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“What is it?” asked Syrilla in a voice trembling with emotion.

“Say! Where in the U.S.A. did you come from?” asked Mr. Dorgan suddenly. “What in the dickens are you, anyway?”

“I’m a Tasmanian Wild Man,” said Mr. Gubb mildly.

“You a Tasmanian Wild Man?” said Mr. Dorgan. “You don’t think you look like a Tasmanian Wild Man, do you? Why, you look like–you look like–you look–“

“He looks like an intoxicated pterodactyl,” said Mr. Lonergan, who had some knowledge of prehistoric animals,–“only hairier.”

“He looks like a human turkey with a piebald face,” suggested General Thumb.

“He don’t look like nothin’!” said Mr. Dorgan at last. “That’s what he looks like. You get out of that cage!” he added sternly to Mr. Gubb. “I don’t want nothin’ that looks like you nowhere near this show.”

“But, Mr. Dorgan, dearie, think how he’d draw crowds,” said Syrilla.

“Crowds? Of course he’d draw crowds,” said Mr. Dorgan. “But what would I say when I lectured about him? What would I call him? No, he’s got to go. Boys,” he said to the four roustabouts, two of whom were those Mr. Gubb had seen in the property tent, “throw this feller out of the tent.”

“Stop!” said Mr. Gubb, raising one hand. “I will admit I have tried to deceive you: I am not a Tasmanian Wild Man. I am a deteckative!”

“Detective?” said Mr. Dorgan.

“In disguise,” said Mr. Gubb modestly. “In the deteckative profession the assuming of disguises is often necessary to the completion of the clarification of a mystery plot.”

He pointed down at the Pet, whose newly rouged and powdered face rested smirkingly in the box below the cage.

“I arrest you all,” he said, but before he could complete the sentence, the red-headed man and the black-headed man turned and bolted from the tent. Mr. Gubb beat and jerked at the bars of his cage as frantically as Mr. Waldo Emerson Snooks had ever beaten and jerked, but he could not rend them apart.

“Get those two fellers,” Mr. Gubb shouted to Mr. Hoxie, and the strong man ran from the tent.

“What’s this about arrest?” asked Mr. Dorgan.

“I arrest this whole side-show,” said Mr. Gubb, pressing his face between the bars of the cage, “for the murder of that poor, gentle, harmless man now a dead corpse into that blue box there–Mr. Winterberry by name, but called by you by the alias of the ‘Pet.'”

“Winterberry?” exclaimed Mr. Dorgan. “That Winterberry? That ain’t Winterberry! That’s a stone man, a made-to-order concrete man, with hollow tile stomach and reinforced concrete arms and legs. I had him made to order.”

“The criminal mind is well equipped with explanations for use in time of stress,” said Mr. Gubb. “Lesson Six of the Correspondence School of Deteckating warns the deteckative against explanations of murderers when confronted by the victim. I demand an autopsy onto Mr. Winterberry.”

“Autopsy!” exclaimed Mr. Dorgan. “I’ll autopsy him for you!”

He grasped one of the Pet’s hands and wrenched off one concrete arm. He struck the head with a tent stake and shattered it into crumbling concrete. He jerked the Roman tunic from the body and disclosed the hollow tile stomach.

“Hello!” he said, lifting a rag-wrapped parcel from the interior of the Pet. “What’s this?”

When unwrapped it proved to be two dozen silver forks and spoons and a good-sized silver trophy cup.

“‘Riverbank Country Club, Duffers’ Golf Trophy, 1909?'” Mr. Dorgan read. “‘Won by Jonas Medderbrook.’ How did that get there?”

“Jonas Medderbrook,” said Mr. Gubb, “is a man of my own local town.”

“He is, is he?” said Mr. Dorgan. “And what’s your name?”

“Gubb,” said the detective. “Philo Gubb, Esquire, deteckative and paper-hanger, Riverbank, Iowa.”

“Then this is for you,” said Mr. Dorgan, and he handed the telegram to Mr. Gubb. The detective opened it and read:–

Gubb,

Care of Circus,

Bardville, Ia.

My house robbed circus night. Golf cup gone. Game now
rotten: never win another. Five hundred dollars reward for
return to me.

JONAS MEDDERBROOK

“You didn’t actually come here to find Mr. Winterberry, did you?” asked Syrilla.

Mr. Gubb folded the telegram, raised his matted hair, and tucked the telegram between it and his own hair for safe-keeping.

“When a deteckative starts out to detect,” he said calmly, “sometimes he detects one thing and sometimes he detects another. That cup is one of the things I deteckated to-day. And now, if all are willing, I’ll step outside and get my pants on. I’ll feel better.”

“And you’ll look better,” said Mr. Dorgan. “You couldn’t look worse.”

“In the course of the deteckative career,” said Mr. Gubb, “a gent has to look a lot of different ways, and I thank you for the compliment. The art of disguising the human physiology is difficult. This disguise is but one of many I am frequently called upon to assume.”

“Well, if any more are like this one,” said Mr. Dorgan with sincerity, “I’m glad I’m not a detective.”

Syrilla, however, heaved her several hundred pounds of bosom and cast her eyes toward Mr. Gubb.

“I think detectives are lovely in any disguise,” she said, and Mr. Gubb’s heart beat wildly.