As he helped Wixy to a sitting position, he kept his pistol against the fellow's head.

"Now, then," said Philo Gubb, when he had arranged his captive to suit his taste, "what you got to say?"

"I got to say I never done what you think I done, whatever it is,"

said Wixy. "I don't know what it is, but I never done it. Some other feller done it."

"That don't bother me none," said Philo Gubb. "If you didn't do it, I don't know who did. Just about the best thing you can do is to account for the chicken and pay my expenses of getting you, and the quicker you do it the better off you'll be."

Pale as Wixy was, he turned still paler when Philo Gubb mentioned the chicken.

"I never killed the Chicken!" he almost shouted. "I never did it!"

"I don't care whether you killed the chicken or not," said Philo Gubb calmly. "The chicken is gone, and I reckon that's the end of the chicken. But Mrs. Smith has got to be paid."

"Did she send you?" asked Wixy, trembling. "Did Mother Smith put you onto me?"

"She did so," said the Correspondence School detective. "And you can pay up or go to jail. How'd you like that?"

Wixy studied the tall detective.

"Look here," he said. "S'pose I give you fifty and we call it square."

He meant fifty dollars.

"Maybe that would satisfy Mrs. Smith," said Philo Gubb, thinking of fifty cents, "but it don't satisfy me. My time's valuable and it's got to be paid for. Ten times fifty ain't a bit too much, and if it had took longer to catch you I'd have asked more. If you want to give that much, all right. And if you don't, all right too."

Wixy studied the face of Philo Gubb carefully. There was no sign of mercy in the bird-like face of the paper-hanger detective. Indeed, his face was severe. It was relentless in its sternness. Five dollars was little enough to ask for two nights of first-cla.s.s Correspondence School detective work. Rather than take less he would lead the chicken thief to jail. And Wixy, with his third, and half of the Chicken's third, of the proceeds of the criminal job that had led to the death of the Chicken, knowing the relentlessness of Mother Smith, that female f.a.gin of Chicago, considered that he would be doing well to purchase his freedom for five hundred dollars.

"All right, pal," he said suddenly. "You're on. It's a bet. Here you are."

He slipped his hand into his pocket and drew out a great roll of money. With the muzzle of Philo Gubb's pistol hovering just out of reach before him, he counted out five crisp one hundred dollar bills.

He held them out with a sickly grin. Philo Gubb took them and looked at them, puzzled.

"What's this for?" he asked, and Wixy suddenly blazed forth in anger.

"Now, don't come any of that!" he cried. "A bargain is a bargain.

Don't you come a-pretendin' you didn't say you'd take five hundred, and try to get more out of me! I won't give you no more--I won't! You can jug me, if you want to. You can't prove nothin' on me, and you know it. Have you found the body of the Chicken? Well, you got to have the corpus what-you-call-it, ain't you? Huh? Ain't five hundred enough? I bet the Chicken never cost Mother Smith more than a hundred and fifty--"

"I was only thinkin'--" began Philo Gubb.

"Don't think, then," said Wixy.

"Five hundred dollars seemed too--" Philo began again.

"It's all you'll get, if I hang for it," said Wixy firmly. "You can give Mother Smith what you want, and keep what you want. That's all you'll get."

Philo Gubb could not understand it. He tried to, but he could not understand it at all. And then suddenly a great light dawned in his brain. There was something this chicken thief knew that he and Mrs.

Smith did not know. The stolen chicken must have been of some rare and much-sought strain. So it was all right. The thief was paying what the chicken was worth, and not what Mrs. Smith thought it was worth in her ignorance. He slipped the money into his pocket.

"All right," he said. "I'm satisfied if you are. The chicken was a fancy bird, ain't it so?"

"The Chicken was a tough old rooster, that's what he was," said Wixy, staggering to his feet.

"I thought he was a hen," said Philo Gubb. "Mrs. Smith said he was a hen."

Wixy laughed a sickly laugh.

"That ain't much of a joke. That's why everybody called him Chicken, because his first name was Hen."

Philo Gubb's mouth fell open. He was convinced now that he had to do with an insane man. Wixy moved toward the open drying-floor.

"Well, so 'long, pard," he said to Philo Gubb. "Give my regards to Mother Smith. And say," he added, "if you see Sal, don't let her know what happened to the Chicken. Don't say anybody made away with the Chicken, see? Tell Sal the Chicken flew the coop himself, see?"

"Who is Sal?" asked Philo Gubb.

"You ask Mother Smith," said Wixy. "She'll tell you." And he went out into the dark. Philo Gubb heard him shuffle across the drying-floor, and when the sound had died away in the distance he put up his revolver.

"Five hundred dollars!" he said, and he routed Mrs. Smith out of bed.

He did not tell her the amount of reward he had made the chicken thief pay. He asked her what the most expensive chicken in the world might be worth, and she reluctantly accepted ten dollars as being far too much. Then he asked her who Sal was.

"Sal?" queried Mrs. Smith.

"The chicken thief declared the statement that you would know," said Mr. Gubb. "He said to tell her--"

"Well, Mr. Gubb," said Mrs. Smith tartly, "I don't know any Sal, and if I did I wouldn't carry messages to her for a chicken thief, and it is past midnight, and the draught on my bare feet is giving me my death of cold, and if you think this is a pink tea for me to stand around and hold fool conversation at, I don't!"

And she slammed the door.

THE DRAGON'S EYE

It was with great pleasure that Mr. Gubb carried four hundred and ninety dollars to Mr. Medderbrook, and his intended father-in-law received him quite graciously.

"This is more like it, Gubb," he said. "Keep the money coming right along and you'll find I'm a good friend and a faithful one."

"I aim so to do to the best of my ability," said Mr. Gubb, delighted to find Mr. Medderbrook in a good humor. "I hope to get the eleven thousand two hundred and sixty dollars I owe you paid up--"

"Where do you get that?" asked Mr. Medderbrook. "You owe me twelve thousand dollars, Gubb."

"It was eleven thousand seven hundred and fifty," said Mr. Gubb, "and this here payment of four hundred and ninety--"

"Ah!" said Mr. Medderbrook, "but the Utterly Hopeless Gold-Mine has declared a dividend--"

"But," ventured Mr. Gubb timidly, "I thought dividends was money that came to the owner of the stock."

"Often so," said Mr. Medderbrook. "I may say, not infrequently so. But in this case it was a compound ten per cent reversible dividend, c.u.mulative and retroactive, payable to prior owners of the stock, on account of the second mortgage debenture lien. In such a case," he explained, "unless the priority is waived by the party of the first part, you have to pay it to me."