Detective Philo Gubb: Collected Mysteries. Ellis Parker Butler
stopped short.
“Gubb,” he said, “did that fellow tell you what his business was?”
“He did not,” said Philo Gubb. “He failed to express any mention of it.”
“That man,” said Mr. Medderbrook bitterly, “is Schreckenheim, the greatest tattoo artist in the world. He is the king of them all. A connoisseur in tattooish art can tell a Schreckenheim as easily as a picture-dealer can tell a Corot. But no matter! Mr. Gubb, you are a detective and I believe what is told detectives is held inviolable. Yes. You—and all Riverbank—see in me an ordinary citizen, wealthy, perhaps, but ordinary. As a matter of fact, I was once”—he looked cautiously around—“I was once a contortionist. I was once the contortionist. And now I am a wealthy man. My wife left me because she said I was stingy, and she took my child—my only daughter. I have never seen either of them since. I have searched high and low, but I cannot find them. Mr. Gubb, I would give the man that finds my daughter—if she is alive—a thousand dollars.”
“You don’t object to my attempting to try?” said Philo Gubb.
“No,” said Mr. Jonas Medderbrook, “but that is not what I wish to explain. In my contortion act, Mr. Gubb, I was obliged to wear the most expensive silk tights. Wiggling on the floor destroys them rapidly. I had a happy thought. I was known as the Man-Serpent. Could I not save all expense of tights by having myself tattooed so that my skin would represent scales? Look.”
Mr. Medderbrook pulled up his cuff and showed Mr. Gubb his arm. It was beautifully tattooed in red and blue, like the scales of a cobra.
“The cost,” continued Mr. Medderbrook, “was great. Herr Schreckenheim worked continuously on me, and when he reached my manly chest I had a brilliant thought. I would have tattooed upon it an American eagle. Imagine the enthusiasm of an audience when I stood straight, spread my arms and showed that noble emblem of our nation’s strength and freedom! I told Herr Schreckenheim and he set to work. When—and the contract price, by the way, for doing that eagle was five hundred dollars—when the eagle was about completed, I said to Herr Schreckenheim, ‘Of course you will do no more eagles?’
“‘More eagles?’ he said questioningly.
“‘On other men,’ I said. ‘I want to be the only man with an eagle on my chest.’
“‘I am doing an eagle on another man now,’ he said.
“I was angry at once. I jumped from the table and threw on my clothes. ‘Cheater!’ I cried. ‘Not another spot or dot shall you make on me! Go! I will never pay you a cent!’
“He was very angry. ‘It is a contract!’ he cried. ‘Five hundred dollars you owe me!’
“‘I owe it to you when the job is complete,’ I declared. ‘That was the contract. Is this job complete? Where are the eagle’s claws? I’ll never pay you a cent!’
“We had a lot of angry words. He demanded that I give him a chance to put the claws on the eagle. I refused. I said I would never pay. He said he would follow me to the end of the world and collect. He said he would do those eagle claws if he had to do them on my infant daughter. I dared him to touch the child. And now,” said Mr. Medderbrook, “he has taken the golf cup I value at five hundred dollars. He has won.”
At the mention of the threat regarding the child, Philo Gubb’s eyes opened wide, but he kept silence.
“Gubb,” said Mr. Medderbrook suddenly, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars if you can recover my poor child.”
“The deteckative profession is full of complicity of detail,” said Mr. Gubb, “and the impossible is quite possible when put in the right hands. The cup—”
“Bother the cup!” said Mr. Medderbrook carelessly. “I want my child—I’ll give ten thousand dollars for my child, Gubb.”
With difficulty could Philo Gubb restrain his eagerness to depart. He had a clue!
Ordinarily Mr. Gubb would have taken any disguise that seemed to him best suited for the work in hand; but now he was going to see and be seen by Syrilla!
Mr. Gubb ran down the list—Number Seven, Card Sharp; Number Nine, Minister of the Gospel; Number Twelve, Butcher; Number Sixteen, Negro Hack-Driver; Number Seventeen, Chinese Laundryman; Number Twenty, Cowboy.... Philo Gubb paused there. He would be a cowboy, for it was a jaunty disguise—“chaps,” sombrero, spurs, buckskin gloves, holsters and pistols, blue shirt, yellow hair, stubby mustache. He donned the complete disguise, put his street garments in a suitcase and viewed himself in his small mirror. He highly approved of the disguise. He touched his cheeks with red to give himself a healthy, outdoor appearance.
Early the next morning, before the earliest merchants had opened their shops, Philo Gubb boarded the train for West Higgins, for it was there the World’s Greatest Combined Shows were to appear. The few sleepy passengers did not open their eyes; the conductor, as he took Mr. Gubb’s ticket, merely remarked, “Joining the show at West Higgins?” and passed on. Boys were already gathering on the West Higgins station platform when the train pulled in, and they cheered Mr. Gubb, thinking him part of the show. This greatly increased the difficulty of Mr. Gubb’s detective work. He had hoped to steal unobserved to the circus grounds, but a dozen small boys immediately attached themselves to him, running before him and whooping with joy.
“Boys,” said Mr. Gubb sternly, “I wish you to run away and play elsewhere than in front of me continuously and all the time,”—and they cheered because he had spoken. Only the glad news that the circus trains had reached town finally dragged them reluctantly away. Detective Gubb hurried to the circus grounds. The cook tent was already up, and the grub tent was being put up. Presently the side-show tent was up and the “big top” rising. It was not until nine o’clock, however, that the side-show ladies and gentlemen began to appear, and when they arrived they went at once to the grub tent and seated themselves at the table. From a corner of the “big top’s” side wall, Detective Gubb watched them.
“Look there, dearie,” said Syrilla suddenly to Princess Zozo, “don’t that cowboy look like Mr. Gubb that was at Bardville and got the golf cup?”
“It don’t look like him,” said Princess Zozo; “it is him. Why don’t you ask him to come over and help at the eats? You seemed to like him yesterday.”
“I thought he was a real gentlem’nly gentlemun, dearie, if that’s what you mean,” said Syrilla; and raising her voice she called to Mr. Gubb. For a moment he hesitated, and then he came forward. “We knowed you the minute we seen you, Mr. Gubb. Come and sit in beside me and have some breakfast if you ain’t dined. I thought you went home last night. You ain’t after no more crim’nals, are you?”
“There are variously many ends to the deteckative business,” said Mr. Gubb, as he seated himself beside Syrilla. “I’m upon a most important case at the present time.”
Syrilla reached for her fifth boiled potato, and as her arm passed Mr. Gubb’s face he thrilled. He had not been mistaken. Upon that arm was a pair of eagle’s claws, tattooed in red and blue! How little these had meant to him before, and how much they meant now!
“I presume you don’t hardly ever long for a home in one place, Miss Syrilla,” he began, with his eye fixed on her arm just above the elbow.
“Well, believe me, dearie,” said Syrilla, “you don’t want to think that just because I travel with a side-show I don’t long for the refinements of a true home just like other folks. Some folks think I’m easy to see through and that I ain’t nothin’ but fat and appetite, but they’ve got me down wrong, Mr. Gubb. I was unfortunate in gettin’ lost from my father and mother when a babe, but many is the time I’ve said to Zozo, ‘I got a refined strain in my nature.’ Haven’t I, Zozo?”
“You say it every time we begin to rag you about fallin’ in love with every new thin man you see,” said Princess Zozo. “You said it last night when we was joshin’ you about Mr. Gubb here.”
Syrilla