Philo Gubb, Correspondence-School Detective

Unfortunately there were no calls for Mr. Gubb’s detective services for some time after he received his disguises and diploma, but while waiting he devoted his spare time to the dynamite mystery, a remarkable case on which many detectives had been working for many weeks. This led only to his being beaten up twice by Joseph Henry, one of the men he shadowed.

The arrival in Riverbank of the World’s Monster Combined Shows the day after Mr. Gubb received his diploma seemed to offer an opportunity for his detective talents, as a circus is usually accompanied by crooks, and early in the morning Mr. Gubb donned disguise Number Sixteen, which was catalogued as “Negro Hack-Driver, Complete, $22.00”; but, while looking for crooks while watching the circus unload, his eyes alighted on Syrilla, known as “Half a Ton of Beauty,” the Fat Lady of the Side-Show.

As Syrilla descended from the car, aided by the Living Skeleton and the Strong Man, the fair creature wore a low-neck evening gown. Her arms and shoulders were snowy white (except for a peculiar mark on one arm). Not only had Mr. Gubb never seen such white arms and shoulders, but he had never seen so much arm and shoulder on one woman, and from that moment he was deeply and hopelessly in love. Like one hypnotized he followed her to the side-show tent, paid his admission, and stood all day before her platform. He was still there when the tent was taken down that night.

Mr. Gubb was not the only man in Riverbank to fall in love with Syrilla. When the ladies of the Riverbank Social Service League heard that the circus was coming to town they were distressed to think how narrow the intellectual life of the side-show freaks must be and they instructed their Field Secretary, Mr. Horace Winterberry, to go to the side-show and organize the freaks into an Ibsen Literary and Debating Society. This Mr. Winterberry did and the Tasmanian Wild Man was made President, but so deeply did Mr. Winterberry fall in love with Syrilla that he begged Mr. Dorgan, the manager of the side-show, to let him join the side-show, and this Mr. Dorgan did, putting him in a cage as Waw-Waw, the Mexican Hairless Dog-Man, as Mr. Winterberry was exceedingly bald.

At the very next stop made by the circus a strong, heavy-fisted woman entered the side-show and dragged Mr. Winterberry away. This was his wife. Of this the ladies of the Riverbank Social Service League knew nothing, however. They believed Mr. Winterberry had been stolen by the circus and that he was doubtless being forced to learn to swing on a trapeze or ride a bareback horse, and they decided to hire Detective Gubb to find and return him.

At the very moment when the ladies were deciding to retain Mr. Gubb’s services the paper-hanger detective was on his way to do a job of paper-hanging, thinking of the fair Syrilla he might never see again, when suddenly he put down the pail of paste he was carrying and grasped the handle of his paste-brush more firmly. He stared with amazement and fright at a remarkable creature that came toward him from a small thicket near the railway tracks. Mr. Gubb’s first and correct impression was that this was some remarkable creature escaped from the circus. The horrid thing loping toward him was, indeed, the Tasmanian Wild Man!

As the Wild Man approached, Philo Gubb prepared to defend himself. He was prepared to defend himself to his last drop of blood.

When halfway across the field, the Tasmanian Wild Man glanced back over his shoulder and, as if fearing pursuit, increased his speed and came toward Philo Gubb in great leaps and bounds. The Correspondence School detective waved his paste-brush more frantically than ever. The Tasmanian Wild Man stopped short within six feet of him.

Viewed thus closely, the Wild Man was a sight to curdle the blood. Remnants of chains hung from his wrists and ankles; his long hair was matted about his face; and his finger nails were long and claw-like. His face was daubed with ochre and red, with black rings around the eyes, and the circles within the rings were painted white, giving him an air of wildness possessed by but few wild men. His only garments were a pair of very short trunks and the skin of some wild animal, bound about his body with ropes of horse-hair.

Philo Gubb bent to receive the leap he felt the Tasmanian Wild Man was about to make, but to his surprise the Wild Man held up one hand in token of amity, and with the other removed the matted hair from his head, revealing an under-crop of taffy yellow, neatly parted in the middle and smoothed back carefully.

“I say, old chap,” he said in a pleasant and well-bred tone, “stop waving that dangerous-looking weapon at me, will you? My intentions are most kindly, I assure you. Can you inform me where a chap can get a pair of trousers hereabout?”

Philo Gubb’s experienced eye saw at once that this creature was less wild than he was painted. He lowered the paste-brush.

“Come into this house,” said Philo Gubb. “Inside the house we can discuss pants in calmness.”

The Tasmanian Wild Man accepted.

“Now, then,” said Philo Gubb, when they were safe in the kitchen. He seated himself on a roll of wall-paper, and the Tasmanian Wild Man, whose real name was Waldo Emerson Snooks, told his brief story.

Upon graduating from Harvard, he had sought employment, offering to furnish entertainment by the evening, reading an essay entitled, “The Comparative Mentality of Ibsen and Emerson, with Sidelights on the Effect of Turnip Diet at Brook Farm,” but the agency was unable to get him any engagements. They happened, however, to receive a request from Mr. Dorgan, manager of the side-show, asking for a Tasmanian Wild Man, and Mr. Snooks had taken that job. To his own surprise, he made an excellent Wild Man. He was able to rattle his chains, dash up and down the cage, gnaw the iron bars of the cage, eat raw meat, and howl as no other Tasmanian Wild Man had ever done those things, and all would have been well if an interloper had not entered the side-show.

The interloper was Mr. Winterberry, who had introduced the subject of Ibsen’s plays, and in a discussion of them the Tasmanian Wild Man and Mr. Hoxie, the Strong Man, had quarreled, and Mr. Hoxie had threatened to tear Mr. Snooks limb from limb.

“And he would have done so,” said the Tasmanian Wild Man with emotion, “if I had not fled. I dare not return. I mean to work my way back to Boston and give up Tasmanian Wild Man-ing as a profession. But I cannot without pants.”

“I guess you can’t,” said Philo Gubb. “In any station of Boston life, pants is expected to be worn.”

“So the question is, old chap, where am I to be panted?” said Waldo Emerson Snooks.

“I can’t pant you,” said Philo Gubb, “but I can overall you.”

The late Tasmanian Wild Man was most grateful. When he was dressed in the overalls and had wiped the grease-paint from his face on an old rag, no one would have recognized him.

“And as for thanks,” said Philo Gubb, “don’t mention it. A deteckative gent is obliged to keep up a set of disguises hitherto unsuspected by the mortal world. This Tasmanian Wild Man outfit will do for a hermit disguise. So you don’t owe me no thanks.”

As Philo Gubb watched Waldo Emerson Snooks start in the direction of Boston – only some thirteen hundred miles away – he had no idea how soon he would have occasion to use the Tasmanian Wild Man disguise, but hardly had the Wild Man departed than a small boy came to summon Mr. Gubb, and it was with a sense of elation and importance that he appeared before the meeting of the Riverbank Ladies’ Social Service League.

“And so,” said Mrs. Garthwaite, at the close of the interview, “you understand us, Mr. Gubb?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Philo Gubb. “What you want me to do, is to find Mr. Winterberry, ain’t it?”

“Exactly,” agreed Mrs. Garthwaite.

“And, when found,” said Mr. Gubb, “the said stolen goods is to be returned to you?”

“Just so.”

“And the fiends in human form that stole him are to be given the full limit of the law?”

“They certainly deserve it, abducting a nice little gentleman like Mr. Winterberry,” said Mrs. Garthwaite.

“They do, indeed,” said Philo Gubb, “and they shall be. I would only ask how far you want me to arrest. If the manager of the side-show stole him, my natural and professional deteckative instincts would tell me to arrest the manager; and if the whole side-show stole him I would make bold to arrest the whole side-show; but if the whole circus stole him, am I to arrest the whole circus, and if so ought I to include the menagerie? Ought I to arrest the elephants and the camels?”

“Arrest only those in human form,” said Mrs. Garthwaite.

Philo Gubb sat straight and put his hands on his knees.

“In referring to human form, ma’am,” he asked, “do you include them oorangootangs and apes?”

“I do,” said Mrs. Garthwaite. “Association with criminals has probably inclined their poor minds to criminality.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Philo Gubb, rising. “I leave on this case by the first train.”

Mr. Gubb hastily packed the Tasmanian garment and six other disguises in a suitcase, put the fourteen dollars given him by Mrs. Garthwaite in his pocket, and hurried to catch the train for Bardville, where the World’s Monster Combined Shows were to show the next day. With true detective caution Philo Gubb disguised even this simple act.

Having packed his suitcase, Mr. Gubb wrapped it carefully in manila paper and inserted a laundry ticket under the twine. Thus, any one seeing him might well suppose he was returning from the laundry and not going to Bardville. To make this seem the more likely, he donned his Chinese disguise, Number Seventeen, consisting of a pink, skull-like wig with a long pigtail, a blue jumper, and a yellow complexion. Mr. Gubb rubbed his face with crude ochre powder, and his complexion was a little high, being more the hue of a pumpkin than the true Oriental skin tint. Those he met on his way to the station imagined he was in the last stages of yellow fever, and fled from him hastily.

He reached the station just as the train’s wheels began to move; and he was springing up the steps onto the platform of the last car when a hand grasped his arm. He turned his head and saw that the man grasping him was Jonas Medderbrook, one of Riverbank’s wealthiest men.

“Gubb! I want you!” shouted Mr. Medderbrook energetically, but Philo Gubb shook off the detaining arm.

“Me no savvy Melican talkee,” he jabbered, bunting Mr. Medderbrook off the car step.

Bright and early next morning, Philo Gubb gave himself a healthy coat of tan, with rather high color on his cheek-bones. From his collection of beards and mustaches – carefully tagged from “Number One” to “Number Eighteen” in harmony with the types of disguise mentioned in the twelve lessons of the Rising Sun Detective Agency’s Correspondence School of Detecting – he selected mustache Number Eight and inserted the spring wires in his nostrils.

Mustache Number Eight was a long, deadly black mustache with up-curled ends, and when Philo Gubb had donned it he had a most sinister appearance, particularly as he failed to remove the string tag which bore the legend, “Number Eight. Gambler or Card Sharp. Manufactured and Sold by the Rising Sun Detective Agency’s Correspondence School of Detecting Supply Bureau.” Having put on this mustache, Mr. Gubb took a common splint market-basket from under the bed and placed in it the matted hair of the Tasmanian Wild Man, his make-up materials, a small mirror, two towels, a cake of soap, the Tasmanian Wild Man’s animal skin robe, the hair rope, and the abbreviated trunks. He covered these with a newspaper.

The sun was just rising when he reached the railway siding, and hardly had Mr. Gubb arrived when the work of unloading the circus began.

Mr. Gubb – searching for the abducted Mr. Winterberry – sped rapidly from place to place, the string tag on his mustache napping over his shoulder, but he saw no one answering Mrs. Garthwaite’s description of Mr. Winterberry. When the tent wagons had departed, the elephants and camels were unloaded, but Mr. Winterberry did not seem to be concealed among them, and the animal cages – which came next – were all tightly closed. There were four or five cars, however, that attracted Philo Gubb’s attention, and one in particular made his heart beat rapidly. This car bore the words, “World’s Monster Combined Shows Freak Car.” And as Mr. Winterberry had gone as a social reform agent to the side-show, Mr. Gubb rightly felt that here if anywhere he would find a clue, and he was doubly agitated since he knew the beautiful Syrilla was doubtless in that car.

Walking around the car, he heard the door at one end open. He crouched under the platform, his ears and eyes on edge. Hardly was he concealed before the head ruffian of the unloading gang approached.

“Mister Dorgan,” he said, in quite another tone than he had used to his laborers, “should I fetch that wild man cage to the grounds for you to-day?”

“No,” said Dorgan. “What’s the use? I don’t like an empty cage standing around. Leave it on the car, Jake. Or – hold on! I’ll use it. Take it up to the grounds and put it in the side-show as usual. I’ll put the Pet in it.”

“Are ye foolin’?” asked the loading boss with a grin. “The cage won’t know itself, Mister Dorgan, afther holdin’ that rip-snortin’ Wild Man to be holdin’ a cold corpse like the Pet is.”

“Never you mind,” said Dorgan shortly. “I know my business, Jake. You and I know the Pet is a dead one, but these country yaps don’t know it. I might as well make some use of the remains as long as I’ve got ’em on hand.”

“Who you goin’ to fool, sweety?” asked a voice, and Mr. Dorgan looked around to see Syrilla, the Fat Lady, standing in the car door.

“Oh, just folks!” said Dorgan, laughing.

“You’re goin’ to use the Pet,” said the Fat Lady reproachfully, “and I don’t think it is nice of you. Say what you will, Mr. Dorgan, a corpse is a corpse, and a respectable side-show ain’t no place for it. I wish you would take it out in the lot and bury it, like I wanted you to, or throw it in the river and get rid of it. Won’t you, dearie?”

“I will not,” said Mr. Dorgan firmly. “A corpse may be a corpse, Syrilla, any place but in a circus, but in a circus it is a feature. He’s goin’ to be one of the Seven Sleepers.”

“One of what?” asked Syrilla.

“One of the Seven Sleepers,” said Dorgan. “I’m goin’ to put him in the cage the Wild Man was in, and I’m goin’ to tell the audiences he’s asleep. ‘He looks dead,’ I’ll say, ‘but I give my word he’s only asleep. We offer five thousand dollars,’ I’ll say, ‘to any man, woman, or child that proves contrary than that we have documents provin’ that this human bein’ in this cage fell asleep in the year 1837 and has been sleepin’ ever since. The longest nap on record,’ I’ll say. That’ll fetch a laugh.”

“And you don’t care, dearie, that I’ll be creepy all through the show, do you?” said Syrilla.

“I won’t care a hang,” said Dorgan.

Mr. Gubb glided noiselessly from under the car and sped away. He had heard enough to know that deviltry was afoot. There was no doubt in his mind that the Pet was the late Mr. Winterberry, for if ever a man deserved to be called “Pet,” Mr. Winterberry – according to Mrs. Garthwaite’s description – was that man. There was no doubt that Mr. Winterberry had been murdered, and that these heartless wretches meant to make capital of his body. The inference was logical. It was a strong clue, and Mr. Gubb hurried to the circus grounds to study the situation.

“No,” said Syrilla tearfully, “you don’t care a hang for the nerves of the lady and gent freaks under your care, Mr. Dorgan. It’s nothin’ to you if repulsion from that corpse-like Pet drags seventy or eighty pounds of fat off of me, for you well know what my contract is – so much a week and so much for each additional pound of fat, and the less fat I am the less you have to add onto your pay-roll. The day the Pet come to the show first I fainted outright and busted down the platform, but little do you care, Mr. Dorgan.”

“Don’t you worry; you didn’t murder him,” said Mr. Dorgan.

“He looks so lifelike!” sobbed Syrilla.

“Oh, Hoxie!” shouted Mr. Dorgan.

“Yes, sir?” said the Strong Man, coming to the car door.

“Take Syrilla in and tell the girls to put ice on her head. She’s gettin’ hysterics again. And when you’ve told ’em, you go up to the grounds and tell Blake and Skinny to unpack the Petrified Man. Tell ’em I’m goin’ to use him again to-day, and if he’s lookin’ shop-worn, have one of the men go over his complexion and make him look nice and lifelike.”

Mr. Dorgan swung off from the car step and walked away.

The Petrified Man had been one of his mistakes. In days past petrified men had been important side-show features and Mr. Dorgan had supposed the time had come to re-introduce them, and he had had an excellent petrified man made of concrete, with steel reinforcements in the legs and arms and a body of hollow tile so that it could stand rough travel.

Unfortunately, the features of the Petrified Man had been entrusted to an artist devoted to the making of clothing dummies. Instead of an Aztec or Cave Dweller cast of countenance, he had given the Petrified Man the simpering features of the wax figures seen in cheap clothing stores. The result was that, instead of gazing at the Petrified Man with awe as a wonder of nature, the audiences laughed at him, and the living freaks dubbed him “the Pet,” or, still more rudely, “the Corpse,” and when the glass case broke at the end of the week, Mr. Dorgan ordered the Pet packed in a box.

Just now, however, the flight of the Tasmanian Wild Man, and the involuntary departure of Mr. Winterberry at the command of his wife after his short appearance as Waw-Waw, the Mexican Hairless Dog-Man, suggested the new use for the Petrified Man.

When Detective Gubb reached the circus grounds the glaring banners had not yet been erected before the side-show tent, but all the tents except the “big top” were up and all hands were at work on that one, or supposed to be. Two were not. Two of the roughest-looking roustabouts, after glancing here and there, glided into the property tent and concealed themselves behind a pile of blue cases, hampers, and canvas bags. One of them immediately drew from under his coat a small but heavy parcel wrapped in an old rag.

“Say, cul,” he said in a coarse voice, “you sure have got a head on you. This here stuff will be just as safe in there as in a bank, see? Gimme the screw-driver.”

“‘Not to be opened until Chicago,’” said the other gleefully, pointing to the words daubed on one of the blue cases. “But I guess it will be – hey, old pal? I guess so!”

Together they removed the lid of the box, and Detective Gubb, seeking the side-show, crawled under the wall of the property tent just in time to see the two ruffians hurriedly jam their parcel into the case and screw the lid in place again. Mr. Gubb’s mustache was now in a diagonal position, but little he cared for that. His eyes were fastened on the countenances of the two roustabouts. The men were easy to remember. One was red-headed and pockmarked and the other was dark and the lobes of his ears were slit, as if some one had at some time forcibly removed a pair of rings from them. Very quietly Philo Gubb wiggled backward out of the tent, but as he did so his eyes caught a word painted on the side of the blue case. It was “Pet”!

Mr. Gubb proceeded to the next tent. Stooping, he peered inside, and what he saw satisfied him that he had found the side-show. Around the inside of the tent men were erecting a blue platform, and on the far side four men were wheeling a tongueless cage into place. A door at the back of the cage swung open and shut as the men moved the cage, but another in front was securely bolted and barred. Mr. Gubb lowered the tent wall and backed away. It was into this cage that the body of Mr. Winterberry was to be put to make a public holiday for yokels! And the murderer was still at large!

Murderer? Murderers! For who were the two rough characters he had seen tampering with the case containing the remains of the Pet? What had they been putting in the case? If not the murderers, they were surely accomplices. Walking like a wary flamingo, Mr. Gubb circled the tent. He saw Mr. Dorgan and Syrilla enter it. Himself hidden in a clump of bushes, he saw Mr. Lonergan, the Living Skeleton; Mr. Hoxie, the Strong Man; Major Ching, the Chinese Giant; General Thumb, the Dwarf; Princess Zozo, the Serpent Charmer; Maggie, the Circassian Girl; and the rest of the side-show employees enter the tent. Then he removed his Number Eight mustache and put it in his pocket, and balanced his mirror against a twig. Mr. Gubb was changing his disguise.

For a while the lady and gentleman freaks stood talking, casting reproachful glances at Mr. Dorgan. Syrilla, with traces of tears on her face, was complaining of the cruel man who insisted that the Pet become part of the show once more and Mr. Dorgan was resisting their reproaches.

“I’m the boss of the show,” he said firmly. “I’m goin’ to use that cage, and I’m goin’ to use the Pet.”

“Couldn’t you put Orlando in it, and get up a spiel about him?” asked Princess Zozo, whose largest serpent was called Orlando. “If you got him a bottle of cold cream from the make-up tent he’d lie for hours with his dear little nose sniffin’ it. He’s pashnutly fond of cold cream.”

“Well, the public ain’t pashnutly fond of seein’ a snake smell it,” said Mr. Dorgan. “The Pet is goin’ into that cage – see?”

“Couldn’t you borry an ape from the menagerie?” asked Mr. Lonergan, the Living Skeleton, who was as passionately fond of Syrilla as Orlando was of cold cream. “And have him be the first man-monkey to speak the human language, only he’s got a cold and can’t talk to-day? You did that once.”

“And got roasted by the whole crowd! No, sir, Mr. Lonergan. I can’t, and I won’t. Bring that case right over here,” he added, turning to the four roustabouts who were carrying the blue case into the tent. “Got it open? Good! Now – ”

He looked toward the cage and stopped short, his mouth open and his eyes staring. Sitting on his haunches, his fore paws, or hands, hanging down like those of a “begging” dog, a Tasmanian Wild Man stared from between the bars of the cage. The matted hair, the bare legs, the animal skin blanket, the streaks of ochre and red on the face, the black circles around the eyes with the white inside the circles, were those of a real Tasmanian Wild Man, but this Tasmanian Wild Man was tall and thin, almost rivaling Mr. Lonergan in that respect. The thin Roman nose and the blinky eyes, together with the manner of holding the head on one side, suggested a bird – a large and dissipated flamingo, for instance.

Mr. Dorgan stared with his mouth open. He stared so steadily that he even took a telegram from the messenger boy who entered the tent, and signed for it without looking at the address. The messenger boy, too, stopped to stare at the Tasmanian flamingo. The men who had brought the blue case set it down and stared. The freaks gathered in front of the cage and stared.

“What is it?” asked Syrilla in a voice trembling with emotion.

“Say! Where in the U.S.A. did you come from?” asked Mr. Dorgan suddenly. “What in the dickens are you, anyway?”

“I’m a Tasmanian Wild Man,” said Mr. Gubb mildly.

“You a Tasmanian Wild Man?” said Mr. Dorgan. “You don’t think you look like a Tasmanian Wild Man, do you? Why, you look like – you look like – you look – ”

“He looks like an intoxicated pterodactyl,” said Mr. Lonergan, who had some knowledge of prehistoric animals, – “only hairier.”

“He looks like a human turkey with a piebald face,” suggested General Thumb.

“He don’t look like nothin’!” said Mr. Dorgan at last. “That’s what he looks like. You get out of that cage!” he added sternly to Mr. Gubb. “I don’t want nothin’ that looks like you nowhere near this show.”

“But, Mr. Dorgan, dearie, think how he’d draw crowds,” said Syrilla.

“Crowds? Of course he’d draw crowds,” said Mr. Dorgan. “But what would I say when I lectured about him? What would I call him? No, he’s got to go. Boys,” he said to the four roustabouts, two of whom were those Mr. Gubb had seen in the property tent, “throw this feller out of the tent.”

“Stop!” said Mr. Gubb, raising one hand. “I will admit I have tried to deceive you: I am not a Tasmanian Wild Man. I am a deteckative!”