THE TRAP THAT WAS SET
When, in his conversation with Judge Hoyt, Terence McGuire stated that
his wardrobe purchases were made under the guidance and jurisdiction of
his sister, he was creating a fabrication of purest ray serene. For, in
this sorry scheme of things, no sister had been allotted to Fibsy, nor,
until that moment, had he ever felt need of one. So, the need arising, a
sister easily sprang, full fledged, from the red head of the well-named
inventor.
Fibsy, likewise was unprovided with parents, and lived with a doting
aunt. This relative, a knobby-coiffured spinster, was of the firmly
grounded opinion that the orb of day has its rising and setting in her
prodigy of a nephew. That he was not a bigoted stickler for the truth,
bothered her not at all, for Fibsy never told his aunt lies, at least
none that could possibly matter to her.
Now, being temporarily out of a business position, and not minded to go
at once to Philadelphia, Fibsy was giving Aunt Becky the ecstatic bliss
of having him at home for a time.
He was mostly absorbed in thoughts and plans of his own, but when she saw
him, hands in pockets, sprawled bias on a chair, she forbore to bother
him; and, like Charlotte, went on cutting bread and butter, to which she
added various and savory dishes for her pet’s demolition.
Nor were her efforts unappreciated.
“Gee! Aunt Beck, but this is the scream of a strawberry shortcake!” would
be her well-earned reward. “You sure do beat the hull woild fer cookin’!”
And Aunt Becky would beam and begin at once to plan for supper.
“There’s no use talkin’” said Fibsy, to himself, as he writhed and
twisted around in the dilapidated rocker that graced his sleeping-room;
“that milk bottle, with the old druggy stuff in it, means sumpum. Here
I’ve mumbled over that fer weeks an’ ain’t got nowhere yet. But I got a
norful hunch that it’s got a lot to do with our moider. An’ I’ve simply
gotto dig out what!”
Scowling fearfully, he racked his brain, but got no answer to his own
questions. Then he turned his thoughts again to Miss Wilkinson’s strange
account of that queer telephone message. “That’s the penny in the slot!”
he declared. “I jest know that rubbish she reels off so slick, is the key
clue, as they call it. Me for Wilky, onct again.”
Grabbing his hat he went to interview the stenographer. She too, had not
yet taken another place, though she had one in view.
Obligingly she parroted over to Fibsy the lingo of the message.
“Did the guy say he’d _give_ the Stephanotis to Mr. Trowbridge, or they’d
_get_ it?” he demanded, his blue eyes staring with deep thought.
“W’y, lemmesee. I guess he said,—oh, yes, I remember, he said, I guess
we’ll _find_ some Stephanotis—”
“Oh, did he? Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. What dif, anyhow?”
But Fibsy didn’t wait to answer. He ran off and went straight to the
Trowbridge house.
“Miss Avice,” he said, when he saw her, “Please kin I look at Mr.
Trowbridge’s c’lection, if I won’t touch nothin’? Oh, please do lemme,
won’t you?”
“Yes, if you promise to touch nothing,” and Avice led the way to the
room, with its glass cases and cabinets of shallow drawers that held the
stuffed birds and mounted insects so carefully arranged by the
naturalist.
Rapidly Fibsy scanned the various specimens. Eagerly he scrutinized the
labels affixed to them. Oblivious to the amused girl who watched him, he
darted from case to case, now and then nodding his shock of red hair, or
blinking his round blue eyes.
After a time, he stood for a moment in deep thought, then with a little
funny motion, meant for a bow, he said, abstractedly, “Goo’ by, Lady.
Fergive me fer botherin—” and rapidly descending the stairs he ran
outdoors, and up the Avenue.
Half an hour later, he was at the door of a large college building,
begging to be allowed to see Professor Meredith.
“Who are you?” asked the attendant.
“Nobody much,” returned Fibsy, honestly. “But me business is important.
Wontcha tell Mr.——here, I’ll write it, it’s sorta secret—” and taking a
neat pad and pencil from his pocket, the boy wrote, “Concerning the
Trowbridge murder,” and folded it small.
“Give him that,” he said, with a quiet dignity, “and don’t look inside.”
Then he waited, and after a moment was given audience with the Professor
of Natural History.
“You wished to see me?” said the kindly voice of a kind-faced man, and
Fibsy looked at him appraisingly.
“Yessir. Most important. And please, if you don’t want to tell me what I
ask, don’t laugh at me, will you?”
“No, my lad, I rarely laugh at anything.”
The serious face of the speaker bore out this assertion, and Fibsy
plunged at once into his subject.
“Is there a bug, sir, named something like Stephanotis?”
“Well, my child, there is the Scaphinotus. Do you mean that?”
“Oh, I guess I do! I think maybe, perhaps, most likely, that’s the trick!
What sort of a bug is it?”
“It’s a beetle, a purplish black ground-beetle, of the genus Carabidæ,——”
“What! Say that again—please!”
“Carabidæ?”
“Caribbean Sea! Stephanotis!”
“No, Scaphinotus. That is, the Scaphinotus Viduus, Dejean,——”
“Oh, sir, thank you.”
“Did you say this has something to do with the Trowbridge case? Mr.
Trowbridge was a friend of mine,—”
“Oh, please sir, I don’t know but I think this here beetle business will
help a lot. Do these pertikler bugs show up in Van Cortlandt Park woods?”
“Yes, they may be found there. I’ve set traps there for them myself—”
“How do you set a trap for a beetle, kin I ask?”
“Why, you’re really interested, aren’t you? Well it’s a simple matter. We
take a wide-mouthed bottle,——”
“Say, a milk bottle?”
“Yes, if you like. Then put it about a half-inch of molasses and
asafoetida——”
A whoop from Fibsy startled the Professor. “What’s the matter?” he cried.
“Matter, Sir! Didn’t you read the accounts of the Trowbridge murder in
the papers?”
“Not all of it. I get little time to read the papers,——”
“Well, then, this here bottle o’ stuff—does it smell bad?”
“Oh, the asafoetida is unpleasant, of course, but we get used to that. We
next sink this bottle in the ground, up to its neck, and——”
“And you call it a trap!”
“Yes, a trap to catch unwary insects. Not very kind to them, but
necessary for the advancement of science. You seem a bright lad, would
you care to see some fine specimens of——”
“Oh, sir, not now, but some other day. Oh, thank you fer this spiel about
the bugs! But who was the guy what did it? _You_ didn’t telephone Mr.
Trowbridge to go after Stephanotises, did you?’”
“Scaphinotus, the name is. No, I didn’t telephone him. I haven’t seen Mr.
Trowbridge for years.”
“Oh, yes, I remember, you an’ him was on the outs. Well, I’m much
obliged, I sure am! Goo’ by, Sir.” and with his usual abruptness of
departure, Fibsy darted out of the door, leaving the Professor bewildered
at the whole episode.
Back to Miss Wilkinson the boy hurried, to verify his new discoveries.
“Say, Yellowtop,” he began, “did you sure hear Caribbean _Sea_?”
“Yep, fer the thoity thousandth time,—yep!”
“Sure of the Sea?”
Miss Wilkinson stared at him. “Gee, Fibsy, you are a wiz, fer sure! I was
a thinkin’ that the guy jest said Caribbean, but I knew he musta meant
Sea, so I ’sposed I skipped that woid.”
“Naw, he didn’t say it. Wot he said wuz, Carabidæ.”
“It was! I know it now! What’s that mean?”
“Never mind. What d’you mean, sayin’ the feller said things he didn’t say
at all? He said Scaphinotus too, not Stephanotis.”
“I can’t tell any difference when you say ’em.”
“Never mind, you don’t have to. Now, turn that thinker of yourn backward,
and remember hard. Don’t it seem to you like the guy said somebody’d set
a trap, no matter who, and that he and Mr. Trowbridge’d get the
Stephanotis and the Carib—whatever it was,—outen the trap?”
“Yes, it does seem like he said that, only that ain’t sense.”
“Never you mind the sense. I’m lookin’ after that end. An’ then, wasn’t
Mr. Trowbridge tickled to death to go an’ get these queer things from the
trap?”
“Yes, said he had a nengagement, but he’d break it to get the
Stephanotis—”
“Sure he would! In a minute! All right, Wilky. You keep all this under
your Yellowtop; don’t squeak it to a soul. Goo’ by.”
“Sumpum told me not to go off to Philadelphia so swift,” the boy mused,
as he went home. “Now, here I am chock-a-block with new dope on this
murder case, an’ I dunno what to do with it. If I tell the police first,
maybe Miss Avice won’t like it. And if I tell Judge Hoyt first, maybe the
police’ll get mad. There’s that Duane guy, but he don’t know enough to go
in when it rains. I wisht I was a real detective. Here I am just a kid,
an’ yet I got a lot o’ inside info that orta be put to use. Lemmesee, who
do I want to favor most? Miss Avice, o’course. But sure’s I go to her,
that Pinckney feller’ll butt in, an’ he does get my goat! I b’lieve I’ll
do the right thing, an’ take it straight to the strong arm o’ th’ law.”
Fibsy went to the Criminal Court Building, and by dint of wheedling,
fighting, coaxing and, it must be admitted, lying, he at last obtained
access to the district attorney’s office, for the boy declined to entrust
his secrets to any intermediary.
Judge Hoyt was there and Detective Groot. Also Mr. Duane, looking a bit
despairing, and several others, all discussing the Trowbridge case.
Fibsy was a little frightened, not at the size of his audience, but
because he was not sure he wanted all those present to know of his news.
And yet, after all, it might not prove of such great importance as he
expected. He had misgivings on that score, as well as on many others.
But Mr. Whiting, though he greeted the boy with a nod, was in no hurry to
listen to him, and Fibsy was given a chair and told to wait. Nothing
loath, he sat down and pretended to be oblivious to all that was being
said, though really he was taking in every thing he could hear.
At last the district attorney, in a preoccupied way told him to tell his
story, and to make it as brief as he could.
But when the boy began by simply stating that he had discovered what was
the meaning of the mysterious telephone message and also what relation
the milk bottle bore to the trip to the woods, all eyes and ears gave him
attention.
Knowing the importance of the occasion and anxious to make a good
impression, Fibsy strove to make his language conform, as far as he
could, to the English spoken by his present audience.
“So I asked Perfesser Meredith,” he related, “and he told me there is a
beetle named Scaphinotus, and it’s of the Carabidæ fambly.”
He had obtained these names in writing from the Professor, and had
learned them, unforgettably, by heart.
“What!” exclaimed Whiting, more amazed at this speech from the boy, than
its bearing on the matter in hand.
“Yessir; an’ I says to myself, ‘that’s the meanin’ of Wilky’s puffumery
dope and Caribbean Sea.” In his excitement, Fibsy forgot his intended
elegance of diction.
“But the girl said she overheard _Sea_,” said Judge Hoyt, looking in
amazement at the boy.
“Yessir, I know. I read that in my Pus-shol-ogy book. It says that what
you expect to hear, you hear. That is, Wilky heard Caribbean, as she
thought, an’ she natchelly spected to hear Sea next, so she honest
thought she did!”
“That is psychological reasoning,” said Whiting. “It’s Münsterberg’s
theories applied to detection. I’ve read it. And it’s true, doubtless,
that the girl thought she heard Caribbean, expected to hear Sea next, and
assumed she did hear it.”
“Yessir,” cried Fibsy, eagerly; “that’s the guy, Musterberg,—or whatever
his name is. I’m studyin’ him, ’cause I’m goin’ to be a detective.”
“Now, let us see how this new angle of vision affects our outlook,” said
Judge Hoyt, ignoring the boy, and turning to the district attorney.
“It gives us a fresh start,” said Whiting, musingly. “And here’s my first
thought. Whoever telephoned that message, not only knew of Mr.
Trowbridge’s interest in rare beetles, but knew the scientific names for
them.”
“Right,” agreed Hoyt, “and doesn’t that imply that we must start afresh
for a suspect? For, surely, neither Stryker the butler, nor Mr. Landon
would have those names so glibly on his tongue.”
“Also, it was somebody who knew how to set the trap,—the milk-bottle
trap. Terence, my boy, you did a big thing, this morning. How did you
come to think it out?”
“I thought such a long time, sir.” Fibsy’s manner was earnest and not at
all conceited. “I thought of every thing I could find in me bean to
explain those crazy words that Wilky,—Miss Wilkinson said she heard. An’
I knew the goil well enough to know she heard jest about what she said
she did, an’ so, I says to myself, there _must_ be some meanin’ to ’em.
An’ at last, I doped it out they must have sumpum to do with Mr.
Trowbridge’s bug c’lection. He’d go anywhare or do anythin’ fer a new bug
or boid. So I went an’ asked Miss Avice to let me give the c’lection the
once-over. An’ she did, an’ then I saw a name sumpum like Wilky’s
Stephanotis, an’ I was jest sure I was on the right track. So I ups an’
goes to see Perfesser Mer’dith,—an’ there you are!”
Fibsy’s face glowed, not with vanity, but with honest pride in his own
achievement.
The boy was sent away, with an assurance that his assistance would be
duly recognized at some other time, but that now he was in the way.
Not at all offended, he took his hat, and with his funny apology for a
bow he left the room.
“Looks bad,” said Groot.
“For whom?” asked Whiting.
“Landon, of course. He knows all that scientific jargon. He’s a college
man,——”
“He never was graduated,” said Judge Hoyt.
“No matter; he gathered up enough Latin words to know names and things.
Or he looked them up on purpose. Then he set the milk bottle trap,—what
happens? Do the things crawl in?”
“Yes,” said Hoyt. “Attracted by the odor of the drug, and the molasses,
they crawl to the edge, tumble in, and can’t get out.”
“H’m, well, Landon knows all this, and he sets the trap and baits his
uncle as well as the beetles. He tempts him with a promise of this
Stephanotis bug, and off goes uncle, willingly. Then Landon meets him
there, or goes with him,—it’s all one,—and he stabs him, and Mr.
Trowbridge lives long enough, thank goodness,—to say Kane killed me! You
can’t get away from that speech, Mr. Whiting. If there hadn’t been any
suspect named Kane, we might say Mr. Trowbridge meant Cain,—any murderer.
But with the only real suspect bearing that very name, it’s too absurd to
look any further. Then the murderer having thoughtfully provided himself
with a handkerchief belonging to the next possible suspect, wipes the
bloody blade on that and throws it where it’ll be found. Could anything
be clearer? Who wants money right away? Who has just quarreled with the
victim? Who is impudent and insolent when questioned about it? Who is now
enjoying his ill-gotten gains, and has already used a lot of money for
the purpose he told his uncle about that first day he saw him? Answer all
those questions, and then doubt, if you can, who murdered Rowland
Trowbridge!”
Groot spoke quietly, but forcibly, and all present realized there was no
answer save the one he indicated.
Judge Hoyt looked aghast. “It’s incredible!” he exclaimed. “Kane
Landon——”
“You mean any other theory or suspicion is incredible, Judge,” said
Whiting. “I have thought this was the only solution for some time. I have
had a strict watch kept on Landon’s movements, and he has spent that
money, as Groot says. In every way he seems guilty of this crime and I
say the time has come to arrest him.”
And so Kane Landon was arrested for the murder of his uncle, Rowland
Trowbridge, and was taken to The Tombs.