Part 14 (2/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”WHO SENT YOU HERE, ANYWAY?”]

Detective Gubb, outside the house, examined the cellar window as well as he could. There was not a mark to be seen from the outside, but a pansy-bed bore the marks of the un-burglar's exit. To get out of the cellar, the un-burglar had had to wiggle himself out of the small window, and had crushed the pansies flat. Detective Gubb felt carefully among the crushed pansies, and his hand found something hard and round. It was the drumstick bone of a chicken's leg. Detective Gubb threw it away. Even an un-burglar would not have chosen a chicken's leg bone as a weapon. Evidently Billy Getz had not left any clue in the pansy-bed.

Philo Gubb had no doubt that Billy was putting up a joke on him. The detective decided that his best method would be to shadow Billy Getz from sundown each day, until he caught him un-burgling another house, or found something to connect him with the un-burglaries. So he went home. It was eleven when he began to undress.

It was then he first realized that the knees of his light trousers were damp from kneeling in the pansy-bed, and he looked at them ruefully. The knees were stained like Joseph's coat of many colors, and they were his best trousers. He hung them carefully over the back of his chair, and went to bed.

The next morning he rolled the trousers in a bundle and took them with him on his way to his paper-hanging job. On Main Street he stopped at Frank the Tailor's--”Pants Cleaned and Pressed, 35 Cents.” He unrolled the trousers and laid them across the counter.

”Can you remove those stains?” he asked.

”Oh, sure I couldt!” said Frank. ”I make me no droubles by dot, Mister Gupp. Shust dis morning alretty I didt it der same ding. You fall ofer der vire too, yes?”

”Certainly. I expect it was the same wire. Into a flower-bed.”

”Chess,” said Frank. ”Like Misder Vestcote, yes? Cudding across der corner, yes, und didn't see der vire?”

”That so?” said Detective Gubb. ”You don't mean old Mr. Westcote, do you?”

”Sure, yes!” said Frank. ”He falls by der flower-bed in, und stains his knees alretty, shust like dot. Vell, I have me dese pants retty by you dis efenings. You vant dem pressed too?”

”Press 'em, an' clean 'em, an' make 'em nice,” said Philo Gubb, and went out.

[Ill.u.s.tration: UNDER HIS ARM HE CARRIED A SMALL BUNDLE]

Old John Westcote, and pansy stains on his trouser knees, was it? The thing seemed impossible, but so did un-burglary, for that matter. Old John Westcote was one of the richest men in Riverbank. He was a retired merchant and as mean as sin. He was the last man in Riverbank any one would suspect of leaving spoons and forks in other people's houses. But how did it come that he had pansy stains on the knees of his trousers? Philo Gubb thought of old John Westcote all day, and toward night he hit on a solution. Wedding presents! From what he had heard, old John was--or had been--the sort of man to accept a wedding invitation, go to the reception and eat his fill, and never send the bride so much as a black wire hairpin. And now, grown old, his conscience might be hurting him. He might be in that semi-senile state when rest.i.tution becomes a craze, and the ungiven wedding presents might press upon his conscience. It was not at all unlikely that he had chosen the un-burglary method of giving the presents at this late date. The form of the un-burgled goods--forks and spoons--and the initials engraved upon them, made this more likely.

That night Detective Gubb did not report in person or by docket to Marshal Wittaker. At seven o'clock he was hiding in the hazel brush opposite old John Westcote's lonely house on Pottex Lane. At seven-fifteen the old man tottered from his gate and tottered down the lane toward the more thickly settled part of the town. Under his arm he carried a small bundle--a bundle wrapped in newspaper!

Detective Gubb waited until the old man was well in advance, and then slipped from the hazel brush and followed him, observing all the rules for Shadowing and Trailing as taught by the Rising Sun Detective Agency's Correspondence School of Detecting. For three hours the old man wandered the streets. Now he walked along Main Street, peering anxiously into the faces of the pedestrians, with purblind eyes, and now walking the residence streets. Detective Gubb kept close behind.

As ten o'clock struck from the clock in the High School tower, old John Westcote quickened his steps a little and walked toward the opposite end of the town, where the lumber-yards are. Down the hill into the lumber district he walked, and Detective Gubb dodged from tree to tree. Halfway down the hill the old man hesitated. He glanced around. At his side was a ma.s.s of lilac bushes, seeming strangely out of place among the huge piles of lumber. Without stopping, the old man let the bundle slide from under his arm and fall on the walk. For a moment it lay like a white spot on the walk, and then it moved rapidly out of sight into the bushes.

Bundles do not move thus, unless a.s.sisted, but Philo Gubb was too far away to see the hand he knew must have reached out for the bundle. He ran rapidly, keeping in the sawdust that formed the unfruitful soil of the lumber-yard, until he dared come no nearer, and then he climbed to the top of the tallest lumber-pile and lay flat. He commanded every side of the hillside lumber-yard, and he did not have long to wait.

From the lower side of the yard he saw a black figure emerge, cross the street and disappear over the bank into the railway switch-yard below. Mr. Gubb scrambled down and followed.

At the bank above the switch-yard he paused, keeping in a shadow, and looked here and there. Flat cars and box cars stood on the tracks in great numbers, most of them closed and sealed--some partly open. He heard a car door grate as it was closed. He slipped down the bank and crept on his hands and knees. He was halfway down the line of cars when he heard a voice. It came from car 7887, C. B. & Q.

”Run all the breath out of me,” said the voice in a wheeze.

”Well, did you get it?” whispered another voice.

”Sure I got it! Got something, anyway. Strike a match, Bill, and let's see if he put up a job on us. If he did, we'll blow him up to-morrow night, hey?”

”That's right. We got a can o' powder left under the pile by the laylocks. How much is it?”

”We tol' him one thousand, didn't we? Same as he give the Law and Order to help grab us. Now, listen! You take half of this and go one way, an' I'll take half an' go the other. We can get away with five hundred apiece.”

”And we got the five hundred apiece we got for doin' the dynamite job, too. Say, I never thought to have a thousand dollars at once in me life. What's that?”

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