Philo Gubb

Philo Gubb by Ellis Parker Butler

Philo Gubb, a tall, gaunt, gentle-natured paper-hanger of Riverbank, Iowa, is a correspondence-school student of the Rising Sun Detective Agency, learning detection entirely by mail while continuing his paper-hanging trade. His roommate, plump little Roscoe Critz, reveals himself as an aspiring confidence man armed with a gold-brick, shell game, and a cheap manual called "The Complete Con' Man," and enlists Gubb and Gubb's friend Pie-Wagon Pete as practice "cappers." Pete, recognizing Critz as the notorious swindler "the Hard-Boiled Egg," coaches Gubb to stage a real arrest during the mock gold-brick sale; Gubb collects his star and diploma soon after, and the "Riverbank Eagle" hails him as a rising detective. Investigating the unsolved dynamite bombings of Riverbank's prohibitionists, Gubb also drifts into circus intrigue when the World's Monster Combined Shows arrives. He falls hopelessly in love with Syrilla, the enormous Fat Lady. A Social Service League mix-up sends Gubb after the vanished Field Secretary Winterberry, who had joined the show disguised as the Tasmanian Wild Man before fleeing (aided by Gubb's spare overalls) after quarreling with the Strong Man. Believing manager Dorgan's grotesque "Petrified Man" (the Pet) is Winterberry's corpse, Gubb infiltrates the side-show in Wild Man disguise, only to discover the Pet is concrete—stuffed inside it, however, is Jonas Medderbrook's stolen golf trophy, earning Gubb a reward. Noting tattooed eagle's claws on Syrilla's arm, Gubb deduces she is Medderbrook's long-lost daughter, born Jones; the tattoo artist Schreckenheim, still owed money by Medderbrook, confirms the connection (and briefly re-steals the golf cup before being caught). Medderbrook, once a circus contortionist himself, joyfully reclaims Syrilla and rewards Gubb with $10,000 worth of "Utterly Hopeless Gold-Mine" stock, on credit, leaving Gubb deeply and increasingly indebted to his prospective father-in-law as he tries to pay it off. Syrilla, still under contract to Dorgan, begins a comic slimming campaign via a string of telegrams reporting each abandoned food group, addressed fondly to "Gubby." Back in Riverbank, town prankster Billy Getz and his "Kidders" club repeatedly gull Gubb: lending him a lurid dime novel ("The Pale Avengers"), staging a fake shadowing scare, and finally recruiting him to "capture" bootlegger Jack Harburger at Derlingport's Harburger House. There Gubb is lured into what he believes is a death-trap elevator ("oubliette") but escapes, discovers concealed liquor caches, and stumbles onto real criminals: he traps two dynamite-bombing confederates in a freight car after overhearing their confession, resulting in arrests of the actual dynamiters and several bootleggers, and payment of reward money that he again funnels toward his Medderbrook debt. A separate comic thread involves an "un-burglary" epidemic—houses entered only to have solid silver spoons left behind—which draws in Aunt Martha Turner, her nephew reporter "Snooks" Turner (jailed after a beating by City Attorney Mullen), Nan Kilfillan, Slippery Williams, and multiple parties each bribing Gubb to protect their interests in a beer-smuggling scandal tied to the Temperance League. Gubb collects money from nearly everyone involved without resolving the case outright, though Snooks is eventually freed. Hired to find a chicken thief for a trifling reward, Gubb stakes out a brick-kiln and instead overhears two tramps, Sandlot and Wixy, confessing to having murdered and drowned an accomplice called "the Chicken" over stolen loot. Gubb captures the drunken Wixy, who—mistaking him for an underworld enforcer sent by "Mother Smith"—pays him $500 in hush money. At the town's Carnival, Gubb serves as Official Detective disguised as the wizard "Ali Baba," selling fortune-telling slips from a magic tube. He recovers Mrs. Phillipetti's stolen turban and its priceless ruby, the "Dragon's Eye," after a bribed accomplice slips him the jewel, earning another reward that he again turns over to Medderbrook, whose debt calculations (via invented "cumulative dividends") keep Gubb perpetually owing more rather than less. Wealthy miser Uncle Gabriel Hostetter then hires Gubb cheaply to investigate his own supposed slow "murder" by pea-shooter, actually a scheme to get free surveillance of his son-in-law Farrington Pierce for divorce evidence; Gubb, overhearing loafers gossip about the true purpose, angrily abandons the case—only to learn shortly after that Hostetter has been shot dead for real. The narrative then opens a new case: Gubb, reading of a wealthy Chicago man, Custer Master, who vanished strangely (fleeing a swimming pool in apparent horror after inheriting $450,000 under mysterious conditions), is visited late at night by laundryman Billy Gribble and a self-styled detective who repeatedly changes his own name, both bearing Master's abandoned suitcase and parcels and hoping to split a reward with Gubb for finding the missing man in Riverbank. The text breaks off as this new case is being proposed to Gubb.

By Ellis Parker Butler · First published 1913 · Genre: Mystery, Humor, Crime · 17 chapters · 105,807 words

First lines

Walking close along the wall, to avoid the creaking floor boards, Philo Gubb, paper-hanger and student of the Rising Sun Detective Agency's Correspondence School of Detecting, tiptoed to the door of the bedroom he shared with the mysterious Mr. Critz. In appearance Mr. Gubb was tall and gaunt, reminding one of a modern Don Quixote or a human flamingo; by nature Mr. Gubb was the gentlest and most simple-minded of men. Now, bending his long, angular body almost double, he placed his eye to a crack in the door panel and stared into the room. Within, just out of the limited area of Mr. Gubb's vision, Roscoe Critz paused in his work and listened carefully. He heard the sharp whistle of Mr. Gubb's breath as it cut against the sharp edge of the crack in the panel, and he knew he was being spied upon. He placed his chubby hands on his knees and smiled at the door, while a red flush of triumph spread over his face.

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Humor · Satire · Fiction · American Literature · Early 20th Century · Comedy · Social Commentary · Rural Life · Small Town · Quirky Characters · Amateur Detective · Mystery

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