Detective Philo Gubb: Collected Mysteries. Ellis Parker Butler
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!”
“Detective?” said Mr. Dorgan.
“In disguise,” said Mr. Gubb modestly. “In the deteckative profession the assuming of disguises is often necessary to the completion of the clarification of a mystery plot.”
He pointed down at the Pet, whose newly rouged and powdered face rested smirkingly in the box below the cage.
“I arrest you all,” he said, but before he could complete the sentence, the red-headed man and the black-headed man turned and bolted from the tent. Mr. Gubb beat and jerked at the bars of his cage as frantically as Mr. Waldo Emerson Snooks had ever beaten and jerked, but he could not rend them apart.
“Get those two fellers,” Mr. Gubb shouted to Mr. Hoxie, and the strong man ran from the tent.
“What’s this about arrest?” asked Mr. Dorgan.
“I arrest this whole side-show,” said Mr. Gubb, pressing his face between the bars of the cage, “for the murder of that poor, gentle, harmless man now a dead corpse into that blue box there—Mr. Winterberry by name, but called by you by the alias of the ‘Pet.’”
“Winterberry?” exclaimed Mr. Dorgan. “That Winterberry? That ain’t Winterberry! That’s a stone man, a made-to-order concrete man, with hollow tile stomach and reinforced concrete arms and legs. I had him made to order.”
“The criminal mind is well equipped with explanations for use in time of stress,” said Mr. Gubb. “Lesson Six of the Correspondence School of Deteckating warns the deteckative against explanations of murderers when confronted by the victim. I demand an autopsy onto Mr. Winterberry.”
“Autopsy!” exclaimed Mr. Dorgan. “I’ll autopsy him for you!”
He grasped one of the Pet’s hands and wrenched off one concrete arm. He struck the head with a tent stake and shattered it into crumbling concrete. He jerked the Roman tunic from the body and disclosed the hollow tile stomach.
“Hello!” he said, lifting a rag-wrapped parcel from the interior of the Pet. “What’s this?”
When unwrapped it proved to be two dozen silver forks and spoons and a good-sized silver trophy cup.
“‘Riverbank Country Club, Duffers’ Golf Trophy, 1909?’” Mr. Dorgan read. “‘Won by Jonas Medderbrook.’ How did that get there?”
“Jonas Medderbrook,” said Mr. Gubb, “is a man of my own local town.”
“He is, is he?” said Mr. Dorgan. “And what’s your name?”
“Gubb,” said the detective. “Philo Gubb, Esquire, deteckative and paper-hanger, Riverbank, Iowa.”
“Then this is for you,” said Mr. Dorgan, and he handed the telegram to Mr. Gubb. The detective opened it and read:—
Gubb,
Care of Circus,
Bardville, Ia.
My house robbed circus night. Golf cup gone. Game now rotten: never win another. Five hundred dollars reward for return to me.
Jonas Medderbrook
“You didn’t actually come here to find Mr. Winterberry, did you?” asked Syrilla.
Mr. Gubb folded the telegram, raised his matted hair, and tucked the telegram between it and his own hair for safe-keeping.
“When a deteckative starts out to detect,” he said calmly, “sometimes he detects one thing and sometimes he detects another. That cup is one of the things I deteckated to-day. And now, if all are willing, I’ll step outside and get my pants on. I’ll feel better.”
“And you’ll look better,” said Mr. Dorgan. “You couldn’t look worse.”
“In the course of the deteckative career,” said Mr. Gubb, “a gent has to look a lot