American Sherlocks by Nick Rennison (reading like a writer .TXT) 📕

‘In the first place,’ said Mr Bartman, ‘he didn’t sew it in with any corpse, because Hen Smitz wasn’t a corpse when he was sewed in that burlap, unless Wiggins drowned him first, for Dr Mortimer says Hen Smitz died of drowning; and in the second place, if you had a live man to sew in burlap, and had to hold him while you sewed him, you’d be liable to sew anything in with him.

‘My idea is that Wiggins and some of his crew jumped on Hen Smitz and threw him down, and some of them held him while the others sewed him in. My idea is that Wiggins got that electric-light bulb to replace one that had burned out, and that he met Hen Smitz and had words with him, and they clinched, and Hen Smitz grabbed the bulb, and then the others came, and they sewed him into the burlap and dumped him into the river.

‘So all you’ve got to do is to go out and tell that crowd that Wiggins did it and that you’ll let them know who helped him as soon as you find out. And you better do it before they break my windows.’

Detective Gubb turned and went out of the morgue. As he left the undertaker’s establishment the crowd gave a slight cheer, but Mr Gubb walked hurriedly toward the jail. He found Policeman O’Toole there and questioned him about the bulb; and O’Toole, proud to be the center of so large and interested a gathering of his fellow citizens, pulled the bulb from his pocket and handed it to Mr Gubb, while he repeated in more detail the facts given by Mr Bartman. Mr Gubb looked at the bulb.

‘I presume to suppose,’ he said, ‘that Mr Wiggins asked the stock-keeper for a new bulb to replace one that was burned out?’

‘You’re right,’ said O’Toole. ‘Why?’

‘For the reason that this bulb is a burned-out bulb,’ said Mr Gubb.

And so it was. The inner surface of the bulb was darkened slightly, and the filament of carbon was severed. O’Toole took the bulb and examined it curiously.

‘That’s odd, ain’t it?’ he said.

‘It might so seem to the non-deteckative mind,’ said Mr Gubb, ‘but to the deteckative mind, nothing is odd.’

‘No, no, this ain’t so odd, either,’ said O’Toole, ‘for whether Hen Smitz grabbed the bulb before Wiggins changed the new one for the old one, or after he changed it, don’t make so much difference, when you come to think of it.’

‘To the deteckative mind,’ said Mr Gubb, ‘it makes the difference that this ain’t the bulb you thought it was, and hence consequently it ain’t the bulb Mister Wiggins got from the stock-keeper.’

****

Mr Gubb started away. The crowd followed him. He did not go in search of the original bulb at once. He returned first to his room, where he changed his undertaker disguise for Number Six, that of a blue woolen-shirted laboring-man with a long brown beard. Then he led the way back to the packing house.

Again the crowd was halted at the gate, but again P Gubb passed inside, and he found the stock-keeper eating his luncheon out of a tin pail. The stock-keeper was perfectly willing to talk.

‘It was like this,’ said the stock-keeper. ‘We’ve been working overtime in some departments down here, and Wiggins and his crew had to work overtime the night Hen Smitz was murdered. Hen and Wiggins was at outs, or anyway I heard Hen tell Wiggins he’d better be hunting another job because he wouldn’t have this one long, and Wiggins told Hen that if he lost his job he’d murder him – Wiggins would murder Hen, that is. I didn’t think it was much of anything but loose talk at the time. But Hen was working overtime too. He’d been working nights up in that little room of his on the second floor for quite some time, and this night Wiggins come to me and he says Hen had asked him for a fresh thirty-two-candle-power bulb. So I give it to Wiggins, and then I went home. And, come to find out, Wiggins sewed that bulb up with Hen.’

‘Perhaps maybe you have sack-needles like this into your stockroom,’ said P Gubb, producing the needle Long Sam had given him. The stock-keeper took the needle and examined it carefully.

‘Never had any like that,’ he said.

‘Now, if,’ said Philo Gubb – ‘if the bulb that was sewed up into the burlap with Henry Smitz wasn’t a new bulb, and if Mr Wiggins had given the new bulb to Henry, and if Henry had changed the new bulb for an old one, where would he have changed it at?’

‘Up in his room, where he was always tinkering at that machine of his,’ said the stock-keeper.

‘Could I have the pleasure of taking a look into that there room for a moment of time?’ asked Mr Gubb.

The stock-keeper arose, returned the remnants of his luncheon to his dinner-pail and led the way up the stairs. He opened the door of the room Henry Smitz had used as a workroom, and P Gubb walked in. The room was in some confusion, but, except in one or two particulars, no more than a workroom is apt to be. A rather cumbrous machine – the invention on which Henry Smitz had been working – stood as the murdered man had left it, all its levers, wheels, arms, and cogs intact. A chair, tipped over, lay on the floor. A roll of burlap stood on a roller by the machine. Looking up, Mr Gubb saw, on the ceiling, the lighting fixture of the room, and in it was a clean, shining thirty-two-candle-power bulb. Where another similar bulb might have been in the other socket was a plug from which an insulated wire, evidently to