. Take me down to
the lock-up. Me and you can hold me all right."
"It's somewhat out of the ordinary common run for a feller to be a
deteckative and the criminal murderer he's chasing both at once," said
P. Gubb doubtfully.
"That's so, ain't it?" agreed Chi Foxy. "It looks that way. But facts
are facts, ain't they?"
"Quite occasionally they are such," agreed P. Gubb.
"That's right," said Chi Foxy. "And all you've got to do is to explain
them. You see, bo, I was a young feller when I murdered this old
miser--"
"What did you say his name was?" asked P. Gubb.
"Smith," said Chi Foxy promptly. "John J. Smith, and he lived right
here in this town. And I murdered the old feller and got away. Nobody
cared much whether the old feller was murdered or not, and nothin'
much might have been said of it except that the old feller had a
nephew. His name was Smith--Peter P. Smith."