“Hungry?” said Chi Foxy. “I’m so hungry that I feel like a living skeleton. I’m so hungry that a square meal would make me feel like Syrilla, that Fat Lady I seen at Derlingport a couple of days ago.”
“What’s that you remarked about?” asked Mr. Gubb, pinning Chi Foxy with his eye. “Did I understand the meaning of what you said was that you saw a Fat Lady named Syrilla?”
“At Derlingport,” said Chi Foxy. “A swell guy named Medderbrook give me a meal and a ticket to the big show. It was a performance de luxe, so to say. Special attraction, bo. You’d have laughed your head off. This here Syrilla Fat Lady got married to the Living Skeleton in the middle ring, and she had the Snake Charmer for a bridesmaid. Say! you’d have laughed—”
But Mr. Gubb did not laugh. He never laughed again.
PHILO GUBB’S GREATEST CASE
Philo Gubb, wrapped in his bathrobe, went to the door of the room that was the headquarters of his business of paper-hanging and decorating as well as the office of his detective business, and opened the door a crack. It was still early in the morning, but Mr. Gubb was a modest man, and, lest any one should see him in his scanty attire, he peered through the crack of the door before he stepped hastily into the hall and captured his copy of the “Riverbank Daily Eagle.” When he had secured the still damp newspaper, he returned to his cot bed and spread himself out to read comfortably.
It was a hot Iowa morning. Business was so slack that if Mr. Gubb had not taken out his set of eight varieties of false whiskers daily and brushed them carefully, the moths would have been able to devour them at leisure.