The Best American Mystery Stories of the Nineteenth Century

by Penzler, Otto

  Up jumps Tom and shouts:

  “Now, I’ve got it!” and waves his hand, oh, ever so fine and starchy, towards the old man, and says:

  “Set down! A murder was done, but you never had no hand in it!”

  Well, sir, you could ’a’ heard a pin drop. And the old man he sunk down kind of bewildered in his seat and Aunt Sally and Benny didn’t know it, because they was so astonished and staring at Tom with their mouths open and not knowing what they was about. And the whole house the same. I never seen people look so helpless and tangled up, and I hain’t ever seen eyes bug out and gaze without a blink the way theirn did. Tom says, perfectly ca’m:

  “Your honor, may I speak?”

  “For God’s sake, yes—go on!” says the judge, so astonished and mixed up he didn’t know what he was about hardly.

  Then Tom he stood there and waited a second or two—that was for to work up an “effect,” as he calls it—then he started in just as ca’m as ever, and says:

  “For about two weeks now there’s been a little bill sticking on the front of this courthouse offering two thousand dollars reward for a couple of big di’monds—stole at St. Louis. Them di’monds is worth twelve thousand dollars. But never mind about that till I get to it. Now about this murder. I will tell you all about it—how it happened—who done it—every detail.”

  You could see everybody nestle now, and begin to listen for all they was worth.

  “This man here, Brace Dunlap, that’s been sniveling so about his dead brother that you know he never cared a straw for, wanted to marry that young girl there, and she wouldn’t have him. So he told Uncle Silas he would make him sorry. Uncle Silas knowed how powerful he was, and how little chance he had against such a man, and he was scared and worried, and done everything he could think of to smooth him over and get him to be good to him: he even took his no-account brother Jubiter on the farm and give him wages and stinted his own family to pay them; and Jubiter done everything his brother could contrive to insult Uncle Silas, and fret and worry him, and try to drive Uncle Silas into doing him a hurt, so as to injure Uncle Silas with the people. And it done it. Everybody turned against him and said the meanest kind of things about him, and it gradu’ly broke his heart—yes, and he was so worried and distressed that often he warn’t hardly in his right mind.

  “Well, on that Saturday that we’ve had so much trouble about, two of these witnesses here, Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, come along by where Uncle Silas and Jubiter Dunlap was at work—and that much of what they’ve said is true, the rest is lies. They didn’t hear Uncle Silas say he would kill Jubiter; they didn’t hear no blow struck; they didn’t see no dead man, and they didn’t see Uncle Silas hide anything in the bushes. Look at them now—how they set there, wishing they hadn’t been so handy with their tongues; anyway, they’ll wish it before I get done.

  “That same Saturday evening Bill and Jack Withers did see one man lugging off another one. That much of what they said is true, and the rest is lies. First off they thought it was a nigger stealing Uncle Silas’s corn—you notice it makes them look silly, now, to find out somebody overheard them say that. That’s because they found out by and by who it was that was doing the lugging, and they know best why they swore here that they took it for Uncle Silas by the gait—which it wasn’t, and they knowed it when they swore to that lie.

  “A man out in the moonlight did see a murdered person put under ground in the tobacker field—but it wasn’t Uncle Silas that done the burying. He was in his bed at that very time.

  “Now, then, before I go on, I want to ask you if you’ve ever noticed this: that people, when they’re thinking deep, or when they’re worried, are most always doing something with their hands, and they don’t know it, and don’t notice what it is their hands are doing. Some stroke their chins; some stroke their noses; some stroke up under their chin with their hand; some twirl a chain, some fumble a button, then there’s some that draws a figure or a letter with their finger on their cheek, or under their chin or on their under lip. That’s my way. When I’m restless, or worried, or thinking hard, I draw capital V’s on my cheek or on my under lip or under my chin, and never anything but capital V’s—and half the time I don’t notice it and don’t know I’m doing it.”

  That was odd. That is just what I do; only I make an O. And I could see people nodding to one another, same as they do when they mean “That’s so.”

  “Now, then, I’ll go on. That same Saturday—no, it was the night before—there was a steamboat laying at Flagler’s Landing, forty miles above here, and it was raining and storming like the nation. And there was a thief aboard, and he had them two big di’monds that’s advertised out here on this courthouse door; and he slipped ashore with his hand-bag and struck out into the dark and the storm, and he was a-hoping he could get to this town all right and be safe. But he had two pals aboard the boat, hiding, and he knowed they was going to kill him the first chance they got and take the di’monds; because all three stole them, and then this fellow he got hold of them and skipped.

  “Well, he hadn’t been gone more’n ten minutes before his pals found it out, and they jumped ashore and lit out after him. Prob’ly they burnt matches and found his tracks. Anyway, they dogged along after him all day Saturday and kept out of his sight; and towards sundown he come to the bunch of sycamores down by Uncle Silas’s field, and he went in there to get a disguise out of his hand-bag and put it on before he showed himself here in the town—and mind you he done that just a little after the time that Uncle Silas was hitting Jubiter Dunlap over the head with a club—for he did hit him.

  “But the minute the pals see that thief slide into the bunch of sycamores, they jumped out of the bushes and slid in after him.

  “They fell on him and clubbed him to death.

  “Yes, for all he screamed and howled so, they never had no mercy on him, but clubbed him to death. And two men that was running along the road heard him yelling that way, and they made a rush into the sycamore bunch—which was where they was bound for, anyway—and when the pals saw them they lit out and the two new men after them a-chasing them as tight as they could go. But only a minute or two—then these two new men slipped back very quiet into the sycamores.

  “Then what did they do? I will tell you what they done. They found where the thief had got his disguise out of his carpet-sack to put on; so one of them strips and puts on that disguise.”

  Tom waited a little here, for some more “effect”—then he says, very deliberate:

  “The man that put on that dead man’s disguise was—Jubiter Dunlap!”

  “Great Scott!” everybody shouted, all over the house, and old Uncle Silas he looked perfectly astonished.

  “Yes, it was Jubiter Dunlap. Not dead, you see. Then they pulled off the dead man’s boots and put Jubiter Dunlap’s old ragged shoes on the corpse and put the corpse’s boots on Jubiter Dunlap. Then Jubiter Dunlap stayed where he was, and the other man lugged the dead body off in the twilight; and after midnight he went to Uncle Silas’s house, and took his old green work-robe off of the peg where it always hangs in the passage betwixt the house and the kitchen and put it on, and stole the long-handled shovel and went off down into the tobacker field and buried the murdered man.”

  He stopped, and stood half a minute. Then—

  “And who do you reckon the murdered man was? It was—Jake Dunlap, the long-lost burglar!”

  “Great Scott!”

  “And the man that buried him was—Brace Dunlap, his brother!”

  “Great Scott!”

  “And who do you reckon is this mowing idiot here that’s letting on all these weeks to be a deef and dumb stranger? It’s—Jubiter Dunlap!”

  My land, they all busted out in a howl, and you never see the like of that excitement since the day you was born. And Tom he made a jump for Jubiter and snaked off his goggles and his false whiskers, and there was the murdered man, sure enough, just as alive as anybody! And Aunt Sally and Benny they went to hu
gging and crying and kissing and smothering old Uncle Silas to that degree he was more muddled and confused and mushed up in his mind than he ever was before, and that is saying considerable. And next, people begun to yell:

  “Tom Sawyer! Tom Sawyer! Shut up everybody, and let him go on! Go on, Tom Sawyer!”

  Which made him feel uncommon bully, for it was nuts for Tom Sawyer to be a public character that-away, and a hero, as he calls it. So when it was all quiet, he says:

  “There ain’t much left, only this. When that man there, Bruce Dunlap, had most worried the life and sense out of Uncle Silas till at last he plumb lost his mind and hit this other blatherskite, his brother, with a club, I reckon he seen his chance. Jubiter broke for the woods to hide, and I reckon the game was for him to slide out, in the night, and leave the country. Then Brace would make everybody believe Uncle Silas killed him and hid his body somers; and that would ruin Uncle Silas and drive him out of the country—hang him, maybe; I dunno. But when they found their dead brother in the sycamores without knowing him, because he was so battered up, they see they had a better thing; disguise both and bury Jake and dig him up presently all dressed up in Jubiter’s clothes, and hire Jim Lane and Bill Withers and the others to swear to some handy lies—which they done. And there they set, now, and I told them they would be looking sick before I got done, and that is the way they’re looking now.

  “Well, me and Huck Finn here, we come down on the boat with the thieves, and the dead one told us all about the di’monds, and said the others would murder him if they got the chance; and we was going to help him all we could. We was bound for the sycamores when we heard them killing him in there; but we was in there in the early morning after the storm and allowed nobody hadn’t been killed, after all. And when we see Jubiter Dunlap here spreading around in the very same disguise Jake told us he was going to wear, we thought it was Jake his own self—and he was goo-gooing deef and dumb, and that was according to agreement.

  “Well, me and Huck went on hunting for the corpse after the others quit, and we found it. And was proud, too; but Uncle Silas he knocked us crazy by telling us he killed the man. So we was mighty sorry we found the body, and was bound to save Uncle Silas’s neck if we could; and it was going to be tough work, too, because he wouldn’t let us break him out of prison the way we done with our old nigger Jim.

  “I done everything I could the whole month to think up some way to save Uncle Silas, but I couldn’t strike a thing. So when we come into court to-day I come empty, and couldn’t see no chance anywheres. But by and by I had a glimpse of something that set me thinking—just a little wee glimpse—only that, and not enough to make sure; but it set me thinking hard—and watching, when I was only letting on to think; and by and by, sure enough, when Uncle Silas was piling out that stuff about him killing Jubiter Dunlap, I catched that glimpse again, and this time I jumped up and shut down the proceedings, because I knowed Jubiter Dunlap was a-setting here before me. I knowed him by a thing which I seen him do—and I remembered it. I’d seen him do it when I was here a year ago.”

  He stopped then, and studied a minute—laying for an “effect”—I knowed it perfectly well. Then he turned off like he was going to leave the platform, and says, kind of lazy and indifferent:

  “Well, I believe that is all.”

  Why, you never heard such a howl!—and it come from the whole house:

  “What was it you seen him do? Stay where you are, you little devil! You think you are going to work a body up till his mouth’s a-watering and stop there? What was it he done?”

  That was it, you see—he just done it to get an “effect”; you couldn’t ’a’ pulled him off of that platform with a yoke of oxen.

  “Oh, it wasn’t anything much,” he says. “I seen him looking a little excited when he found Uncle Silas was actu’ly fixing to hang himself for a murder that warn’t ever done; and he got more and more nervous and worried, I a-watching him sharp but not seeming to look at him—and all of a sudden his hands begun to work and fidget, and pretty soon his left crept up and his finger drawed a cross on his cheek, and then I had him!”

  Well, then they ripped and howled and stomped and clapped their hands till Tom Sawyer was that proud and happy he didn’t know what to do with himself.

  And then the judge he looked down over his pulpit and says:

  “My boy, did you see all the various details of this strange conspiracy and tragedy that you’ve been describing?”

  “No, your honor, I didn’t see any of them.”

  “Didn’t see any of them! Why, you’ve told the whole history straight through, just the same as if you’d seen it with your eyes. How did you manage that?”

  Tom says, kind of easy and comfortable:

  “Oh, just noticing the evidence and piecing this and that together, your honor; just an ordinary little bit of detective work; anybody could ’a’ done it.”

  “Nothing of the kind! Not two in a million could ’a’ done it. You are a very remarkable boy.”

  Then they let go and give Tom another smashing round, and he—well, he wouldn’t ’a’ sold out for a silver mine. Then the judge says:

  “But are you certain you’ve got this curious history straight?”

  “Perfectly, your honor. Here is Brace Dunlap—let him deny his share of it if he wants to take the chance; I’ll engage to make him wish he hadn’t said anything . . . Well, you see he’s pretty quiet. And his brother’s pretty quiet, and them four witnesses that lied so and got paid for it, they’re pretty quiet. And as for Uncle Silas, it ain’t any use for him to put in his oar, I wouldn’t believe him under oath!”

  Well, sir, that fairly made them shout; and even the judge he let go and laughed. Tom he was just feeling like a rainbow. When they was done laughing he looks up at the judge and says:

  “Your honor, there’s a thief in this house.”

  “A thief?”

  “Yes, sir. And he’s got them twelve-thousand-dollar di’monds on him.”

  By gracious, but it made a stir! Everybody went shouting:

  “Which is him? which is him? p’int him out!”

  And the judge says:

  “Point him out, my lad. Sheriff, you will arrest him. Which one is it?”

  Tom says:

  “This late dead man here—Jubiter Dunlap.”

  Then there was another thundering let-go of astonishment and excitement; but Jubiter, which was astonished enough before, was just fairly putrified with astonishment this time. And he spoke up, about half crying, and says:

  “Now that’s a lie. Your honor, it ain’t fair; I’m plenty bad enough without that. I done the other things—Brace he put me up to it, and persuaded me, and promised he’d make me rich, some day, and I done it, and I’m sorry I done it, and I wisht I hadn’t; but I hain’t stole no di’monds, and I hain’t got no di’monds; I wisht I may never stir if it ain’t so. The sheriff can search me and see.”

  Tom says:

  “Your honor, it wasn’t right to call him a thief, and I’ll let up on that a little. He did steal the di’monds, but he didn’t know it. He stole them from his brother Jake when he was laying dead, after Jake had stole them from the other thieves; but Jubiter didn’t know he was stealing them; and he’s been swelling around here with them a month; yes, sir, twelve thousand dollars’ worth of di’monds on him—all that riches, and going around here every day just like a poor man. Yes, your honor, he’s got them on him now.”

  The judge spoke up and says:

  “Search him, sheriff.”

  Well, sir, the sheriff he ransacked him high and low, and everywhere: searched his hat, socks, seams, boots, everything—and Tom he stood there quiet, laying for another of them effects of hisn. Finally the sheriff he give it up, and everybody looked disappointed, and Jubiter says:

  “There, now! what’d I tell you?”

  And the judge says:

  “It appears you were mistaken this time, my boy.”

  Then Tom took an
attitude and let on to be studying with all his might, and scratching his head. Then all of a sudden he glanced up chipper, and says:

  “Oh, now I’ve got it! I’d forgot.”

  Which was a lie, and I knowed it. Then he says:

  “Will somebody be good enough to lend me a little small screwdriver? There was one in your brother’s hand-bag that you smouched, Jubiter. but I reckon you didn’t fetch it with you.”

  “No, I didn’t. I didn’t want it, and I give it away.”

  “That’s because you didn’t know what it was for.”

  Jubiter had his boots on again, by now, and when the thing Tom wanted was passed over the people’s heads till it got to him, he says to Jubiter:

  “Put up your foot on this chair.” And he kneeled down and begun to unscrew the heel-plate, everybody watching; and when he got that big di’mond out of that boot-heel and held it up and let it flash and blaze and squirt sunlight everwhichaway, it just took everybody’s breath; and Jubiter he looked so sick and sorry you never see the like of it. And when Tom held up the other di’mond he looked sorrier than ever. Land! he was thinking how he would ’a’ skipped out and been rich and independent in a foreign land if he’d only had the luck to guess what the screwdriver was in the carpet-bag for.