The Best American Mystery Stories of the Nineteenth Century

by Penzler, Otto

“Aunt Polly, it beats anything I ever heard of. Why, he’s just as gentle as mush.”

  “Well, she’s worried, anyway. Says your uncle Silas is like a changed man, on account of all this quarreling. And the neighbors talk about it, and lay all the blame on your uncle, of course, because he’s a preacher and hain’t got any business to quarrel. Your aunt Sally says he hates to go into the pulpit he’s so ashamed; and the people have begun to cool toward him, and he ain’t as popular now as he used to was.”

  “Well, ain’t it strange? Why, Aunt Polly, he was always so good and kind and moony and absent-minded and chuckle-headed and lovable—why, he was just an angel! What can be the matter of him, do you reckon?”

  CHAPTER II: JAKE DUNLAP

  WE HAD POWERFUL good luck; because we got a chance in a stern-wheeler from away North which was bound for one of them bayous or one-horse rivers away down Louisiana way, and so we could go all the way down the Upper Mississippi and all the way down the Lower Mississippi to that farm in Arkansaw without having to change steamboats at St. Louis; not so very much short of a thousand miles at one pull.

  A pretty lonesome boat; there warn’t but few passengers, and all old folks, that set around, wide apart, dozing, and was very quiet. We was four days getting out of the “upper river,” because we got aground so much. But it warn’t dull—couldn’t be for boys that was traveling, of course.

  From the very start me and Tom allowed that there was somebody sick in the stateroom next to ourn, because the meals was always toted in there by the waiters. By and by we asked about it—Tom did—and the waiter said it was a man, but he didn’t look sick.

  “Well, but ain’t he sick?”

  “I don’t know; maybe he is, but ’pears to me he’s just letting on.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because if he was sick he would pull his clothes off some time or other—don’t you reckon he would? Well, this one don’t. At least he don’t ever pull off his boots, anyway.”

  “The mischief he don’t! Not even when he goes to bed?”

  “No.”

  It was always nuts for Tom Sawyer—a mystery was. If you’d lay out a mystery and a pie before me and him, you wouldn’t have to say take your choice; it was a thing that would regulate itself. Because in my nature I have always run to pie, whilst in his nature he has always run to mystery. People are made different. And it is the best way. Tom says to the waiter:

  “What’s the man’s name?”

  “Phillips.”

  “Where’d he come aboard?”

  “I think he got aboard at Elexandria, up on the Iowa line.”

  “What do you reckon he’s a-playing?”

  “I hain’t any notion—I never thought of it.”

  I says to myself, here’s another one that runs to pie.

  “Anything peculiar about him?—the way he acts or talks?”

  “No—nothing, except he seems so scary, and keeps his doors locked night and day both, and when you knock he won’t let you in till he opens the door a crack and sees who it is.”

  “By jiminy, it’s int’resting! I’d like to get a look at him. Say—the next time you’re going in there, don’t you reckon you could spread the door and—”

  “No, indeedy! He’s always behind it. He would block that game.”

  Tom studied over it, and then he says:

  “Looky here. You lend me your apern and let me take him his breakfast in the morning. I’ll give you a quarter.”

  The boy was plenty willing enough, if the head steward wouldn’t mind. Tom says that’s all right, he reckoned he could fix it with the head steward; and he done it. He fixed it so as we could both go in with aperns on and toting vittles.

  He didn’t sleep much, he was in such a sweat to get in there and find out the mystery about Phillips; and moreover he done a lot of guessing about it all night, which warn’t no use, for if you are going to find out the facts of a thing, what’s the sense in guessing out what ain’t the facts and wasting ammunition? I didn’t lose no sleep. I wouldn’t give a dern to know what’s the matter of Phillips, I says to myself.

  Well, in the morning we put on the aperns and got a couple of trays of truck, and Tom he knocked on the door. The man opened it a crack, and then he let us in and shut it quick. By Jackson, when we got a sight of him, we ’most dropped the trays! and Tom says:

  “Why, Jubiter Dunlap, where’d you come from?”

  Well, the man was astonished, of course; and first off he looked like he didn’t know whether to be scared, or glad, or both, or which, but finally he settled down to being glad; and then his color come back, though at first his face had turned pretty white. So we got to talking together while he et his breakfast. And he says:

  “But I aint Jubiter Dunlap. I’d just as soon tell you who I am, though, if you’ll swear to keep mum, for I ain’t no Phillips, either.”

  Tom says:

  “We’ll keep mum, but there ain’t any need to tell who you are if you ain’t Jubiter Dunlap.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you ain’t him you’re t’other twin, Jake. You’re the spit’n image of Jubiter.”

  “Well, I am Jake. But looky here, how do you come to know us Dunlaps?”

  Tom told about the adventures we’d had down there at his uncle Silas’s last summer, and when he see that there warn’t anything about his folks—or him either, for that matter—that we didn’t know, he opened out and talked perfectly free and candid. He never made any bones about his own case; said he’d been a hard lot, was a hard lot yet, and reckoned he’d be a hard lot plumb to the end. He said of course it was a dangerous life, and—

  He give a kind of gasp, and set his head like a person that’s listening. We didn’t say anything, and so it was very still for a second or so, and there warn’t no sounds but the screaking of the woodwork and the chug-chugging of the machinery down below.

  Then we got him comfortable again, telling him about his people, and how Brace’s wife had been dead three years, and Brace wanted to marry Benny and she shook him, and Jubiter was working for Uncle Silas, and him and Uncle Silas quarreling all the time—and then he let go and laughed.

  “Land!” he says, “it’s like old times to hear all this tittle-tattle, and does me good. It’s been seven years and more since I heard any. How do they talk about me these days?”

  “Who?”

  “The farmers—and the family.”

  “Why, they don’t talk about you at all—at least only just a mention, once in a long time.”

  “The nation!” he says, surprised; “why is that?”

  “Because they think you are dead long ago.”

  “No! Are you speaking true?—honor bright, now.” He jumped up, excited.

  “Honor bright. There ain’t anybody thinks you are alive.”

  “Then I’m saved, I’m saved, sure! I’ll go home. They’ll hide me and save my life. You keep mum. Swear you’ll keep mum—swear you’ll never, never tell on me. Oh, boys, be good to a poor devil that’s being hunted day and night, and dasn’t show his face! I’ve never done you any harm; I’ll never do you any, as God is in the heavens; swear you’ll be good to me and help me save my life.”

  We’d ’a’ swore it if he’d been a dog; and so we done it. Well, he couldn’t love us enough for it or be grateful enough, poor cuss; it was all he could do to keep from hugging us.

  We talked along, and he got out a little hand-bag and begun to open it, and told us to turn our backs. We done it, and when he told us to turn again he was perfectly different to what he was before. He had on blue goggles and the naturalest-looking long brown whiskers and mustashes you ever see. His own mother wouldn’t ’a’ knowed him. He asked us if he looked like his brother Jubiter, now.

  “No,” Tom said; “there ain’t anything left that’s like him except the long hair.”

  “All right, I’ll get that cropped close to my head before I get there; then him and Brace will keep my secret, an
d I’ll live with them as being a stranger, and the neighbors won’t ever guess me out. What do you think?”

  Tom he studied awhile, then he says:

  “Well, of course me and Huck are going to keep mum there, but if you don’t keep mum yourself there’s going to be a little bit of a risk—it ain’t much, maybe, but it’s a little. I mean, if you talk, won’t people notice that your voice is just like Jubiter’s; and mightn’t it make them think of the twin they reckoned was dead, but maybe after all was hid all this time under another name?”

  “By George,” he says, “you’re a sharp one! You’re perfectly right. I’ve got to play deef and dumb when there’s a neighbor around. If I’d ’a’ struck for home and forgot that little detail— However, I wasn’t striking for home. I was breaking for any place where I could get away from these fellows that are after me; then I was going to put on this disguise and get some different clothes, and—”

  He jumped for the outside door and laid his ear against it and listened, pale and kind of panting. Presently he whispers:

  “Sounded like cocking a gun! Lord, what a life to lead!”

  Then he sunk down in a chair all limp and sick-like, and wiped the sweat off of his face.

  CHAPTER III: A DIAMOND ROBBERY

  FROM THAT TIME out, we was with him ’most all the time, and one or t’other of us slept in his upper berth. He said he had been so lonesome, and it was such a comfort to him to have company, and somebody to talk to in his troubles. We was in a sweat to find out what his secret was, but Tom said the best way was not to seem anxious, then likely he would drop into it himself in one of his talks, but if we got to asking questions he would get suspicious and shet up his shell. It turned out just so. It warn’t no trouble to see that he wanted to talk about it, but always along at first he would scare away from it when he got on the very edge of it, and go to talking about something else. The way it come about was this: He got to asking us, kind of indifferent like, about the passengers down on deck. We told him about them. But he warn’t satisfied; we warn’t particular enough. He told us to describe them better. Tom done it. At last, when Tom was describing one of the roughest and raggedest ones, he gave a shiver and a gasp and says:

  “Oh, lordy, that’s one of them! They’re aboard sure—I just knowed it. I sort of hoped I had got away, but I never believed it. Go on.”

  Presently when Tom was describing another mangy, rough deck passenger, he give that shiver again and says:

  “That’s him!—that’s the other one. If it would only come a good black stormy night and I could get ashore. You see, they’ve got spies on me. They’ve got a right to come up and buy drinks at the bar yonder forrard, and they take that chance to bribe somebody to keep watch on me—porter or boots or somebody. If I was to slip ashore without anybody seeing me, they would know it inside of an hour.”

  So then he got to wandering along, and pretty soon, sure enough, he was telling! He was poking along through his ups and downs, and when he come to that place he went right along. He says:

  “It was a confidence game. We played it on a julery-shop in St. Louis. What we was after was a couple of noble big di’monds as big as hazel-nuts, which everybody was running to see. We was dressed up fine, and we played it on them in broad daylight. We ordered the di’monds sent to the hotel for us to see if we wanted to buy, and when we was examining them we had paste counterfeits all ready, and them was the things that went back to the shop when we said the water wasn’t quite fine enough for twelve thousand dollars.”

  “Twelve—thousand—dollars!” Tom says. “Was they really worth all that money, do you reckon?”

  “Every cent of it.”

  “And you fellows got away with them?”

  “As easy as nothing. I don’t reckon the julery people know they’ve been robbed yet. But it wouldn’t be good sense to stay around St. Louis, of course, so we considered where we’d go. One was for going one way, one another, so we throwed up, heads or tails, and the Upper Mississippi won. We done up the di’monds in a paper and put our names on it and put it in the keep of the hotel clerk, and told him not to ever let either of us have it again without the others was on hand to see it done; then we went down-town, each by his own self—because I reckon maybe we all had the same notion. I don’t know for certain, but I reckon maybe we had.”

  “What notion?” Tom says.

  “To rob the others.”

  “What—one take everything, after all of you had helped to get it?”

  “Cert’nly.”

  It disgusted Tom Sawyer, and he said it was the orneriest, low-downest thing he ever heard of. But Jake Dunlap said it warn’t unusual in the profession. Said when a person was in that line of business he’d got to look out for his own intrust, there warn’t nobody else going to do it for him. And then he went on. He says:

  “You see, the trouble was, you couldn’t divide up two di’monds amongst three. If there’d been three—But never mind about that, there warn’t three. I loafed along the back streets studying and studying. And I says to myself, I’ll hog them di’monds the first chance I get, and I’ll have a disguise all ready, and I’ll give the boys the slip, and when I’m safe away I’ll put it on, and then let them find me if they can. So I got the false whiskers and the goggles and this countrified suit of clothes, and fetched them along back in a hand-bag; and when I was passing a shop where they sell all sorts of things, I got a glimpse of one of my pals through the window. It was Bud Dixon. I was glad, you bet. I says to myself, I’ll see what he buys. So I kept shady, and watched. Now what do you reckon it was he bought?”

  “Whiskers?” said I.

  “No.”

  “Goggles?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, keep still, Huck Finn, can’t you, you’re only just hendering all you can. What was it he bought, Jake?”

  “You’d never guess in the world. It was only just a screwdriver—just a wee little bit of a screwdriver.”

  “Well, I declare! What did he want with that?”

  “That’s what I thought. It was curious. It clean stumped me. I says to myself, what can he want with that thing? Well, when he come out I stood back out of sight, and then tracked him to a second-hand slop-shop and see him buy a red flannel shirt and some old ragged clothes—just the ones he’s got on now, as you’ve described. Then I went down to the wharf and hid my things aboard the up-river boat that we had picked out, and then started back and had another streak of luck. I seen our other pal lay in his stock of old rusty second-handers. We got the di’monds and went aboard the boat.

  “But now we was up a stump, for we couldn’t go to bed. We had to set up and watch one another. Pity, that was; pity to put that kind of a strain on us, because there was bad blood between us from a couple of weeks back, and we was only friends in the way of business. Bad anyway, seeing there was only two di’monds betwixt three men. First we had supper, and then tramped up and down the deck together smoking till most midnight; then we went and set down in my stateroom and locked the doors and looked in the piece of paper to see if the di’monds was all right, then laid it on the lower berth right in full sight; and there we set, and set, and by and by it got to be dreadful hard to keep awake. At last Bud Dixon he dropped off. As soon as he was snoring a good regular gait that was likely to last, and had his chin on his breast and looked permanent, Hal Clayton nodded towards the di’monds and then towards the outside door, and I understood. I reached and got the paper, and then we stood up and waited perfectly still; Bud never stirred; I turned the key of the outside door very soft and slow, then turned the knob the same way, and we went tiptoeing out onto the guard, and shut the door very soft and gentle.

  “There warn’t nobody stirring anywhere, and the boat was slipping along, swift and steady, through the big water in the smoky moonlight. We never said a word, but went straight up onto the hurricane-deck and plumb back aft, and set down on the end of the skylight. Both of us knowed what that meant, without having to exp
lain to one another. Bud Dixon would wake up and miss the swag, and would come straight for us, for he ain’t afeard of anything or anybody, that man ain’t. He would come, and we would heave him overboard, or get killed trying. It made me shiver, because I ain’t as brave as some people, but if I showed the white feather—well, I knowed better than do that. I kind of hoped the boat would land somers, and we could skip ashore and not have to run the risk of this row, I was so scared of Bud Dixon, but she was an upper-river tub and there warn’t no real chance of that.

  “Well, the time strung along and along, and that fellow never come! Why, it strung along till dawn begun to break, and still he never come. ‘Thunder,’ I says, ‘what do you make out of this?—ain’t it suspicious?’ ‘Land!’ Hal says, ‘do you reckon he’s playing us?—open the paper!’ I done it, and by gracious there warn’t anything in it but a couple of little pieces of loaf-sugar! That’s the reason he could set there and snooze all night so comfortable. Smart? Well, I reckon! He had had them two papers all fixed and ready, and he had put one of them in place of t’other right under our noses.

  “We felt pretty cheap. But the thing to do, straight off, was to make a plan; and we done it. We would do up the paper again, just as it was, and slip in, very elaborate and soft, and lay it on the bunk again, and let on we didn’t know about any trick, and hadn’t any idea he was a-laughing at us behind them bogus snores of his’n; and we would stick by him, and the first night we was ashore we would get him drunk and search him, and get the di’monds; and do for him, too, if it warn’t too risky. If we got the swag, we’d got to do for him, or he would hunt us down and do for us, sure. But I didn’t have no real hope. I knowed we could get him drunk—he was always ready for that—but what’s the good of it? You might search him a year and never find—

  “Well, right there I catched my breath and broke off my thought! For an idea went ripping through my head that tore my brains to rags—and land, but I felt gay and good! You see, I had had my boots off, to unswell my feet, and just then I took up one of them to put it on, and I catched a glimpse of the heel- bottom, and it just took my breath away. You remember about that puzzlesome little screwdriver?”