Part 30 (1/2)

The telegram, which Mr. Medderbrook permitted Mr. Gubb to read after he had paid the cash in hand, said:--

Heaven smiles on us. Have given up all vegetable diet. Have given up potatoes, beets, artichokes, fried parsnips, Swiss chard, turnips, squash, kohl-rabi, boiled radishes, sugar beets, corn on the cob, cow pumpkin, mushrooms, string beans, asparagus, spinach, and canned and fresh tomatoes.

Have lost ten pounds more. Weight now only nine hundred and fifteen pounds. Dorgan worried. I dream of Gubby and love.

Mr. Gubb sighed happily. ”I suppose,” he said blissfully, ”that by the present moment of time Miss Syrilla has only got left a remainder of six double chins out of seven, dear little one!” And he went back to his office feeling that it would not be long now before the apple of his eye was released from her side-show contract.

The next day Mr. Gubb had begun his labors on a new and interesting case when the door opened.

”Gubb, come across the hall here!”

Gubb looked up from the labor in which he was engaged and blinked at Lawyer Higgins.

”At the present time I am momently engaged upon a case,” said Mr.

Gubb. ”As soon as I am disengaged away from what I am at, I expect to be engaged at the next thing I have to do. I shouldn't wish to a.s.sume to be rude, Mr. Higgins, but when a deteckative is working up a case, and has a sign on his door 'Out--Back at Midnight,' he generally means he ain't receiving callers on no account.”

”That's all right,” said Higgins briskly, ”but this is business. I've got a real job for you.”

”I am engaged upon a real job now,” said Philo Gubb.

”This is a detective job,” said Mr. Higgins. ”We want you to find a man, and if you find him, there's two hundred dollars in it for you.

What sort of a job is it you have on hand?”

”I am searching out the whereabouts of a lost party,” said Gubb earnestly. ”I'm investigating clues at the present time and moment.”

Higgins stepped inside the door. He walked to where Philo Gubb sat at an elaborate mahogany desk, and looked at the apparatus Mr. Gubb was using.

”What the d.i.c.kens?” he asked.

On the slide of the desk were grouped a number of small articles, and a large and powerful microscope. Through the lens of the microscope Mr. Gubb was inspecting something that looked like frayed yellow-brown wool yarn.

”You don't expect to find your missing party in that wad of wool, do you, Gubb?” asked Mr. Higgins jestingly.

”Maybe I do, and maybe the operations of the deteckative mind are none of your particular affair when conducted in the private seclusion of my laboratory,” said Gubb.

”Now, don't get mad,” said Higgins. ”It just struck me as funny. Looks as if you were hunting for fleas in a wisp of dog hair.”

Philo Gubb looked up quickly. As a matter of fact, he had but a moment before found a flea in the wool he was examining, and the wool was indeed a wisp of dog hair. The party Mr. Gubb had been engaged to find was a dog, and Mr. Gubb was--by the inductive method of detecting--trying to reason out the location of the dog. By the aid of the microscope, Mr. Gubb was searching for the slight indications that mean so much to detectives. Unfortunately, however, Mr. Gubb had not yet found anything from which he could deduce anything whatever, unless the flea in the wool might lead to the conclusion that the dog now, or once, had fleas.

”Tell you what I want,” said Mr. Higgins: ”I want you to find Mustard.”

Detective Gubb swung suddenly in his chair and faced Mr. Higgins.

”I don't want nothing more to do with that will!” he said.

”I'm with you there!” said Higgins, laughing. ”When O'Hara made his will so that my client couldn't get her rights at once he did a mean trick, and I dare say Mrs. Doblin will think so when she gets my bill.

But, just the same, Gubb, you're in the detective business more or less, and it strikes me you ought to take a job when it's offered to you. You signed the will as a witness, and this man Bilton, commonly known as Mustard on account of his yellow complexion and hair, was the other witness, wasn't he? Now, if you can't give us the information we want, and Mustard can, it looks to me as if it was your duty, as a fellow witness, to hunt him up. But we don't ask that. We're willing to pay you if you find him.”

”Are you prepared to contract to say you'll pay me just for hunting for him?” asked Mr. Gubb.

”We'll give you two hundred dollars if you can produce Mustard here in Riverbank,” said Higgins.