[Ill.u.s.tration: "A DETECKATIVE LIKE YOU ARE OUGHTN"T TO NEED TWENTY-FIVE CENTS SO BAD AS THAT"]
"That"s what I did," said Chi Foxy. "I did it here. Take me down to the lock-up. Me and you can hold me all right."
"It"s somewhat out of the ordinary common run for a feller to be a deteckative and the criminal murderer he"s chasing both at once," said P. Gubb doubtfully.
"That"s so, ain"t it?" agreed Chi Foxy. "It looks that way. But facts are facts, ain"t they?"
"Quite occasionally they are such," agreed P. Gubb.
"That"s right," said Chi Foxy. "And all you"ve got to do is to explain them. You see, bo, I was a young feller when I murdered this old miser--"
"What did you say his name was?" asked P. Gubb.
"Smith," said Chi Foxy promptly. "John J. Smith, and he lived right here in this town. And I murdered the old feller and got away. n.o.body cared much whether the old feller was murdered or not, and nothin"
much might have been said of it except that the old feller had a nephew. His name was Smith--Peter P. Smith."
"What did he do?" asked P. Gubb.
"He offered a reward of a thousand dollars," said Chi Foxy. "It was one of them unsolved mystery cases--one of them cases that never get solved because no detective is smart enough to solve it. n.o.body knew who killed old John J. Smith but me, and I wasn"t going around telling it."
"I should think not," said P. Gubb.
"No, sir!" said Chi Foxy. "So I was as safe as a babe unborn. I skipped up the river to Minneapolis, and n.o.body thought of lookin" for me, because I wasn"t suspected. And then I did a fool thing."
"Murderers "most always does," said P. Gubb.
"Sure!" said Chi Foxy. "I thought I"d go to New Orleans. It was all right--nice trip--until we got to Dubuque, and then what happened? The old steamboat blew up. I went sailin" up in the air like one of these here skyrockets, I did, and when I come down I lit head first."
"It is a remarkable wonder it didn"t kill you to death," said P. Gubb.
"Ain"t it?" said Chi Foxy. "But it did worse than kill me. It knocked my senses out of me. When I come to I didn"t know what had happened. I didn"t remember a thing out of my past--not a thing. I was like a newborn babe. I didn"t have an idea or a memory left in me. When they picked me up and I opened my eyes I could just say "Ah-goo" and "Da-da" and things like that, and I didn"t know who I was or where I"d been or anything. So some kind folks took me and sent me to kinder-garden, and I started in to learn my A-B-C"s and things like that. I learned fast, and pretty soon I was in the high school, and pretty soon I graduated, and the name I graduated under was Mike Higgs, Higgs being the name of the family that adopted me."
"Mike Higgs?" repeated P. Gubb, trying to remember a celebrated detective of that name.
"Yes," said Chi Foxy, "they named me Mike after the old gran"pa of the family. He was a butcher, and they wanted me to be a butcher, but I wanted to be a detective. So Gran"pa Higgs he lent me enough money to go to London and take lessons in detecting from Shermlock Hollums, and I did. He says to me, when I"d finished the course, "Mike, I hate to say it, but I can"t call you a rival. You"re so far ahead of me in detective knowledge that I"m like a half-witted child beside you."
That"s what my old friend and teacher, Shermlock Hollums, says to me."
"That was exceedingly high praising from one so great," said P. Gubb.
"You bet it was!" said Chi Foxy, "So one day Shermlock says to me, "Mike you"re so good at this detecting work, why don"t you try to solve The Great Mystery?"
""What"s that?" I says.
""Why, the greatest unsolved mystery of the world," he says. "The mystery of the Riverbank, Iowa, miser."
"So he told me what he knew about it," continued Chi Foxy, "and I set to work. I come here to Riverbank to hunt up a clue, and I found just one clue."
"What was it?" asked Philo Gubb.
"It was a speck of red pepper no bigger than the point of a pin,"
said Chi Foxy, "crushed into the carpet by the old miser"s bed, where he had been killed. I picked up the speck of red pepper and microscoped it, and I saw that along one edge it was sort of brown, where it had been burned a little."
"Have you got it now?" asked P. Gubb.
"Got it?" said Chi Foxy. "I should say not. While I was lookin" at it a breeze come and blowed it away, and I never saw it again, but that was enough for me. "Red pepper," I says, "partly burned," and I began to tremble. "Cause why? "Cause I never was able to get smoking tobacco strong enough to suit me, and to make it taste snappy I always put a little red pepper in my pipe. I turned as white as a sheet. "Red pepper partly burned!" I says to myself. "n.o.body in the world but me puts red pepper in his tobacco."
"Well, sir, I started tracing myself back and I found out I was the murderer. And I was the detective after the murderer. I was everybody concerned. In a moment I was overcome by criminal fear and I fled. I fled all over Europe, Asia, and Africa, and wherever I went I was right after myself, ready to arrest me."
Chi Foxy paused and glanced at P. Gubb questioningly. With a solemn face the great Correspondence School detective blinked his bird-like eyes at Chi Foxy.
"So now arrest me," said Chi Foxy.
Philo Gubb rubbed his chin. "I"d like to favor you by so doing, Mr.
Jones," he said, "for I can easy see, Mr. Higgs, that you can"t arrest yourself, but it is against the instructions in Lesson Six of the Rising Sun Correspondence School of Deteckating for a graduate to arrest a man without a good clue, and the only clue you had was blowed away."
For a moment this seemed to annoy Chi Foxy, but his face suddenly brightened.
"Clue?" he said. "Say, friend, I wouldn"t ask you to arrest me on any such clue as a speck of red pepper. No, sir! But I"ve got a clue that"ll mean something. I can tell you right where I buried that old miser"s bones, I can. You go up the river road until you come to a tool-house on the railway, and just back of the tool-house is a dwellin"-house--old and unpainted. All right! Right in that yard, close to the railway fence, the bones is buried. Now, you turn me over to the law, and you go up there--"
"We"d best go up there immediately first before anything else," said Philo Gubb, starting to remove his paper-hanger"s ap.r.o.n. "Putting off clues until sometime else is against Paragraph Four, Lesson One. If you come up there with me--"
"Look here," said Chi Foxy, "will you buy me a feed on the way up if I go with you?"
"Quite certainly sure," said P. Gubb, and so it was agreed.
The paper-hanger detective and the criminal-detective stopped at Hank"s restaurant and Chi Foxy ate a heavy meal, and then led the way to the tool-house, and pointed over the wire fence to the spot where the bones of the murdered miser were supposed to repose.
"Right there!" he said, but when P. Gubb had climbed the fence and had turned to look for Chi Foxy, the late detective-criminal was gone. Mr.
Gubb"s face turned red, but as he hung his head in shame he noticed that the ground at his feet had lately been spaded. He stooped to look at it, and then walked to the weather-beaten house and knocked. A lanky, loose-jointed man came to the door, and a woman peered at Mr.
Gubb from behind the man.
"I hope you"ll pardon," said Mr. Gubb politely, "but my name is P.
Gubb, deteckative and paper-hanger, and I"m looking up a case. Might I trouble you for the loan of a spade or shovel?"
"What you want with it?" asked the man gruffly.
"To dig," said Mr. Gubb.
The man reluctantly handed Mr. Gubb a spade on which there were still traces of soft, sandy soil. Mr. Gubb walked to the rear of the yard and jabbed the spade into the soft soil. It struck something hard. In a moment or two Mr. Gubb had the evidences of crime completely uncovered. There were bones buried there--many bones. Mr. Gubb looked up and wiped his brow. Then he looked down at the bones. One was a skull. Mr. Gubb stared at it. It was indeed a skull, but it was the skull of a calf. All the bones were calf bones--not bones of the human calf, but bones of the veal calf. Mr. Gubb turned his head and saw the long lanky man approaching.
"All right," said the long, lanky man, "I give up. You"ve got me. I surrender. When a detective gets that close, a man hasn"t any chance.
I own up. I did it."
"You did what?"
"Now, quit!" said the long, lanky man. "No use rubbin" it in after I"ve owned up. You know as well as I do--I"m the man that stole Farmer Hopper"s calf. I give up. I surrender."
"I"m much obliged to you," said Philo Gubb.