 This is Chapter 18 of Puddinhead Wilson. The Tragedy of Puddinhead Wilson by Mark Twain, Chapter 18, Roxanna Commands Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same procession. You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy officials have gone by. Puddinhead Wilson's Calendar Thanksgiving Day Let us all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks now, but the turkeys. In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys, they use plumbers. It does not become you and me to sneer at Fiji. Puddinhead Wilson's Calendar The Friday after the election was a rainy one in St. Louis. It rained all day long and rained hard, apparently trying its best to wash that soot-blackened town white, but of course not succeeding. Toward midnight Tom Driscoll arrived at his lodgings from the theatre in the heavy downpour and closed his umbrella and let himself in. But when he would have shut the door he found that there was another person entering, doubtless another lodger. This person closed the door and trapped upstairs behind Tom. Tom found his door in the dark and entered it and turned up the gas. When he faced about, lightly whistling, he saw the back of a man. The man was closing and locking his door from him. His whistle faded out and he felt uneasy. The man turned around, a wreck of shabby old clothes, sodden with rain and all a drip, and showed a black face under an old slouch hat. Tom was frightened. He tried to order the man out, but the words refused to come and the other man got the start. He said in a low voice, "'Gate, stale, as your mother!' Tom sunk in a heap on a chair and gasped out. It was mean of me and base, I know it, but I meant it for the best. But I did indeed, I can swear it!' Roxana stood awhile, looking mutely down on him while he writhed in shame and went on incoherently babbling self-accusations mixed with pitiful attempts at explanation and paliation of his crime. Then she seated herself and took off her hat, and her unkept masses of long brown hair tumbled down about her shoulders. It were no fault of yours that that ain't gray,' she said sadly, noticing the hair. "'I know it, I know it, I'm a scoundrel, but I swear I meant it for the best. It was a mistake, of course, but I thought it was for the best, I truly did.' Roxana began to cry softly and presently words began to find their way out between her sobs. They were uttered lamentingly, rather than angrily. Salaperson down the river, down the river, for the best. I wouldn't treat a dog so. Eyes all broke down and wore out now, and so I reckoned it ain't me to storm round no more, like I used to when I was trampled unabused. I don't know, but maybe it's so. Leastwise I suffered so much that mourning seemed to come more handy to me now than storming. These words should have touched Tom Driscoll, but if they did that effect was obliterated by a stronger one, one which removed the heavy weight of fear which lay upon him, and gave his crushed spirit a most grateful rebound, and filled all his small soul with a deep sense of relief. But he kept prudently still, and ventured no comment. There was a voiceless interval of some duration now, in which no sounds were heard but the beating of the rain upon the panes, the sighing and complaining of the winds. And now and then a muffled sob from Roxanna. The sobs became more and more infrequent, and at last ceased. Then the refugee began to talk again. "'Shit down, Dad, lie a little more, uh, more yet!' Person dead his hunted, don't like the lie. Dad, that'll do. I can see where you is, and that's enough. I was going to tell you the tale, and cut it just as short as I can, and then I'll tell you what you's got to do. That man that bought me ain't a bad man, he's good enough as planters go. And if he could have had his way, I'd have been a house-servant in his family, and been comfortable. But his wife was a yank, and not right down good-looking, and she rise up again me straight off. So then they sent me out to the quarters amongst the common-feel hands. That woman weren't satisfied even with that. But she worked up the overseer again me. She is that jealous and hateful. So the overseer, he had me out before day and the mornings, and worked me the whole long day as long as there's any light to see by, and many's delashings I got, because I couldn't come up to the work of the strongest. That overseer was a yank, too, out in New England, and anybody down south can tell you what that mean. Day knows how to work a nigger to death, and day knows how to wail him, too. Wail him till day's backs is welted like a wash-board. Long at first my master said a good word for me to the overseer, but that is bad for me, for the mistress she found it out, and out of that I just catched it at every turn. They weren't no mercy for me no more. Tom's heart was fired with fury against the planter's wife, and he said to himself, but for that meddlesome fool everything would have gone all right. He added a deep and bitter curse against her. The expression of this sentiment was fiercely written in his face, and stood thus revealed to Roxanna by a white glare of lightning which turned the somber dusk of the room into dazzling day at that moment. She was pleased. Pleased and grateful. For did not that expression show that her child was capable of grieving for his mother's wrongs, and of feeling resentment toward her persecutors, a thing which she had been doubting. But her flash of happiness was only a flash, and went out again and left her spirit dark, for she said to herself, he sewed me down to Ribba. He can't feel for a body long, and this'll pass and go. Then she took up her tail again. About ten days ago I was saying to myself that I couldn't last many more weeks. I so wore out with the awful work and the belations, and so downhearted and full. And I didn't care no more or another. Life weren't worth nothing to me if I had to go on like that. Well when a body is in a frame of mind like that, what do a body care what a body do? There was a little sickly nigger wench, about ten-year-old, that's good to me, and had no mammy-po thing. And I loved her, and she loved me, and she came out while I was working, and she had roasted tater and tried to slip it to me, robbing herself, you see, she know'd the overseer didn't give me enough to eat. And he catched her at it, and give her a lick across the back with this stick, which is as thick as a broom-handle, and she dropped, screaming on the ground, and squirming and walling around in the dust like a spider that's got crippled. I couldn't stand it, all the hell fired as ever in my heart, flame up, and I snatched the stick out in his hand, and laid him flat. He laid the moanin' and cussin' and all out of his head, you know, and the niggers as plum-skier'd to death, and they gathered round him to help him, and I jumped on his horse and took out for the river as tight as I could go. I know'd what they would do with me. Soon as he got well, he would start in and work me to death, if must let him, and if they didn't do that, they'd sell me further down the river, and that's the same thing, so I allowed to drown myself and get out of my troubles. As I was gettin' toward dark, I was at the river in two minutes, then I see a canoe, and it says, Dane, no use to drown myself till I got to, so I ties the horse in the edge of the timber, and shove out down the river, keepin' in under the shelter to bluff bank, and prayin' for the dark to shut down quick. I had a powerful good start, cause the big house is three mile back from the river, and only to work me to ride down, and only the niggers ride him, and they weren't quite a hurry, they'd give me all the chance they could. Before a body could go house and back, it would be long past dark, and they couldn't track the horse and find out which way I went till moanin', and the niggers would tell him all the lies they could about it. Well, the dark come, and I went on a spinnin' down the river. I paddled moan two hours, then I weren't worried no more, so I quit padlin' and floated down to current, considering what I was going to do if I didn't have to drown myself. I made up some plans, and floated along, turnin' over in my mind. Well, when it was a little past midnight, as I reckoned, and I'd come fifteen or twenty mile, I'd see the lights of a steamboat laying at the bank. Why, they weren't no town and no woodyard, and pretty soon I'd catch the shape of the jimbly tops again, the stars, and then, good gracious me, I most jumped out of my skin for joy. It is the grand mogul! I was chambermaid on her for eight seasons in the Cincinnati and Orleans trade. I slid long past, don't see nobody stirring now, eh? Hear him hammering away in the engine room. Then I knowed what the matter was. Some of the machineries broke. I got sho'led below the boat, and turned the canoe loose. Then I goes long up, and there's just one plank out. I step aboard the boat. It is powerful hot, deckhands and roustabouts as sprawled round asleep on the folksal. The second mate, Jim Bangs, he sat down to bits with his head down to sleep, because that's the way the second mate stand the captain's watch. And the old watchman, Billy Hatch, he is a noddin' on the companion way, and I knowed him all. And land, but they did look good. I says to myself, I wish the old master'd come along now and try to take me, bless your heart, as among friends I is. So I tromped right along amongst him, and went up on to Byler Deck, and way back after the ladies' cabin-guard, and sought down da' in the same cheer that's I'd sought in most a hundred million times, I reckon. And it is just home again, I tell ya. In about an hour I heard the ready bell jingle, and then the racket begin. Pretty soon I hear the gong strike. Set her back on da' outside, I says to myself. I reckon I know's that music. I hear the gong again. Come ahead on da' inside, I says. Gong again. Stop da' outside. Gong again. Come ahead on da' outside. Now's we pined it for St. Louis, and I's uttered the woods, and ain't got to drown myself at all. I knowed the mogul is in the St. Louis trade now, you see. And it is just fair daylight when we passed our plantation, and I seen the gang of niggers and white folks hunting up and down da' show, and troubling da' sales a good deal about me, but I won't trouble myself none about them. About that time Sally Jackson, that used to be my second chambermaid, and his head chambermaid now, she come out on da' guard, and is powerful glad to see me, and so is all da' offices, and I told him I'd got kidnapped and sold down da' river, and they made up twenty dollars and give it to me, and Sally, she rigged me out with good clothes, and when I got here I went straight to where you used to was, and then I come to this house, and they say use away but expect it back every day, so I didn't dast go down the river to Dawson's, because I might miss ya. Well, last Monday I was passing by one of them places in 4th Street where da' sticks up and run away nigger's bills and helps to catch him, and I see'd my master. I most flopped down on da' ground I felt so gone. He had his back to me, and was talkin' to da' man, and givin' him some bills, nigger bills I reckon, and eyes da' nigger. He's offerin' a reward. That's it. Ain't I right? Don't you reckon? Tom had been gradually sinking into a state of ghastly terror, and he said to himself now, I'm lost no matter what turn the things take. This man has said to me that he thinks there was something suspicious about that sail. He said he had a letter from a passenger on the grandmobile, saying that Roxy came here on that boat, and that everybody on board knew all about the case. So he says that her coming here instead of flying to a free state looks bad for me, and that if I don't find her for him, and that pretty soon he will make trouble for me. I never believed that story. I couldn't believe she would be so dead to all motherly instincts as to come here, knowing the risk she would run of getting me into irremediable trouble. And after all, here she is. And I stupidly swore I would help find her, thinking it was a perfectly safe thing to promise. If I venture to deliver her up, she—she— but how can I help myself? I've got to do that, or pay the money! And where's the money to come from? I—well, I should think that if he would swear to treat her kindly hereafter, and she says herself that he is a good man, and if he would swear to never allow her to be overworked, or ill-fed, or a flash of lightning exposed Tom's pallid face drawn and rigid with these worrying thoughts. Roxana spoke up sharply now, and there was apprehension in her voice. Turn up that light! I want to see your face better! Dare now let me look at you! Chambers, use as white as your shirt! Has you seen that man? Has he been to see you? Yes. When? Monday noon. Monday noon! Was he on my track? He—well, he thought he was. That is, he hoped he was. This is the bill you saw. He took it out of his pocket. Read it to me. She was panting with excitement, and there was a dusky glow in her eyes that Tom could not translate with certainty, but there seemed to be something threatening about it. The hand-bill had the usual rude woodcut of a turban negro woman running, with a customary bundle on a stick over her shoulder, and the heading in the bold type, One Hundred Dollars Reward. Tom read the bill aloud, at least the part that described Roxana, and named the master and his St. Louis address and the address of the Fourth Street Agency, but he left out the item that applicants for the reward might also apply to Mr. Thomas Driscoll. Give me the bill. Tom had folded it and was putting it in his pocket. He felt a chilly streak creeping down his back, but set as carelessly as he could. The bill? Why, it isn't any use to you. You can't read it. What do you want with it? Give me the bill! Tom gave it to her, but with a reluctance which he could not entirely disguise. Did you read it all to me? Certainly I did. Hold up your hand and swear to it. Tom did it. Roxana put the bill carefully away in her pocket, with her eyes fixed upon Tom's face all the while, and she said, Yo's lying! What would I want to lie about it for? I don't know, but you is. That's my opinion, anyways. But never mind about that. When I see that man eyes that scared that I could scarcely wobble home, then I give a nigger man a dollar for these clothes, and I ain't been in a house since night and day till now. I blackened my face and laid hid in this cellar of an old house that burned down day times, and robbed a sugar hog's head and grain sacks on the wharf nights, to get something to eat. Never dast to try to buy nothing, and eyes most starved. I never dast to come near this place till this rainy night, when there ain't no people round scarcely. But tonight I've been standing in a dark alley ever since night come, waiting for you to come by. And here I is. She fell to thinking. Presently she said, You see that man at noon last Monday? Yes. I see them the middle of that afternoon. He hunted you up, didn't he? Yes. Did he give you to bill that time? No, he hadn't got it printed yet. Roxana darted a suspicious glance at him. Did you help him fix up the bill? Tom cursed himself for making that stupid blunder and tried to rectify it by saying he remembered now that it was at noon Monday that the man gave him the bill. Roxana said, You's lying again, shawl! Then she straightened up and raised her finger. Now, then, I's going to ask you a question, and I want to know how you's going to get round it. You knowed he is out of me. And if you run off, did a stain here to help him? He'd know there is something wrong about this business, and then he would inquire about you. And that would take him to your uncle, and your uncle would read the bill and see that you've been selling a free nigger down the river, and you know him, I reckon. He'd tire up the will and kick you out in the house. Now, then, you answer me this question. Hate you told that man that I would be shawl to come here, and then you would fix it so he could set a trap and catch me? Tom recognized that neither lies nor arguments could help him any longer. He was in a vice, with a screw turned on, and out of it there was no budging. His face began to take on an ugly look, and presently he said, with a snarl, Well, what could I do? You see yourself that I was in his grip and couldn't get out. Roxie scorched him with a scornful gaze awhile, and she said, What could you do? You could be Judas to your own mother to save your worthless hide. Would anybody believe it? No, a dog couldn't. You is to load down as ornery as hound that was air-pumped into this world, and I is responsible for it, and she spat on him. He made no effort to present it. Roxie reflected a moment, and she said, Now, I'll tell you what you's going to do. You's going to give that man the money that you's got laid up, and make him wait till you can go to judge, and get the risk, and buy me free again. Thunder, what are you thinking of? Go and ask him for three hundred dollars, an odd? What would I tell him I wanted for, pray? Roxie's answer was delivered in a serene and level voice. You tell him you sold me to pay your gamblin' debts, and that you lied to me and was a villain, and that I acquires you to get that money and buy me back again. Why, you've gone stark mad. He would tear the will to shreds in a minute. Don't you know that? Yes, I does. Then you don't believe I'm idiot enough to go to him, do you? I don't believe nothing about it. I knows you's are going. I knows it, because you knows that if you don't raise that money, I'll go to him myself, and then he'll sell you down to Iber, and you can see how you like it. Tom Rose, trembling and excited, and there was an evil light in his eye. He strode to the door and said he must go out of this suffocating place for a moment and clear his brain in the fresh air so he could determine what to do. The door wouldn't open. Roxie smiled grimly and said, I's got the key, honey, set down. You needn't clear up your brain none to find out what you're going to do. I knows what you's going to do. Tom sat down and began to pass his hands through his hair with a helpless and desperate air. Roxie said, Is that man in this house? Tom glanced up with a surprised expression and asked, What gave you such an idea? You done it. Go on out to clear your brain. And the first place you ain't got none to clear. And in the second place, you ornery eye told on you. Used to load down as hounded ever, but I done told you that before. Now then, this is Friday. You can fix it up with that man, and tell him you's gone away to get the rest of the money, and that you'll be back with it next Tuesday or maybe Wednesday. You understand? Tom answered sullenly. Yes. And when you gets the new bill of sale that sells me to my own self, take and send it in the mail to Mr. Putin, Head Wilson, and write on the back that he's to keep it till I come. You understand? Yes. That's all then. Take your umbrella and put on your hat. Why? Because you's going to see me home to the wharf. You see this knife? I has toed it around since the day I see that man and bought these clothes in it. If he catch me, I was going to kill myself with it. Now start along, and go soft, and lead away. And if you give the sign in this house, or if anybody comes up to you in the street, I's going to jam it right into you. Chambers, does you believe when I says that? It's no use to bother me with that question. I know your word's good. Yes, it's different from your own. Shit to lie down on. Move along. Here's the key. They were not followed. Tom trembled every time a late straggler brushed by them on the street, and half expected to feel the cold steel in his back. Roxy was right at his heels and always in reach. After tramping a mile they reached a wide vacancy on the deserted wharfs, and in this dark and rainy desert they parted. As Tom trudged home his mind was full of dreary thoughts and wild plans, but alas he said to himself wearily, There is but the one way out. I must follow her plan. But, with a variation, I will not ask for the money and ruin myself. I will rob the old skin-flint." This is Chapter 19 of Puddinhead Wilson. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Tragedy of Puddinhead Wilson by Mark Twain, Chapter 19 The Prophecy Realized Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example, Puddinhead Wilson's calendar. It were not best that we should all think alike. It is difference of opinion that makes horse races, Puddinhead 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 Driscoe declined to fight with an assassin—that is, he added significantly—in the field of honour. Elsewhere, of course, he would be ready. Wilson tried to convince him that if he had been present himself when Angelo told him 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 principle 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 in 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 nature is. The judge and his late wife never had any children. The judge and his wife were past middle age when his 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 mudcat 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 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 songbirds 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 healed—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 anyone 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 girls' clothes out from under the mail 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 creek. When he was halfway 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 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 his 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 stairfoot 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 girls' 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 black hall, locked that door and kept the key, then worked his way along in the dark and descended the black stairs. He was not expecting to meet anybody for all interest was centred in the other part of the house now. His calculation proved correct. By the time he was passing through the backyard Mrs. Pratt, her servants and a dozen half-dressed neighbors had joined the twins and the dead, and the sessions 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 Stephen'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 the 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 down downstream, 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 passage for St. Louis. He was ill at ease 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 a 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 favour us. I actually cursed Putinhead 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 a 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 I'm 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 defence 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 fingerprints on the knife's 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 had 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 upstairs, 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 misfortunes, 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 was 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 opened, 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 fingerprints 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 they had lost their knife, and now these people were joyful and said, I told you so! If their fingerprints had been on the handle—but useless to bother any further about that—the fingerprints 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 fingerprints must be sought. The twins might have no case with them, 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 fingerprints 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 a stealing raid, and thought she might have been the old woman's Confederate, if not the very thief 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 apart, but it was not all apart. The picture of his alleged uncle, as he had last seen him, was before him in the dark pretty frequently, when he was away and called again in his dreams when he was asleep. He wouldn't go into the room where the tragedy had happened. This charms 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. END OF CHAPTER XIX Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution. Take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman. If you have witnesses, you will find she did it with a knife. But if you take simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say she did it with her teeth. Puddin had Wilson's calendar. The weeks dragged along. No friend visiting with jail twins but their counsel and Aunt Patsy Cooper, and the day of trial came at last, the heaviest day in Wilson's life. For with all his tireless diligence he had discovered no sign or trace of the missing Confederate. Confederate was the term he had long ago privately accepted for that person, not as being unquestionably the right term, but as being the least possibly the right one. Though he was never able to understand why the twins did not vanish and escape as the Confederate had done, instead of remaining by the murdered man and getting caught there. The courthouse was crowded, of course, and would remain so to the finish, for not only in the town itself but in the country for miles around, the trial was one topic of conversation among the people. Mrs. Pratt, in deep mourning, and Tom, with a weed on his hat, had seats near Pembroke Howard, the public prosecutor, and back of them sat a great array of friends of the family. The twins had but one friend present to keep their consul in countenance, their poor old sorrowing landlady. She sat near Wilson and looked her friendliest. In the nigger corner sat Chambers, also Roxy, with good clothes on, and her bill of sale in her pocket. It was her most precious possession, and she never parted with it night or day. Tom had allowed her thirty-five dollars a month ever since he came into his property, and had said that he and she ought to be grateful to the twins for making them rich. But had roused such a temper in her by this speech that he did not repeat the argument afterward. She said the old judge had treated her child a thousand times better than he deserved, and had never done her an unkindness in his life. So she hated these outlandish devils for killing him, and shouldn't ever sleep satisfied till she saw them hanged for it. She was here to watch the trial now, and was going to lift up just one hurrah over it, if the county judge put her in jail a year for it. She gave her turbaned head a toss and said, When that verdict comes, I's going to lift a roof now, I tell you! Pembroke Howard briefly sketched the state's case. He said he would show by a chain of circumstantial evidence without break or fault in it anywhere that the principal prisoner at the bar committed the murder, that the motive was partly revenge and partly a desire to take his own life out of jeopardy, and that his brother, by his presence, was a consenting accessory to the crime, a crime which was the basest known to the calendar of human misdeeds assassination, that it was conceived by the blackest of hearts and consummated by the cowardliest of hands, a crime which had broken a loving sister's heart, blighted the happiness of a young nephew who was as dear as a son, brought inconsolable grief to many friends and sorrow and loss to the whole community. The utmost penalty of the outraged law could be exacted, and upon the accused, now present at the bar, that penalty would unquestionably be executed. He would reserve for the remark until his closing speech. He was strongly moved, and so also was the whole house. Mrs. Pratt and several other women were weeping when he sat down, and many an eye that was full of hate was riveted upon the unhappy prisoners. Witness after witness was called by the state and questioned at length, but the cross-questioning was brief. Wilson knew they could furnish nothing valuable for his side. People were sorry for Putinhead Wilson. His budding career would get hurt by this trial. Several witnesses swore they heard Judge Driscoll say in his public speech that the twins would be able to find their lost knife again when they needed it to assassinate somebody with. This was not news, but now it was seen to have been sorrowfully prophetic, and a profound sensation quivered through the hushed courtroom when those dismal words were repeated. The public prosecutor rose and said that it was within his knowledge, through a conversation held with Judge Driscoll on the last day of his life, that counsel for the defense had brought him a challenge from the person charged at the bar with murder, that he had refused to fight with a confessed assassin, that is, on the field of honor, but had added significantly that he would be ready for him elsewhere. Presumably the person here charged with murder was warned that he must kill or be killed the first time he should meet Judge Driscoll. If counsel for the defense chose to let the statement stand so, he would not call him to the witness stand. Mr. Wilson said he would offer no denial. murmurs in the house, It is getting worse and worse for Wilson's case! Mrs. Pratt testified that she heard no outcry and did not know what woke her up, unless it was the sound of rapid footsteps approaching the front door. She jumped up and ran out in the hall just as she was and heard the footsteps flying up the front steps and then following behind her as she ran to the sitting room. There she found the accused standing over her murdered brother. Here she broke down and sobbed, sensation in the court. Resuming, she said the persons entered behind her were Mr. Rogers and Mr. Buckstone. Cross-examined by Wilson, she said the twins proclaimed their innocence, declared that they had been taking a walk and had hurried to the house in response to a cry for help, which was so loud and strong that they had heard it at a considerable distance, that they begged her and the gentleman just mentioned to examine their hands and clothes, which was done, and no blood stains found. Confirmatory evidence followed from Rogers and Buckstone. The finding of the knife was verified, the advertisement minutely describing it and offering a reward for it was put in evidence and its exact correspondence with that description proved. Then followed a few minor details and the case for the state was closed. Wilson said that he had three witnesses—the Mrs. Clarkson, who would testify that they met a veiled young woman leaving Judge Driscoll's premises by the back gate a few minutes after the cries for help were heard, and that their evidence, taken with certain circumstantial evidence, which he would call the court's attention to, would in his opinion convince the court that there was still one person concerned in this crime who had not yet been found, and also that a stay of proceedings ought to be granted injustice to his clients until that person should be discovered. As it was late, he would ask Leave to defer the examination of his three witnesses until the next morning. The crowd poured out of the place and went flocking away in excited groups and couples, taking the events of the session over with vivacity and consuming interest, and everybody seemed to have had a satisfactory and enjoyable day except the accused, their counsel, and their old lady friend. There was no cheer among wheeze, and no substantial hope. In parting with the twins, Aunt Patsy did attempt a good-bye with a gay pretense of hope and cheer in it, but broke down without finishing. Absolutely secure, as Tom considered himself to be, the opening solemnities of the trial had nevertheless oppressed him with a vague uneasiness, his being nature-sensitive to even the smallest alarms, but from the moment that the poverty and weakness of Wilson's case lay exposed to the court, he was comfortable once more, even jubilant. He left the courtroom sarcastically sorry for Wilson. The Clarksons met an unknown woman in the back lane, he said to himself. That is his case. I'll give him a sentry to find her in, a couple of them if he likes, a woman who doesn't exist any longer, and the clothes that gave her her sex burnt up, and the ashes thrown away. Oh, certainly I'll find her easy enough. This reflection set him to admiring for the hundredth time the shrewd ingenuities by which he had ensured himself against detection, more, against even suspicion. Nearly always in cases like this there is some little detail or other overlooked. Some wee little track or trace left behind, and detection follows. But here there's not even the faintest suggestion of a trace left. No more than a bird leaves when it flies through the air, yes through the night you may say. The man that can track a bird through the air in the dark and find that bird is the man to track me out and find the judge's assassin. No other need apply. And that is the job that has been laid out for poor Puddinhead Wilson of all people in the world. Lord, it will be pathetically funny to see him grubbing and groping after that woman that don't exist, and the right person sitting under his very nose all the time. The more he thought the situation over, the more the humor of it struck him. Finally he said, I'll never let him hear the last of that woman. Every time I catch him in company to his dying day, I'll ask him, in the guileless affectionate way that used to gravel him so when I inquired how his unborn law business was coming along. Got on her track yet? Hey, Puddinhead! He wanted to laugh. But that would not have answered. There were people about. And he was mourning for his uncle. He made up his mind that it would be good entertainment to look in on Wilson that night and watch him worry over his barren law case and goad him with an exasperating word or two of sympathy and commiseration now and then. Wilson wanted no supper. He had no appetite. He got out all the fingerprints of girls and women in his collection of records and poured gloomily over them an hour or more, trying to convince himself that that troublesome girl's marks were there somewhere and had been overlooked. But it was not so. He drew back his chair, clasped his hands over his head, and gave himself up to doll and arid musings. Tom Driscoll dropped in an hour after dark and said with a pleasant laugh as he took a seat, Hello! We've gone back to the amusement of our days of neglect and obscurity for consolation, have we? And he took up one of the glass strips and held it against the light to inspect it. Come, cheer up, old man. There's no use in losing your grip and going back to this child's play merely because this big sunspot is drifting across your shining new desk. It'll pass. And you'll be all right again. And he laid the glass down. Did you think you could win always? Oh, no, said Wilson with a sigh. I didn't expect that, but I can't believe Luigi killed your uncle and I feel very sorry for him. It makes me blue. And you would feel as I do, Tom, if you were not prejudiced against those young fellows. I don't know about that. And Tom's countenance darkened for his memory revered to his kicking. I owe them no good will. Considering the brunette one's treatment of me that night, prejudice or no prejudice put in head, I don't like them. And when they get their desserts, you're not going to find me sitting on the mourners' bench. He took up another strip of glass and exclaimed, Why, here is old Roxy's label. You're going to ornament the royal palaces with nigger-paw marks, too? By the date here I was seven months old when this was done, and she was nursing me and her little nigger-cub. There's a line straight across her thumbprint. How comes that? And Tom held out the piece of glass to Wilson. That is common, said the bored man wearily. Scar of a cut or a scratch usually. And he took the strip of glass indifferently and raised it toward the lamp. All the blood sank suddenly out of his face. His hand quaked, and he gazed at the polished surface before him with a glassy stare of a corpse. Great heavens, what's the matter with you, Wilson? Are you going to faint? Tom sprang for a glass of water and offered it, but Wilson shrank, shuddering from him and said, No! No! Take it away! His breast was rising and falling, and he moved his head about in a dull and wandering way like a person who had been stunned. Presently he said, I shall feel better when I get to bed. I have been overwrought today, yes, and overworked for many days. Then I'll leave you and let you get to your rest. Good night, old man! But as Tom went out he couldn't deny himself a small parting jibe. Don't take it so hard. A body can't win every time. You'll hang somebody yet? Wilson muttered to himself, It is no lie to say I am sorry I have to begin with you, miserable dog, that you are. He brazed himself up with a glass of cold whiskey and went to work again. He did not compare the new finger-marks unintentionally left by Tom a few minutes before on Roxy's glass, with the tracings of the marks left on the knife-handle. There being no need for that, for his trained eye, but busied himself with another matter, muttering from time to time, idiot that I was. Nothing but a girl would do me. A man in girl's clothes never occurred to me. First he hunted out the plate containing the fingerprints made by Tom when he was twelve years old, and laid it by itself. Then he brought forth the marks made by Tom's baby fingers when he was a suckling of seven months, and placed these two plates with the one containing this subject's newly and unconsciously made record. Now the series is complete, he said with satisfaction, and sat down to inspect these things and enjoy them. But his enjoyment was brief. He stared a considerable time at the three strips and seemed stupefied with astonishment. At last he put them down and said, I can't make it out at all. Hang it to the babies, don't tally with the others. He walked the floor for half an hour puzzling over his enigma, then he hunted out the other glass plates. He sat down and puzzled over these things a good while, but kept muttering. It's no use, I can't understand it. They don't tally right, and yet I'll swear the names and dates are right, and so, of course, they ought to tally. I never labelled one of these things carelessly in my life. There is a most extraordinary mystery here. He was tired out now, and his brains were beginning to clog. He said he would sleep himself fresh, and then see what he could do with this riddle. He slept through a troubled and unrestful hour. Then unconsciousness began to shred away, and presently he rose drowsily to a sitting posture. Now, what was that dream? he said, trying to recall. What was that dream? It seemed to unravel that puzzling. He landed in the middle of the floor to bound, without finishing the sentence, and ran and turned up his light and seized his records. He took a single swift glance at them and cried out, It's so! Heavens, what a revelation! And for twenty-three years no man has ever suspected it. He is useless on top of the ground. He ought to be under it. Inspiring the cabbages! Puddin had Wilson's calendar. April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four. Puddin had Wilson's calendar. Wilson put on enough clothes for business purposes, and went to work under a high pressure of steam. He was awake all over. All sense of weariness had been swept away by the invigorating refreshment of the great and hopeful discovery which he had made. He made fine and accurate reproductions of a number of his records, and then enlarged them on a scale of ten to one with his pantograph. He did these pantograph enlargements on sheets of white cardboard, and made each individual line of the bewildering maze of whirls and curves or loops which consisted of the pattern of a record stand out bold and black by reinforcing it with ink. To the untrained eye the collection of delicate originals made by the human finger on the glass plates looked about alike, but when enlarged ten times they resembled the markings of a block of wood that has been sawed across the grain, and the dullest eye could detect at a glance and at a distance of many feet that no two of the patterns were alike. When Wilson had at last finished his tedious and difficult work, he arranged his results according to a plan in which a progressive order and sequence was a principal feature. Then he added to the batch several pantograph enlargements which he had made from time to time in bygone years. The night was spent, and the day well advanced now. By the time he had snatched a trifle of breakfast it was nine o'clock, and the court was ready to begin its sitting. He was in his place twelve minutes later with his records. Tom Driscoll caught a slight glimpse of the records and nudged his nearest friend and said with a wink, Puddenhead's got a rare eye to business, thinks that as long as he can't win his case it's at least a noble good chance to advertise his window-palice decorations without any expense. Wilson was informed that his witnesses had been delayed, but would arrive presently. But he rose and said he should probably not have occasion to make use of their testimony. An amused murmur ran through the room. It's a clean back-down. He gives up without hitting a lick! Wilson continued, I have other testimony and better. This compelled interest and evoked murmurs of surprise that had a delectable ingredient of disappointment in them. If I seem to be springing this evidence upon the court, I offer as my justification for this that I did not discover its existence until late last night, and have been engaged in examining and classifying it ever since, until half an hour ago. I shall offer it presently, but first I wish to say a few preliminary words. May it please the court, the claim given the front place, the claim most persistently urged, the claim most strenuously, and I may even say aggressively and defiantly insisted upon by the prosecution is this, that the person whose hand left the bloodstained fingerprints upon the handle of the Indian knife is the person who committed the murder. Wilson paused, during several moments, to give impressiveness to what he was about to say, and then added tranquilly, We grant that claim. It was an electrical surprise. No one was prepared for such an admission. A buzz of astonishment rose on all sides and people were heard to intimate that the overworked lawyer had lost his mind. Even the veteran judge, accustomed as he was to legal ambushes and masked batteries in criminal procedure, was not sure that his ears were not deceiving him, and asked counsel what it was he had said. Howard's impassive face betrayed no sign, but his attitude and bearing lost something of their careless confidence for a moment. Wilson resumed, We not only grant that claim, but we welcome it and strongly endorse it. Leaving that matter for the present, we will now proceed to consider other points in the case which we propose to establish by evidence, and shall include that one in the chain in its proper place. He had made up his mind to try a few hardy guesses, in mapping out his theory of the origin and motive of the murder, guesses designed to fill up gaps in it, guesses which could help if they hid, and would probably do no harm if they didn't. To my mind, certain circumstances of the case before the court seemed to suggest a motive for the homicide quite different from the one insisted on by the state. It is my conviction that the motive was not revenge, but robbery. It has been urged that the presence of the accused brothers in that fatal room, just after notification that one of them must take the life of Judge Driscoll or lose his own the moment the party should meet, clearly signifies that the natural instinct of self-preservation moved my clients to go there secretly and save Count Luigi by destroying his adversary. Then why did they stay there after the deed was done? Mrs. Pratt had time, although she did not hear the cry for help, but woke up some moments later, to run to that room, and there she found these men standing and making no effort to escape. If they were guilty, they ought to have been running out of the house at the same time that she was running to that room. If they had had such a strong instinct toward self-preservation as to move them to kill that unarmed man, what had become of it now, when it should have been more alert than ever? Would any of us have remained there? That has not slander our intelligence to that degree. Much stress has been laid upon the fact that the accused offered a very large reward for the knife with which this murder was done, that no thief came forward to claim that extraordinary reward, that the latter fact was good circumstantial evidence that the claim that the knife had been stolen was a vanity and a fraud, that these details taken in connection with the memorable and apparently prophetic speech of the deceased concerning that knife, and the final discovery of that very knife in the fatal room where no living person was found present with the slaughtered man but the owner of the knife and his brother, form an indestructible chain of evidence which fixed the crime upon those unfortunate strangers. But I shall presently ask to be sworn, and shall testify that there was a large reward offered for the thief also, and it was offered secretly and not advertised, that this fact was indiscreetly mentioned, or at least tacitly admitted, in what was supposed to be safe circumstances but may not have been. The thief may have been present himself. Tom Driscoll had been looking at the speaker but dropped his eyes at this point. In that case he would retain the knife in his possession, not daring to offer it for sale or for pledge in a pawn-shop. There was a nodding of heads among the audience by way of admission that this was not a bad stroke. I shall prove to the satisfaction of the jury that there was a person in Judge Driscoll's room several minutes before the accused entered it. This produced a strong sensation. The last drowsy head in the courtroom roused up now and made preparation to listen. If it shall seem necessary, I will prove by the Mrs. Clarkson that they met a veiled person, ostensibly a woman, coming out of the back gate a few minutes after the cry for help was heard. This person was not a woman, but a man dressed in woman's clothes. Another sensation. Wilson had his eye on Tom when he hazarded this guess to see what effect it would produce. He was satisfied with the result and said to himself, It was a success. He's hit. The object of that person in that house was robbery, not murder. It is true that the safe was not open, but there was an ordinary cash-box on the table with three thousand dollars in it. It is easily supposable that the thief was concealed in the house, that he knew of the box and of its owner's habit of counting its contents and arranging his accounts at night, if he had that habit, which I do not assert, of course, that he tried to take the box while its owner slept but made a noise and was seized, and had to use the knife to save himself from capture, and that he fled without his booty because he heard help coming. I have now done with my theory and will proceed to the evidences by which I propose to try to prove its soundness. Wilson took up several of his strips of glass. When the audience recognized these familiar mementos of Puddinhead's old-time childish puttering and folly, the tents and funerial interests vanished out of their faces, and the house burst into volleys of relieving and refreshing laughter, and Tom jerked up and joined in the fun himself. But Wilson was apparently not disturbed. He arranged his records on the table before him and said, I beg the indulgence of the court, while I make a few remarks and explanation of some evidence which I am about to introduce, and which I shall presently ask to be allowed to verify under oath on the witness-stand. Every human being carries with him from his cradle to his grave certain physical marks which do not change their character, and by which he can always be identified, and that without shade of doubt or question. These marks are his signature, his physiological autograph, so to speak, and this autograph cannot be counterfeited, nor can he disguise it or hide it away, nor can it become illegible by the wear and mutations of time. This signature is not his face. Age can change that beyond recognition. It is not his hair, for that can fall out. It is not his height, for duplicates of that exist. It is not his form, for duplicates of that exist also. Whereas this signature is each man's very own. There is no duplicate of it among the swarming populations of the globe. The audience were interested once more. This autograph consists of the delicate lines or corrugations with which nature marks the insides of the hands and the soles of the feet. If you will look at the balls of your fingers, you that have very sharp eyesight, you will observe that these dainty curving lines lie close together, like those that indicate the borders of oceans in maps, and that they form various clearly defined patterns such as arches, circles, long curves, whirls, etc., and that these patterns differ on the different fingers. Every man in the room had his hand up to the light now, and his head canted to one side, and was minutely scrutinizing the balls of his fingers. There were whispered ejaculations of, Why, it's so! I never noticed that before! The patterns on the right hand are not the same as those on the left. Ejaculations of, Why, that's so too! Taken finger for finger, your patterns differ from your neighbors. Comparisons were made all over the house, even the judge and jury were absorbed in this curious work. The patterns of a twin's right hand are not the same as those on his left. One twin's patterns are never the same as his fellow twin's patterns. The jury will find that the patterns upon the finger balls of the twin's hands follow this rule. An examination of the twin's hands was begun at once. You have often heard of twins who were so exactly alike that when dressed alike, their own parents could not tell them apart. Yet there was never a twin born into this world that did not carry from birth to death a sure identifier in this mysterious and marvelous natal autograph. At once known to you, his fellow twin could never personate him and deceive you. Wilson stopped and stood silent. Inattention dies a quick and sure death when a speaker does that. The stillness gives warning that something is coming. All palms and finger balls went down now, all slouching form straightened. All heads came up. All eyes were fastened upon Wilson's face. He waited yet one, two, three moments to let his paws complete and perfect its spell upon the house. Then, when through the profound hush he could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall, he put out his hand and took the Indian knife by the blade and held it aloft where all could see the sinister spots upon its ivory handle. Then he said, in a level and passionless voice, upon this haft stands the assassin's natal autograph, written in the blood of that helpless and unoffending old man who loved you and whom you all loved. There is but one man in the whole earth whose hand can duplicate that crimson sign. He paused and raised his eyes to the pendulum swinging back and forth. And, please God, we will produce that man in this room before the clock strikes noon. Stunned, distraught, unconscious of its own movement, the house half rose as if expecting to see the murderer appear at the door and a breeze of muttered ejaculation swept the place. Order in the court! Sit down! This from the sheriff. He was obeyed and quiet reigned again. Wilson stole a glance at Tom and said to himself, He is flying signals of distress now. Even people who despise him are pitying him. They think this is a hard ordeal for a young fellow who has lost his benefactor by so cruel a stroke. And they are right. He resumed his speech. For more than twenty years I have amused my compulsory leisure with collecting these curious physical signatures in this town. At my house I have hundreds upon hundreds of them. Each and every one is labelled with name and date, not labelled the next day or even the next hour but in the very minute that the impression was taken. When I go upon the witness stand I will repeat under oath the things which I am now saying. I have the fingerprints of the court, the sheriff, and every member of the jury. There is hardly a person in this room white or black whose natal signature I cannot produce, and not one of them can so disguise himself that I cannot pick him out from a multitude of his fellow creatures and unerringly identify him by his hands. And if he and I should live to be a hundred I could still do it. The interest of the audience was steadily deepening now. I have studied some of these signatures so much that I know them as well as the bank cashier knows the autographed of his oldest customer. While I turn my back now I beg that several persons will be so good as to pass their fingers through their hair and then press them upon one of the panes of the window near the jury, and that among them the accused may set their finger marks. Also I beg that these experimenters or others will set their fingers upon another pain, and add again the marks of the accused, but not placing them in the same order or relation to the other signatures as before. For by one chance in a million a person might happen upon the right marks by pure guesswork once, therefore I wish to be tested twice. He turned his back, and the two panes were quickly covered with delicately lined oval spots, but visible only to such persons as could get a dark background for them, the foliage of a tree outside, for instance. Then upon call Wilson went to the window, made his examination, and said, This is Count Luigi's right hand. This one, three signatures below, is his left. Here is Count Angelo's right. Down here is his left. Now for the other pain. Here and here are Count Luigi's. Here and here are his brothers. He faced about. Am I right? A deafening explosion of applause was the answer. The bench said, This certainly approaches the miraculous! Wilson turned the window again and remarked, pointing with his finger. This is the signature of Mr. Justice Robinson. Applause. This of Constable Blake. Applause. This of John Mason Juryman. This of the Sheriff. I cannot name the others, but I have them all at home, named and dated, and could identify them all by my fingerprint records. He moved to his place through a storm of applause which the Sheriff stopped, and also made the people sit down, for they were all standing and struggling to see, of course. Court, jury, Sheriff, and everybody had been too absorbed in observing Wilson's performance to attend to the audience earlier. Now then, said Wilson, I have here the natal autographs of the two children, thrown up to ten times the natural size by the pantograph, so that anyone who can see at all can tell the markings apart at a glance. We will call the children A and B. Here are A's finger marks taken at the age of five months. Here they are again taken at seven months. Tom started. They are alike, you see. Here are B's at five months, and also at seven months. They, too, exactly copy each other, but the patterns are quite different from A's, you observe. I shall refer to these again presently, but we will turn them face down now. Here, thrown up ten sizes, are the natal autographs of the two persons who are here before you accused of murdering Judge Driscoll. I made these pantograph copies last night, and will so swear when I go upon the witness stand. I ask the jury to compare them with the finger marks of the accused upon the window-panes, and tell the court if they are the same. He passed a powerful magnifying glass to the foreman. One jury man after another took the cardboard and the glass and made the comparison. Then the foreman said to the judge, Your Honor, we are all agreed that they are identical! Wilson said to the foreman, Please turn that cardboard face down and take this one, and compare it searchingly by the magnifier with the fatal signature upon the knife handle, and report your finding to the court. Again the jury made minute examinations, and again reported, We find them to be exactly identical, Your Honor! Wilson turned toward the counsel for the prosecution, and there was a clearly recognizable note of warning in his voice when he said, May it please the court the state has claimed strenuously and persistently that the blood-stained fingerprints upon that knife handle were left there by the assassin of Judge Driscoll. You have heard us grant that claim and welcome it. He turned to the jury, Compare the fingerprints of the accused with the fingerprints left by the assassin, and report. The comparison began. As it proceeded all movement and all sound ceased, and the deep silence of an absorbed and waiting suspense settled upon the house, and when at last the words came, They do not even resemble! A thunder-crash of applause followed and the house sprang to its feet, but was quickly repressed by official force and brought to order again. Tom was altering his position every few minutes now, but none of his changes brought repose nor any small trifle of comfort. When the house's attention was become fixed once more Wilson said gravely, indicating the twins were the gesture, These men are innocent. I have no further concern with them. Another outbreak of applause began, but was promptly checked. We will now proceed to find the guilty. Tom's eyes were starting from their sockets. Yes, it was a cruel day for the bereaved youth, everybody thought. We will return to the infant autographs of A and B. I will ask the jury to take these large pantograph facsimiles of A's marked five months and seven months. Do they tally? The foreman responded, Perfectly! Now examine this pantograph taken at eight months and also marked A. Does it tally with the other two? The surprised response was, No! They differ widely! You are quite right. Now take these two pantographs of B's autograph, marked five months and seven months. Do they tally with each other? Yes, perfectly! Take this third pantograph marked B eight months. Does it tally with B's other two? By no means! Do you know how to account for those strange discrepancies? I will tell you. For a purpose unknown to us, but probably a selfish one, somebody changed those children in the cradle. This produced a vast sensation naturally. Roxanna was astonished at this admirable guess, but not disturbed by it. To guess the exchange was one thing. To guess who did it? Quite another. Puddinhead Wilson could do wonderful things, no doubt, but he couldn't do impossible ones. Safe? She was perfectly safe. She smiled privately. Between the ages of seven months and eight months those children were changed in the cradle. He made one of this effect, collecting pauses and added, And the person who did it is in this house. Roxie's pulses stood still. The house was thrilled as if with an electric shock, and the people half rose as if to seek a glimpse of the person who had made that exchange. Tom was growing limp. The life seemed oozing out of him. Wilson resumed. A was put into B's cradle in the nursery. B was transferred to the kitchen and became a negro and a slave. Sensation, confusion of angry ejaculations. But within a quarter of an hour he will stand before you, white and free. Burst of applause, checked by the officers. From seven months onward until now, A has still been a usurper, and in my finger record he bears B's name. Here is his pantograph at the age of twelve. Compare it with the assassin's signature upon the knife-handle. Do they tally? The foreman answered, To the minutest detail! Wilson said solemnly, The murderer of your friend and mine, York Driscoll, of the generous hand and the kindly spirit, sits in among you. Valet de Chamber, negro and slave, falsely called Thomas a beckett Driscoll, make upon the window the fingerprints that will hang you. Tom turned his ashen face imploring toward the speaker, made some impotent movements with his white lips, then slid limp and lifeless to the floor. Wilson broke the odd silence with the words, There is no need. He has confessed. Roxy flung herself upon her knees, covered her face with her hands, and out through her sobs the words struggled, The Lord have mercy on me, poor miserable sinner than I is! The clock struck twelve. The court rose, the new prisoner, handcuffed, was removed. City of Puddinhead Wilson by Mark Twain Conclusion It is often the case that the man who can't tell a lie thinks he is the best judge of one, Puddinhead Wilson's calendar. October 12. The Discovery It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it, Puddinhead Wilson's calendar. The town sat up all night to discuss the amazing events of the day and swap guesses as to when Tom's trial would begin. Troop after troop of citizens came to serenade Wilson and require a speech, and shout themselves hoarse over every sentence that fell from his lips, for all his sentences were golden now, all were marvellous. His long fight against hard luck and prejudice was ended. He was a made man for good, and as each of these roaring gangs of enthusiasts marched away, some remorseful member of it was quite sure to raise his voice and say, And this is the man the likes of us have called a Puddinhead for more than twenty years! He has resigned from that position, friends! Yes, but it isn't vacant. We're elected! The twins were heroes of romance now and with rehabilitated reputations, but they were weary of western adventure and straightway retired to Europe. Roxy's heart was broken. The young fellow upon whom she had inflicted twenty-three years of slavery continued the false air's pension of thirty-five dollars a month to her, but her hurts were too deep for money to heal. The spirit in her eye was quenched, her martial bearing departed with it, and the voice of her laughter ceased in the land. In her church and its affairs she found her only solace. The real air suddenly found himself rich and free, but in a most embarrassing situation. He could neither read nor write, and his speech was the basis dialect of the Negro Quarter. His gait, his attitudes, his gestures, his bearing, his laugh, all were vulgar and uncouth. His manners were the manners of a slave. Money and fine clothes could not mend these defects or cover them up. They only made them more glaring and the more pathetic. The poor fellow could not endure the terrors of the white man's parlor, and felt at home and at peace nowhere but in the kitchen. The family pew was a misery to him. Yet he could never more enter into the solacing refuge of the nigger-gallery that was closed to him for good and all. But we cannot follow his curious fate further. That would be a long story. The false air made a full confession and was sentenced to imprisonment for life. But now a complication came up. The Percy Driscoll estate was in such a crippled shape when its owner died that it could pay only sixty percent of its great indebtedness and was settled at that rate. But the creditors came forward now and complained that in as much as through an error for which they were in no way to blame, the false air was not inventoried at the time with the rest of the property, great wrong and loss had thereby been inflicted upon them. They rightly claimed that Tom was lawfully their property, and had been so for eight years, that they had already lost sufficiently in being deprived of his services during that long period, and ought not to be required to add anything to that loss. That if he had been delivered up to them in the first place, they would have sold him, and he could not have murdered Judge Driscoll. Therefore, it was not that he had really committed the murder, the guilt lay with the erroneous inventory. Everybody saw that there was reason in this. Everybody granted that if Tom were white and free it would be unquestionably right to punish him. It would be no loss to anybody. But to shut up a valuable slave for life that was quite another matter. As soon as the Governor understood the case he pardoned Tom at once, and the creditors sold him down the river. End of conclusion. This is author's note to Puddin Head Wilson. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Tragedy of Puddin Head Wilson by Mark Twain, author's note to those extraordinary twins. A man who is not born with the novel writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story. In fact, he has no story. He merely has some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality, and he trusts he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results. So he goes to work. To write a novel? No. That is a thought which comes later. In the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little tale, a very little tale, a six-page tale. But as it is a tale which he is not acquainted with and can only find out what it is by listening as it goes along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on till it spreads itself into a book. I know about this because it has happened to me so many times. And I have noticed another thing, that as the short tale grows into the long tale, the original intention, or motive, is apt to get abolished and find itself superseded by a quite different one. It was so in the case of a magazine sketch which I once started to write, a funny and fantastic sketch about a prince and a pauper. It presently assumed a grave cast of its own accord, and in that new shape spread itself out into a book. Much the same thing happened with Putinhead Wilson. I had a sufficiently hard time with that tale because it changed itself from a farce to a tragedy while I was going along with it, a most embarrassing circumstance. But what was a great deal worse was that it was not one story but two stories tangled together, and they obstructed and interrupted each other at every turn and created no end of confusion and annoyance. I could not offer the book for publication, for I was afraid it would unseat the reader's reason. I did not know what was the matter with it, for I had not noticed as yet, but it was two stories in one. It took me months to make that discovery. I carried the manuscript back and forth across the Atlantic two or three times, and read it, and studied over it on ship-board, and at last I saw where the difficulty lay. I had no further trouble. I pulled one of the stories out by the roots and left the other, a kind of literary caesarean operation. With the reader care to know something about the story which I pulled out? He has been told many a time how the born and trained novelist works. Won't he let me round and complete his knowledge by telling him how the jack leg does it? Originally the story was called Those Extraordinary Twins. I meant to make it very short. I had seen a picture of a youthful Italian freak, or freaks, which was, or which were, on exhibition in our cities, a combination consisting of two heads and four arms joined to a single body and a single pair of legs. And I thought I would write an extravagantly fantastic little story with this freak of nature for hero, or heroes, a silly young miss for heroin, and two old ladies and two boys for the minor parts. I lavishly elaborated these people and their doings, of course, but the tale kept spreading along and spreading along, and other people got to intruding themselves and taking up more and more room with their talk and their affairs. Among them came a stranger named Puddenhead Wilson, and a woman named Roxanna. And presently the doings of these two pushed up into prominence, a young fellow named Tom Driscoll, whose proper place was away in the obscure background. Before the book was half finished, those three were taking things almost entirely into their own hands, and working the whole tale as a private venture of their own, a tale which they had nothing at all to do with, by rights. When the book was finished and I came to look around to see what had become of the team I had originally started out with, Aunt Patsy Cooper, Aunt Betsy Hale, and the two boys, and Rowena, the lightweight heroine, they were nowhere to be seen. They had disappeared from the story some time or other. I hunted about and found them, found them stranded, idle, forgotten, and permanently useless. It was very awkward. It was awkward all around. But more particularly in the case of Rowena, because there was a love match on between her and one of the twins that constituted the freak, and I had worked it up to a blistering heat and thrown in a quite dramatic love quarrel, where in Rowena scathingly denounced her betrothed for getting drunk and scoffed at his explanation of how it had happened and wouldn't listen to it, and had driven him from her in the usual, forever way. And now here she sat crying and broken-hearted, for she had found that he had spoken only the truth, that it was not he but the other of the freak that had drunk the liquor that made him drunk, that her half was a prohibitionist and had never drunk a drop in his life, and altogether, tight as a brick three days in the week, was wholly innocent of blame. And indeed, when sober was constantly doing all he could to reform his brother, the other half, who never got any satisfaction out of drinking anyway because liquor never affected him. Yes, here she was, stranded with that deep injustice of hers torturing her poor, torn heart. I didn't know what to do with her. I was as sorry for her as anybody could be. But the campaign was over, the book was finished, she was side-tracked, and there was no possible way of crowding her in anywhere. I could not leave her there, of course, it would not do. After spreading her out so and making such a to-do over her affairs it would be absolutely necessary to account to the reader for her. I thought and thought and studied and studied, but I arrived at nothing. I finally saw plainly that there was really no way but one. I must simply give her the grand bounce. It grieved me to do it, for after associating with her so much I had come to kind of like her after a fashion, notwithstanding she was such an ass and said such stupid irritating things, and was so nauseatingly sentimental. Still, it had to be done. So at the top of Chapter 17 I put a calendar remark concerning July the 4th, and began the chapter with this statistic. Rowena went out in the backyard after supper to see the fireworks, and fell down the well and got drowned. It seemed abrupt, but I thought maybe the reader wouldn't notice it, because I changed the subject right away to something else. Anyway, it loosened up Rowena from where she was stuck and got her out of the way, and that was the main thing. It seemed a prompt good way of weeding out people that had got stalled, and a plenty good enough way for those others. So I hunted up the two boys and said, They went out back one night to stone the cat and fell down the well and got drowned. Next I searched round and found old Aunt Patsy and Aunt Betsy Hale where they were around, and said, They went out back one night to visit the sick, and fell down the well and got drowned. I was going to drown some others, but I gave up the idea, partly because I believed that if I kept that up it would arouse attention, and perhaps sympathy with those people, and partly because it was not a large well and would not hold any more anyway. Still, the story was unsatisfactory. Here was a set of new characters who were become inordinately prominent and who persisted in remaining so to the end, and back yonder was an older set who made a large noise and a great to-do for a little while and then suddenly played out utterly and fell down the well. There was a radical defect somewhere, and I must search it out and cure it. The defect turned out to be the one already spoken of, two stories in one, a farce and a tragedy. So I pulled out the farce and left the tragedy. This left the original team in but only as mere names, not as characters. Their prominence was wholly gone. They were not even worth drowning. So I removed that detail. Also I took the twins apart and made two separate men of them. They had no occasion to have foreign names now, but it was too much trouble to remove them all through, so I left them christened as they were, and made no explanation. The end of The Tragedy of Puddin Head Wilson by Mark Twain. This is John Greenman.