than I am right now. He was murdered or wan't nothin'! I've dredged up
some suicides in my day, and some of 'em had stones tied to 'em, to
make sure they'd sink, and some thought they'd sink without no
ballast, but nary one of 'em ever sewed himself into a bag, and I give
my word," he said positively, "that Hen Smitz couldn't have sewed
himself into that burlap bag unless some one done the sewing. Then the
feller that did it was an assistant-suicide, and the way I look at
it is that an assistant-suicide is jest the same as a murderer."
The crowd murmured approval, but Mr. Gubb held up his hand for
silence.
"In certain kinds of burlap bags it is possibly probable a man could
sew himself into it," said Mr. Gubb, and the crowd, seeing the logic
of the remark applauded gently but feelingly.
"You ain't seen the way he was sewed up," said Long Sam, "or you
wouldn't talk like that."
"I haven't yet took a look," admitted Mr. Gubb, "but I aim so to do
immediately after I find a clue onto which to work up my case. An A-1
deteckative can't set forth to work until he has a clue, that being a
rule of the game."
"What kind of a clue was you lookin' for?" asked Long Sam. "What's a
clue, anyway?"
"A clue," said P. Gubb, "is almost anything connected with the late
lamented, but generally something that nobody but a deteckative would
think had anything to do with anything whatsoever. Not infrequently
often it is a button."
"Well, I've got no button except them that is sewed onto me," said
Long Sam, "but if this here sack-needle will do any good--"
He brought from his pocket the point of a heavy sack-needle and laid
it in Philo Gubb's palm. Mr. Gubb looked at it carefully. In the eye
of the needle still remained a few inches of twine.
"I cut that off'n the burlap he was sewed up in," volunteered Long
Sam, "I thought I'd keep it as a sort of nice little souvenir. I'd
like it back again when you don't need it for a clue no more."
"Certainly sure," agreed Mr. Gubb, and he examined the needle
carefully.
There are two kinds of sack-needles in general use. In both, the point
of the needle is curved to facilitate pushing it into and out of a
closely filled sack; in both, the curved portion is somewhat flattened
so that the thumb and finger may secure a firm grasp to pull the
needle through; but in one style the eye is at the end of the shaft
while in the other it is near the point. This needle was like neither;
the eye was midway of the shaft; the needle was pointed at each end
and the curved portions were not flattened. Mr. Gubb noticed another
thing--the twine was not the ordinary loosely twisted hemp twine, but
a hard, smooth cotton cord, like carpet warp.
"Thank you," said Mr. Gubb, "and now I will go elsewhere to
investigate to a further extent, and it is not necessarily imperative
that everybody should accompany along with me if they don't want to."
But everybody did want to, it seemed. Long Sam and his audience joined
Mr. Gubb's gallery and, with a dozen or so newcomers, they followed
Mr. Gubb at a decent distance as he walked toward the plant of the
Brownson Packing Company, which stood on the riverbank some two blocks
away.
It was here Henry Smitz had worked. Six or eight buildings of various
sizes, the largest of which stood immediately on the river's edge,
together with the "yards" or pens, all enclosed by a high board fence,
constituted the plant of the packing company, and as Mr. Gubb appeared
at the gate the watchman there stood aside to let him enter.
"Good-morning, Mr. Gubb," he said pleasantly. "I been sort of
expecting you. Always right on the job when there's crime being done,
ain't you? You'll find Merkel and Brill and Jokosky and the rest of
Wiggins's crew in the main building, and I guess they'll tell you just
what they told the police. They hate it, but what else can they say?
It's the truth."
"What is the truth?" asked Mr. Gubb.
"That Wiggins was dead sore at Hen Smitz," said the watchman. "That
Wiggins told Hen he'd do for him if he lost them their jobs like he
said he would. That's the truth."
Mr. Gubb--his admiring followers were halted at the gate by the
watchman--entered the large building and inquired his way to Mr.
Wiggins's department. He found it on the side of the building toward
the river and on the ground floor. On one side the vast room led into
the refrigerating room of the company; on the other it opened upon a
long but narrow dock that ran the width of the building.
Along the outer edge of the dock were tied two barges, and into these
barges some of Wiggins's crew were dumping mutton--not legs of mutton
but entire sheep, neatly sewed in burlap. The large room was the
packing and shipping room, and the work of Wiggins's crew was that of
sewing the slaughtered and refrigerated sheep carcasses in burlap for
shipment. Bales of burlap stood against one wall; strands of hemp
twine ready for the needle hung from pegs in the wall and the posts
that supported the floor above. The contiguity of the refrigerating
room gave the room a pleasantly cool atmosphere.
Mr. Gubb glanced sharply around. Here was the burlap, here were
needles, here was twine. Yonder was the river into which Hen Smitz had
been thrown. He glanced across the narrow dock at the blue river. As
his eye returned he noticed one of the men carefully sweeping the dock
with a broom--sweeping fragments of glass into the river. As the men
in the room watched him curiously, Mr. Gubb picked up a piece of
burlap and put it in his pocket, wrapped a strand of twine around his
finger and pocketed the twine, examined the needles stuck in
improvised needle-holders made by boring gimlet holes in the wall, and
then walked to the dock and picked up one of the pieces of glass.
"Clues," he remarked, and gave his attention to the work of
questioning the men.
Although manifestly reluctant, they honestly admitted that Wiggins had
more than once threatened Hen Smitz--that he hated Hen Smitz with the
hatred of a man who has been threatened with the loss of his job. Mr.
Gubb learned that Hen Smitz had been the foreman for the entire
building--a sort of autocrat with, as Wiggins's crew informed him, an
easy job. He had only to see that the crews in the building turned out
more work this year than they did last year. "'Ficiency" had been his
motto, they said, and they hated "'Ficiency."
Mr. Gubb's gallery was awaiting him at the gate, and its members were
in a heated discussion as to what Mr. Gubb had been doing. They ceased
at once when he appeared and fell in behind him as he walked away from
the packing house and toward the undertaking establishment of Mr.
Holworthy Bartman, on the main street. Here, joining the curious group
already assembled, the gallery was forced to wait while Mr. Gubb
entered. His task was an unpleasant but necessary one. He must visit
the little "morgue" at the back of Mr. Bartman's establishment.
The body of poor Hen Smitz had not yet been removed from the bag in
which it had been found, and it was to the bag Mr. Gubb gave his
closest attention. The bag--in order that the body might be
identified--had not been ripped, but had been cut, and not a stitch
had been severed. It did not take Mr. Gubb a moment to see that Hen
Smitz had not been sewed in a bag at all. He had been sewed in
burlap--burlap "yard goods," to use a shopkeeper's term--and it was
burlap identical with that used by Mr. Wiggins and his crew. It was no
loose bag of burlap--but a close-fitting wrapping of burlap; a cocoon
of burlap that had been drawn tight around the body, as burlap is
drawn tight around the carcass of sheep for shipment, like a mummy's
wrappings.
It would have been utterly impossible for Hen Smitz to have sewed
himself into the casing, not only because it bound his arms tight to
his sides, but because the burlap was lapped over and sewed from the
outside. This, once and for all, ended the suicide theory. The
question was: Who was the murderer?
As Philo Gubb turned away from the bier, Undertaker Bartman entered
the morgue.
"The crowd outside is getting impatient, Mr. Gubb," he said in his
soft, undertakery voice. "It is getting on toward their lunch hour,
and they want to crowd into my front office to find out what you've
learned. I'm afraid they'll break my plate-glass windows, they're
pushing so hard against them. I don't want to hurry you, but if you
would go out and tell them Wiggins is the murderer they'll go away. Of
course there's no doubt about Wiggins being the murderer, since he has
admitted he asked the stock-keeper for the electric-light bulb."
"What bulb?" asked Philo Gubb.
"The electric-light bulb we found sewed inside this burlap when we
sliced it open," said Bartman. "Matter of fact, we found it in Hen's
hand. O'Toole took it for a clue and I guess it fixes the murder on
Wiggins beyond all doubt. The stock-keeper says Wiggins got it from
him."
"And what does Wiggins remark on that subject?" asked Mr. Gubb.
"Not a word," said Bartman. "His lawyer told him not to open his
mouth, and he won't. Listen to that crowd out there!"
"I will attend to that crowd right presently," said P. Gubb, sternly.
"What I should wish to know now is why Mister Wiggins went and sewed
an electric-light bulb in with the corpse for."
"In the first place," said Mr. Bartman, "he didn't sew it in with any
corpse, because Hen Smitz wasn't a corpse when he was sewed in that
burlap, unless Wiggins drowned him first, for Dr. Mortimer says Hen
Smitz died of drowning; and in the second place, if you had a live man
to sew in burlap, and had to hold him while you sewed him, you'd be
liable to sew anything in with him.
"My idea is that Wiggins and some of his crew jumped on Hen Smitz and
threw him down, and some of them held him while the others sewed him
in. My idea is that Wiggins got that electric-light bulb to replace
one that had burned out, and that he met Hen Smitz and had words with
him, and they clinched, and Hen Smitz grabbed the bulb, and then the
others came, and they sewed him into the burlap and dumped him into
the river.
"So all you've got to do is to go out and tell that crowd that Wiggins
did it and that you'll let them know who helped him as soon as you
find out. And you better do it before they break my windows."
Detective Gubb turned and went out of the morgue. As he left the
undertaker's establishment the crowd gave a slight cheer, but Mr. Gubb
walked hurriedly toward the jail. He found Policeman O'Toole there and
questioned him about the bulb; and O'Toole, proud to be the center of
so large and interested a gathering of his fellow citizens, pulled the
bulb from his pocket and handed it to Mr. Gubb, while he repeated in
more detail the facts given by Mr. Bartman. Mr. Gubb looked at the
bulb.
"I presume to suppose," he said, "that Mr. Wiggins asked the
stock-keeper for a new bulb to replace one that was burned out?"
"You're right," said O'Toole. "Why?"
"For the reason that this bulb is a burned-out bulb," said Mr. Gubb.
And so it was. The inner surface of the bulb was darkened slightly,
and the filament of carbon was severed. O'Toole took the bulb and
examined it curiously.
"That's odd, ain't it?" he said.
"It might so seem to the non-deteckative mind," said Mr. Gubb, "but to
the deteckative mind, nothing is odd."
"No, no, this ain't so odd, either," said O'Toole, "for whether Hen
Smitz grabbed the bulb before Wiggins changed the new one for the old
one, or after he changed it, don't make so much difference, when you
come to think of it."
"To the deteckative mind," said Mr. Gubb, "it makes the difference
that this ain't the bulb you thought it was, and hence consequently it
ain't the bulb Mister Wiggins got from the stock-keeper."
* * * * *
Mr. Gubb started away. The crowd followed him. He did not go in search
of the original bulb at once. He returned first to his room, where he
changed his undertaker disguise for Number Six, that of a blue
woolen-shirted laboring-man with a long brown beard. Then he led the
way back to the packing house.
Again the crowd was halted at the gate, but again P. Gubb passed
inside, and he found the stock-keeper eating his luncheon out of a tin
pail. The stock-keeper was perfectly willing to talk.
"It was like this," said the stock-keeper. "We've been working
overtime in some departments down here, and Wiggins and his crew had
to work overtime the night Hen Smitz was murdered. Hen and Wiggins was
at outs, or anyway I heard Hen tell Wiggins he'd better be hunting
another job because he wouldn't have this one long, and Wiggins told
Hen that if he lost his job he'd murder him--Wiggins would murder Hen,
that is. I didn't think it was much of anything but loose talk at the
time. But Hen was working overtime too. He'd been working nights up in
that little room of his on the second floor for quite some time, and
this night Wiggins come to me and he says Hen had asked him for a
fresh thirty-two-candle-power bulb. So I give it to Wiggins, and then
I went home. And, come to find out, Wiggins sewed that bulb up with
Hen."
"Perhaps maybe you have sack-needles like this into your stock-room,"
said P. Gubb, producing the needle Long Sam had given him. The
stock-keeper took the needle and examined it carefully.
"Never had any like that," he said.
"Now, if," said Philo Gubb,--"if the bulb that was sewed up into the
burlap with Henry Smitz wasn't a new bulb, and if Mr. Wiggins had
given the new bulb to Henry, and if Henry had changed the new bulb for
an old one, where would he have changed it at?"
"Up in his room, where he was always tinkering at that machine of
his," said the stock-keeper.
"Could I have the pleasure of taking a look into that there room for a
moment of time?" asked Mr. Gubb.
The stock-keeper arose, returned the remnants of his luncheon to his
dinner-pail and led the way up the stairs. He opened the door of the
room Henry Smitz had used as a work-room, and P. Gubb walked in. The
room was in some confusion, but, except in one or two particulars, no
more than a work-room is apt to be. A rather cumbrous machine--the
invention on which Henry Smitz had been working--stood as the murdered
man had left it, all its levers, wheels, arms, and cogs intact. A
chair, tipped over, lay on the floor. A roll of burlap stood on a
roller by the machine. Looking up, Mr. Gubb saw, on the ceiling, the
lighting fixture of the room, and in it was a clean, shining
thirty-two-candle-power bulb. Where another similar bulb might have
been in the other socket was a plug from which an insulated wire,
evidently to furnish power, ran to the small motor connected with the
machine on which Henry Smitz had been working.
The stock-keeper was the first to speak.
"Hello!" he said. "Somebody broke that window!" And it was true.
Somebody had not only broken the window, but had broken every pane and
the sash itself. But Mr. Gubb was not interested in this. He was
gazing at the electric bulb and thinking of Part Two, Lesson Six of
the Course of Twelve Lessons--"How to Identify by Finger-Prints, with
General Remarks on the Bertillon System." He looked about for some
means of reaching the bulb above his head. His eye lit on the fallen
chair. By placing the chair upright and placing one foot on the frame
of Henry Smitz's machine and the other on the chair-back, he could
reach the bulb. He righted the chair and stepped onto its seat. He put
one foot on the frame of Henry Smitz's machine; very carefully he put
the other foot on the top of the chair-back. He reached upward and
unscrewed the bulb.
The stock-keeper saw the chair totter. He sprang forward to steady it,
but he was too late. Philo Gubb, grasping the air, fell on the broad,
level board that formed the middle part of Henry Smitz's machine.
The effect was instantaneous. The cogs and wheels of the machine began
to revolve rapidly. Two strong, steel arms flopped down and held
Detective Gubb to the table, clamping his arms to his side. The roll
of burlap unrolled, and as it unrolled, the loose end was seized and
slipped under Mr. Gubb and wrapped around him and drawn taut, bundling
him as a sheep's carcass is bundled. An arm reached down and back and
forth, with a sewing motion, and passed from Mr. Gubb's head to his
feet. As it reached his feet a knife sliced the burlap in which he was
wrapped from the burlap on the roll.
And then a most surprising thing happened. As if the board on which he
lay had been a catapult, it suddenly and unexpectedly raised Philo
Gubb and tossed him through the open window. The stock-keeper heard a
muffled scream and then a great splash, but when he ran to the window,
the great paper-hanger detective had disappeared in the bosom of the
Mississippi.
Like Henry Smitz he had tried to reach the ceiling by standing on the
chair-back; like Henry Smitz he had fallen upon the newly invented
burlaping and loading machine; like Henry Smitz he had been wrapped
and thrown through the window into the river; but, unlike Henry Smitz,
he had not been sewn into the burlap, because Philo Gubb had the
double-pointed shuttle-action needle in his pocket.
Page Seventeen of Lesson Eleven of the Rising Sun Detective Agency's
Correspondence School of Detecting's Course of Twelve Lessons, says:--
In cases of extreme difficulty of solution it is well for
the detective to reenact as nearly as possible the probable
action of the crime.
Mr. Philo Gubb had done so. He had also proved that a man may be sewn
in a sack and drowned in a river without committing willful suicide or
being the victim of foul play.
THE END
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise,
every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and
intent.