"Snooks Turner!" said his aunt. "You know as well as I do that Mr.
Mullen will forgive and forget, if you will. Would you rather see me go to prison--suffer?"
"No, of course not, auntie," said Snooks, laughing. "But you see, I"ve hired Detective Gubb to work on this case, and if there"s no case, it will not be fair to him. He"s all worked up about it. He"s so eager to be at it that he has almost come down from the top of that ladder. In another day or two he would come all the way down, and then there"s no telling what would happen. No, I"m a newspaper man. I want Philo Gubb to discover something we don"t know anything about."
"I might start in trailing and shadowing somebody that hasn"t anything to do with this case," suggested Philo Gubb. "That wouldn"t discommode none of you folks, and I"d sort of feel as if I was giving you your money"s worth. Somebody has been writin" on the front of the Methodist Church with black chalk. I might try to detect who done that."
"But that would be a very difficult job," said Snooks.
"It would be some hard," admitted Philo Gubb.
"Then you ought to have more money," said Snooks. "Aunt Martha ought to contribute to the fund. If Aunt Martha contributes to the fund, I"ll be good. I"ll come out of jail."
Aunt Martha opened her shopping bag, and fumbled in it with her old fingers. Philo Gubb took from his pocket the bills he had been given during the morning. He counted them. He had exactly one hundred dollars, just enough to send to Mr. Medderbrook.
"How much should I give you, Mr. Gubb?" asked Aunt Martha tremulously, and Philo Gubb stared thoughtfully at the ceiling for a few minutes.
When he spoke, his words were cryptic to all those in the room.
"Well, ma"am," he said, "I guess ten cents will be about enough. I"ve got a two-cent postage stamp myself."
"Ain"t detectives wonderful?" whispered Nan, clinging to Snooks"s arm.
"You can"t ever tell what they really mean."
n.o.body seemed to care what Philo Gubb meant, but a week later Snooks stopped him on the street and asked him why he had asked for ten cents.
"For to register a letter," said Philo Gubb. "A letter I had to send off."
THE CHICKEN
Philo Gubb, with three rolls of wall-paper under his arm and a pail of mixed paste in one hand, walked along Cherry Street near the brick-yard.
On this occasion Mr. Gubb was in a reasonably contented frame of mind, for he had just received his share of the reward for capturing the dynamiters and had this very morning paid the full amount to Mr.
Medderbrook, leaving but eleven thousand six hundred and fifty dollars still to be paid that gentleman for the Utterly Hopeless Gold-Mine Stock, and upon the further payment of seventy-five cents--half its cost--Mr. Medderbrook gave him a telegram he had received from Syrilla. The telegram was as follows:--
Rapidly shrinking. Have given up all soups, including tomato soup, chicken soup, mulligatawny, mock turtle, green pea, vegetable, gumbo, lentil, consomme, bouillon and clam broth.
Now weigh only nine hundred and fifty pounds. Wire at once whether clam chowder is a soup or a food. Fond remembrances to Gubby.
Mr. Gubb was thinking of this telegram as he walked toward his work.
Just ahead of him a short lane led, between Mrs. Smith"s house and the Cherry Street Methodist Chapel, to the brick-yard. Mrs. Smith"s chicken coop stood on the fence line between her property and the brick-yard!
[Ill.u.s.tration: "DETECKATING IS MY AIM AND MY PROFESSION"]
Philo Gubb had pa.s.sed Mrs. Smith"s front gate when Mrs. Smith waddled to her fence and hailed him.
"Oh, Mr. Gubb!" she panted. "You got to excuse me for speakin" to you when I don"t know you. Mrs. Miffin says you"re a detective."
"Deteckating is my aim and my profession," said Mr. Gubb.
"Well," said Mrs. Smith, "I want to ask a word of you about crime.
I"ve had a chicken stole."
"Chicken-stealing is a crime if ever there was one," said Philo Gubb seriously. "What was the chicken worth?"
"Forty cents," said Mrs. Smith.
"Well," said Philo Gubb, "it wouldn"t hardly pay me."
"It ain"t much," admitted Mrs. Smith.
"No. You"re right, it ain"t," said Philo Gubb. "Was this a rooster or a hen?"
"It was a hen," said Mrs. Smith.
"Well," said Mr. Gubb, "if you was to offer a reward of a hundred dollars for the capture of the thief--"
"Oh, my land!" exclaimed Mrs. Smith. "It would be cheaper for me to pay somebody five dollars to come and steal the rest of the chickens.
It seems to me, that you ought to make the thief pay. I ain"t the one that did the crime, am I? It"s only right that a thief should pay for the time and trouble he puts you to, ain"t it?"
"I never before looked at it that way," said Mr. Gubb thoughtfully, "but it stands to reason."
"Of course it does!" said Mrs. Smith. "You catch that thief and you can offer yourself a million dollars reward if you want to. That"s none of my business."
"Well," said Philo Gubb, picking up his paste-pail, "I guess if there ain"t any important murders or things turn up by seven to-night, I"ll start in to work for that reward. I guess I can"t ask more than five dollars reward."
At seven the evening was still light, and Philo Gubb, to cover his intentions and avert suspicion in case his interview with Mrs. Smith had been observed by the thief, put a false beard in his pocket and a revolver beside it and left his office in the Opera House Block cautiously. He slipped into the alley and glided down it, keeping close to the stables. A detective must be cautious.
The abandoned brick-kilns offered admirable seclusion. A brick-kiln is built entirely, or almost so, of the brick that are to be burned, and the kilns are torn down and carted away as the brick are sold. The over-structure of the kilns was a mere roof of half-inch planks laid on timbers that were upheld by poles.
A ladder leaning against one of the poles gave access to the roof. In the darkness it was impossible for Philo Gubb to find a finger-print of the culprit on the kilns, although he looked for one. He did not even find the usual and highly helpful b.u.t.ton, torn from its place in the criminal"s eagerness to depart. He found only an old horseshoe and a broken tobacco pipe. As there were evidences that the pipe had been abandoned on that spot several years earlier, neither of these was a very valuable clue.
Mr. Gubb next gave his attention to the chicken coop. It was preeminently a hand-made chicken coop of the rough-and-ready variety.
Philo Gubb entered the chicken-house and looked around, lighting his dark lantern and throwing its rays here and there that he might see better. The house was so low of roof that he had to stoop to avoid the roosts, and the tails of the chickens brushed his hat. It needed brushing, so this did no harm. The hens and the two roosters complained gently of this interruption of their beauty sleep, and moved along the roosts, and Mr. Gubb went outside again. It was quite evident that the thief had had no great hardships to undergo in robbing that roost. All he had to do was to enter the chicken-house, choose a chicken, and walk away with it.
Why had he not taken ten chickens? Mr. Gubb, as he put the keg hoop over the end board of the gate, studied this.
The theory that Mr. Gubb adopted was that the thief, coming for a raid on the coop, had been surprised to find it so poorly guarded. It had been so easy to enter the coop and steal the chicken that he had decided it would be folly to take eight or ten chickens and thus arouse instant suspicion and reprisal. Instead of this he had taken but one, trusting that the loss of one would be unnoticed or laid to rats or cats or weasels. Thus he would be able to return again and again as fowl meat was needed or desired, and the chickens would be like money in the bank--a fund on which to draw. This theory was so sound that Mr. Gubb believed it would require nothing more than patience to capture the criminal. The thief would come back for more chickens!
Philo Gubb looked around for an advantageous position in which to await the coming of the thief, and be unseen himself, and the loose board roof of the brick-kiln met his eye. No position could be better.
He climbed the ladder inside the kiln, pushed one of the boards aside enough to permit him to squeeze through onto the roof, and creeping carefully over the loose boards, reached the edge of the roof. Here he stretched himself out flat on the boards, and waited.
Nothing--absolutely nothing--happened! The mosquitoes, numerous indeed because of the nearness of the pond, buzzed around his head and stung him on the neck and hands, but he did not dare slap at them lest he betray his hiding-place. Hour followed hour and no chicken thief appeared. And when the first rays of the sun lighted the east he climbed down and stalked stiffly away to a short hour of sleep.
The next night the Correspondence School detective wasted no time in preliminary observations of the lay of the land. He kept out of sight until the sun had set and dusk covered the land with shade, and then he went at once to the roof of the brick-kiln. This time he was disguised in a red mustache, a pair of flowing white side-whiskers, and a woolen cap. And he wore two revolvers--large ones--in a belt about his waist.