“We’d best go up there immediately first before anything else,” said Philo Gubb, starting to remove his paper-hanger’s apron. “Putting off clues until sometime else is against Paragraph Four, Lesson One. If you come up there with me—”
“Look here,” said Chi Foxy, “will you buy me a feed on the way up if I go with you?”
“Quite certainly sure,” said P. Gubb, and so it was agreed.
The paper-hanger detective and the criminal-detective stopped at Hank’s restaurant and Chi Foxy ate a heavy meal, and then led the way to the tool-house, and pointed over the wire fence to the spot where the bones of the murdered miser were supposed to repose.
“Right there!” he said, but when P. Gubb had climbed the fence and had turned to look for Chi Foxy, the late detective-criminal was gone. Mr. Gubb’s face turned red, but as he hung his head in shame he noticed that the ground at his feet had lately been spaded. He stooped to look at it, and then walked to the weather-beaten house and knocked. A lanky, loose-jointed man came to the door, and a woman peered at Mr. Gubb from behind the man.
“I hope you’ll pardon,” said Mr. Gubb politely, “but my name is P. Gubb, deteckative and paper-hanger, and I’m looking up a case. Might I trouble you for the loan of a spade or shovel?”
“What you want with it?” asked the man gruffly.
“To dig,” said Mr. Gubb.
The man reluctantly handed Mr. Gubb a spade on which there were still traces of soft, sandy soil. Mr. Gubb walked to the rear of the yard and jabbed the spade into the soft soil. It struck something hard. In a moment or two Mr. Gubb had the evidences of crime completely uncovered. There were bones buried there—many bones. Mr. Gubb looked up and wiped his brow. Then he looked down at the bones. One was a skull. Mr. Gubb stared at it. It was indeed a skull, but it was the skull of a calf. All the bones were calf bones—not bones of the human calf, but bones of the veal calf. Mr. Gubb turned his head and saw the long lanky man approaching.
“All right,” said the long, lanky man, “I give up. You’ve got me. I surrender. When a detective gets that close, a man hasn’t any chance. I own up. I did it.”