Philo Gubb, Correspondence-School Detective. Butler Ellis Parker

He looked up and down the street and then, with surprising agility, sprang across the street toward where Philo Gubb lay hid. With a wild cry, Philo Gubb fled. The pitchfork clattered at his feet, but missed him, and he had every advantage of long legs and speed. His heels clattered on the alley pave, and Joe Henry’s clattered farther and farther behind at each leap of the Correspondence School detective.

      “All right, you explain,” said Joe Henry sullenly.

      “Now you ain’t to breathe a word of this, cross-your-heart, hope-to-die, Philo Gubb. Nor you neither, Billy,” said Pie-Wagon Pete. “Listen! Me an’ Joe Henry ain’t what we let on to be. That’s why we don’t want to be follered. We’re detectives. Reg’lar detectives. From Chicago. An’ we’re hired by the Law an’ Order League to run down them gools. We’re right clost onto ’em now, ain’t we, Joe? An’ that’s why we don’t want to have no one botherin’ us. You wouldn’t want no one shadowin’ you when you was on a trail, would you, Gubby?”

      “No, I don’t feel like I would,” admitted Philo Gubb.

      “That’s right,” said Pie-Wagon Pete approvingly. “An’ when these here dynamite gools is the kind of murderers they is, an’ me and Joe is expectin’ to be murdered by them any minute, it makes Joe nervous to be follered an’ spied on, don’t it, Joe?”

      “You bet,” said Joe. “I’m liable to turn an’ maller up anybody I see sneakin’ on me. I can’t take chances.”

      “So you won’t interfere with Joe in the pursoot of his dooty no more, will you, Gubby?” said Pie-Wagon Pete.

      “I don’t aim to interfere with nobody, Peter,” said Philo Gubb. “I just want to pursoo my own dooty, as I see it. I won’t foller Mr. Henry no more, if he don’t like it; but I got a dooty to do, as a full graduate of the Rising Sun Deteckative Agency’s Correspondence School of Deteckating. I got to do my level best to catch them dynamiters myself.”

      Joe Henry frowned, and Pie-Wagon Pete shook his head.

      “If you’ll take my advice, Gubby,” he said, “you’ll drop that case right here an’ now. You don’t know what dangerous characters them gools are. If they start to get you – ”

      “You want to read that book – ‘The Pale Avengers’ – I just gave you,” said Billy Getz, “and then you’ll know more.”

      “Well, I won’t interfere with you, Mr. Henry,” said Philo Gubb. “But I’ll do my dooty as I see it. Fear don’t frighten me. The first words in Lesson One is these: ‘The deteckative must be a man devoid of fear.’ I can’t go back on that. If them gools want to kill me, I can’t object. Deteckating is a dangerous employment, and I know it.”

      He went out and closed the door.

      “There,” said Pie-Wagon Pete. “Ain’t that better than beatin’ him up?”

      “Maybe,” said Joe Henry grudgingly. “Chances are – he’s such a dummy – he’ll go right ahead follerin’ me. He needs a good scare thrown into him.”

      Billy Getz slid from his stool and ran his hands deep into his pockets, jingling a few coins and a bunch of keys.

      “Want me to scare him?” he asked pleasantly.

      “Say! You can do it, too!” said Joe Henry eagerly. “You’re the feller that can kid him to death. Go ahead. If you do, I’ll give you a case of Six Star. Ain’t that so, Pete?”

      “Absolutely,” said Pie-Wagon.

      “That’s a bet,” said Billy Getz pleasantly. “Leave it to the Kidders.”

      Philo Gubb went straight to his room at the Widow Murphy’s, and having taken off his shoes and coat, leaned back in his chair with his feet on the bed, and opened “The Pale Avengers.” He had never before read a dime novel, and this opened a new world to him. He read breathlessly. The style of the story was somewhat like this: —

      The picture on the wall swung aside and Detective Brown stared into the muzzles of two revolvers and the sharp eyes of the youngest of the Pale Avengers. A thrill of horror swept through the detective. He felt his doom was at hand. But he did not cringe.

      “Your time has come!” said the Avenger.

      “Be not too sure,” said Detective Brown haughtily.

      “Are you ready to die?”

      “Ever ready!”

      The detective extended his hand toward the table, on which his revolver lay. A cruel laugh greeted him. It was the last human voice he was to hear. As if by magic the floor under his feet gave way. Down, down, down, a thousand feet he was precipitated. He tried to grasp the well-like walls of masonry, but in vain. Nothing could stay him. As he plunged into the deep water of the oubliette a fiendish laugh echoed in his ears. The Pale Avengers had destroyed one more of their adversaries.

      Until he read this thrilling tale, Philo Gubb had not guessed the fiendishness of malefactors when brought to bay, and yet here it was in black and white. The oubliette – a dark, dank dungeon hidden beneath the ground – was a favorite method of killing detectives, it seemed. Generally speaking, the oubliette seemed to be the prevailing fashion in vengeful murder. Sometimes the bed sank into the oubliette; sometimes the floor gave way and cast the victim into the oubliette; sometimes the whole room sank slowly into the oubliette; but death for the victim always lurked in the pit.

      Before getting into bed Philo Gubb examined the walls, the floor, and the ceiling of his room. They seemed safe and secure, but twice during the night he awoke with a cry, imagining himself sinking through the floor.

      Three nights later, as Philo Gubb stood in the dark doorway of the Willcox Building waiting to pick up any suspicious character, Billy Getz slipped in beside him and drew him hastily to the back of the entry.

      “Hush! Not a word!” he whispered. “Did you see a man in the window across the street? The third window on the top floor?”

      “No,” whispered Philo Gubb. “Was – was there one?”

      “With a rifle!” whispered Billy Getz. “Ready to pick you off. Come! It is suicide for you to try to go out the front way now. Follow me; I have news for you. Step quietly!”

      He led the paper-hanger through the back corridor to the open air and up the outside back stairs to the third floor and into the building. He tapped lightly on a door and it was opened the merest crack.

      “Friends,” whispered Billy Getz, and the door opened wide and admitted them.

      The room was the club-room of the Kidders, where they gathered night after night to play cards and drink illicit whiskey. Green shades over which were hung heavy curtains protected the windows. A large, round table stood in the middle of the floor under the gas-lights; a couch was in one corner of the room; and these, with the chairs and a formless heap in a far corner, over which a couch-cover was thrown, constituted all the furniture, except for the iron cuspidors. Here the young fellows came for their sport, feeling safe from intrusion, for the possession of whiskey was against the law. There was a fine of five hundred dollars – one half to the informer – for the misdemeanor of having whiskey in one’s possession, but the Kidders had no fear. They knew each other.

      For the moment the cards were put away and the couch-cover hid the four cases of Six Star that represented the club’s stock of liquor. The five young men already in the room were sitting around the table.

      “Sit down, Detective Gubb,” said Billy Getz. “Here we are safe. Here we may talk freely. And we have something big to talk to-night.”

      Philo Gubb moved a chair to the table. He had to push one of the cuspidors aside to make room, and as he pushed it with his foot he saw an oblong of paper lying in it among the sand and cigar stubs. It was a Six Star whiskey label. He turned his head from it with his bird-like twist of the neck and let his eyes rest on Billy Getz.

      “We know who dynamited those houses!” said Billy Getz suddenly. “Do you know Jack Harburger?”

      “No,”