ned my eyes I could just say 'Ah-goo' and
'Da-da' and things like that, and I didn't know who I was or where I'd
been or anything. So some kind folks took me and sent me to
kinder-garden, and I started in to learn my A-B-C's and things like
that. I learned fast, and pretty soon I was in the high school, and
pretty soon I graduated, and the name I graduated under was Mike
Higgs, Higgs being the name of the family that adopted me."

"Mike Higgs?" repeated P. Gubb, trying to remember a celebrated
detective of that name.

"Yes," said Chi Foxy, "they named me Mike after the old gran'pa of the
family. He was a butcher, and they wanted me to be a butcher, but I
wanted to be a detective. So Gran'pa Higgs he lent me enough money to
go to London and take lessons in detecting from Shermlock Hollums, and
I did. He says to me, when I'd finished the course, 'Mike, I hate to
say it, but I can't call you a rival. You're so far ahead of me in
detective knowledge that I'm like a half-witted child beside you.'
That's what my old friend and teacher, Shermlock Hollums, says to me."

"That was exceedingly high praising from one so great," said P. Gubb.

"You bet it was!" said Chi Foxy, "So one day Shermlock says to me,
'Mike you're so good at this detecting work, why don't you try to
solve The Great Mystery?'

"'What's that?' I says.

"'Why, the greatest unsolved mystery of the world,' he says. 'The
mystery of the Riverbank, Iowa, miser.'

"So he told me what he knew about it," continued Chi Foxy, "and I set
to work. I come here to Riverbank to hunt up a clue, and I found just
one clue."

"What was it?" asked Philo Gubb.

"It was a speck of red pepper no bigger than the point of a pin,"
said Chi Foxy, "crushed into the carpet by the old miser's bed, where
he had been killed. I picked up the speck of red pepper and
microscoped it, and I saw that along one edge it was sort of brown,
where it had been burned a little."

"Have you got it now?" asked P. Gubb.

"Got it?" said Chi Foxy. "I should say not. While I was lookin' at it
a breeze come and blowed it away, and I never saw it again, but that
was enough for me. 'Red pepper,' I says, 'partly burned,' and I began
to tremble. 'Cause why? 'Cause I never was able to get smoking tobacco
strong enough to suit me, and to make it taste snappy I always put a
little red pepper in my pipe. I turned as white as a sheet. 'Red
pepper partly burned!' I says to myself. 'Nobody in the world but m