“Don’t I know that?” said Mr. Critz rather impatiently. “Same as you’ve got to practice snoopin’, Mr. Gubb. Maybe you thought I didn’t know you was snoopin’ after me wherever I went last night.”
“Did you?” asked Mr. Gubb, with surprise plainly written on his face.
“I seen you every moment from nine p. m. till eleven!” said Mr. Critz. “I didn’t like it, neither.”
“I didn’t think to annoy you,” apologized Mr. Gubb. “I was practicin’ Lesson Four. You wasn’t supposed to know I was there at all.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” said Mr. Critz. “’Twas all right last night, for I didn’t have nothin’ important on hand, but if I’d been workin’ up a con’ game, the feller I was after would have thought it mighty strange to see a man follerin’ me everywhere like that. If you went about it quiet and unobtrusive, I wouldn’t mind; but if I’d had a customer on hand and he’d seen you it would make him nervous. He’d think there was a – a crazy man follerin’ us.”
“I was just practicin’,” apologized Mr. Gubb. “It won’t be so bad when I get the hang of it. We all got to be beginners sometime.”
“I guess so,” said Mr. Critz, rearranging the shells and the little rubber pea. “Well, I put the pea down like this, and I dare you to bet which shell she’s goin’ to be under, and you don’t bet, see? So I put the shells down, and you’re willin’ to bet you see me put the first shell over the pea like this. So you keep your eye on that shell, and I move the shells around like this – ”
“She’s under the same shell,” said Mr. Gubb.
“Well, yes, she is,” said Mr. Critz placidly, “but she hadn’t ought to be. By rights she ought to sort of ooze out from under whilst I’m movin’ the shells around, and I’d ought to sort of catch her in between my fingers and hold her there so you don’t see her. Then when you say which shell she’s under, she ain’t under any shell; she’s between my fingers. So when you put down your money I tell you to pick up that shell and there ain’t anything under it. And before you can pick up the other shells I pick one up, and let the pea fall on the stand like it had been under that shell all the time. That’s the game, only up to now I ain’t got the hang of it. She won’t ooze out from under, and she won’t stick between my fingers, and when she does stick, she won’t drop at the right time.”
“Except for that, you’ve got her all right, have you?” asked Mr. Gubb.
“Except for that,” said Mr. Critz; “and I’d have that, only my fingers are stubby.”
“What was it you thought of having me do if I wasn’t a deteckative?” asked Mr. Gubb.
“The work you’d have to do would be capping work,” said Mr. Critz. “Capper – that’s the professional name for it. You’d guess which shell the ball was under – ”
“That would be easy, the way you do it now,” said Mr. Gubb.
“I told you I’d got to learn it better, didn’t I?” asked Mr. Critz impatiently. “You’d be capper, and you’d guess which shell the pea was under. No matter which you guessed, I’d leave it under that one, so’d you’d win, and you’d win ten dollars every time you bet – but not for keeps. That’s why I’ve got to have an honest capper.”
“I can see that,” said Mr. Gubb; “but what’s the use lettin’ me win it if I’ve got to bring it back?”
“That starts the boobs bettin’,” said Mr. Critz. “The boobs see how you look to be winnin’, and they want to win too. But they don’t. When they bet, I win.”
“That ain’t a square game,” said Mr. Gubb seriously, “is it?”
“A crook ain’t expected to be square,” said Mr. Critz. “It stands to reason, if a crook wants to be a crook, he’s got to be crooked, ain’t he?”
“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Gubb. “I hadn’t looked at it that way.”
“As far as I can see,” said Mr. Critz, “the more I know how a detective acts, the better off I’ll be when I start in doin’ real business. Ain’t that so? I guess, till I get the hang of things better, I’ll stay right here.”
“I’m glad to hear you say so, Mr. Critz,” said Mr. Gubb with relief. “I like you, and I like your looks, and there’s no tellin’ who I might get for a roommate next time. I might get some one that wasn’t honest.”
So it was agreed, and Mr. Critz stood over the washstand and manipulated the little rubber pea and the three shells, while Mr. Gubb sat on the edge of the bed and studied Lesson Eleven of the “Rising Sun Detective Agency’s Correspondence School of Detecting.”
When, presently, Mr. Critz learned to work the little pea neatly, he urged Mr. Gubb to take the part of capper, and each time Mr. Gubb won he gave him a five-dollar bill. Then Mr. Gubb posed as a “boob” and Mr. Critz won all the money back again, beaming over his spectacle rims, and chuckling again and again until he burst into a fit of coughing that made him red in the face, and did not cease until he had taken a big drink of water out of the wash-pitcher. Never had he seemed more like a kindly old gentleman from behind the candy counter of a small village. He hung over the washstand, manipulating the little rubber pea as if fascinated.
“Ain’t it curyus how a feller catches onto a thing like that all to once?” he said after a while. “If it hadn’t been that I was so anxious, I might have fooled with that for weeks and weeks and not got anywheres with it. I do wisht you could be my capper a while anyway, until I could get one.”
“I need all my time to study,” said Mr. Gubb. “It ain’t easy to learn deteckating by mail.”
“Pshaw, now!” said Mr. Critz. “I’m real sorry! Maybe if I was to pay you for your time and trouble five dollars a night? How say?”
Mr. Gubb considered. “Well, I dunno!” he said slowly. “I sort of hate to take money for doin’ a favor like that.”
“Now, there ain’t no need to feel that way,” said Mr. Critz. “Your time’s wuth somethin’ to me – it’s wuth a lot to me to get the hang of this gold-brick game. Once I get the hang of it, it won’t be no trouble for me to sell gold-bricks like this one for all the way from a thousand dollars up. I paid fifteen hundred for this one myself, and got it cheap. That’s a good profit, for this brick ain’t wuth a cent over one hundred dollars, and I know, for I took it to the bank after I bought it, and that’s what they was willin’ to pay me for it. So it’s easy wuth a few dollars for me to have help whilst I’m learnin’. I can easy afford to pay you a few dollars, and to pay a friend of yours the same.”
“Well, now,” said Mr. Gubb, “I don’t know but what I might as well make a little that way as any other. I got a friend – ” He stopped short. “You don’t aim to sell the gold-brick to him, do you?”
Mr. Critz’s eyes opened wide behind their spectacles.
“Land’s sakes, no!” he said.
“Well, I got a friend may be willing to help out,” said Mr. Gubb. “What’d he have to do?”
“You or him,” said Mr. Critz, “would be the ‘come-on,’ and pretend to buy the brick. And you or him would pretend to help me to sell it. Maybe you better have the brick, because you can look stupid, and the feller that’s got the brick has got to look that.”
“I can look anyway a’most,” said Mr. Gubb with pride.
“Do tell!” said Mr. Critz, and so it was arranged that the first rehearsal of the gold-brick game should take place the next evening, but as Mr. Gubb turned away Mr. Critz deftly slipped something into the student detective’s coat pocket.
It was toward noon the next