American Sherlocks Nick Rennison (best big ereader txt) 📖

‘And the footprints?’ I asked eagerly.

‘I made them myself,’ he explained with a dogged shamefacedness. ‘I did have a moment of temptation to keep the crystal, and so tried to make you think that a burglar had taken it; but the purity and beauty of the ball itself so reproached me that I tried to return it. I didn’t do so then, and since –’

‘Since?’ urged Fred, not unkindly.

‘Well, I’ve been torn between fear and the desire to keep the ball. You will find it in my trunk. Here is the key.’

There was a certain dignity about the young man that made him seem unlike a criminal, or even a wrong-doer.

As for me, I entirely appreciated the fact that he was hypnotized by the crystal and in a way was not responsible. I don’t believe that man would steal anything else in the world.

Somehow the others agreed with me, and as they had recovered the ball, they took no steps to prosecute Mr Wayne.

He went away at once, still in that dazed, uncertain condition. We never saw him again; but I hope for his own sake that he never was subjected to such a temptation.

Just before he left, I said to him out of sheer curiosity: ‘Please explain one point, Mr Wayne. Since you opened and closed that window purposely to mislead us, since you made those footprints in the flower-bed for the same reason, and since to do it you must have gone out and then come back, why were the outgoing footprints made over the incoming ones?’

‘I walked backward on purpose,’ said Mr Wayne simply.

PHILO GUBB

Created by Ellis Parker Butler (1869-1937)

Philo Gubb works as a paper-hanger in a small town in Iowa. He is also an enthusiast for the Sherlock Holmes stories who is taking a correspondence course in how to be a ‘deteckative’. Whenever the opportunity arises, he tries to put into practice what he is learning, adopting a series of disguises which fool nobody and solving crimes more through amiable persistence and good luck than any deductive skills. Gubb himself is said to commit ‘a major crime during every case on which he works: the murder of the English language’. Comic crime stories rarely work very well. Comic crime stories that are more than a century old should be very nearly unreadable but the tales featuring Philo Gubb retain their charm. They were the work of Ellis Parker Butler, Iowa-born but long resident in New York, who, in addition to a successful career in banking, was also a prolific writer of novels and short stories. The first Philo Gubb story appeared in The Red Book magazine in 1913. Several dozen others followed, mostly in the next four years, although Butler returned to the character on a handful of occasions in the 1920s and 1930s. Gubb was popular enough to appear in several short films in the silent era and for the stories to be regularly reprinted.

PHILO GUBB’S GREATEST CASE

Philo Gubb, wrapped in his bathrobe, went to the door of the room that was the headquarters of his business of paper-hanging and decorating as well as the office of his detective business, and opened the door a crack. It was still early in the morning, but Mr Gubb was a modest man, and, lest anyone should see him in his scanty attire, he peered through the crack of the door before he stepped hastily into the hall and captured his copy of the Riverbank Daily Eagle. When he had secured the still damp newspaper, he returned to his cot bed and spread himself out to read comfortably.

It was a hot Iowa morning. Business was so slack that if Mr Gubb had not taken out his set of eight varieties of false whiskers daily and brushed them carefully, the moths would have been able to devour them at leisure.

P Gubb opened the Eagle. The first words that met his eye caused him to sit upright on his cot. At the top of the first column of the first page were the headlines.

MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF HENRY SMITZ

Body Found In Mississippi River By Boatman Early This AM.

Foul Play Suspected

Mr Gubb unfolded the paper and read the item under the headlines with the most intense interest. Foul play meant the possibility of an opportunity to put to use once more the precepts of the Course of Twelve Lessons, and with them fresh in his mind Detective Gubb was eager to undertake the solution of any mystery that Riverbank could furnish. This was the article:

Just as we go to press we receive word through Policeman Michael O’Toole that the well-known mussel-dredger and boatman, Samuel Fliggis (Long Sam), while dredging for mussels last night just below the bridge, recovered the body of Henry Smitz, late of this place.

Mr Smitz had been missing for three days and his wife had been greatly worried. Mr Brownson, of the Brownson Packing Company, by whom he was employed, admitted that Mr Smitz had been missing for several days.

The body was found sewed in a sack. Foul play is suspected.

‘I should think foul play would be suspected,’ exclaimed Philo Gubb, ‘if a man was sewed into a bag and deposited into the Mississippi River until dead.’

He propped the paper against the foot of the cot bed and was still reading when someone knocked on his door. He wrapped his bathrobe carefully about him and opened the door. A young woman with tear-dimmed eyes stood in the doorway.

‘Mr P Gubb?’ she asked. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you so early in the morning, Mr Gubb, but I couldn’t sleep all night. I came on a matter of business, as you might say. There’s a couple of things I want you to do.’

‘Paper-hanging or deteckating?’ asked P Gubb.

‘Both,’ said the young woman. ‘My name is Smitz – Emily Smitz. My husband –’

‘I’m aware of the knowledge of your loss, ma’am,’ said the paper-hanger detective gently.

‘Lots of people know