Читать книгу Death on the Mississippi: The Mark Twain Mysteries #1 - Peter J. Heck - Страница 11

Early the next morning, Mr. Clemens sent me to buy newspapers, while he went to the telephone office. When I joined him there, he was just finishing an animated phone conversation. He extracted a promise from the other party to keep him informed, promised to feed him the best steak in New York for his trouble, and ended the connection. He took a few moments to chat with the “hello girls,” who operated the phones and who were clearly excited to have such a celebrity in their midst. He paid for the call, and we made our way to the breakfast table to fortify ourselves for the first leg of our trip. Our breakfast consisted of a thick, juicy beefsteak and hot coffee. In between bites, he told me what he had learned: mostly nothing. The source—evidently someone high on the police force—knew nothing more about the death of Hubbard, but confirmed that there was a Detective Berrigan assigned to the case. On the other hand, he (whoever he was) had heard nothing of the supposed connection to Mr. Clemens before the telephone call.

“This should put to rest your doubts about Detective Berrigan,” I said.

“You assume that the fellow we saw really is Berrigan,” said Mr. Clemens. “Easy enough to find the name of a real officer if you mean to impersonate one. Or to bribe one—which is even easier, if you get right down to it.”

“But why go to all the trouble? I can’t see what anyone’s gained by the charade, if such a thing it is.”

He frowned, took a sip of coffee, and shrugged. “You’re probably right. I suppose I’ll never be so old that I don’t get a little spooked when somebody I knew on the river is murdered. It’s the timing and the fact that he was looking for me that same day that really bother me. If I’d come home early, I’d probably have seen the poor old villain. He really could play billiards.”

“Who is this McPhee fellow you mentioned?”

“A no-good son of a rattlesnake. Has been, for as long as I can remember. He’s another one I met on the river, right after I became a pilot. He tried to swindle me out of the little bit I had, more or less for the principle of the thing, I suppose. Later that same trip, I saw him jump overboard to get away from a fellow who caught him with a couple of extra cards in his hand. He showed up on our next trip upriver, and acted as if nothing funny had happened, but the boys wouldn’t let him off that easily. They started calling him Slippery Ed, and the name stuck, although there’s few that remember how he got it.”

“How does he manage to continue his career if he’s a known cheater? Surely the authorities would be aware of him by now.”

“You might be surprised how many people will look the other way if you make it worth their while. There were plenty of riverboat captains who took in more in bribes than in salary. The better the gamblers did, the better the captain and crew did by turning a blind eye.”

“I’m afraid I’ve never understood the appeal of games of chance.”

“Ah, there’s the mistake everyone makes,” said Mr. Clemens. “The minute a professional gets involved, there’s no such thing as a game of chance. The professional is there to earn a living. I recall a court case in Nevada, where a miner was arrested for playing a game of chance on the Sabbath and defended himself by claiming that he was playing Red Dog, which was not a game of chance but of skill. The judge picked a jury of six chance men and six skill men, and sent ’em off with a deck of cards to determine the verdict. After a respectable interval for their deliberations, the chance men were broke to the wire, and the verdict was Not guilty. From that day on, Red Dog was exempted from all laws governing games of chance. Not that it kept the suckers from playing it.” He finished his coffee and, with a sigh, pushed away from the table.

After breakfast, a cab took us downtown to Desbrosses Street, through traffic so thick I was afraid we would never get through without an accident. The streets were crammed with everything from bicycles and dogcarts to overloaded freight wagons pulled by six or even eight huge Percherons. I was convinced that we had left the hotel too late, but Mr. Clemens merely sat back and smiled. “These New York cabdrivers would have given old Hank Monk a pretty good run for his money. This fellow’s got a good horse, and he knows he’s got an extra fifty cents coming if he gets us in on time, and by gum, he’ll do it.”

“Who was Hank Monk?” I inquired innocently.

Mr. Clemens gave me a strange look. “I can tell you a most laughable thing. . . .” He shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t be fair. He was a driver on the old Nevada stagecoach lines. There was an old story—not true, but that’s beside the point—about how he once carried Horace Greeley, who made the mistake of letting Hank Monk know he was in a hurry. Hank set off at a breakneck pace and like to have killed poor Horace, but he got him there on time—what was left of him.”

This anecdote did nothing to assuage my worries, but we arrived at the ferry slips in plenty of time—and miraculously, without mishap. Thence we took a ferry across the Hudson River to Jersey City, to catch our train: the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Limited Vestibule Express to Chicago. For this we arrived barely in time; luckily, Mr. Clemens had instructed me to send most of our luggage ahead the night before, leaving us to carry only one small carpetbag apiece, containing our toilet kits and a couple of changes of clothing. “Enough to hold us until we’re set up on board the boat,” said Mr. Clemens. “Never carry so much that it’ll slow you down when you’re in a rush.” I was vaguely pleased to think that I was already benefiting from the advice, however mundane, of a world traveler.

The train took us south through New Jersey, flat country with occasional muddy rivers and unattractive towns, then across the Delaware River to Philadelphia, whence it would take us west to Chicago and St. Paul. There we would board our steamer for the journey down the great Mississippi all the way to New Orleans, with numerous stops along the way to allow for sightseeing and lectures. The steamer was, in fact, a veritable floating lecture hall, which would dock at every city of any consequence for as many lectures as the local citizenry could be expected to attend.

I busied myself in reading over the detailed itinerary my predecessor (about whom Mr. Clemens had very little good to say) had prepared for our journey, and rapidly became befuddled by the complexity of our journey. I despaired of remembering all the riverside towns at which we planned to stop, let alone the hotels, restaurants, railroad stations, telegraph offices, post offices, and local people of note. At last, as we neared the outskirts of Philadelphia, I lay the thick portfolio across my lap and stared off into the pungent atmosphere of our smoking car. Surely I had gotten myself in deeper water than I had bargained for.

Mr. Clemens looked up from his newspaper and divined somehow what was on my mind. “Here, Wentworth, don’t fret. There’s no need to turn into a walking Baedeker; if that’s all I needed, I could get one a lot cheaper than a secretary, and carry it a lot easier, too. The details will come to you soon enough.”

“I’m sure I don’t know how. Learning Latin was child’s play to this, at least there’s some system to it. Here, I’ve got to remember a different set of facts for every town in twenty-five states.”

“Oh, you’re barely started. By the time we get to New Orleans, I’ll expect you to know something. If you don’t know anything useful by the time we’re back to New York, it’ll be time to worry. For the present, just look a day or two ahead every morning and make sure you know what’s coming up next. Do you know where we’re going when we arrive in Chicago?”

My blank expression must have spoken volumes. He pointed to the papers on my lap. With some embarrassment I fumbled through the pages until I found the information. “The Great Northern Hotel, on Dearborn Street.”

“Good boy. Never expect more of your memory than it can handle. That’s why people write things down. It’s better to know where you can find something than to try to remember it and come up empty. Besides, there are new buildings going up, businesses opening and closing, people moving in and out, a thousand changes every day. I can guarantee you there’ll be a dozen or more things that have changed since the last time I was in Chicago.”

“How am I ever to learn it, then?”

“The trick is to learn the general lay of the land and fill in the specific map in your head as you need to. If you know that the best place to look for a cab, any time of day or night, is in front of a big hotel, that information is as good for London or Vienna as for Boston. There are exceptions to everything, but better to have your eyes open than your memory stuffed with useless baggage.” He stared out the window a while, then turned back to me. “The sooner you get good at this job, the sooner I can forget about the details and let you handle them. So any time you have any questions about the arrangements, better to ask than to wonder what to do.”

We took our luncheon at the first seating, shortly before the train pulled into the Philadelphia station. The approach to this city is drab, with mills and manufacturing districts, but the center of Philadelphia is quite handsome, with broad parklands and a picturesque river—the Schuylkill, pronounced “skookill,” Mr. Clemens told me.

After a brief stop to take on passengers at Broad Street Station, we turned west, through pleasant farm country interspersed with patches of woods: the famous Pennsylvania Dutch country. The landscape became hilly, then (after we crossed the broad Susquehanna River) gradually turned rugged and mountainous. I commented on the grand scenery we were passing through. Mr. Clemens, busy writing letters, glanced out the window. “You should see the Rockies,” he said. “These are barely hummocks.” He turned back to his writing and scarcely raised his head until it was time for dinner. As for me, I had plenty to occupy my mind as some of the most picturesque scenery I have ever laid eyes on rolled by, a wonderful moving pageant of mountains and rivers and forests. If Mr. Clemens knew of something better than this, I looked forward to seeing it; for now, Pennsylvania was fine.

But while my eyes were busy with the view, my thoughts were on our mission to the west and Mr. Clemens’s odd story. Between the scenery and my speculations, I gradually lost track of time. It wasn’t until Mr. Clemens quietly asked whether I wanted a drink before dinner that I realized that the sun had moved well ahead of us. I glanced at my watch to see that it was nearly six.

The smoking car began to empty out as other passengers went to the diner, and so we found ourselves with enough breathing room to talk without anyone close by to overhear. I took the opportunity to bring up the questions I had been mulling over all afternoon.

“I’ve been thinking about Jack Hubbard,” I began.

Mr. Clemens gave me a calculating look. “And what exactly have you been thinking, Wentworth?”

“I’ve been wondering why you’re so convinced that what happened to Hubbard has anything to do with us. Couldn’t it be pure coincidence that he was trying to get in touch with you just before he died?”

“It could be a coincidence. But if it’s not, I’m walking into danger. I just don’t fancy the risk.”

“Then why not take the police into our trust when we had the opportunity?”

He took a long hard look out the window; the Appalachian Mountains were painted by a golden sunset. He tasted his drink, sighed, and said, “A hunch. I have a bad feeling about that detective.”

He paused as a tall gentleman with a full head of gray hair, cut short, and wearing a dark suit of semimilitary cut passed by us, nodding and smiling in our direction as he passed. Mr. Clemens nodded back, absently; I was already becoming used to the fact that a large fraction of the population recognized my employer by sight. As he continued on in the direction of the dining car, I heard the door open again, and a sour look came over Mr. Clemens’s face as he spotted the person who’d just entered.

Before I could even decide whether or not to look around, a familiar voice behind me solved my problem. “Sure, and it’s Mr. Mark Twain again. And Mr. Wentworth.”

“Wentworth Cabot,” I corrected him. It was the New York detective, Berrigan.

“And are you traveling on business, Berrigan, or is this a vacation?” my employer asked him.

“Business, Mr. Twain, and there’s a bit of a funny twist to it. Do you mind if I sit with you a moment?” He took off his hat and plopped himself in the chair adjacent to me without waiting for an answer. Then he fished out a pipe and tobacco pouch, and began loading it.

“I checked with the desk clerk at your hotel, asking who had left the note for you. It was a tall fellow with a red beard, a bit shabbily dressed, which is why the clerk noticed him. He waited around for another fifteen minutes, then left. The clerk was just as glad to see him go—said he was making the quality folks uncomfortable.”

“That sounds like Farmer Jack to me,” said Mr. Clemens. “He used to act so countrified that most city folks wouldn’t believe he had two cents’ worth of brains. It made it easier to find suckers to play billiards with him.”

The detective nodded. “We went to the address on the note he’d left for you, and it was a shabby little rented room down in Five Points, which isn’t a part of town decent folk go into after dark—not and come back out with a whole skin. The landlord said the tenant was there a few months. And it took a little persuasion, but we got him to look at the body,” he said. He popped the filled pipe into his mouth and began searching his jacket pockets.

“There’s matches on the table,” said Mr. Clemens.

“Right you are,” said the detective, taking them. “Well, he recognized the dead man, all right. But he swore he’d never seen him with that phony red beard. And he’d never heard of Jack Hubbard—the room was rented under a different name, probably an alias.” He dug into his pocket again, and came up with an envelope. “So we’re back to you again, Mr. Twain. Take a look at this.”

Mr. Clemens opened the envelope and extracted a photograph, which he looked at, then shrugged and passed to me without saying a word. It showed the garishly lit face of a shabbily dressed man whose eyes were closed in death—or so I had to assume. The sepia tints of the glossy photographic print gave no hint as to the color of the man’s hair or complexion. But I had the feeling I had seen him before, though I couldn’t for the life of me say where. I told the detective so, and he nodded.

“What about you, Mr. Twain?”

“It’s not Farmer Jack Hubbard, even allowing for ten years and the false beard. You think Hubbard killed him?”

“That’s one possibility. Killed him and planted evidence to make it look as if he were the one that died.”

“Why?” I asked.

“If I knew that, I’d have a better idea where to find him, wouldn’t I?” Berrigan’s pipe was finally lit, and he puffed a couple of times before continuing. “But all the signs point to some connection to you, Mr. Twain. For one thing, he had your name in his pocket; for another, you had a note in the same handwriting at your hotel, signed by this Hubbard. And for a third, the dead man had Hubbard’s phony beard. That’s a few too many coincidences, says I. That’s why we were hoping you could tell us who the victim is.”

Mr. Clemens took the photograph again and stared at it a while longer. “If I ever knew him, the name’s escaped me. He’s a bit too young to be one of the old crew I knew along the river,” he finally said, passing it back to me.

“But Hubbard’s from the river, and he wanted to see you,” said the detective. “And now you’re headed back there. Are you sure there’s not more involved in this trip than you’ve told me?”

Mr. Clemens shook his head. “A lecture tour and research for a book,” he said. “My backer says my last Mississippi book was a great success, and he suggests I do another one. As it happens, I need the money, so I’m willing to listen to suggestions.”

“Aye,” said Berrigan, “I brought along a copy of that very book for reading on the train. I was of a mind it might give me an idea what to look out for.”

“I see,” said Mr. Clemens, raising one eyebrow. “So you’ll be traveling with us down the river?”

“Unless I catch my man first. Maybe Hubbard planted the beard on this fellow to cover his own escape, or maybe the dead man grabbed it from him. Either way, I think he’ll come looking for you. That’s why I’m on the train with you, and it’s why I’ll be riding on the steamboat with you. And it’s why I’m wondering if there isn’t more to this story than you’ve told me so far, Mr. Twain.” He paused, then continued in a lower tone. “This is a murder we’re talking about, Mr. Twain. You could be putting yourself in a lot of danger by withholding information from us.”

“I’m well aware of that,” said my employer. “I’ve been around some rough characters in my time, and lived to tell the tale so far, so I know what they’re capable of. I didn’t get these white hairs by taking foolish chances, and I’m not about to start. Believe me, if I see hide or hair of Farmer Jack Hubbard, you’ll be the first to know.”

I had picked up the grisly photograph for another look, racking my memory, and suddenly recalled where I’d seen the dead man. “This fellow was at your lecture the other night,” I blurted, and both of them turned to stare at me. “He sat slightly ahead of me, on the right-side aisle.”

“Now I’m sure I’m on the right trail,” crowed Berrigan.

For his part, Mr. Clemens just took the picture from my hands, and looked at it, frowning. “What name did the landlord say this fellow gave him?” he asked at last.

“Lee Russell,” said Berrigan.

“Never heard of him,” said Mr. Clemens, and his frown went even darker. “But I’m afraid we haven’t seen the last of him.”