The Best American Mystery Stories of the Nineteenth Century

by Penzler, Otto

  “My sister was about to finish with the creature when a new idea took her, and she said, looking at It as before:—‘Of all thy crimes, which one is the worst? Speak, I command thee!’

  “Then the fiend told how once It had killed every soul in a house of holy women and buried the bodies in a cellar under a heavy door.

  “‘Where was the house?’

  “‘At No. 19 Rue Picpus, next to the old graveyard.’

  “‘And when was this?’

  “Here the fiend seemed to break into fierce rebellion, writhing on the floor with hideous contortions, and pouring forth words that meant nothing to me, but seemed to reach my sister’s understanding, for she interrupted from time to time, with quick, stern words that finally brought It to subjection.

  “‘Enough,’ she said, ‘I know all,’ and then she spoke some words again, her eyes fixed as before, and the reverse change came. Before us stood once more the honest-looking, fine-appearing gentleman, Richard Burwell, of New York.

  “‘Excuse me, madame,’ he said, awkwardly, but with deference; ‘I must have dozed a little. I am not myself to-night.’

  “‘No,’ said my sister, ‘you have not been yourself to-night.’

  “A little later I accompanied the man to the Continental Hotel, where he was stopping, and, returning to my sister, I talked with her until late into the night. I was alarmed to see that she was wrought to a nervous tension that augured ill for her health. I urged her to sleep, but she would not.

  “‘No,’ she said, ‘think of the awful responsibility that rests upon me.’ And then she went on with her strange theories and explanations, of which I understood only that here was a power for evil more terrible than a pestilence, menacing all humanity.

  “‘Once in many cycles it happens,’ she said, ‘that a kulos-soul pushes itself within the body of a new-born child, when the pure soul waiting to enter is delayed. Then the two live together through that life, and this hideous principle of evil has a chance upon the earth. It is my will, as I feel it my duty, to see this poor man again. The chances are that he will never know us, for the shock of this night to his normal soul is so great as to wipe out memory.’

  “The next evening, about the same hour, my sister insisted that I should go with her to the Folies Bergère, a concert garden, none too well frequented, and when I remonstrated, she said: ‘I must go,—It is there,’ and the words sent a shiver through me.

  “We drove to this place, and passing into the garden, presently discovered Richard Burwell seated at a little table, enjoying the scene of pleasure, which was plainly new to him. My sister hesitated a moment what to do, and then, leaving my arm, she advanced to the table and dropped before Burwell’s eyes the card she had prepared. A moment later, with a look of pity on her beautiful face, she rejoined me and we went away. It was plain he did not know us.”

  To so much of the savant’s strange recital I had listened with absorbed interest, though without a word, but now I burst in with questions.

  “What was your sister’s idea in giving Burwell the card?” I asked.

  “It was in the hope that she might make the man understand his terrible condition, that is, teach the pure soul to know its loathsome companion.”

  “And did her effort succeed?”

  “Alas! it did not; my sister’s purpose was defeated by the man’s inability to see the pictures that were plain to every other eye. It is impossible for the kulos-man to know his own degradation.”

  “And yet this man has for years been leading a most exemplary life?”

  My visitor shook his head. “I grant you there has been improvement, due largely to experiments I have conducted upon him according to my sister’s wishes. But the fiend soul was never driven out. It grieves me to tell you, doctor, that not only was this man the Water Street assassin, but he was the mysterious murderer, the long-sought-for mutilator of women, whose red crimes have baffled the police of Europe and America for the past ten years.”

  “You know this,” said I, starting up, “and yet did not denounce him?”

  “It would have been impossible to prove such a charge, and besides, I had made oath to my sister that I would use the man only for these soul-experiments. What are his crimes compared with the great secret of knowledge I am now able to give the world?”

  “A secret of knowledge?”

  “Yes,” said the savant, with intense earnestness, “I may tell you now, doctor, what the whole world will know, ere long, that it is possible to compel every living person to reveal the innermost secrets of his or her life, so long as memory remains, for memory is only the power of producing in the brain material pictures that may be projected externally by the thought rays and made to impress themselves upon the photographic plate, precisely as ordinary pictures do.”

  “You mean,” I exclaimed, “that you can photograph the two principles of good and evil that exist in us?”

  “Exactly that. The great truth of a dual soul existence, that was dimly apprehended by one of your Western novelists, has been demonstrated by me in the laboratory with my camera. It is my purpose, at the proper time, to entrust this precious knowledge to a chosen few who will perpetuate it and use it worthily.”

  “Wonderful, wonderful!” I cried, “and now tell me, if you will, about the house on the Rue Picpus. Did you ever visit the place?”

  “We did, and found that no buildings had stood there for fifty years, so we did not pursue the search.”2

  “And the writing on the card, have you any memory of it, for Burwell told me that the words have faded?”

  “I have something better than that; I have a photograph of both card and writing, which my sister was careful to take. I had a notion that the ink in my pocket pen would fade, for it was a poor affair. This photograph I will bring you tomorrow.”

  “Bring it to Burwell’s house,” I said.

  The next morning the stranger called as agreed upon.

  “Here is the photograph of the card,” he said.

  “And here is the original card,” I answered, breaking the seal of the envelope I had taken from Burwell’s iron box. “I have waited for your arrival to look at it. Yes, the writing has indeed vanished; the card seems quite blank.”

  “Not when you hold it this way,” said the stranger, and as he tipped the card I saw such a horrid revelation as I can never forget. In an instant I realized how the shock of seeing that card had been too great for the soul of wife or friend to bear. In these pictures was the secret of a cursed life. The resemblance to Burwell was unmistakable, the proof against him was overwhelming. In looking upon that piece of pasteboard the wife had seen a crime which the mother could never forgive, the partner had seen a crime which the friend could never forgive. Think of a loved face suddenly melting before your eyes into a grinning skull, then into a mass of putrefaction, then into the ugliest fiend of hell, leering at you, distorted with all the marks of vice and shame. That is what I saw, that is what they had seen!

  “Let us lay these two cards in the coffin,” said my companion impressively, “we have done what we could.”

  Eager to be rid of the hateful piece of pasteboard (for who could say that the curse was not still clinging about it?), I took the strange man’s arm, and together we advanced into the adjoining room where the body lay. I had seen Burwell as he breathed his last, and knew that there had been a peaceful look on his face as he died. But now, as we laid the two white cards on the still breast, the savant suddenly touched my arm, and pointing to the dead man’s face, now frightfully distorted, whispered:—“See, even in death It followed him. Let us close the coffin quickly.”

  1896

  MARK TWAIN

  Tom Sawyer, Detective

  Unlike the rather dark story of “A Thumb-print and What Came of It,” “Tom Sawyer, Detective” is a typically humorous tall tale involving the teenagers with whom Mark Twain enjoyed his greatest successes, the eponymous character and Huckleberry Finn, who narrates the story. It is
a sequel to the more famous Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) and is the last major work in which either character plays a role, though Twain attempted two further adventures of the young friends, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians and Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy, neither of which were completed.

  Like most of Twain’s other mystery and detective stories, this is a parody of the genre, which was beginning to enjoy great popularity. It features several of the elements found in the earlier books about Tom and Huck, such as a desire to escape school and work, the quest for adventure, an insatiable curiosity, a hint of supernatural occurrences, and a use of vernacular language that wasn’t always quite precise.

  Twain claimed that the story was largely based on true incidents, as he wrote in a footnote to the first page:

  Strange as the incidents of this story are, they are not inventions, but facts—even to the public confession of the accused. I take them from an old-time Swedish criminal trial, change the actors, and transfer the scenes to America. I have added some details, but only a couple of them are important ones.

  In spite of the disclaimer, Twain was accused of plagiarizing the plot from The Vicar of Weilby, a Danish story by Steen Blicher, a charge denied by Twain. The story was filmed in 1938; it was directed by Louis King and starred Billy Cook as Tom Sawyer and Donald O’Connor as Huckleberry Finn.

  “Tom Sawyer, Detective” was first published as a serial in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June-November 1896. It was first published in book form in Tom Sawyer Abroad, Tom Sawyer, Detective, and Other Stories (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1896).

  ***

  CHAPTER I: AN INVITATION FOR TOM AND HUCK

  WELL, IT WAS the next spring after me and Tom Sawyer set our old nigger Jim free, the time he was chained up for a runaway slave down there on Tom’s uncle Silas’s farm in Arkansaw. The frost was working out of the ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next mumblety-peg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right away it would be summer and going in a-swimming. It just makes a boy homesick to look ahead like that and see how far off summer is. Yes, and it sets him to sighing and saddening around, and there’s something the matter with him, he don’t know what. But anyway, he gets out by himself and mopes and thinks; and mostly he hunts for a lonesome place high up on the hill in the edge of the woods, and sets there and looks away off on the big Mississippi down there a-reaching miles and miles around the points where the timber looks smoky and dim it’s so far off and still, and everything’s so solemn it seems like everybody you’ve loved is dead and gone, and you ’most wish you was dead and gone too, and done with it all.

  Don’t you know what that is? It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want—oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! It seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away; get away from the same old tedious things you’re so used to seeing and so tired of, and see something new. That is the idea; you want to go and be a wanderer; you want to go wandering far away to strange countries where everything is mysterious and wonderful and romantic. And if you can’t do that, you’ll put up with considerable less; you’ll go anywhere you can go, just so as to get away, and be thankful of the chance, too.

  Well, me and Tom Sawyer had the spring fever, and had it bad, too; but it warn’t any use to think about Tom trying to get away, because, as he said, his aunt Polly wouldn’t let him quit school and go traipsing off somers wasting time; so we was pretty blue. We was setting on the front steps one day about sundown talking this way, when out comes his aunt Polly with a letter in her hand and says:

  “Tom, I reckon you’ve got to pack up and go down to Arkansaw—your aunt Sally wants you.”

  I ’most jumped out of my skin for joy. I reckoned Tom would fly at his aunt and hug her head off; but if you believe me he set there like a rock, and never said a word. It made me fit to cry to see him act so foolish, with such a noble chance as this opening up. Why, we might lose it if he didn’t speak up and show he was thankful and grateful. But he set there and studied and studied till I was that distressed I didn’t know what to do; then he says, very ca’m, and I could ’a’ shot him for it:

  “Well,” he says, “I’m right down sorry, Aunt Polly, but I reckon I got to be excused—for the present.”

  His aunt Polly was knocked so stupid and so mad at the cold impudence of it that she couldn’t say a word for as much as a half a minute, and this gave me a chance to nudge Tom and whisper:

  “Ain’t you got any sense? Sp’iling such a noble chance as this and throwing it away?”

  But he warn’t disturbed. He mumbled back:

  “Huck Finn, do you want me to let her see how bad I want to go? Why, she’d begin to doubt, right away, and imagine a lot of sicknesses and dangers and objections, and first you know she’d take it all back. You lemme alone; I reckon I know how to work her.”

  Now I never would ’a’ thought of that. But he was right. Tom Sawyer was always right—the levelest head I ever see, and always at himself and ready for anything you might spring on him. By this time his aunt Polly was all straight again, and she let fly. She says:

  “You’ll be excused! You will! Well, I never heard the like of it in all my days! The idea of you talking like that to me! Now take yourself off and pack your traps; and if I hear another word out of you about what you’ll be excused from and what you won’t, I lay I’ll excuse you—with a hickory!”

  She hit his head a thump with her thimble as we dodged by, and he let on to be whimpering as we struck for the stairs. Up in his room he hugged me, he was so out of his head for gladness because he was going traveling. And he says:

  “Before we get away she’ll wish she hadn’t let me go, but she won’t know any way to get around it now. After what she’s said, her pride won’t let her take it back.”

  Tom was packed in ten minutes, all except what his aunt and Mary would finish up for him; then we waited ten more for her to get cooled down and sweet and gentle again; for Tom said it took her ten minutes to unruffle in times when half of her feathers was up, but twenty when they was all up, and this was one of the times when they was all up. Then we went down, being in a sweat to know what the letter said.

  She was setting there in a brown study, with it laying in her lap. We set down, and she says:

  “They’re in considerable trouble down there, and they think you and Huck’ll be a kind of diversion for them—‘comfort,’ they say. Much of that they’ll get out of you and Huck Finn, I reckon. There’s a neighbor named Brace Dunlap that’s been wanting to marry their Benny for three months, and at last they told him point blank and once for all, he couldn’t; so he has soured on them, and they’re worried about it. I reckon he’s somebody they think they better be on the good side of, for they’ve tried to please him by hiring his no-account brother to help on the farm when they can’t hardly afford it, and don’t want him around anyhow. Who are the Dunlaps?”

  “They live about a mile from Uncle Silas’s place, Aunt Polly—all the farmers live about a mile apart down there—and Brace Dunlap is a long sight richer than any of the others, and owns a whole grist of niggers. He’s a widower, thirty-six years old, without any children, and is proud of his money and overbearing, and everybody is a little afraid of him. I judge he thought he could have any girl he wanted, just for the asking, and it must have set him back a good deal when he found he couldn’t get Benny. Why, Benny’s only half as old as he is, and just as sweet and lovely as—well, you’ve seen her. Poor old Uncle Silas—why, it’s pitiful, him trying to curry favor that way—so hard pushed and poor, and yet hiring that useless Jubiter Dunlap to please his ornery brother.”

  “What a name—Jubiter! Where’d he get it?”

  “It’s only just a nickname. I reck
on they’ve forgot his real name long before this. He’s twenty-seven, now, and has had it ever since the first time he ever went in swimming. The school teacher seen a round brown mole the size of a dime on his left leg above his knee, and four little bits of moles around it, when he was naked, and he said it ’minded him of Jubiter and his moons; and the children thought it was funny, and so they got to calling him Jubiter, and he’s Jubiter yet. He’s tall, and lazy, and sly, and sneaky, and ruther cowardly, too, but kind of good-natured, and wears long brown hair and no beard, and hasn’t got a cent, and Brace boards him for nothing, and gives him his old clothes to wear, and despises him. Jubiter is a twin.”

  “What’s t’other twin like?”

  “Just exactly like Jubiter—so they say; used to was, anyway, but he hain’t been seen for seven years. He got to robbing when he was nineteen or twenty, and they jailed him; but he broke jail and got away—up North here, somers. They used to hear about him robbing and burglaring now and then, but that was years ago. He’s dead now. At least that’s what they say. They don’t hear about him any more.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Jake.”

  There wasn’t anything more said for a considerable while; the old lady was thinking. At last she says:

  “The thing that is mostly worrying your aunt Sally is the tempers that that man Jubiter gets your uncle into.”

  Tom was astonished, and so was I. Tom says:

  “Tempers? Uncle Silas? Land, you must be joking! I didn’t know he had any temper.”

  “Works him up into perfect rages, your aunt Sally says; says he acts as if he would really hit the man, sometimes.”