Philo Gubb, Correspondence-School Detective Part 46

He p.r.o.nounced the name of the celebrated detective of fiction "Shermlock Hol-lums."

"Oh, yes," said the tramp, "me and Shermlock is great chums. And me and the kid!"

"To what kid do you refer to?" asked Philo Gubb.

"Why, my old side partner's little son, Shermlock Hollums the Twoth,"

said Chi Foxy without a blink. "And a cunnin' little feller he was--took after his father like a cat after fish, he did. Me and old Shermlock we used to hide things--candy and--and oranges--and let little Shermlock go and detect where they was. He was a great little codger, he was."

He noticed that Mr. Gubb was looking at him sharply. He looked down at his ragged garments.

"Disguise," he said briefly. "n.o.body'd know a swell dresser like I am in this rig, would he? Say, pard, how about giving me a half-dollar to get breakfast? Us detectives ought to have es-_spirit dee corpse_, hey? We ought to stick by each other, hey?"

The celebrated paper-hanger detective considered Chi Foxy. It was evident that P. Gubb doubted the authenticity of the tramp-detective.

"In times of necessary need," he said slowly, "I often a.s.sume onto me the disguise of a tramp, but I don't a.s.sume it onto me so complete that I go asking for money to buy breakfast."

"You don't, hey?" said Chi Foxy scornfully. "Well, you must be a swell detective, you must. When I get into a tramp disguise I'm a tramp all through."

"Most certainly," said P. Gubb. "And so am I. But there's a difference into the way you are doing it now. You ain't deteckating now. You are coming at me as one deteckative unto another."

Chi Foxy laughed.

"Say," he said, "I'd like to see this here Correspondence School you graduated out of, I would. I'd like to see the lessons they learn you, I would. Why, the first thing my old pard Shermlock Hollums told me was _never_ to be anything but what I was disguised to be as long as I was disguised to be it. That's right. Maybe I'd be disguised as a tramp and I'd meet our old friend and college chum, the Dook of Sluff.

He'd want to take me into some swell place and blow me off to a swell dinner. Would I let on? No, sir! I'd sort of whine at him and say, 'Mister, won't you give a poor feller a penny for to hire a bed?'

That's how me and Shermlock stuck to a disguise. And Shermlock! Me and him was like twins, we was, and yet when I was in this tramp disguise and went up to his room to report, I'd knock at the door and say, 'Mister, give a poor cove a hand-out, won't you?' and Shermlock would turn and say, 'Watson, throw this tramp downstairs.' And Watson would do it. Yes, sir! I've been so sore and bruised from being thrown downstairs when I went to report to Shermlock that sometimes I'd have to go to the hospital to get plastered up. That's detecting!"

Chi Foxy looked at P. Gubb, but P. Gubb did not seem to have melted.

"That's livin' up to your disguise," continued Chi Foxy. "Me and Shermlock, when we had on tramp disguises we _were_ tramps. Why, I used to go home and my valet would throw me downstairs. I was so thoroughly disguised, and I kept actin' so trampish while I had the disguise on, that he used to come at me with a golluf stick and whack me on the head. And when I got into my own room I kept right on being a tramp. Took off my clothes--still a tramp. Took off my false whiskers--still a tramp. I'd be there stark naked and I'd still be a tramp. Yes, sir. That's the kind of detective disguising I did. And then I'd take a bath. Then I was myself again. Yes, sir. When I'd scrubbed myself in the bathtub I figured I'd got rid of the tramp disguise right down into the skin, and I'd be myself again--and not until then."

He looked at P. Gubb out of the corner of his eye.

"Why, I remember one time," he said briskly, "I was asked to the Dook's palace to a swell party. Me and Shermlock was both asked, because they knew one of us wouldn't go unless the other did. Well, sir, I had been out detecting in a tramp disguise that day--findin'

stolen jools and murderers and that sort of business--and I went and took my bath and rigged all up in swell clothes, and called my limmy-seen automobile, and when the feller I hired to drive the limmy-seen come to open the door of the car at the Dook's palace I dodged. Yes, sir, I dodged like I thought he was going to hit me because I hadn't no business in my own limmy-seen automobile. That was funny, wasn't it? So I went up the steps into the Dook's palace, and the gentleman he had to open the door opened the door, and he called out my name and up come the Dookess--Mrs. Dook of Sluff, as they call her, but I always called her Maggie, like she called me Mike. So she says to me, 'Mike, I'm mighty glad to see you here. We're going to have a swell party.' And I started to say back something pleasant, but what I said was, 'Please, missus, won't you give a poor cove a hand-out?'"

"What seemed to be the reason you said that?" asked Philo Gubb with interest.

"That's what worried me," said Chi Foxy. "I didn't mean to say it. I just said it against my will, as you might say. But I guess she thought I was tryin' to be smart, for she just says, 'Naughty, naughty, Mike,' and whistled to the Dook to come and blow me off to the feeds. So the Dook come and led me into the dining-room, and stacked me up against the table for a stand-up feed. Swell feed, bo!

Samwiches till you couldn't rest--ham samwiches and chicken samwiches and tongue samwiches and club samwiches and--and all kinds of samwiches. And what did I do? I grabbed half a dozen of them samwiches and rammed them into my pants pocket, just like a tramp would do it.

The Dook looked surprised, but he begun to haw-haw, and he slapped me on the back and said, 'Good joke, ol' chap, good joke!' So that pa.s.sed off all right. Then I went into the jool room, because the Dook had told me his son, the Dookette, or what you might call the little Dookerino, was in there. So in I went, and the first thing I knew I was hiding one of the Dook's gold crowns inside my vest. In a minute in come the Dook to pick out a crown to wear at dinner--"

"I thought you said they had a stand-up dinner at the table," said Philo Gubb.

"Pshaw, that was nothing but the appetizer," said Chi Foxy. "Well, in he come and began lookin' through his crowns for the one he wanted, and all at once he saw how my vest bulged out, and he knew by the rough edges of the bulge it wasn't samwiches because them dookal samwiches is all boneless. So he puts his hand on my shoulder and he says, 'Mike, ain't you carryin' the joke a bit too far?' That's what he says, and I wish you could have heard how sad his voice was. He says, 'You know me, Mike, and you know that anything I've got is yours--_except_ that crown you've got inside your vest.'

"For a minute I didn't know what to do. I wasn't in tramp disguise and I thought he would think I was a thief in real life, so I says, 'Dook, search me!' 'I don't have to search you,' he says, 'for I can see my favorite crown bulging out your vest.' 'I don't mean that, Dook, old chap,' I says; 'I mean take me up to your bood-u-war or the bathroom and give me the twice-over. Something's wrong with me, and I don't know what, but some of my tramp disguise must be sticking to me somewhere.' So we went up to the bathroom and he went over me with this one-eyed monocule he always wore, and then he went over me with a reading-gla.s.s, and then he went over me with a microscope, but he couldn't see a speck of tramp disguise on me. Not a speck. 'Keep lookin'!' I says. 'It must be there somewhere, Dook,' I says, 'or I wouldn't act so pernicious.' So he begun again, and all at once I hear him chuckle. He was lookin' in my ear with the microscope."

"What was it?" asked Philo Gubb eagerly.

"A hair," said Chi Foxy. "Just one hair. It was a hair out of my tramp whiskers that had got in my ear, and the minute he pulled it out I was all right again and no more tramp than he was. So you see that's the way I keep acting tramp as long as I have even one hair of tramp disguise about me. Come on, be a good feller and let me have half a dollar to get some feeds with."

P. Gubb put his hand in his pocket and withdrew it again. "I much admire to like the way you act right up to the disguise," he said, "and it does you proud, but of course when you ask for fifty cents it's nothing but part of the disguise, ain't it?"

"Now, see here, bo!" said Chi Foxy earnestly. "Don't you go and misunderstand me. I didn't mean to be mistook that way. I _do_ want fifty cents. I'm hungry, I am."

P. Gubb smiled approvingly. "Most excellent trampish disguise work,"

he said. "n.o.body couldn't do it better. A real tramp couldn't do it better."

Chi Foxy frowned. "Say," he said, "cut that out, won't you, cully?

Your head ain't solid ivory, is it? I'm starvin'. Gimme fifty cents, mister. Gimme a quarter if you won't give me fifty. Come on, now, be a good feller."

"A deteckative like you are oughtn't to need twenty-five cents so bad as that," said P. Gubb. "A deteckative acquainted with the knowing of a Dook and of Sherlock Holmes don't have to beg."

Chi Foxy actually gritted his teeth. He was angry with himself. He had talked too well. He had proved so thoroughly that he was a detective that P. Gubb would not believe he was hungry.

"See here, bo," he said suddenly, "is this straight about you being a detective, or is that a bluff, too?"

Philo Gubb showed Chi Foxy the badge he had received upon completion of his correspondence course of twelve lessons.

"I'm the most celebrated and only deteckative in the town of Riverbank, Iowa," he said seriously, "and you can ask the Sheriff or the Chief of Police if you don't believe me. I'm working right now onto a case of quite some importance, into which a calf was stolen, but up to now the clues ain't what they should be. If you don't think I'm a deteckative you can ask Farmer Hopper. He hired me for to get the capture of the guilty calf-stealer aforesaid."

Chi Foxy studied P. Gubb's simple face.

"And you can arrest a feller and lodge him in jail?" he asked.

"I've arrested many and lodged them into jail," P. Gubb a.s.sured him.

"Well, bo," said Chi Foxy frankly, "I'm the man you're looking for.

Arrest me."

The tramp knew enough about arrests to know that even a suspect, when lodged in jail, would be fed, and he was hungry and getting hungrier every moment. P. Gubb looked at him with surprise.

"I thought you said you was a deteckative," he said.

"I am," said Chi Foxy. "Or I wouldn't know I was a criminal. I detected it myself, because n.o.body else could. Even my old friend Shermlock Hollums couldn't detect it, but I did. I'm a--a murderer, I am. There's a thousand-dollar reward offered for me."

"Then why don't you arrest yourself and get the reward?" asked P.

Gubb.

"Say," said Chi Foxy with disgust. "It can't be done. I know, for I've tried. I'm a fugitive, that's what I am, and right behind me, no matter where I flee to, comes myself ready to grab me and arrest me.

I've chased myself all over Europe, Asia and Africa, and I can't get away from myself, and I can't grab myself. It's--it's just awful."

Chi Foxy wiped an imaginary tear from his eye.

"And I can't keep away from the scene of my crime," he said. "I come back here time after time--"

"Did you do the murder here?" asked P. Gubb with increased interest.