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The Oubliette
by
The huge cellar was dusky in the dim light that entered through the cobwebbed panes, high in the wall. It was an immense place, and now knee-deep in water, except for a gangway of boards laid on low trestles, which led from one side of the cellar to the cellar door. There were coal-bins and vegetable-bins, like watery bays leading from the general cellar sea, and–strange appliance to discover in a hotel cellar–a small hay-baling press stood on an extemporized platform against one wall, and alongside it, on a long table, such as are seen in factories, bales of hay, some complete and some torn open–and cases! The cases were labeled “Blue River Canned Tomatoes,” but one, split across the end, gave evidence that their contents were not canned tomatoes at all. Through the crack in the case glittered the six silver stars of the Six Star whiskey. There were twenty-six of the cases.
Philo Gubb waded to the raised gangway and walked to the cellar door. It was double-barred on the inside, and he lifted the bars cautiously and stepped into the alley, closing the door carefully behind him. He pulled his false whiskers and wig from his face and stuffed them in his pockets and hurried down the alley.
When he returned, Billy Getz, Jack Harburger, and six of the Kidders were holding high revel in the closed bar-room of the Harburger House, but they all fell silent when the door opened and the Sheriff of Derling County entered, with Philo Gubb and three deputies in company. It was evident that the Sheriff did not consider Philo Gubb a joke.
“Search-warrant, Jack,” he said to Harburger. “Detective Gubb, of Riverbank, has been doing some sleuthing in your hotel, he says. We want to have a look at the cellar.”
The next morning the “Riverbank Eagle” was full of Philo Gubb again. Through the superb acumen of that wonderful detective, three stores of whiskey had been discovered and confiscated–one in the cellar of the Harburger House at Derlingport; one in Joe Henry’s stable at Riverbank; and a smaller one in the room in the Willcox Building frequented by the “Kidders.”
“How I done it?” said Philo Gubb to one of his admirers. “I done it like a deteckative does it–a deteckative that wants to detect–picks up some feller that looks suspicious-like, like it says in Lesson Four, Rule Four. And then he shadows and trails him, like it says in Lesson Four, Rules Four to Seventeen. And then somethin’s bound to happen.”
“But how can you tell what’s goin’ to happen?” asked his admirer.
“Well, sir,” said Philo Gubb, “that’s the beauty of the deteckative business. You don’t ever know what’s goin’ to happen until it happens.”