“Not necessarily,” I said, cautiously. “I’ve only worked for him for a short while, you know. But here’s someone you’ve been asking about. Detective Berrigan! Miss Patterson has been wanting to meet you.”
The detective turned, then doffed his hat and smiled. “My pleasure, miss.”
“My goodness, Mr. Berrigan,” she said. “May I ask what mysterious errand brings you onto a simple pleasure cruise? It must be something very unusual.”
“Nothing really unusual, miss,” said Berrigan. “Mr. Twain’s backers in New York think he ought to have a bodyguard, and I’m the fellow they sent.”
“But Mr. Cabot said you were a regular police detective, following a criminal from New York,” she said. “Isn’t that true?”
The detective looked at me through narrowed eyes. “He really shouldn’t have told you that, miss. I’ll ask you to promise not to repeat it; if the suspect were to learn that I’m this close to him, he might escape.”
“Oh, I promise!” said Miss Patterson.
“Have you narrowed down your list of suspects?” I asked.
“There are still some passengers I haven’t ruled out completely,” said Berrigan. “But something on the passenger list jogged a memory, and I’m trying to follow that line of inquiry as well. I can’t go into detail yet, of course. Wouldn’t want to arouse suspicion about somebody who might be innocent.”
“Well, this is fascinating,” said Miss Patterson. “Do promise to tell us all about it when you’ve captured your man—it is a man you’re after, isn’t it?”
“Sure, miss, and are you studying to be a detective yourself?” Berrigan laughed; then his expression turned more serious. “I suppose I can tell you that much, but I’m afraid I really shouldn’t talk any more about it. I’ve already told you more than I should have. Now that Mr. Cabot has tipped my hand, I’ll just have to depend on your discretion. Please don’t talk to anyone about it.”
“Certainly not!” she said fervently. “I won’t tell a soul!”
“Perhaps you can advise me,” I said. “Last night I was fool enough to play cards with that McPhee fellow, and he cheated me. Do I have any recourse with the law?”
“Well, that would be up to the local authorities, of course. How do you know he cheated you?”
I began to tell him about the bent corner on the winning card, but he raised his hand. “Say no more. That’s the oldest trick in the book. Most people are so embarrassed to fall for it that they never report it.”
“But how does he do it?” I demanded.
“Any of about three ways, but the easiest one is to bend the corner on the wrong card to begin with, and then exchange it for the right one when he shows it. Did McPhee turn it over with a hand that was holding another card?”
I tried to remember. “I think so. But I didn’t see him do anything!”
“You aren’t supposed to. McPhee’s probably been practicing that move for thirty years, and a dozen others just as hard to spot. If you’re asking my opinion, I’d advise you to forget about it, Mr. Cabot. The law can’t help you.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” I said. I had gotten myself into the game by forgetting the advice of older, more experienced heads; it might be time to start paying greater attention to them. “Still, there he sits at the card table, and cheating everyone who plays with him, for all I know.”
“If the captain won’t stop him, it’s not my job,” said Berrigan. “You’re talking to the wrong boy.”
“And what about the case you’re supposed to be investigating?” I demanded. “Have you eliminated McPhee as a suspect? Have you even questioned him?” I couldn’t stand the thought of his getting off scot-free.
“Don’t tell me how to do my job, Mr. Cabot. I’m following what I think is the most promising direction, and that’s all you need to know. As for you, I hope you’ll be more careful how many people you tell about this matter. If you’ll excuse me.” He turned and nodded. “Miss Patterson, my pleasure. . . . Could I possibly have seen you before—in New York, perhaps?”
“Oh, no,” she said, laughing. “I’ve never been east of Ohio.”
Berrigan smiled and said, “I suppose I must be mistaken, then. It would be hard to have seen a young lady as pretty as yourself and not remember her.” He bowed and took his leave.
When he’d left, she turned to me with an excited whisper. “My goodness! Is it really a murder case? He wouldn’t come this far from New York for anything less, would he?”
“I suppose I shouldn’t tell you, if he didn’t want to,” I said. Berrigan’s criticism stung; I felt that my interest in the case was legitimate, since it was my employer who was at risk. “But it is a very serious crime,” I said, “and the detective thinks the person who did it might be on this boat.”
“And that gambler, McPhee, is a suspect? I can’t believe he’d be a murderer, could you?” She leaned forward as if eager to hear my opinion. Someone, at least, recognized the value of my contribution.
“I don’t know if he did it or not,” I said, “but I wish the detective would take this business more seriously. He’s here on an important case, and he’s got no notion how to go about solving it.”
I turned to go to my cabin to get on with my duties, but Miss Patterson laid a soft hand on my arm and said, “I’ll bet we could solve it, if we put our heads together.” She smiled encouragingly. “Will you tell me what it’s all about?”
Somewhat hesitantly, I told Miss Patterson—or Martha, as I had begun to think of her—most of what I knew. I held back Mr. Clemens’s story of the treasure hidden in Arkansas, knowing that he had told it to me in the strictest confidence. Perhaps it was foolish not to reveal that, having revealed so much else. But the cache of gold was one detail about which Mr. Clemens had not told even the detective, and so I felt honor-bound to keep it back from Martha—at least for now. When I finished, she nodded her head gravely and said, “I can see why Mr. Twain’s backers might be worried. But I doubt that Mr. McPhee is as dangerous as you think. Old animosities may have colored Mr. Twain’s perceptions. You and I don’t have to let that govern our conduct. What do you think of this—I’ll eavesdrop on the gamblers, and listen to McPhee’s conversation; he won’t suspect me of being in league with you. He may let something slip, not knowing that anyone is listening who can put two and two together. We’ll meet again this evening, and see what each of us has learned. The two of us can surely get to the bottom of things.” She smiled brightly, and put her hand on my arm again for just a moment.
“Very well,” I said. It felt good to have someone with whom I could discuss the case, since Berrigan had become so closemouthed. “But promise me you’ll be careful. McPhee may seem colorful and exciting to you, but I have reason to think he’s more dangerous than he appears. Not only is he a cheat at cards, but he continues to associate with those two Throckmorton brothers, a nasty pair if ever I saw one.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll keep my wits about me. Mr. McPhee may be an expert at the card table, but a clever woman always has an advantage over his sort.” She winked at me and twirled her parasol.
“I certainly hope so,” I said. Somewhere inside I was not entirely sure, but there was no point in letting her know. Martha was undoubtedly very bright—anyone could tell that from her conversation—yet at the same time her head seemed full of romantic ideas of adventure. McPhee might be a creature of bluster and bluff, but as I had learned to my own regret, he was no easy mark.
I spent another lazy afternoon watching the river. It continued to present a constantly changing panorama along its banks, sleepy little towns alternating with farmlands and woods. The shoreline was somewhat less dramatic than in the upper reaches of the river, although there was a good bit more traffic here. Claude Dexter stopped to talk, and within a few sentences managed to convince me there was nothing in the world quite so boring as the history of steamboats on the Mississippi. Eventually he left; a glance at my watch showed that we had been
talking only ten minutes, although it had seemed like hours. I was struck with the fact that precisely the same topic became a matter of utter fascination when Mr. Clemens was the speaker. For that matter, the river itself provided far more entertainment than Dexter’s pedantic dissertations, which were designed more to display his own learning than to illuminate the subject.
The day was hot, with little cottonlike clouds drifting across the sky and barely a hint of any breeze to mitigate the oppressive heat. So around four o’clock, when Mr. Clemens found me on the shady side of the boiler deck, fanning myself with my hat, it did not take him long to persuade me to join him and the captain for a cold drink up on the texas.
I blew the foam off a tall mug of beer, then settled back in expectation that my employer and Captain Fowler would begin another session of “swapping yarns,” usually preposterous tales of their youthful high jinks in their early days on the river. While many of the incidents remained obscure to me, I never failed to find a certain quota of amusement in the stories, of which they had an ample fund. So I was frankly surprised when Mr. Clemens turned to me and said, “Cabot, why don’t you tell the captain about what happened in front of the theater last night?”
Captain Fowler listened intently, nodding gravely, while I told of the incident involving McPhee and the bet I’d lost. “Well,” he said at last. “Can’t say I’d expected much else of Slippery Ed. He’d best watch himself, though. If I get any complaints of his cheating on my boat, he’ll wish he’d learned to walk on water. There’s nothing I can do about his antics on shore, mind you, but I’ll not have my passengers cheated on board the Greeley.”
“That’s all well and good, Mike,” said Mr. Clemens. “I know you can’t police the whole length of the Mississippi. And you can’t stop people from betting a few dollars on a turn of the cards. But I wonder if you couldn’t do something to convince Slippery Ed that your boat isn’t a convenient place to carry on his trade. After all, his two sidekicks are making their trip by train. It shouldn’t be all that hard to get Ed to join them.”
“And what do you have in mind, Sam?” The captain took off his hat and fanned himself with it.
“Suppose you got somebody from the crew to stand beside the table—right next to Ed—and watch the action. If anybody asks what he’s doing, let him say he’s just making sure the game is all according to Hoyle. That should be enough to make some of the players think maybe it isn’t according to Hoyle, and that McPhee’s the reason. That might make some of them decide to sit out the game as long as he’s at the table.”
“And if the game dries up, Ed leaves the boat,” said the captain. “Well, it might work. Charlie Snipes would be a good man for it; he’s something of a cardplayer, when he’s ashore. I’ll think about it, Sam—but I can’t promise anything. There are always a few passengers who like playing against a professional cardplayer, even if they lose most of the time. I could stand to see Ed go, but not if he takes the rest of the players with him.”
“You run an honest boat, but you don’t want it so honest that nobody has any fun,” Mr. Clemens suggested, leaning forward and raising his eyebrows.
“There you have it,” said Captain Fowler, with a sigh. He stood up and spread his hands. “I’ve got to offer my passengers more than just a ride from one town to another. If that’s all they want, the railroad’s quicker and cheaper. But if I give them a little bit of entertainment—”
A loud knock on the door interrupted him. “Now, who could that be?” said the captain. He went to the door and opened it, and in walked Slippery Ed McPhee.
“Howdy, gents,” said McPhee. He rubbed his hands together, looking at Mr. Clemens, then at me. “Just the party I was hoping to find. Hope I’m not intruding on anything.”
“Why, no, Ed,” said Mr. Clemens. “As it happens, we were just speaking about you.”
“Just like the devil, eh?” said McPhee, with a chuckle. “Well, I won’t take up much of your time, Sam. I just wanted to come see if your boy here learnt his lesson from last night.”
“Excuse me?” I said. “Are you referring to the card game?”
“And what else would I be talking about, sonny?” McPhee swelled out his chest and struck a pose as if he were about to deliver an oration. “I seen you come up the street, and I seen you thinking you could outsmart an old fox at his own game, and I says to myself, Ed McPhee, this boy’s looking to learn a hard lesson, and better he learns it from a friend than from an enemy.”
“A friend!” said Mr. Clemens. “That’s a considerable stretch of the term, don’t you think?”
“There you go making your jokes again, Sam,” said McPhee. “You know old Ed wouldn’t hurt a bug, ’less it bit him. Fact is, I come up here to give Mr. Cabot his money back, and hope it learns him not to try to bet over his head. There’s lots of men along the river would’ve taken every cent he has, and not shed a tear about it. But let it never be said that Ed McPhee’s that kind of man.” He pulled a wallet out of his breast pocket and proceeded to count off two tens and a five, which he put on the table next to my beer. “There you go, sonny.”
I was frankly dumbfounded. I stared at the money as if it were a hot poker. Mr. Clemens seemed every bit as shocked as I, but he managed to blurt out, “Jesus, Ed, what have you been drinking?”
“You know I never drink during business hours, Sam. A fellow’s got to keep his wits about him in my line of work; never know when somebody might take something amiss. That’s why I wanted to make sure your boy understood that I took his money just to make a point. Never did mean to keep it. Don’t forget to take that money, young feller—one of these two old buzzards is likely to snatch it if you don’t.” He laughed, then turned to me and reached out his hand, which I shook almost by reflex. “I hope this little hoax will teach you to steer clear of gambling with strangers, now, Mr. Cabot. Stick with folks you know, and you won’t get burnt.”
“I still don’t believe what I’m seeing,” said Mr. Clemens. “Is this the same Ed McPhee who got chased off the Natchez for dealing off the bottom of the deck? Are you sure you don’t have an extra pair of aces up your sleeve?”
“I’ve changed my style, Sam,” said McPhee, smiling like a man selling patent medicine. “I suppose it’s seeing so many young folks ruined by bad judgment over the years. Given me a soft spot, it has. So every now and then, I see a boy needs to learn a lesson, and I teach it to him—then make sure he gets his money back, so he’ll know it wasn’t out of malice. Just a little hoax, like you used to pull all the time, Sam. Remember that business about Napoleon, Arkansas, when you rode downriver on the Gold Dust and fooled everybody into thinking you was after buried treasure? George Devol said you pulled their legs till they was a mile long before you let loose with the stinger. Well, Mr. Cabot just got hit with the stinger, and got his money back, to boot. Let it be a lesson to you, sonny.” He clapped me on the back and took his departure, leaving all three of us with our mouths open.
He had barely left when another knock came on the door, and Mr. Snipes, the chief clerk, stuck his head into the cabin. “Beg your pardon, Cap’n, but I just saw that McPhee fellow come out of here. Was he stirring up more trouble?”
“Damned if I know, Charlie,” said the captain. “I thought I’d seen everything there was to see along this river, but a gambler giving refunds is a brand-new one.”
“I second that,” said Mr. Clemens. “Slippery Ed’s the last man I expected ever to change his stripes, not that I’m sorry to see it, if it’s true. Next thing you know, he’ll be preaching temperance sermons. Of course, if he starts that, I’ll have to insist you throw him overboard. I don’t mind a man reforming his ways, but I draw the line when he starts trying to reform mine.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said the captain, and we all three raised our glasses. Snipes nodded and withdrew. The captain and Mr. Clemens soon turned to old stories and began carrying on in their usual way, while I sat there sipping my beer and staring at the money on the ta
ble. I myself was not quite certain McPhee had changed his stripes, however it appeared. And I was not at all happy that he had mentioned the treasure—exactly the thing we were most anxious to keep anyone from thinking about. The more I thought about it, the less I liked it.
16
“I’ve had a busy day,” said Martha Patterson. I was not surprised. It seemed as if our earlier conversation had taken place several days before, rather than just a few short hours ago. “The gamblers had no idea I was spying on them,” she said. “It was all I could do not to laugh out loud. I didn’t expect I’d be able to eavesdrop quite so easily!” She laughed, leaning toward me in a conspiratorial manner. A lock of her dark hair fell across her forehead, and her smile almost made me forget our mutual purpose. With an effort, I brought my mind back to the subject at hand.
“What did you learn?” I asked. We were docked in Cairo, Illinois, a fair-sized manufacturing town on a long, flat point of land near the mouth of the broad Ohio River. After the boat made port, the two of us had met at the rear of the hurricane deck, whence we could see across the river to the west bank. Many of our fellow passengers had taken the opportunity to go ashore, and (as usual) Captain Fowler and Mr. Clemens had been invited to dinner by some local person of importance, so we had all the privacy we needed.
“Oh, I learned a great deal,” she said with an impish smile. “A lot of what they talk about is sheer nonsense, of course—men seem to think that inflating their own importance will make the others back down when they bluff. Why, to listen to them, you’d think that half a dozen of the richest and most powerful men in America are sitting at that table every day.”
“Perhaps they think it’s true,” I said. “McPhee certainly seems to have an exaggerated notion of his place in the world.” I was still smarting at the fellow’s arrogance in handing me back the money he had cheated me out of, representing it as a lesson for my own good.
[Mark Twain Mysteries 01] - Death on the Mississippi Page 16
