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“Shess! Shess!” he agreed, nodding his head several times, and then he smiled at Mr. Gubb a broadly benevolent smile. “Oxcoose me!” he added, and with gentle deliberation he removed Mr. Gubb’s hat. “Shoost a minute, please!” he continued, and with his free hand he felt gently of the top of Mr. Gubb’s head. He turned Mr. Gubb’s head gently to the right. “So!” he exclaimed: “Dot vos goot!” He raised the cup above his head and brought it down on top of Mr. Gubb’s head in the exact spot he had selected. For two moments Mr. Gubb made motions with his hands resembling those of a swimmer, and then he collapsed in a heap. The kindly looking old German-American gentleman, seeing he was quite unconscious, tucked the golf cup under his own arm, and waddled slowly down the path to the club gates.

Ten minutes later a small automobile drove up and young Dr. Anson Briggs hopped out. Mr. Gubb was just getting to his feet, feeling the top of his head with his hand as he did so.

“Here!” said Dr. Briggs. “You must not do that!”

“Why can’t I do it?” Mr. Gubb asked crossly. “It is my own personal head, and if I wish to desire to rub it, you are not concerned in the occasion whatever.”

“Oh, rub your head if you want to!” exclaimed the doctor. “I say you must not stand up. A man that has just had a fit must not stand up.”

“Who had a fit?” asked Philo Gubb.

“You did,” said Dr. Briggs. “I am told you had a very bad fit, and fell and knocked your head against the building. You’re dazed. Lie down!”

“I prefer to wish to stand erect on my feet,” said Mr. Gubb firmly. “Where’s my cup?”

“What cup?”

“Who told you I was suffering from the symptom of a fit?” demanded Philo Gubb.

“Why, a short, plump little German did,” said the doctor. “He sent me here. And he gave me this to give to you.”

The doctor held an envelope toward Mr. Gubb, and the detective took it and tore it open. By the light of the window he read:–

Rec’d of J. Jones, golluf cup worth $500. P. H. SCHRECKENHEIM.

Philo Gubb turned to Dr. Briggs.

“I am much obliged for the hastiness with which you came to relieve one you considered to think in trouble, doctor,” he said, “but fits are not in my line of sickness, which mainly is dyspeptic to date.”

“Now, what is all this?” asked the doctor suspiciously. “What is that letter, anyway?”

“It is a clue,” said Philo Gubb, “which, connected with the bump on the top of the cranium of my skull, will, no doubt, land somebody into jail. So good-evening, doctor.”

He picked his hat from the lawn, and in his most stately manner walked around the club-house and in at the door.

Inside the club-house, Mr. Gubb asked one of the waiters to call Mr. Medderbrook, and Mr. Medderbrook immediately appeared.

As he came from the dining-room rapidly, the napkin he had had tucked in his neck fell over his shoulder behind him, and Mr. Medderbrook, instead of turning around bent backward until he could pick up the napkin with his teeth, after which he resumed his normal upright position.

“Excuse me, Gubb,” he said; “I didn’t think what I was doing. Where is the cup?”

The detective explained. He handed Mr. Medderbrook the receipt that had been sent by Mr. Schreckenheim, and the moment Mr. Medderbrook’s eyes fell upon it he turned red.

“That infernal Dutchman!” he cried, although Mr. Schreckenheim was not a Dutchman at all, but a German-American. “I’ll jail him for this!”

He stopped short.

“Gubb,” he said, “did that fellow tell you what his business was?”

“He did not,” said Philo Gubb. “He failed to express any mention of it.”

“That man,” said Mr. Medderbrook bitterly, “is Schreckenheim, the greatest tattoo artist in the world. He is the king of them all. A connoisseur in tattooish art can tell a Schreckenheim as easily as a picture-dealer can tell a Corot. But no matter! Mr. Gubb, you are a detective and I believe what is told detectives is held inviolable. Yes. You–and all Riverbank–see in me an ordinary citizen, wealthy, perhaps, but ordinary. As a matter of fact, I was once”–he looked cautiously around–“I was once a contortionist. I was once the contortionist. And now I am a wealthy man. My wife left me because she said I was stingy, and she took my child–my only daughter. I have never seen either of them since. I have searched high and low, but I cannot find them. Mr. Gubb, I would give the man that finds my daughter–if she is alive–a thousand dollars.”