“It is a remarkable wonder it didn’t kill you to death,” said P. Gubb.
“Ain’t it?” said Chi Foxy. “But it did worse than kill me. It knocked my senses out of me. When I come to I didn’t know what had happened. I didn’t remember a thing out of my past—not a thing. I was like a newborn babe. I didn’t have an idea or a memory left in me. When they picked me up and I opened my eyes I could just say ‘Ah-goo’ and ‘Da-da’ and things like that, and I didn’t know who I was or where I’d been or anything. So some kind folks took me and sent me to kinder-garden, and I started in to learn my A-B-C’s and things like that. I learned fast, and pretty soon I was in the high school, and pretty soon I graduated, and the name I graduated under was Mike Higgs, Higgs being the name of the family that adopted me.”
“Mike Higgs?” repeated P. Gubb, trying to remember a celebrated detective of that name.
“Yes,” said Chi Foxy, “they named me Mike after the old gran’pa of the family. He was a butcher, and they wanted me to be a butcher, but I wanted to be a detective. So Gran’pa Higgs he lent me enough money to go to London and take lessons in detecting from Shermlock Hollums, and I did. He says to me, when I’d finished the course, ‘Mike, I hate to say it, but I can’t call you a rival. You’re so far ahead of me in detective knowledge that I’m like a half-witted child beside you.’ That’s what my old friend and teacher, Shermlock Hollums, says to me.”
“That was exceedingly high praising from one so great,” said P. Gubb.
“You bet it was!” said Chi Foxy, “So one day Shermlock says to me, ‘Mike you’re so good at this detecting work, why don’t you try to solve The Great Mystery?’
“‘What’s that?’ I says.
“‘Why, the greatest unsolved mystery of the world,’ he says. ‘The mystery of the Riverbank, Iowa, miser.’
“So he told me what he knew about it,” continued Chi Foxy, “and I set to work. I come here to Riverbank to hunt up a clue, and I found just one clue.”