Sherlock Holmes Great War Parodies and Pastiches II
Page 19
“Hello, Uncle Philo,” he said.
The voice was a surprise. It was a thin, weak treble, diluted to a whisper and ending in a wheeze. It was as if a hippopotamus spoke, and its voice was the voice of a short-winded canary bird. Mr. Gubb stood and stared.
“Don’t you know me, Uncle Philo?” wheezed the fat boy squeakily. “I’m Epaminondas, but you don’t have to call me that. You can call me Eppy for short. Papa calls me Eppy. Everybody calls me Eppy for short.”
And still Mr. Gubb stood staring. It was first necessary for him to accustom himself to the idea that anything as fat as this fat boy could be. That in itself was hard to believe. Then it was necessary to force himself to believe that his sister could have a child as fat as this fat boy. Then it was necessary to convince himself that this boy was that boy. It was all hard to believe, but the boy seemed to be so sure he was Epaminondas and a nephew that slowly Mr. Gubb began to take some stock in the idea. Before the massively cheerful certitude of the boy Mr. Gubb was forced to believe. No doubt this was Epaminondas.
Mr. Gubb had never seen Epaminondas before. He had not seen his sister—once a teacher of Greek in the Darlingport High School—since she had married Otis Smits, one of Darlingport’s fair-to-middling tailors; but there was really no reason to doubt that this fat boy was Epaminondas Smits. The boy said so himself.
“I’m quite pleased to see you looking so well,” said Mr. Gubb. “I presume you have come down to Riverbank for a spell of visit?”
The fat boy grinned engagingly and wheezed.
“Papa said I should bring all my things,” he squeaked; “so I brought them. Papa said if you wanted me to sleep on a cot I’d better tell you to let me sleep on the floor, so I’d be safer. Papa says it isn’t safe for me to sleep on a cot—when the cot broke one of its legs it might run into my lung and give me consumption.”
Mr. Gubb cocked his birdlike head and studied Epaminondas.
“You aim to remain staying past over night or more?” he asked. Epaminondas nodded his head. It did not nod far, because his chin hit the roll of fat above his collar; but it was an indubitable affirmative.
“I’m going to stay all the time,” he squeaked. “Papa says I’m too stupid to be a tailor. Papa says a tailor has to have at least a little sense; so papa said: ‘Ach, Himmel! you’ll never be a tailor; go down and let your Uncle Philo make a detective out of you!’ So I’ve come to be a detective.”
He wheezed awhile after this long speech and then added:
“I haven’t anything to do now; you can begin teaching me right away. Papa says—”
Mr. Gubb interrupted Epaminondas by opening the door wider and standing aside, and Epaminondas bent down—turning almost purple in the face—and raising his canvas telescope, brought it inside the room. He dropped it the instant it was over the doorsill. This exertion had almost exhausted him.
Mr. Gubb had been thinking, not rapidly but deeply. He did not want Epaminondas, and he did not need him, but it was quite evident he had him. Fate, so often mysterious, had given him Epaminondas. Here Epaminondas was. A feeling of tardy and regretful affection for his long-neglected sister surged over Philo Gubb. He remembered her now as she had been when a little girl, dainty in a frilled white dress and blue sash, lisping prettily as she walked beside Philo, holding his hand, looking up at him with pride in his protective bigness. He saw her—still visualizing her as the baby girl in a blue sash and fluffy skirts—trying to do something with Epaminondas, trying to make something of him. A surge of brotherly tenderness swept over Philo. To take Epaminondas and try to make something out of him was little enough to do for a dear sister so long neglected.
Epaminondas had removed his hat, and after trying the edge of the folding bed and deciding it was too frail to hold a youth of his weight, had seated himself in the arm chair before Philo Gubb’s desk.
“I’m ready to begin to be a detective right away, Uncle Philo,” he reminded the great detective. Mr. Gubb stood with one hand on the highest point of the folding bed and looked Epaminondas straight in the eye.
“The deteckative business ain’t learned into a few minutes, Epaminondas,” he said severely. “Personally myself I had to devote up long periods of time to studying into the twelve complete lessons of the Rising Sun Deteckative Bureau’s Correspondence School of Deteckating, before I started to begin to think I knowed almost nothing whatever about it. It’s going to take a long period of time to learn you even the first beginnings!”
“I don’t care,” piped Epaminondas. “I’ve got more time than almost anybody has.”
“You’re so much bigger, you ought to have,” said Mr. Gubb, not meaning a joke, but that if Epaminondas was as stupid as his size indicated, he would be a slow learner. “If you was smaller sized, I could have you help out when I’m working onto the decorating and paper-hanging ends of my lines of work, but you ain’t and you can’t. But you ought to be assisting to help me in some form of shape or manner whilst learning to be a deteckative. A deteckative apprentice ought to be a help, just the same as what a paper—hanger apprentice is.”
“Yes, Uncle Philo,” wheezed Epaminondas.
“So I ain’t so badly sorry that you’ve come,” said Mr. Gubb, “because for a long period of time I’ve been hampered up in my deteckative career in one kind of way. Have you ever heard of the great deteckative Sherlock Holmes?”
“Yes, Uncle Philo,” wheezed Epaminondas.
“Then I don’t need to explain out to you,” said Mr. Gubb, “that Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t have solved out hardly none of his cases if he hadn’t Watson to hand him the needle when he needed it, and to be surprised full of amazement at ‘most anything Mr. Holmes said to him. Ain’t that so?”
“Yes, Uncle Philo,” squeaked Epaminondas.
“So I’m going to begin to start you in for a Watson,” said Mr. Gubb. “To do deteckating in A1 first-class manner every deteckative ought to have a Watson. I don’t much care to like your name of Epaminondas, anyway, and I ain’t particular fond of Eppy for short, so from now on forth your name will start to be Watson.”
“All right, Uncle Philo,” said Epaminondas.
“And when I say anything like, ‘And so you see, Watson, this wisp of straw tells me Jonas Hook committed the murder,’ you’ll say ‘Marvelous!’”
“Yes, Uncle Philo,” said Epaminondas, “and what else do I say?”
“Well, for the present and until the future,” said Mr. Gubb, “you don’t need to trouble to say anything else but that. ‘Marvelous’ is a good enough thing for a Watson to say, and he can’t repeat it over hardly too much.” He hesitated, and then continued:
“Up to the present moment of time, Watson,” he said, “I ain’t started to begin to use hypodermic morphine into my arm, so I’m not fixed and provided with no hypodermic morphine needle. The only needle I’ve got into my regular possession is that one sticking into my pincushion on my desk, and I use it to repair up the rips and tears I get into my clothing garments. So for the present and until the future when I say, ‘The needle, Watson!’ you can hand me that sewing needle.”
“Yes, Uncle Philo,” said Epaminondas, obediently, “but—”
“But what, Watson?” asked Mr. Gubb.
“But I’ll have to do only the best I can,” said Epaminondas. “One reason papa always got so mad at me was because I couldn’t pick up a needle—my fingers are so fat.”
Mr. Gubb saw the truth of this. Fingers as fat as Epaminondas’ would have trouble in picking up any article as small and as elusive as a needle. It would be like an ordinary person trying to pick up a needle while wearing driving gloves.
“You needn’t have no sort of worry about that, Watson,” said Mr. Gubb. “As soon as I can spare a few moments of time I’ll secure the purchase of a horseshoe magnet for you to pick up the needle with.”
“Marvelous!” said Epaminondas. Mr. Gubb looked at the cheerful fat face doubtfully. There was, however, no sign of ridicule there.
Epaminondas settled back in his chair and opened the small pamphlet, and Mr. Gubb began the cleansing work he had indicated. They were so engaged when a new tapping sounded on the door, and Mr. Gubb went to learn who thus disturbed them. The disturber was Mrs. Sarah Quimby.
“Gubb,” she said the moment he opened the door, “some devil has robbed me!”
It seemed fairly evident from the lady’s appearance that she had discovered the robbery after its occurrence and not while it was taking place. If she had discovered the robber in the act, she would probably have come dragging him by one foot in a more or less mangled condition, or in case the robber was a veritable giant, she would have shown by her attire and injuries that a frightful struggle had taken place. Mrs. Quimby was not the sort of woman to be robbed without a struggle unless it was done on the sly. She was a square-jawed, square-shouldered and square-toed woman, and when she folded her arms she looked dangerous. Perhaps one reason was that for ten years, earlier in her life and before she sought retirement and obscurity in Riverbank, she had been known as Maggie the Kid, champion female boxer of the U.S.A., willing to meet all corners of her own age and weight. As Mrs. Quimby she had been able to conceal her past, but she could not conceal her looks—they stuck out and hit you. She looked dangerous.
As Mrs. Quimby stood at the door, she held a square parcel in her good right hand. This she thrust at Mr. Gubb, and he took it and held it while she related the tale of the burglary.
“And you want I should detect out the robber and send him or her, as the case may be, to jail in prison?” said Mr. Gubb when she had finished her story.
“Jail! Prison!” exclaimed Mrs. Quimby with scorn. “Jail and prison for the devil that robs me! No, Mr. Gubb! You find out who robbed me and leave the rest to me. Don’t talk to me about jail and prison. You find the murdering malefactor, and I’ll take care of him!”
She opened one hand, palm upward, and slowly closed the fingers, at the same time showing her teeth like a wolf. A shudder ran up and down Mr. Gubb’s back. Somehow, Mrs. Quimby’s pretty little action seemed to suggest a slow and horrible but irresistible death.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Mr. Gubb, and satisfied that the case was now in good hands, Mrs. Quimby departed. “Watson,” said Mr. Gubb, “quick! the needle!”
“Yes! Uncle Philo,” squeaked Epaminondas, and after several unsuccessful attempts he managed to grasp the sewing needle in his fat fingers. He handed it to Mr. Gubb. Mr. Gubb ran the point through the sleeve of his coat and returned the needle to the pincushion.
The story of the robbery was a simple one, but one full of mystery. Mrs. Quimby had had in a japanned-tin cash box $44 in bills and some odd cents in change. As was her custom she had placed the cash box in a drawer of the sideboard in her dining-room. She distinctly remembered placing it there soon after dinner because she had opened it to take out a dime to give Susan Dickelmeyer to pay the milk boy for an extra measure of cream, because Mr. Orpheus Butts had remained for dinner, and as Mr. Butts used a lot of cream on his baked apple Mrs. Quimby felt she would need an extra measure. The cream was only 5 cents a measure, but Mrs. Quimby owed the boy 5 cents in addition. This made 10 cents. Mr. Butts remarked, “You oughtn’t to keep money around like that,” and Mrs. Quimby had said, “If I can’t keep money in my own house, locked in a box and locked in a drawer, where can I keep it?”
Now the money was gone. It must have been taken after midnight, Mrs. Quimby said, because Mr. Gubb had worked there until midnight. Asked whom she suspected, Mrs. Quimby had said, “Everybody!” Alone with Epaminondas in his office bedroom Mr. Gubb now confronted the mystery, and it was his task to solve it. With the fat nephew standing behind him and wheezing with excitement Mr. Gubb undid the square parcel and discovered it to be the japanned-tin cash box. The lid had been roughly wrenched open, breaking the lock and bending the edge. With some difficulty Mr. Gubb opened the lid and looked inside. Mrs. Quimby had said the only clews she had been able to find were inside the box. They were there. They were a coat button of a peculiar watery drab and a broken knife blade. A wisp of black thread hung in the eyes of the button—thread of about the size known as No. 8 black cotton. The knife blade was the blade of a pocket knife and was thick and strong, evidently from a pocket knife of unusual size and strength. Mr. Gubb looked at them carefully.
“Watson,” he said, “this here case amazes you, don’t it? You wonder how I’m going to start out to begin to find out who stole the money, don’t you? With these three clews I’ll have no difficult trouble finding the thief. In about half an hour we’d ought to know about who stole the money.”
He paused and waited.
“Watson,” he said, “this here case amazes you, don’t it?”
“Well, why don’t you say it” he asked.
“Say what?” asked Epaminondas.
“Why don’t you say what I told you to say?”
“Oh!” said Epaminondas. “Marvelous!”
“Well may you say so, Watson,” said Mr. Gubb, “for you don’t yet understand the methods of deteckative work. Now, here, Watson, is a button—a commonly ordinary button, most probably dropped by the thief from off of his clothing garments. Where would you find a button like this one is?”
Epaminondas stared at the button stupidly for a moment while Mr. Gubb looked at it through a magnifying glass. Suddenly Epaminondas’ face brightened.
“On your coat, Uncle Philo!” he exclaimed squeakily.
With a start Mr. Gubb looked at his own coat buttons. They were exactly like the clew button Mrs. Quimby had put in the cash box. Not only so, but where there should have been five buttons on Mr. Gubb’s coat there were but four. Where the fifth button should have been dangled a bit of black thread of the size known as No. 8 black cotton. With an uneasy feeling Mr. Gubb picked up the knife blade. A week or more earlier, while at work, Mr. Gubb had tried to pry open a paint can with his knife and the blade had snapped off. He had slipped the broken blade into his overall pocket. Now he reached into his trousers pocket for his knife, opened the broken stump of blade and fitted the clew portion to it. It fitted exactly!
“Marvelous!”
“Now don’t say that no more until I make a remark,” said Mr. Gubb peevishly. “Quite many times things can accidentally happen that don’t prove nothing at all whatever. Anybody that’s anywhere can drop off buttons and knife blades with no meaning whatsoever at all.”
He was rather cross about it, it seemed to Epaminondas.
“Will you tell me when to say it?—to say ‘Marvelous’?” the fat boy asked.
“Say it when it is time to say it,” said Mr. Gubb sharply, and he drew the cash box toward him and began examining it through the magnifying glass. “Ah, Watson!” he exclaimed, “a clew!”
“Marvelous!” said Epaminondas, but without much enthusiasm.
“You may very well say that exclamation, Watson,” said Mr. Gubb. “For what, Watson, do I find the discovery of onto this tin cash box? Finger prints! And, Watson, science tells us there ain’t no two fingers into the whole entire world makes the same identical prints.”
“Marvelous!” said Epaminondas, hoping it was the right time to say it.
“Indeed it most certainly is,” said Mr. Gubb. “But for these finger prints, Watson, somebody might pretend to say I was the thief of Mrs. Quimby’s cash money, for I was the last person into the dining room except Susan Dickelmeyer. But here, Watson, we have the proof.”
“Marvelous!” squealed Epaminondas, now sure he was right in saying it.
Using the magnifying glass Mr. Gubb began carefully t
racing on a white sheet of paper a replica of the lines of the finger prints on the cash box. As his pen drew the lines Mr. Gubb bit gently on the end of his tongue, thus assisting the work of art. Epaminondas watched breathlessly. He felt he was seeing one of the marvels of detective science performed before his eyes.
“There!” said Mr. Gubb, completing his task. “There, Watson, you see the finger and thumb prints of the thief that criminally stole Mrs. Quimby’s cash money. Beyond this, deteckative science can’t go no further. Finger prints can’t lie. Whomsoever it was made those finger prints is the criminal thief and—”
“Marvelous!” said Epaminondas.
Mr. Gubb paid no attention to the exclamation. His eyes were glued to a spot in the corner of the sheet of paper where his ink-stained thumb had left an impression. The impression of Mr. Gubb’s thumb and the impression of the thumb that had left a mark on the cash box were exactly alike in every particular! Slowly Mr. Gubb turned the sheet of paper to see the finger mark on the other side. It was the exact duplicate of the finger impression on the cash box!
“Marv—” Epaminondas began.
“Stop that!” snapped Mr. Gubb. Epaminondas stopped it.
The position in which Mr. Gubb had placed himself was a most serious one. Confronted by such evidence as he had before him, he would, had the evidence pointed to any other man, have declared instantly that he had found the criminal. He arose, and with his hands clasped behind him he walked up and down the floor with long, nervous strides. Epaminondas watched him, breathing heavily.
“Stop that! Stop wheezing in that manner of way!” cried Mr. Gubb. “Can’t you see I’m into a serious predicament, without a fat wheezer awheezing at me?” Suddenly he drew himself together. “Watson,” he said in a calmer tone, “this here is a most certainly serious case.”