ross the river. The search for the pirate vessel was
therefore conducted below the town, but most unsuccessfully.

Mr. Gubb, in the three weeks during which the search went on,
exhausted all his disguises and every page of the twelve lessons of
the Rising Sun Detective Agency's Correspondence School of Detecting.
He was in a condition bordering on despair. Each day he donned a
disguise and visited the barn, and saw nothing but scenery and more
scenery. He had reached a point where detective skill seemed to fail,
and where he feared he might have to go openly to Greasy and ask him
whether he was the pirate, or at least go to Maggie and ask her where
she had obtained the scarf-pin and the raisins. And that would not
have been detecting. Nothing like it was mentioned in the twelve
lessons.

A reward of One Hundred Dollars (rewards are always in capital
letters) had been offered by the Business Men's Association for the
capture of the pirate craft, but no one seemed likely to earn the
reward.

"Say, honest!" said Greasy, "if my boat was workin' I'd go out alone
in her and cop off them hundred dollars. Youse is a detective, Gubb;
why don't youse get to work and grab them dollars?"

"Your boat is not into a workable condition?" asked Philo Gubb.

"She's all but that," said Greasy. "She's hauled up on the levee,
rottin' like a tomato. I tried to sell her to Muller, the grocery
feller where Mag gets them raisins you liked, and I tried to trade her
for a ring to Calloway, the jewelry man what Mag got my opal scarf-pin
of, but I can't get rid of her nohow. If I had her workin' I'd find
them pirates or I'd know why."

"I have remembered the thought of something; I've got to go downtown,"
said Mr. Gubb, and he left Greasy and went to question Mr. Muller and
Mr. Calloway. The one admitted selling Mag the raisins, and the other
the pin, and thus two perfectly good clues went bad. Mr. Gubb turned
toward Fifth Street, when Billy Getz caught him by the arm.

"Come on and hunt pirates," he said. "The good cruiser Haddon P.
Rogers is going to hit a new trail--up-river this time. Come on
along."

Billy Getz escorted him aboard the Haddon P. Rogers and led him
straight to the Sheriff on the upper deck.

"Sheriff," he said, "we've got 'em now! This time we've got 'em sure.
Here's Gubb, the famous P. Gubb, detective, and after many
solicitations he has consented to accompany us. We will have the
pirate craft ere we return. P. Gubb