"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 c.u.mbrous 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.
"h.e.l.lo!" 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 carca.s.s is bundled. An arm reached down and back and forth, with a sewing motion, and pa.s.sed 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 m.u.f.fled 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