The Prophecy Realized.
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good
example.--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of
opinion that makes horse-races.--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.
Dawson's Landing was comfortably finishing its season of dull repose and
waiting patiently for the duel. Count Luigi was waiting, too; but not
patiently, rumor said. Sunday came, and Luigi insisted on having his
challenge conveyed. Wilson carried it. Judge Driscoll declined to fight
with an assassin--"that is," he added significantly, "in the field of
honor."
Elsewhere, of course, he would be ready. Wilson tried to convince him
that if he had been present himself when Angelo told about the homicide
committed by Luigi, he would not have considered the act discreditable
to Luigi; but the obstinate old man was not to be moved.
Wilson went back to his principal and reported the failure of his
mission. Luigi was incensed, and asked how it could be that the old
gentleman, who was by no means dull-witted, held his trifling nephew's
evidence and inferences to be of more value than Wilson's. But Wilson
laughed, and said--
"That is quite simple; that is easily explicable. I am not his doll--his
baby--his infatuation: his nephew is. The Judge and his late wife never
had any children. The Judge and his wife were past middle age when this
treasure fell into their lap. One must make allowances for a parental
instinct that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years. It is
famished, it is crazed with hunger by that time, and will be entirely
satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it
can't tell mud-cat from shad. A devil born to a young couple is
measurably recognizable by them as a devil before long, but a devil
adopted by an old couple is an angel to them, and remains so, through
thick and thin. Tom is this old man's angel; he is infatuated with him.
Tom can persuade him into things which other people can't--not all
things; I don't mean that, but a good many--particularly one class of
things: the things that create or abolish personal partialities or
prejudices in the old man's mind. The old man liked both of you. Tom
conceived a hatred for you. That was enough; it turned the old man
around at once. The oldest and strongest friendship must go to the
ground when one of these late-adopted darlings throws a brick at it."
"It's a curious philosophy," said Luigi.
"It ain't a philosophy at all--it's a fact. And there is something
pathetic and beautiful about it, too. I think there is nothing more
pathetic than to see one of these poor old childless couples taking a
menagerie of yelping little worthless dogs to their hearts; and then
adding some cursing and squawking parrots and a jackass-voiced macaw;
and next a couple of hundred screeching song-birds, and presently some
fetid guinea-pigs and rabbits, and a howling colony of cats. It is all a
groping and ignorant effort to construct out of base metal and brass
filings, so to speak, something to take the place of that golden
treasure denied them by Nature, a child. But this is a digression. The
unwritten law of this region requires you to kill Judge Driscoll on
sight, and he and the community will expect that attention at your
hands--though of course your own death by his bullet will answer every
purpose. Look out for him! Are you heeled--that is, fixed?"
"Yes, he shall have his opportunity. If he attacks me I will respond."
As Wilson was leaving, he said--
"The Judge is still a little used up by his campaign work, and will not
get out for a day or so; but when he does get out, you want to be on the
alert."
About eleven at night the twins went out for exercise, and started on a
long stroll in the veiled moonlight.
Tom Driscoll had landed at Hackett's Store, two miles below Dawson's,
just about half an hour earlier, the only passenger for that lonely
spot, and had walked up the shore road and entered Judge Driscoll's
house without having encountered any one either on the road or under the
roof.
He pulled down his window-blinds and lighted his candle. He laid off his
coat and hat and began his preparations. He unlocked his trunk and got
his suit of girl's clothes out from under the male attire in it, and
laid it by. Then he blacked his face with burnt cork and put the cork in
his pocket. His plan was, to slip down to his uncle's private
sitting-room below, pass into the bedroom, steal the safe-key from the
old gentleman's clothes, and then go back and rob the safe. He took up
his candle to start. His courage and confidence were high, up to this
point, but both began to waver a little, now. Suppose he should make a
noise, by some accident, and get caught--say, in the act of opening the
safe? Perhaps it would be well to go armed. He took the Indian knife
from its hiding-place, and felt a pleasant return of his wandering
courage. He slipped stealthily down the narrow stair, his hair rising
and his pulses halting at the slightest creak. When he was half-way
down, he was disturbed to perceive that the landing below was touched by
a faint glow of light. What could that mean? Was his uncle still up? No,
that was not likely; he must have left his night-taper there when he
went to bed. Tom crept on down, pausing at every step to listen. He
found the door standing open, and glanced in. What he saw pleased him
beyond measure. His uncle was asleep on the sofa; on a small table at
the head of the sofa a lamp was burning low, and by it stood the old
man's small tin cash-box, closed. Near the box was a pile of bank-notes
and a piece of paper covered with figures in pencil. The safe-door was
not open. Evidently the sleeper had wearied himself with work upon his
finances, and was taking a rest.
Tom set his candle on the stairs, and began to make his way toward the
pile of notes, stooping low as he went. When he was passing his uncle,
the old man stirred in his sleep, and Tom stopped instantly--stopped,
and softly drew the knife from its sheath, with his heart thumping, and
his eyes fastened upon his benefactor's face. After a moment or two he
ventured forward again--one step--reached for his prize and seized it,
dropping the knife-sheath. Then he felt the old man's strong grip upon
him, and a wild cry of "Help! help!" rang in his ear. Without hesitation
he drove the knife home--and was free. Some of the notes escaped from
his left hand and fell in the blood on the floor. He dropped the knife
and snatched them up and started to fly; transferred them to his left
hand, and seized the knife again, in his fright and confusion, but
remembered himself and flung it from him, as being a dangerous witness
to carry away with him.
He jumped for the stair-foot, and closed the door behind him; and as he
snatched his candle and fled upward, the stillness of the night was
broken by the sound of urgent footsteps approaching the house. In
another moment he was in his room and the twins were standing aghast
over the body of the murdered man!
Tom put on his coat, buttoned his hat under it, threw on his suit of
girl's clothes, dropped the veil, blew out his light, locked the room
door by which he had just entered, taking the key, passed through his
other door into the back hall, locked that door and kept the key, then
worked his way along in the dark and descended the back stairs. He was
not expecting to meet anybody, for all interest was centered in the
other part of the house, now; his calculation proved correct. By the
time he was passing through the back-yard, Mrs. Pratt, her servants, and
a dozen half-dressed neighbors had joined the twins and the dead, and
accessions were still arriving at the front door.
As Tom, quaking as with a palsy, passed out at the gate, three women
came flying from the house on the opposite side of the lane. They rushed
by him and in at the gate, asking him what the trouble was there, but
not waiting for an answer. Tom said to himself, "Those old maids waited
to dress--they did the same thing the night Stevens's house burned down
next door." In a few minutes he was in the haunted house. He lighted a
candle and took off his girl-clothes. There was blood on him all down
his left side, and his right hand was red with the stains of the
blood-soaked notes which he had crushed in it; but otherwise he was free
from this sort of evidence. He cleansed his hand on the straw, and
cleaned most of the smut from his face. Then he burned his male and
female attire to ashes, scattered the ashes, and put on a disguise
proper for a tramp. He blew out his light, went below, and was soon
loafing down the river road with the intent to borrow and use one of
Roxy's devices. He found a canoe and paddled off down-stream, setting
the canoe adrift as dawn approached, and making his way by land to the
next village, where he kept out of sight till a transient steamer came
along, and then took deck passage for St. Louis. He was ill at ease
until Dawson's Landing was behind him; then he said to himself, "All the
detectives on earth couldn't trace me now; there's not a vestige of a
clue left in the world; that homicide will take its place with the
permanent mysteries, and people won't get done trying to guess out the
secret of it for fifty years."
In St. Louis, next morning, he read this brief telegram in the
papers--dated at Dawson's Landing:
Judge Driscoll, an old and respected citizen, was assassinated here
about midnight by a profligate Italian nobleman or barber on account of
a quarrel growing out of the recent election. The assassin will probably
be lynched.
"One of the twins!" soliloquized Tom; "how lucky! It is the knife that
has done him this grace. We never know when fortune is trying to favor
us. I actually cursed Pudd'nhead Wilson in my heart for putting it out
of my power to sell that knife. I take it back, now."
Tom was now rich and independent. He arranged with the planter, and
mailed to Wilson the new bill of sale which sold Roxana to herself; then
he telegraphed his Aunt Pratt:
Have seen the awful news in the papers and am almost prostrated with
grief. Shall start by packet to-day. Try to bear up till I come.
When Wilson reached the house of mourning and had gathered such details
as Mrs. Pratt and the rest of the crowd could tell him, he took command
as mayor, and gave orders that nothing should be touched, but everything
left as it was until Justice Robinson should arrive and take the proper
measures as coroner. He cleared everybody out of the room but the twins
and himself. The sheriff soon arrived and took the twins away to jail.
Wilson told them to keep heart, and promised to do his best in their
defense when the case should come to trial. Justice Robinson came
presently, and with him Constable Blake. They examined the room
thoroughly. They found the knife and the sheath. Wilson noticed that
there were finger-prints on the knife-handle. That pleased him, for the
twins had required the earliest comers to make a scrutiny of their hands
and clothes, and neither these people nor Wilson himself had found any
blood-stains upon them. Could there be a possibility that the twins had
spoken the truth when they said they found the man dead when they ran
into the house in answer to the cry for help? He thought of that
mysterious girl at once. But this was not the sort of work for a girl to
be engaged in. No matter; Tom Driscoll's room must be examined.
After the coroner's jury had viewed the body and its surroundings,
Wilson suggested a search up-stairs, and he went along. The jury forced
an entrance to Tom's room, but found nothing, of course.
The coroner's jury found that the homicide was committed by Luigi, and
that Angelo was accessory to it.
The town was bitter against the unfortunates, and for the first few days
after the murder they were in constant danger of being lynched. The
grand jury presently indicted Luigi for murder in the first degree, and
Angelo as accessory before the fact. The twins were transferred from the
city jail to the county prison to await trial.
Wilson examined the finger-marks on the knife-handle and said to
himself, "Neither of the twins made those marks." Then manifestly there
was another person concerned, either in his own interest or as hired
assassin.
But who could it be? That, he must try to find out. The safe was not
open, the cash-box was closed, and had three thousand dollars in it.
Then robbery was not the motive, and revenge was. Where had the murdered
man an enemy except Luigi? There was but that one person in the world
with a deep grudge against him.
The mysterious girl! The girl was a great trial to Wilson. If the motive
had been robbery, the girl might answer; but there wasn't any girl that
would want to take this old man's life for revenge. He had no quarrels
with girls; he was a gentleman.
Wilson had perfect tracings of the finger-marks of the knife-handle; and
among his glass-records he had a great array of finger-prints of women
and girls, collected during the last fifteen or eighteen years, but he
scanned them in vain, they successfully withstood every test; among them
were no duplicates of the prints on the knife.
The presence of the knife on the stage of the murder was a worrying
circumstance for Wilson. A week previously he had as good as admitted to
himself that he believed Luigi had possessed such a knife, and that he
still possessed it notwithstanding his pretense that it had been stolen.
And now here was the knife, and with it the twins. Half the town had
said the twins were humbugging when they claimed that they had lost
their knife, and now these people were joyful, and said, "I told you
so!"
If their finger-prints had been on the handle--but it was useless to
bother any further about that; the finger-prints on the handle were not
theirs--that he knew perfectly.
Wilson refused to suspect Tom; for first, Tom couldn't murder
anybody--he hadn't character enough; secondly, if he could murder a
person he wouldn't select his doting benefactor and nearest relative;
thirdly, self-interest was in the way; for while the uncle lived, Tom
was sure of a free support and a chance to get the destroyed will
revived again, but with the uncle gone, that chance was gone, too. It
was true the will had really been revived, as was now discovered, but
Tom could not have been aware of it, or he would have spoken of it, in
his native talky, unsecretive way. Finally, Tom was in St. Louis when
the murder was done, and got the news out of the morning journals, as
was shown by his telegram to his aunt. These speculations were
unemphasized sensations rather than articulated thoughts, for Wilson
would have laughed at the idea of seriously connecting Tom with the
murder.
Wilson regarded the case of the twins as desperate--in fact, about
hopeless. For he argued that if a confederate was not found, an
enlightened Missouri jury would hang them, sure; if a confederate was
found, that would not improve the matter, but simply furnish one more
person for the sheriff to hang. Nothing could save the twins but the
discovery of a person who did the murder on his sole personal
account--an undertaking which had all the aspect of the impossible.
Still, the person who made the finger-prints must be sought. The twins
might have no case with him, but they certainly would have none without
him.
So Wilson mooned around, thinking, thinking, guessing, guessing, day and
night, and arriving nowhere. Whenever he ran across a girl or a woman he
was not acquainted with, he got her finger-prints, on one pretext or
another; and they always cost him a sigh when he got home, for they
never tallied with the finger-marks on the knife-handle.
As to the mysterious girl, Tom swore he knew no such girl, and did not
remember ever seeing a girl wearing a dress like the one described by
Wilson. He admitted that he did not always lock his room, and that
sometimes the servants forgot to lock the house doors; still, in his
opinion the girl must have made but few visits or she would have been
discovered. When Wilson tried to connect her with the stealing-raid, and
thought she might have been the old woman's confederate, if not the very
thief herself disguised as an old woman, Tom seemed stuck, and also much
interested, and said he would keep a sharp eye out for this person or
persons, although he was afraid that she or they would be too smart to
venture again into a town where everybody would now be on the watch for
a good while to come.
Everybody was pitying Tom, he looked so quiet and sorrowful, and seemed
to feel his great loss so deeply. He was playing a part, but it was not
all a part. The picture of his alleged uncle, as he had last seen him,
was before him in the dark pretty frequently, when he was awake, and
called again in his dreams, when he was asleep. He wouldn't go into the
room where the tragedy had happened. This charmed the doting Mrs. Pratt,
who realized now, "as she had never done before," she said, what a
sensitive and delicate nature her darling had, and how he adored his
poor uncle.