Sube Cane Part 2

Contrary to Mr. Cane's expectations the odor of the liniment had not evaporated when he came home for the evening meal. It seemed to be stronger than ever, although Sube truthfully insisted that he had not put any more on his injured leg since the first application.

An immediate bath was prescribed, and duly administered, and Sube sat down at the table spotless and germless--but far from odorless. He smelled, it seemed to his family, even worse than before. And in spite of the various heroic processes of deodorization and fumigation through which he was put during the ensuing days, he invariably emerged smiling--and smelling.

The long strain began to tell on Mr. Cane. He became more nervous and irritable than ever, and seemed constantly to wear a look of nasal suspicion. Sube's treatment was in only its third day when his father began to eat his lunch down town. The next day he failed to come home to dinner; and thereafter during the rest of the fateful week he ate no meals at home with the exception of breakfast, and that he managed to get before the other members of the family were out of bed.

As the week of germination drew towards a close the boys became restless. "We ought to begin to do some'pm," Sube suggested as he sat rubbing the Boon into the pores of his long-suffering upper lip. "My week will be up to-morrow morning at five minutes of ten, and yours will be up at about quarter after."

"I'll bet mine'll be up before quarter after," predicted Gizzard enthusiastically. "I'll bet I have my whiskers by ten minutes after.

Gee, but I'll be glad when I don't have to use this ol' Boon any longer.

It certainly is bad!"

"Oh, it ain't so bad," replied Sube; "anyway, not for those that use it.

I'm glad we didn't have to go to school this week. Sunday School was bad enough. But as I tol' you, we got to be doin' some'pm. We want to pick up that party jus' about as quick as we can after we get our whiskers."

"Well," suggested Gizzard briskly, "let's go and get her 'bout ha' pas'

ten to-morrow morning."

Sube shook his head dubiously. "Not by daylight," he drawled professionally. "That's too easy. That's the way policemen do it. We'll have to trick her."

"Trick her?" muttered Gizzard. "What for? How we goin' to trick her?"

"Very sim-ple," drawled Sube. "We'll pin a note on her door to-night tellin' her to come to the Prespaterian Church steps to-morrow night at a certain time--and when she shows up, we'll pinch her."

And so it was arranged. The note was prepared and in due time affixed to the front door of the suspect's house in so conspicuous a place that she found it early the next morning.

But the hours that followed the finding of the note were tragic ones for Sube and Gizzard. They had repaired to the roof of the barn, there to await the accomplishment of the days when their whiskers should be delivered. And as the time drew near and no pin-feathers appeared, they began to have visions of a sudden bursting forth of hair not unlike the eruption of a small volcano. But the time came, and pa.s.sed; and nothing happened to change the youthful character of their hopeful faces.

They allowed fully an hour of grace during which time the word "Fake"

pa.s.sed Gizzard's lips with increasing frequency as Sube sought to bolster up their faith by reading and re-reading the guarantee on the bottle.

"Astonis.h.i.+n' results, hey?" sneered Gizzard. "I should say they are astonis.h.i.+n'."

"Don't be in so much of a hurry," growled Sube. "We might of made a mistake in the time. Ol' Doc Richards, he said--"

An immediate adjournment was taken for the purpose of inspecting the side of the house. But, alas! It was hairless. And more, it didn't even smell.

Then the boys gave up.

They threw their pocket phials as far as they could, and stoned the large bottle with a vengeance that would have startled a Christian martyr. Gizzard's disgust was evidenced by a great deal of careless language feelingly delivered. But Sube was silent. His disappointment was beyond the reach of mere words. The pleasant vision in which he had reveled for a week burst with a result similar to that of over-inflating a bubble. And during the brief period while Gizzard was relieving himself with pleasing combinations of adjectives, Sube contemplated and rejected suicide, flight, old bachelorhood, and becoming an anarchist so that he might dynamite the Boon for Baldness factory. He was considering some sort of legal proceedings based on fraud and misrepresentation, when Gizzard nudged him to ascertain why they couldn't "catch her without whiskers."

After all, Sube had his life to live. There were other affairs besides those of the heart. And perhaps a brilliant piece of detective work might give him a standing that even a mustache would not have been able to effect.

"We _gotta_ do some'pm," Gizzard rattled on. "She'll be at the church to-night, and here we ain't got any whiskers and can't do a thing."

Sube began to pull himself together. "We'll do some'pm all right," he muttered.

"Well, what?"

"Oh, some'pm; and don't you forget it." Sube did not yet know what it was to be himself; but an idea soon sprouted. He went into the house for a sheet of paper and an envelope. Then with the aid of Gizzard and the stump of a lead pencil he wrote the following letter to the sheriff:

Dear Sherriff

Disgise yourself like an old women and sit on the prebsytearean church steps at 9 oclock tonight if you want to catch the mother of the founding baby. When a women comes up and says suffer littel childern arrest her shes the mother.

yours trully

Two Freinds.

"What's he got to disguise himself like a ol' woman for?" asked Gizzard.

"If we make it too easy," Sube explained, "he wouldn't pay any 'ttention to it. And besides, a _man_ there on the church steps might scare her away."

The boys had no way of knowing how much of an uproar the receipt of their letter precipitated in the sheriff's office. And they would have been decidedly uneasy if they had known with what celerity the sheriff exhibited their letter to Mr. Cane, who was acting as Mr. Whiting's counsel. But they remained in a state of beatific ignorance; and shortly after nine o'clock that evening, cramped and uncomfortable from their two hours' vigil among the branches of a large evergreen tree in front of the Presbyterian Church, they were silent witnesses of a scene that for a time baffled everybody, not excepting themselves.

They saw a heavily veiled woman dressed all in black who came slowly down the street and seated herself on the church steps. Shortly afterwards they heard hurried footsteps and a second woman came into view. She turned in at the church and went directly up to the silent figure on the steps. For a moment all was still. Then a ba.s.s voice cried out:

"I _got_ y'u!"

A woman screamed. Men seemed to rise out of the ground on all sides. The boys had a suspicion that the Resurrection was at hand, until the sheriff flashed a light in the face of the prisoner and exclaimed in chorus with several others:

"Good heavens! It's Miss Lester!"

The silence that followed was shattered by Miss Lester's voice. She had recognized Mr. Cane, and at once began to accuse him of being the author of a plot to compromise her. The boys were not clear as to the exact nature of her charges, but it was apparent to them that she was very angry at Sube's father.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SHERIFF FLASHED A LIGHT]

When she stopped at last, all out of breath, Mr. Cane, the sheriff and several of the deputies took advantage of the lull to explain the situation to her, each one telling the others to listen a minute while _he_ told her all about it. The confusion finally became so great that the sheriff ordered them all to be taken to his office some three blocks away, where he hoped in a loud voice that he should be able to hear them one at a time.

The boys dropped excitedly from the tree and followed, forgetting for the moment that there was any such thing as a foundling.

Sube's heart went out to his father. "I know jus' how he felt," he declared. "She bawled me out like that once before the whole Sunday School."

"What do you s'pose he done to her?" asked Gizzard.

"Dern'd if I know," replied Sube. "But maybe if we hurry up we'll find out all about it."

And they did. They arrived as the sheriff was explaining that he and his deputies and Mr. Cane went to the church in answer to an anonymous letter, and he'd like very much to have Miss Lester tell just what _she_ was doing there at that time of night.

Miss Lester's explanation was tense but straightforward. She had gone in answer to a note she had found pinned on her front door that morning.

"You don't happen to have that note along with you, I suppose,"

suggested the ever-skeptical sheriff.

"Indeed I do!" retorted Miss Lester, fumbling in her bosom and producing a folded paper which she handed to the officer.

He read it aloud.