"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 a.s.sumed 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 quant.i.ty.
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, coa.r.s.e-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 b.u.t.ter, 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 ma.s.sage 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs 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."