‘What’s this now?’ asked the policeman none too gently, as he saw the bathrobed Mr Gubb holding the fainting woman in his arms.
‘I am exceedingly glad you have come,’ said Mr Gubb. ‘The only meaning into it, is that this is Mrs H Smitz, widow-lady, fainted onto me against my will and wishes.’
‘I was only askin’,’ said Policeman O’Toole politely enough.
‘You shouldn’t ask such things until you’re asked to ask,’ said Mr Gubb.
After looking into Mr Gubb’s room to see that there was no easy means of escape, O’Toole pushed his prisoner into the room and took the limp form of Mrs Smitz from Mr Gubb, who entered the room and closed the door.
‘I may as well say what I want to say right now,’ said the handcuffed man as soon as he was alone with Mr Gubb. ‘I’ve heard of Detective Gubb, off and on, many a time, and as soon as I got into this trouble I said, “Gubb’s the man that can get me out if any one can.” My name is Herman Wiggins.’
‘Glad to meet you,’ said Mr Gubb, slipping his long legs into his trousers.
‘And I give you my word for what it is worth,’ continued Mr Wiggins, ‘that I’m as innocent of this crime as the babe unborn.’
‘What crime?’ asked Mr Gubb.
‘Why, killing Hen Smitz – what crime did you think?’ said Mr Wiggins. ‘Do I look like a man that would go and murder a man just because –’
He hesitated and Mr Gubb, who was slipping his suspenders over his bony shoulders, looked at Mr Wiggins with keen eyes.
‘Well, just because him and me had words in fun,’ said Mr Wiggins, ‘I leave it to you, can’t a man say words in fun once in a while?’
‘Certainly sure,’ said Mr Gubb.
‘I guess so,’ said Mr Wiggins. ‘Anybody’d know a man don’t mean all he says. When I went and told Hen Smitz I’d murder him as sure as green apples grow on a tree, I was just fooling. But this fool policeman –’
‘Mr O’Toole?’
‘Yes. They gave him this Hen Smitz case to look into, and the first thing he did was to arrest me for murder. Nervy, I call it.’
Policeman O’Toole opened the door a crack and peeked in. Seeing Mr Gubb well along in his dressing operations, he opened the door wider and assisted Mrs Smitz to a chair. She was still limp, but she was a brave little woman and was trying to control her sobs.
‘Through?’ O’Toole asked Wiggins. ‘If you are, come along back to jail.’
‘Now, don’t talk to me in that tone of voice,’ said Mr Wiggins angrily. ‘No, I’m not through. You don’t know how to treat a gentleman like a gentleman, and never did.’
He turned to Mr Gubb.
‘The long and short of it is this: I’m arrested for the murder of Hen Smitz, and I didn’t murder him and I want you to take my case and get me out of jail.’
‘Ah, stuff!’ exclaimed O’Toole. ‘You murdered him and you know you did. What’s the use talkin’?’
Mrs Smitz leaned forward in her chair.
‘Murdered Henry?’ she cried. ‘He never murdered Henry. I murdered him.’
‘Now, ma’am,’ said O’Toole politely, ‘I hate to contradict a lady, but you never murdered him at all. This man here murdered him, and I’ve got the proof on him.’
‘I murdered him!’ cried Mrs Smitz again. ‘I drove him out of his right mind and made him kill himself.’
‘Nothing of the sort,’ declared O’Toole. ‘This man Wiggins murdered him.’
‘I did not!’ exclaimed Mr Wiggins indignantly. ‘Some other man did it.’
It seemed a deadlock, for each was quite positive. Mr Gubb looked from one to the other doubtfully.
‘All right, take me back to jail,’ said Mr Wiggins. ‘You look up the case, Mr Gubb; that’s all I came here for. Will you do it? Dig into it, hey?’
‘I most certainly shall be glad to so do,’ said Mr Gubb, ‘at the regular terms.’
O’Toole led his prisoner away.
For a few minutes Mrs Smitz sat silent, her hands clasped, staring at the floor. Then she looked up into Mr Gubb’s eyes.
‘You will work on this case, Mr Gubb, won’t you?’ she begged. ‘I have a little money – I’ll give it all to have you do your best. It is cruel – cruel to have that poor man suffer under the charge of murder when I know so well Henry killed himself because I was cross with him. You can prove he killed himself – that it was my fault. You will?’
‘The way the deteckative profession operates onto a case,’ said Mr Gubb, ‘isn’t to go to work to prove anything particularly especial. It finds a clue or clues and follows them to where they lead to. That I shall be willing to do.’
‘That is all I could ask,’ said Mrs Smitz gratefully.
Arising from her seat with difficulty, she walked tremblingly to the door. Mr Gubb assisted her down the stairs, and it was not until she was gone that he remembered that she did not know the body of her husband had been found – sewed in a sack and at the bottom of the river. Young husbands have been known to quarrel with their wives over matters as trivial as bedroom wall-paper; they have even been known to leave home for several days at a time when angry; in extreme cases they have even been known to seek death at their own hands; but it is not at all usual for a young husband to leave home for several days and then in cold blood sew himself in a sack and jump into the river. In the first place there are easier ways of terminating one’s life; in the second place a man can jump into the river with perfect ease without going to the trouble of sewing himself in a sack; and in the third place it is exceedingly difficult for a man to sew himself into a sack. It is almost impossible.
To sew himself into a sack a man must have no little skill, and he must have a large, roomy sack. He takes, let us say, a sack-needle, threaded with a good length of twine; he steps into the sack and pulls it up over his head; he then reaches above his head, holding the mouth of the sack together with one hand while he sews with the other hand. In hot anger this would be quite impossible.
Philo Gubb thought of all this as he looked through his disguises, selecting one suitable for the work he had in hand. He had just decided that the most appropriate disguise would be ‘Number 13, Undertaker,’ and had picked up the close black wig, and long, drooping mustache, when he had another thought. Given a bag sufficiently loose to permit free motion of the hands and arms, and a man, even in hot anger, might sew himself in. A man, intent on suicidally bagging himself, would sew the mouth of the bag shut and would then cut a slit in the front of the bag large enough to crawl into. He would then crawl into the bag and sew up the slit, which would be immediately in front of his hands. It could be done! Philo Gubb chose from his wardrobe a black frock coat and a silk hat with a wide band of crape. He carefully locked his door and went down to the street.
On a day as hot as this day promised to be, a frock coat and a silk hat could be nothing but distressingly uncomfortable. Between his door and the corner, eight various citizens spoke to Philo Gubb, calling him by name. In fact, Riverbank was as accustomed to seeing P Gubb in disguise as out of disguise, and while a few children might be interested by the sight of Detective Gubb in disguise, the older citizens thought no more of it, as a rule, than of seeing Banker Jennings appear in a pink shirt one day and a blue striped one the next. No one ever accused Banker Jennings of trying to hide his identity by a change of shirts, and no one imagined that P Gubb was trying to disguise himself when he put on a disguise. They considered it a mere business custom, just as a butcher tied on a white apron before he went behind his counter.
This was why, instead of wondering who the tall, dark-garbed stranger might be, Banker Jennings greeted Philo Gubb cheerfully.
‘Ah, Gubb!’ he said. ‘So you are going to work on this Smitz case, are you? Glad of it, and wish you luck. Hope you place the crime on the right man and get him the full penalty. Let me tell you there’s nothi
ng in this rumor of Smitz being short of money. We did lend him money, but we never pressed him for it. We never even asked him for interest. I told him a dozen times he could have as much more from us as he wanted, within reason, whenever he wanted it, and that he could pay me when his invention was on the market.’
‘No report of news of any such rumor has as yet come to my hearing,’ said P Gubb, ‘but since you mention it, I’ll take it for less than it is worth.’
‘And that’s less than nothing,’ said the banker. ‘Have you any clue?’
‘I’m on my way to find one at the present moment of time,’ said Mr Gubb.
‘Well, let me give you a pointer,’ said the banker. ‘Get a line on Herman Wiggins or some of his crew, understand? Don’t say I said a word – I don’t want to be brought into this – but Smitz was afraid of Wiggins and his crew. He told me so. He said Wiggins had threatened to murder him.’
‘Mr Wiggins is at present in the custody of the county jail for killing H Smitz with intent to murder him,’ said Mr Gubb.
‘Oh, then – then it’s all settled,’ said the banker. ‘They’ve proved it on him. I thought they would. Well, I suppose you’ve got to do your little bit of detecting just the same. Got to air the camphor out of the false hair, eh?’
The banker waved a cheerful hand at P Gubb and passed into his banking institution.
Detective Gubb, cordially greeted by his many friends and admirers, passed on down the main street, and by the time he reached the street that led to the river he was followed by a large and growing group intent on the pleasant occupation of watching a detective detect.
As Mr Gubb walked toward the river, other citizens joined the group, but all kept a respectful distance behind him. When Mr Gubb reached River Street and his false moustache fell off, the interest of the audience stopped short three paces behind him and stood until he had rescued the moustache and once more placed its wires in his nostrils. Then, when he moved forward again, they too moved forward. Never, perhaps, in the history of crime was a detective favored with a more respectful gallery.
On the edge of the river, Mr Gubb found Long Sam Fliggis, the mussel-dredger, seated on an empty tar-barrel with his own audience ranged before him listening while he told, for the fortieth time, the story of his finding of the body of H Smitz. As Philo Gubb approached, Long Sam ceased speaking, and his audience and Mr Gubb’s gallery merged into one great circle which respectfully looked and listened while Mr Gubb questioned the mussel-dredger.
‘Suicide?’ said Long Sam scoffingly. ‘Why, he wan’t no more a suicide than I am right now. He was murdered or wan’t nothin’! I’ve dredged up some suicides in my day, and some of ’em had stones tied to ’em, to make sure they’d sink, and some thought they’d sink without no ballast, but nary one of ’em ever sewed himself into a bag, and I give my word,’ he said positively, ‘that Hen Smitz couldn’t have sewed himself into that burlap bag unless someone done the sewing. Then the feller that did it was an assistant-suicide, and the way I look at it is that an assistant-suicide is jest the same as a murderer.’
The crowd murmured approval, but Mr Gubb held up his hand for silence.
‘In certain kinds of burlap bags it is possibly probable a man could sew himself into it,’ said Mr Gubb, and the crowd, seeing the logic of the remark applauded gently but feelingly.
‘You ain’t seen the way he was sewed up,’ said Long Sam, ‘or you wouldn’t talk like that.’
‘I haven’t yet took a look,’ admitted Mr Gubb, ‘but I aim so to do immediately after I find a clue onto which to work up my case. An A-1 deteckative can’t set forth to work until he has a clue, that being a rule of the game.’
‘What kind of a clue was you lookin’ for?’ asked Long Sam. ‘What’s a clue, anyway?’
‘A clue,’ said P Gubb, ‘is almost anything connected with the late lamented, but generally something that nobody but a deteckative would think had anything to do with anything whatsoever. Not infrequently often it is a button.’
‘Well, I’ve got no button except them that is sewed onto me,’ said Long Sam, ‘but if this here sack-needle will do any good –’
He brought from his pocket the point of a heavy sack-needle and laid it in Philo Gubb’s palm. Mr Gubb looked at it carefully. In the eye of the needle still remained a few inches of twine.
‘I cut that off’n the burlap he was sewed up in,’ volunteered Long Sam, ‘I thought I’d keep it as a sort of nice little souvenir. I’d like it back again when you don’t need it for a clue no more.’
‘Certainly sure,’ agreed Mr Gubb, and he examined the needle carefully.
There are two kinds of sack-needles in general use. In both, the point of the needle is curved to facilitate pushing it into and out of a closely filled sack; in both, the curved portion is somewhat flattened so that the thumb and finger may secure a firm grasp to pull the needle through; but in one style the eye is at the end of the shaft while in the other it is near the point. This needle was like neither; the eye was midway of the shaft; the needle was pointed at each end and the curved portions were not flattened. Mr Gubb noticed another thing – the twine was not the ordinary loosely twisted hemp twine, but a hard, smooth cotton cord, like carpet warp.
‘Thank you,’ said Mr Gubb, ‘and now I will go elsewhere to investigate to a further extent, and it is not necessarily imperative that everybody should accompany along with me if they don’t want to.’
But everybody did want to, it seemed. Long Sam and his audience joined Mr Gubb’s gallery and, with a dozen or so newcomers, they followed Mr Gubb at a decent distance as he walked toward the plant of the Brownson Packing Company, which stood on the riverbank some two blocks away.
It was here Henry Smitz had worked. Six or eight buildings of various sizes, the largest of which stood immediately on the river’s edge, together with the ‘yards’ or pens, all enclosed by a high board fence, constituted the plant of the packing company, and as Mr Gubb appeared at the gate the watchman there stood aside to let him enter.
‘Good morning, Mr Gubb,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I been sort of expecting you. Always right on the job when there’s crime being done, ain’t you? You’ll find Merkel and Brill and Jokosky and the rest of Wiggins’s crew in the main building, and I guess they’ll tell you just what they told the police. They hate it, but what else can they say? It’s the truth.’
‘What is the truth?’ asked Mr Gubb.
‘That Wiggins was dead sore at Hen Smitz,’ said the watchman. ‘That Wiggins told Hen he’d do for him if he lost them their jobs like he said he would. That’s the truth.’
Mr Gubb – his admiring followers were halted at the gate by the watchman – entered the large building and inquired his way to Mr Wiggins’s department. He found it on the side of the building toward the river and on the ground floor. On one side the vast room led into the refrigerating room of the company; on the other it opened upon a long but narrow dock that ran the width of the building.
Along the outer edge of the dock were tied two barges, and into these barges some of Wiggins’s crew were dumping mutton – not legs of mutton but entire sheep, neatly sewed in burlap. The large room was the packing and shipping room, and the work of Wiggins’s crew was that of sewing the slaughtered and refrigerated sheep carcasses in burlap for shipment. Bales of burlap stood against one wall; strands of hemp twine ready for the needle hung from pegs in the wall and the posts that supported the floor above. The contiguity of the refrigerating room gave the room a pleasantly cool atmosphere.
Mr Gubb glanced sharply around. Here was the burlap, here were needles, here was twine. Yonder was the river into which Hen Smitz had been thrown. He glanced across the narrow dock at the blue river. As his eye returned he noticed one of the men carefully sweeping the dock with a broom – sweeping fragments of glass into the river. As the men in the room watched him curiously, Mr Gubb picked up a
piece of burlap and put it in his pocket, wrapped a strand of twine around his finger and pocketed the twine, examined the needles stuck in improvised needle-holders made by boring gimlet holes in the wall, and then walked to the dock and picked up one of the pieces of glass.
‘Clues,’ he remarked, and gave his attention to the work of questioning the men.
Although manifestly reluctant, they honestly admitted that Wiggins had more than once threatened Hen Smitz – that he hated Hen Smitz with the hatred of a man who has been threatened with the loss of his job. Mr Gubb learned that Hen Smitz had been the foreman for the entire building – a sort of autocrat with, as Wiggins’s crew informed him, an easy job. He had only to see that the crews in the building turned out more work this year than they did last year. ‘’Ficiency’ had been his motto, they said, and they hated ‘’Ficiency’.
Mr Gubb’s gallery was awaiting him at the gate, and its members were in a heated discussion as to what Mr Gubb had been doing. They ceased at once when he appeared and fell in behind him as he walked away from the packing house and toward the undertaking establishment of Mr Holworthy Bartman, on the main street. Here, joining the curious group already assembled, the gallery was forced to wait while Mr Gubb entered. His task was an unpleasant but necessary one. He must visit the little ‘morgue’ at the back of Mr Bartman’s establishment.
The body of poor Hen Smitz had not yet been removed from the bag in which it had been found, and it was to the bag Mr Gubb gave his closest attention. The bag – in order that the body might be identified – had not been ripped, but had been cut, and not a stitch had been severed. It did not take Mr Gubb a moment to see that Hen Smitz had not been sewed in a bag at all. He had been sewed in burlap – burlap ‘yard goods,’ to use a shopkeeper’s term – and it was burlap identical with that used by Mr Wiggins and his crew. It was no loose bag of burlap – but a close-fitting wrapping of burlap; a cocoon of burlap that had been drawn tight around the body, as burlap is drawn tight around the carcass of sheep for shipment, like a mummy’s wrappings.
American Sherlocks Page 20