[Mark Twain Mysteries 01] - Death on the Mississippi

by Peter J. Heck

  I had my mouth open to plead other engagements—true enough, if I intended to make my appearance in church this morning—when he glanced over my shoulder and folded his manuscript. “Well, perhaps this isn’t the time or place for a reading. But remind me to show you my verses when we are aboard the Horace Greeley, Mr. Cabot—and perhaps then I can impose on you to introduce me to Mr. Twain. A pleasure making your acquaintance.” He gave one of his little bows, turned on his heel, and walked quickly away.

  Before I had time for any thought other than general puzzlement, a familiar voice came from behind me. “Well, Mr. Cabot, how are we this morning? Any sign of Mr. Twain?”

  I turned to see Detective Berrigan, who, from the look of him, had just come in from the rain.

  “I haven’t seen him yet,” I replied. “You seem to have been up and about early this morning.”

  “Aye, that I have. I walked up to the cathedral on Superior Street for early mass—a bit farther than I’d wanted to travel in this weather, but that’s neither here nor there. On the way back, though, I came past the Windsor Hotel and decided to step out of the rain a moment, and incidentally to ask a few questions of the clerk and the bellboy.”

  “And did you discover anything of interest?”

  Berrigan smiled. “Now, would I be telling you all about it if I hadn’t? But rather than recount my story twice, why don’t we see if Mr. Twain is up and about, especially since it concerns his dear old friends from the river.”

  * * *

  Mr. Clemens answered our knock, dressed in another of his white suits. “Hello, Cabot—and Berrigan. What the blazes are you two up to this early? Have you both been to church?”

  “Yes, and another place, too,” said Berrigan, saving me from admitting to my employer that I had neglected that duty.

  “Well, you’d better come in and tell me the story, whatever it is. There can’t be too many other places of interest open on a Sunday morning, at least in this part of town.”

  After hanging his damp raincoat and derby hat in the hall closet, Detective Berrigan settled into an armchair opposite Mr. Clemens and lit up his pipe. “I took the opportunity, returning from mass this morning, to drop by the Windsor Hotel. You may recall that’s where McPhee said he and his boys are staying.”

  “Yes, he made a point of mentioning it. Do you mean to tell me they aren’t there?” Mr. Clemens leaned forward in his chair.

  “Oh, they’re there all right—I spotted the back of McPhee’s head through the dining room door, so there’s no disputing that. But the interesting thing is that they didn’t all arrive together. First two of them came and reserved a room, and then the next day, the other two joined them.”

  “Other two?” Mr. Clemens and I said it almost together. He looked at me and laughed, then looked at Berrigan. “Slippery Ed, and a pair of Throckmortons, and who else?”

  “Well, I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself,” said the detective, fiddling with his pipe. “The bellboy is the only one who’s seen all four of them; the desk clerk only saw the first two. And he said they were a big fellow and a little one, sort of rough-looking, whom I think we can identify—they checked in before dinnertime on Friday, just as McPhee claimed, and carried their own bags, which were pretty shabby-looking, the boy said, annoyed as he was to miss the tip. Then about noon yesterday, the bellboy saw the Throckmortons come in again, with an older fellow with long hair and a big hat—that’s got to be McPhee—and another man. McPhee and the other man both carried their own bags—they looked to be traveling very light, the boy said, one bag apiece. They went out again about an hour later.”

  “Any idea who the other man was?”

  “The boy described him as older than the Throckmortons, and heavy set, with a country accent and a big beard.”

  “Damnation!” said Mr. Clemens. “You don’t suppose it’s Jack Hubbard. That would be almost too easy.”

  “Well, I didn’t lay eyes on the rascal myself—McPhee was eating alone—not that it’d do me much good, never having seen this Hubbard fellow.”

  “If he’s wearing his old disguise again, I’ll recognize him in a flash. I wonder if I can manage to get a peek at him.” Mr. Clemens stared out the window at the rain. “I can’t just sit in a corner of the lobby—they’d spot me ten miles off. There was a time when people didn’t know my face, but I’m sorry to admit that’s long past.”

  “You’d never see hide nor hair of him, if he didn’t want you to,” the detective agreed. “Of course, it may be someone else entirely. But the interesting thing is that McPhee lied about his having been in the hotel on Friday night. Unless he can prove he was somewhere else in Chicago, his alibi won’t wash. And why would he lie to me unless he had something to hide?”

  “Slippery Ed would lie just to pass the time of day,” said Mr. Clemens. “It’s a habit with him, like spitting or scratching himself. But you’re right about his alibi—it’s up in smoke. And if he’s with Jack Hubbard, he’s smack in the middle of your murder case. Damn it all, Berrigan, I don’t like this one bit.”

  “Nor do I,” said Berrigan. “The best thing I can think of is to settle myself down in the lobby of the Windsor, to see if I can catch a glimpse of this fourth fellow before we leave for St. Paul. Then, at least, I may be able to give you a firsthand description once we’re on the train; if you think it’s Hubbard, I’ll see if the Chicago police will pick him up for questioning. And if I were you, I’d lay low until it’s time to board the train—just in case somebody gets funny ideas.”

  Mr. Clemens gestured toward the window, where the rain continued to fall. “What choice do I have, with this weather? The only good likely to come of it is that it’ll keep McPhee from wandering around looking for mischief. That’s the single really admirable thing about him: he’s too lazy to go out in the rain, at least as long as there’s somebody to be swindled indoors—and there usually is.”

  I never did get to church, and the rest of the day passed very much in the manner of a rainy Sunday anywhere. Mr. Clemens spent the afternoon lying in bed smoking, reading, and jotting down notes for his book. Before supper, I arranged for our luggage to be delivered to the station, and we had our meals sent up to his room. He grumbled a bit about being “shut in,” but went at his meal with a hearty enough appetite, and seemed content to be spending a comparatively uneventful day before getting down to the tour itself, when he would have to deliver a lecture almost every evening for several weeks—a schedule he admitted to me that he dreaded.

  We took a cab to the Canal Street Union Station, where we boarded the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul overnight mail train at 8:00. After stowing our carpetbags in our sleepers, we retired to the smoking car to await Detective Berrigan’s report on his Windsor expedition. Mr. Clemens had barely begun to clip the end of a cigar when the detective entered the car.

  “Well, how was the fishing?” said Mr. Clemens as Berrigan sat down across from us.

  Berrigan frowned for a moment, scraping at the bowl of his pipe, then looked up and smiled. “Oho, my little visit to the Windsor, you mean. Well, for a while I thought it was going to be a wasted afternoon. When I arrived, I asked the clerk whether Mr. McPhee was in, and he allowed as how that party had gone out a short while before—hadn’t checked out, just left in a group. I figured they’d be back soon enough, with the weather and all, so I settled down where I’d have a good view of the lobby. Good thing I had your book along—it was six o’clock before they got back, and then only two of them.”

  “Which two?” I asked.

  “The Throckmortons, and I could tell as soon as they came in they were in a hurry. They went straight upstairs, and were back again in less than ten minutes, with the luggage. All the luggage—the bellboy told me that, after they’d left. He also told me they’d come in a cab, and had it wait while they went upstairs.”

  “Listen to this story, Wentworth, and remember to tip all bellmen and porters,” Mr. Clemens said. “If McPhee had spent fifty
cents two days ago, the fellow’s lips would’ve been sealed.”

  “Well, I can’t say I disagree,” said Berrigan; having apparently scraped the pipe sufficiently, he pulled out his tobacco pouch. “Of course, the story I told him might’ve been an influence. Once I’d informed the young lad that the four tightwads were planning to waylay and rob Mr. Mark Twain, he was cooperation personified. He was the one that told me where they’d gone when they left, too—he heard them tell the hack driver to take them to the train station on Harrison Street—the Grand Central, just like New York’s. They were in a hurry, too.”

  “Grand Central—some of the western trains leave from there,” I said, recalling my frantic study of Mr. Clemens’s lecture route before our departure.

  “Good guess, son,” said Detective Berrigan. He paused a moment to light his pipe. “I got a cab no more than two minutes after them, and went straight to Grand Central. Sure enough, I was in time to see them board a train, along with Mr. McPhee—and someone else.”

  “And what did he look like?” Mr. Clemens leaned forward, with an animated expression.

  “Well, there’s the devil of it,” said Berrigan. “It was a woman they were with.”

  “A woman!” There was a moment of stunned silence as Mr. Clemens tried to comprehend this revelation—I am certain I had no idea what to make of it. “Are you sure she was with them? What about the bearded man?”

  “Well, Billy Throckmorton carried her bag, unless his taste in luggage is fancier than in clothes; and McPhee gave her a hand as she mounted the step. She was with ’em all right. And there was nobody else with ’em that I saw.”

  “Damnation,” said Mr. Clemens. “You can paint me blue if this doesn’t blow all my ideas right up the chimney. I wish I’d been there to get a look at them!”

  “Well, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that,” said Berrigan. “That was the one other thing I learned. Our friends boarded the six twenty-eight Wisconsin Central, bound for Fond du Lac, Oshkosh, Chippewa Falls, and St. Paul—the same place we’re going. I think we’ll be seeing them again.”

  We had sat absorbing this information for several moments when the car door opened and Major Demayne made his way down the aisle, nodding in our direction as he noticed us and hurrying along in the direction of the coaches. “Who was that old fellow?” said Berrigan. “I saw you talking with him this morning.”

  “Oh, yes, I forgot him entirely,” I said. “His name is Major Demayne—he’s going to be one of the passengers on the riverboat. He told me he’s interested in poetry, and he’s written a poem about the Civil War. He’d seen me with Mr. Clemens, and he was asking about publishers.”

  “The hell you say!” Mr. Clemens virtually exploded. “I should have known it. The wretched boat will be so full of literary amateurs it’s even money to sink before we’re out of Minnesota, with every blasted one of them hauling a trunkful of unpublishable manuscripts—novels without a plot, soporific sermons, and improving essays dense enough to make a bishop sick. And poetry! I’d rather be locked in a tiger cage than sit through another amateur poet reading me the ungrammatical nonsense that passes for poetry these days!

  “Cabot, it’ll be worth your neck if that man reads me one single line of poetry. Keep him away from me—I’ll eat a skunk for breakfast before I listen to his stuff.”

  “But sir—” I began to protest. The Major was, after all, one of the paying customers who made the lecture tour possible, and I figured he might even be talented.

  Mr. Clemens shook his head vigorously. “No buts about it. I’ve got enough to worry about with Farmer Jack and Slippery Ed, let alone giving a lecture every night. If that fellow comes within ten feet of me with a piece of paper in his hand, I’ll pitch him overboard. And if you’re anywhere within sight, you’ll follow him directly, or my name isn’t Samuel L. Clemens.”

  7

  I rose early the next morning, so as not to miss my first sight of the Mississippi River, which our train was scheduled to reach after stopping at La Crosse, Wisconsin. Mr. Clemens was in much better spirits than the night before, joking and pointing out the passing scenery with an animated expression. Breakfast had been eaten, the waiter had been paid, and a tip had been placed on the table. I was taking my time in finishing my second cup of coffee, while admiring the Wisconsin woodlands, when Mr. Clemens did a quick reconnaissance of the dining car. Satisfied that nobody was paying attention to our conversation, he leaned toward me and said in a low voice, “What do you think of Berrigan’s story from yesterday?”

  “I must say I’m entirely confounded by it,” I replied. “First we hear that McPhee is with a man who resembles Farmer Jack Hubbard, then he boards the train in the company of a woman. He apparently lied about his arrival time at the hotel, then left town—in something of a hurry—on a train that terminates in St. Paul. I think it’s a good bet he’s following us.”

  “Well, if you can follow somebody from in front—his train is probably an hour or more ahead of us. But yes, I think our detective’s right about that—we’ll most likely see McPhee and his boys again in St. Paul, if not all the way down the dratted river.”

  An intriguing notion came to me. “You say Hubbard is a talented actor—could it be that he’s disguised himself as a woman? That would explain a great deal.”

  Mr. Clemens shook his head. “I wish it were that simple. A man the size of Jack Hubbard can’t just put a dress on and pass for a woman. He’d stick out like a bobcat in a birdcage. A child could spot him from a mile off—let alone somebody like Berrigan, who’s suspicious by profession. No, the woman’s probably exactly the sort of person one would expect to be traveling with those scoundrels, nothing more or less.

  “As for Farmer Jack, I’d guess that he followed us from New York to Chicago, where Slippery Ed met him and put him up; these old river rats do stick together. Then, after Ed talked to us and found out we were hauling along a New York cop, he warned Jack to steer clear. If Jack has any sense, he took the first train leaving Chicago for anyplace except St. Paul.”

  “Cincinnati, perhaps—some of his friends would appear to be there.”

  “That’s what Slippery Ed wants us to think—he mentioned Cincinnati a bit too often and too pointedly for it to be entirely credible. But I wouldn’t bet against Jack heading for some river town where he can join up with our boat, if he’s so inclined. After what we’ve learned, I think he’s very inclined; in fact, I’ll be surprised if we don’t see Farmer Jack Hubbard in St. Louis, or Cairo—maybe as far down as Memphis. But there’s something that worries me even more than that about Berrigan’s story.”

  “What on earth could that be?”

  Mr. Clemens glanced around us—the nearby tables were empty, but he lowered his voice even more. “Remember what he told the bellboy? That four men were going to kidnap and rob Mark Twain?”

  “Lord, yes,” I said, glancing around the dining car in my own turn. “Do you think there’s any truth to what he said?”

  “I have to consider it a strong likelihood, until something proves otherwise; if Ed and his boys are in business with Hubbard, they may all know about our Arkansas expedition. But how does Berrigan know that’s what they’re up to? It’s too close to the truth to be just a lucky guess. And if that damned detective has figured out that we’re looking for the ‘Napoleon’ treasure, who the devil else has figured out the same thing?”

  The train had begun to slow down as it entered the outskirts of La Crosse, a good-sized, modern city with numerous lumberyards visible from the track. At my employer’s suggestion, we quickly got up and moved to the smoking car, before the station stop crowded the aisles with boarding and debarking passengers. We found a pair of seats with a good view out the window on the right side of the car, in anticipation of the river crossing. The previous day’s rain having lifted, I anticipated a fine first view of the Mississippi.

  Much to my surprise, the mighty river of which I had heard so many stories was barely as wid
e as the streams with which I was familiar back east. Mr. Clemens must have seen something in my expression, for he asked, “What do you think, Wentworth?”

  “I must say I expected something more impressive, from the stories I’d heard. Why, this can’t be more than a couple of hundred yards across. It’s certainly nowhere near as broad as the Hudson River where we crossed it in New York. For that matter, the Thames back home in New London, right at the end of our street, puts it to shame.”

  Mr. Clemens laughed. “Yes, and your father’s the strongest man in the world, and your mother the prettiest woman. The river’s barely started on its way here, even if it is a good five hundred miles from the source already. The one constant about the river is change; that wagon bridge is new since I last came through here in ’82, just for one example. And the river changes as much between here and St. Louis as you have from ten years old to now. It’ll change as much again before Memphis, and again by New Orleans. You’ll get to see that better than most. But don’t deprive yourself of the pleasure of really seeing it—not just as a stream of water, but with all the history and legendry that’s attached to it. You really ought to borrow my book from Berrigan and read it.”

  “But sir, I have you here to tell it all to me,” I said, smiling. He was right, though—as an aspiring travel writer, I realized, I should keep a sharp eye on everything I saw. And I had let my journal-writing slide—I knew I should be keeping a careful record of my observations, notes for possible articles and books.

  “I knew I liked you for some reason, Wentworth,” said Mr. Clemens, smiling back. “But there’s only so much you can learn secondhand. If you really want to learn the river, you have to keep your eyes on it, and try to see it for what it is—that’s what I had to do as a cub pilot. The Mississippi will speak to you in its own good time, and in its own language. You may not always like what it has to say, but at least you won’t confuse the reality of it with the sort of nonsense most travel writers try to foist on the public.”