Ellery: (Chuckling) Yes, Dad!
Nikki: Of course—
Velie: It was—
Nikki & Velie: (Together) Ferguson! (The music comes up.)
The Correspondence-School Detective; or, Philo Gubb’s Greatest Case
by Ellis Parker Butler
In this issue we bring back to you the first, the original (but not the only) Correspondence-School Detective — Philo Gubb, created by the famous author of “Pigs Is Pigs.” If you’ll pardon a bit of bibble-babble, it has always struck your Editor as extraordinarily odd that Ellis Parker Butler could have chosen the first name of Philo for his simple-minded, rustic detective and made it seem so appropriate; and yet, a round dozen years later, S. S. Van Dine selected the identical first-name for his sophisticated dilettante, Philo Vance, and again made it seem le nom juste... For a modern version of the Correspondence-School Detective, watch for Percival Wilde’s “P. Moran, Shadow,” scheduled to appear soon.
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 any one 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.
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 of it,” said Mrs. Smitz. “I guess everybody knows of it — I told the police to try to find Henry, so it is no secret. And I want you to come up as soon as you get dressed, and paper my bedroom.”
Mr. Gubb looked at the young woman as if he thought she had gone insane under the burden of her woe.
“And then I want you to find Henry,” she said, “because I’ve heard you can do so well in the detecting line.”
Mr. Gubb suddenly realized that the poor creature did not yet know the full extent of her loss. He gazed down upon her with pity in his bird-like eyes.
“I know you’ll think it strange,” the young woman went on, “that I should ask you to paper a bedroom first, when my husband is lost; but if he is gone it is because I was a mean, stubborn thing. We never quarreled in our lives, Mr. Gubb, until I picked out the wall-paper for our bedroom, and Henry said parrots and birds-of-paradise and tropical flowers that were as big as umbrellas would look awful on our bedroom wall. So I said he hadn’t anything but Low Dutch taste, and he got mad. ‘All right, have it your own way,’ he said, and I went and had Mr. Skaggs put the paper on the wall, and the next day Henry didn’t come home at all.
“If I’d thought Henry would take it that way, I’d rather had the wall bare, Mr. Gubb. I’ve cried and cried, and last night I made up my mind it was all my fault and that when Henry came home he’d find a decent paper on the wall. I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Gubb, that when the paper was on the wall it looked worse than it looked in the roll. It looked crazy.”
“Yes’m,” said Mr. Gubb, “it often does. But, however, there’s something you’d ought to know right away about Henry.”
The young woman stared wide-eyed at Mr. Gubb for a moment; she turned as white as her shirtwaist.
“Henry is dead!” she cried, and collapsed into Mr. Gubb’s long, thin arms.
Mr. Gubb, the inert form of the young woman in his arms, glanced around with a startled gaze. He stood miserably, not knowing what to do, when suddenly he saw Policeman O’Toole coming toward him down the hall. Policeman O’Toole was leading by the arm a man whose wrists bore clanking handcuffs.
“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 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 anyone 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—”