A Double Barrelled Detective

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> A Double Barrelled Detective


"The Consolidated Christian Science and Mary Ann!" was the prompt
response.

A wild crash of hurrahs followed, and every man reached for his
neighbor's hand and wrung it, with tears in his eyes; and Wells-Fargo
Ferguson shouted, "The Straight Flush is on the lode, and up she goes to
a hunched and fifty a foot--you hear me!"

When quiet fell, Mr. Holmes resumed:

"We perceive, then, that three facts are established, to wit: the
assassin was approximately light-witted; he was not a stranger; his
motive was robbery, not revenge. Let us proceed. I hold in my hand a
small fragment of fuse, with the recent smell of fire upon it. What is
its testimony? Taken with the corroborative evidence of the quartz, it
reveals to us that the assassin was a miner. What does it tell us
further? This, gentlemen: that the assassination was consummated by
means of an explosive. What else does it say? This: that the explosive
was located against the side of the cabin nearest the road--the front
side--for within six feet of that spot I found it.

"I hold in my fingers a burnt Swedish match--the kind one rubs on a
safety-box. I found it in the road, six hundred and twenty-two feet from
the abolished cabin. What does it say? This: that the train was fired
from that point. What further does it tell us? This: that the assassin
was left-handed. How do I know this? I should not be able to explain to
you, gentlemen, how I know it, the signs being so subtle that only long
experience and deep study can enable one to detect them. But the signs
are here, and they are reinforced by a fact which you must have often
noticed in the great detective narratives--that all assassins are
left-handed."

"By Jackson, that's so." said Ham Sandwich, bringing his great hand down
with a resounding slap upon his thigh; "blamed if I ever thought of it
before."

"Nor I!" "Nor I!" cried several. "Oh, there can't anything escape him
--look at his eye!"

"Gentlemen, distant as the murderer was from his doomed victim, he did
not wholly escape injury. This fragment of wood which I now exhibit to
you struck him. It drew blood. Wherever he is, he bears the telltale
mark. I picked it up where he stood when he fired the fatal train,"
He looked out over the house from his high perch, and his countenance
began to darken; he slowly raised his hand, and pointed:

"There stands the assassin!"

For a moment the house was paralyzed with amazement; then twenty voices
burst out with:

"Sammy Hillyer? Oh, hell, no! Him? It's pure foolishness!"

"Take care, gentlemen--be not hasty. Observe--he has the blood-mark on
his brow."

Hillyer turned white with fright. He was near to crying. He turned this
way and that, appealing to every face for help and sympathy; and held out
his supplicating hands toward Holmes and began to plead:

"Don't, oh, don't! I never did it; I give my word I never did it. The
way I got this hurt on my forehead was--"

"Arrest him, constable!" cried Holmes. "I will swear out the warrant."

The constable moved reluctantly forward--hesitated--stopped.

Hillyer broke out with another appeal. "Oh, Archy, don't let them do it;
it would kill mother! You know how I got the hurt. Tell them, and save
me, Archy; save me!"

Stillman worked his way to the front, and said:

"Yes, I'll save you. Don't be afraid." Then he said to the house,
"Never mind how he got the hurt; it hasn't anything to do with this case,
and isn't of any consequence."

"God bless you, Archy, for a true friend!"

"Hurrah for Archy! Go in, boy, and play 'em a knock-down flush to their
two pair 'n' a jack!" shouted the house, pride in their home talent and a
patriotic sentiment of loyalty to it rising suddenly in the public heart
and changing the whole attitude of the situation.

Young Stillman waited for the noise to cease; then he said:

"I will ask Tom Jeffries to stand by that door yonder, and Constable
Harris to stand by the other one here, and not let anybody leave the
room.

"Said and done. Go on, old man!"

"The criminal is present, I believe. I will show him to you before long,
in case I am right in my guess. Now I will tell you all about the
tragedy, from start to finish. The motive wasn't robbery; it was
revenge. The murderer wasn't light-witted. He didn't stand six hundred
and twenty-two feet away. He didn't get hit with a piece of wood. He
didn't place the explosive against the cabin. He didn't bring a shot-bag
with him, and he wasn't left-handed. With the exception of these errors,
the distinguished guest's statement of the case is substantially
correct."

A comfortable laugh rippled over the house; friend nodded to friend, as
much as to say, "That's the word, with the bark on it. Good lad, good
boy. He ain't lowering his flag any!"

The guest's serenity was not disturbed. Stillman resumed:

"I also have some witnesses; and I will presently tell you where you can
find some more." He held up a piece of coarse wire; the crowd craned
their necks to see. "It has a smooth coating of melted tallow on it.
And here is a candle which is burned half-way down. The remaining half
of it has marks cut upon it an inch apart. Soon I will tell you where I
found these things. I will now put aside reasonings, guesses, the
impressive hitchings of odds and ends of clues together, and the other
showy theatricals of the detective trade, and tell you in a plain,
straightforward way just how this dismal thing happened."

He paused a moment, for effect--to allow silence and suspense to
intensify and concentrate the house's interest; then he went on:

"The assassin studied out his plan with a good deal of pains. It was a
good plan, very ingenious, and showed an intelligent mind, not a feeble
one. It was a plan which was well calculated to ward off all suspicion
from its inventor. In the first place, he marked a candle into spaces an
inch apart, and lit it and timed it. He found it took three hours to
burn four inches of it. I tried it myself for half an hour, awhile ago,
up-stairs here, while the inquiry into Flint Buckner's character and ways
was being conducted in this room, and I arrived in that way at the rate
of a candle's consumption when sheltered from the wind. Having proved
his trial candle's rate, he blew it out--I have already shown it to you
--and put his inch-marks on a fresh one.

"He put the fresh one into a tin candlestick. Then at the five-hour mark
he bored a hole through the candle with a red-hot wire. I have already
shown you the wire, with a smooth coat of tallow on it--tallow that had
been melted and had cooled.

"With labor--very hard labor, I should say--he struggled up through the
stiff chaparral that clothes the steep hillside back of Flint Buckner's
place, tugging an empty flour-barrel with him. He placed it in that
absolutely secure hiding-place, and in the bottom of it he set the
candlestick. Then he measured off about thirty-five feet of fuse--the
barrel's distance from the back of the cabin. He bored a hole in the
side of the barrel--here is the large gimlet he did it with. He went on
and finished his work; and when it was done, one end of the fuse was in
Buckner's cabin, and the other end, with a notch chipped in it to expose
the powder, was in the hole in the candle--timed to blow the place up at
one o'clock this morning, provided the candle was lit about eight o'clock
yesterday evening--which I am betting it was--and provided there was an
explosive in the cabin and connected with that end of the fuse--which I
am also betting there was, though I can't prove it. Boys, the barrel is
there in the chaparral, the candle's remains are in it in the tin stick;
the burnt-out fuse is in the gimlet-hole, the other end is down the hill
where the late cabin stood. I saw them all an hour or two ago, when the
Professor here was measuring off unimplicated vacancies and collecting
relics that hadn't anything to do with the case."

He paused. The house drew a long, deep breath, shook its strained cords
and muscles free and burst into cheers. "Dang him!" said Ham Sandwich,
"that's why he was snooping around in the chaparral, instead of picking
up points out of the P'fessor's game. Looky here--he ain't no fool,
boys."

"No, sir! Why, great Scott--"

But Stillman was resuming:

"While we were out yonder an hour or two ago, the owner of the gimlet and
the trial candle took them from a place where he had concealed them--it
was not a good place--and carried them to what he probably thought was a
better one, two hundred yards up in the pine woods, and hid them there,
covering them over with pine needles. It was there that I found them.
The gimlet exactly fits the hole in the barrel. And now--"

The Extraordinary Man interrupted him. He said, sarcastically:

"We have had a very pretty fairy tale, gentlemen--very pretty indeed.
Now I would like to ask this young man a question or two."

Some of the boys winced, and Ferguson said:

"I'm afraid Archy's going to catch it now."

The others lost their smiles and sobered down. Mr. Holmes said:

"Let us proceed to examine into this fairy tale in a consecutive and
orderly way--by geometrical progression, so to speak--linking detail to
detail in a steadily advancing and remorselessly consistent and
unassailable march upon this tinsel toy fortress of error, the dream
fabric of a callow imagination. To begin with, young sir, I desire to
ask you but three questions at present--at present. Did I understand you
to say it was your opinion that the supposititious candle was lighted at
about eight o'clock yesterday evening?"

"Yes, sir--about eight."

"Could you say exactly eight?"

"Well, no, I couldn't be that exact."

"Um. If a person had been passing along there just about that time, he
would have been almost sure to encounter that assassin, do you think?"

"Yes, I should think so."

"Thank you, that is all. For the present. I say, all for the present."

"Dern him, he's laying for Archy," said Ferguson.

"It's so," said Ham Sandwich. "I don't like the look of it."

Stillman said, glancing at the guest, "I was along there myself at
half-past eight--no, about nine."

"In-deed? This is interesting--this is very interesting. Perhaps you
encountered the assassin?"

"No, I encountered no one."

"Ah. Then--if you will excuse the remark--I do not quite see the
relevancy of the information."

"It has none. At present. I say it has none--at present."

He paused. Presently he resumed: "I did not encounter the assassin, but
I am on his track, I am sure, for I believe he is in this room. I will
ask you all to pass one by one in front of me--here, where there is a
good light--so that I can see your feet."

A buzz of excitement swept the place, and the march began, the guest
looking on with an iron attempt at gravity which was not an unqualified
success. Stillman stooped, shaded his eyes with his hand, and gazed down
intently at each pair of feet as it passed. Fifty men tramped
monotonously by--with no result. Sixty. Seventy. The thing was
beginning to look absurd. The guest remarked, with suave irony:

"Assassins appear to be scarce this evening."

The house saw the humor if it, and refreshed itself with a cordial laugh.
Ten or twelve more candidates tramped by--no, danced by, with airy and
ridiculous capers which convulsed the spectators--then suddenly Stillman
put out his hand and said:

"This is the assassin!"

"Fetlock Jones, by the great Sanhedrim!" roared the crowd; and at once
let fly a pyrotechnic explosion and dazzle and confusion of stirring
remarks inspired by the situation.

At the height of the turmoil the guest stretched out his hand, commanding
peace. The authority of a great name and a great personality laid its
mysterious compulsion upon the house, and it obeyed. Out of the panting
calm which succeeded, the guest spoke, saying, with dignity and feeling:

"This is serious. It strikes at an innocent life. Innocent beyond
suspicion! Innocent beyond peradventure! Hear me prove it; observe how
simple a fact can brush out of existence this witless lie. Listen. My
friends, that lad was never out of my sight yesterday evening at any
time!"

It made a deep impression. Men turned their eyes upon Stillman with
grave inquiry in them. His face brightened, and he said:

"I knew there was another one!" He stepped briskly to the table and
glanced at the guest's feet, then up at his face, and said: "You were
with him! You were not fifty steps from him when he lit the candle that
by and by fired the powder!" (Sensation.) "And what is more, you
furnished the matches yourself!"

Plainly the guest seemed hit; it looked so to the public. He opened his
mouth to speak; the words did not come freely.

"This--er--this is insanity--this--"

Stillman pressed his evident advantage home. He held up a charred match.

"Here is one of them. I found it in the barrel--and there's another one
there."

The guest found his voice at once.

"Yes--and put them there yourself!"

It was recognized a good shot. Stillman retorted.

"It is wax--a breed unknown to this camp. I am ready to be searched for
the box. Are you?"

The guest was staggered this time--the dullest eye could see it. He
fumbled with his hands; once or twice his lips moved, but the words did
not come. The house waited and watched, in tense suspense, the stillness
adding effect to the situation. Presently Stillman said, gently:

"We are waiting for your decision."

There was silence again during several moments; then the guest answered,
in a low voice:

"I refuse to be searched."

There was no noisy demonstration, but all about the house one voice after
another muttered:

"That settles it! He's Archy's meat."

What to do now? Nobody seemed to know. It was an embarrassing situation
for the moment--merely, of course, because matters had taken such a
sudden and unexpected turn that these unpractised minds were not prepared
for it, and had come to a standstill, like a stopped clock, under the
shock. But after a little the machinery began to work again,
tentatively, and by twos and threes the men put their heads together and
privately buzzed over this and that and the other proposition. One of
these propositions met with much favor; it was, to confer upon the
assassin a vote of thanks for removing Flint Buckner, and let him go.
But the cooler heads opposed it, pointing out that addled brains in the
Eastern states would pronounce it a scandal, and make no end of foolish
noise about it. Finally the cool heads got the upper hand, and obtained
general consent to a proposition of their own; their leader then called
the house to order and stated it--to this effect: that Fetlock Jones be
jailed and put upon trial.

The motion was carried. Apparently there was nothing further to do now,
and the people were glad, for, privately, they were impatient to get out
and rush to the scene of the tragedy, and see whether that barrel and the
other things were really there or not.

But no--the break-up got a check. The surprises were not over yet. For
a while Fetlock Jones had been silently sobbing, unnoticed in the
absorbing excitements which had been following one another so
persistently for some time; but when his arrest and trial were decreed,
he broke out despairingly, and said:

"No! it's no use. I don't want any jail, I don't want any trial; I've
had all the hard luck I want, and all the miseries. Hang me now, and let
me out! It would all come out, anyway--there couldn't anything save me.
He has told it all, just as if he'd been with me and seen it--I don't
know how he found out; and you'll find the barrel and things, and then I
wouldn't have any chance any more. I killed him; and you'd have done it
too, if he'd treated you like a dog, and you only a boy, and weak and
poor, and not a friend to help you."

"And served him damned well right!" broke in Ham Sandwich. "Looky here,
boys--"

From the constable: "Order! Order, gentlemen!"

A voice: "Did your uncle know what you was up to?"

"No, he didn't."

"Did he give you the matches, sure enough?"

"Yes, he did; but he didn't know what I wanted them for."

"When you was out on such a business as that, how did you venture to risk
having him along--and him a detective? How's that?"

The boy hesitated, fumbled with his buttons in an embarrassed way, then
said, shyly:

"I know about detectives, on account of having them in the family; and if
you don't want them to find out about a thing, it's best to have them
around when you do it."

The cyclone of laughter which greeted this native discharge of wisdom did
not modify the poor little waif's embarrassment in any large degree.




IV

From a letter to Mrs. Stillman, dated merely "Tuesday."

Fetlock Jones was put under lock and key in an unoccupied log cabin, and
left there to await his trial. Constable Harris provided him with a
couple of days' rations, instructed him to keep a good guard over
himself, and promised to look in on him as soon as further supplies
should be due.

Next morning a score of us went with Hillyer, out of friendship, and
helped him bury his late relative, the unlamented Buckner, and I acted as
first assistant pall-bearer, Hillyer acting as chief. Just as we had
finished our labors a ragged and melancholy stranger, carrying an old
hand-bag, limped by with his head down, and I caught the scent I had
chased around the globe! It was the odor of Paradise to my perishing
hope!

In a moment I was at his side and had laid a gentle hand upon his
shoulder. He slumped to the ground as if a stroke of lightning had
withered him in his tracks; and as the boys came running he struggled to
his knees and put up his pleading hands to me, and out of his chattering
jaws he begged me to persecute him no more, and said:

"You have hunted me around the world, Sherlock Holmes, yet God is my
witness I have never done any man harm!"

A glance at his wild eyes showed us that he was insane. That was my
work, mother! The tidings of your death can some day repeat the misery I
felt in that moment, but nothing else can ever do it. The boys lifted
him up, and gathered about him, and were full of pity of him, and said
the gentlest and touchingest things to him, and said cheer up and don't
be troubled, he was among friends now, and they would take care of him,
and protect him, and hang any man that laid a hand on him. They are just
like so many mothers, the rough mining-camp boys are, when you wake up
the south side of their hearts; yes, and just like so many reckless and
unreasoning children when you wake up the opposite of that muscle. They
did everything they could think of to comfort him, but nothing succeeded
until Wells-Fargo Ferguson, who is a clever strategist, said:

"If it's only Sherlock Holmes that's troubling you, you needn't worry any
more."

"Why?" asked the forlorn lunatic, eagerly.

"Because he's dead again."

"Dead! Dead! Oh, don't trifle with a poor wreck like me. Is he dead?
On honor, now--is he telling me true, boys?"

"True as you're standing there!" said Ham Sandwich, and they all backed
up the statement in a body.

"They hung him in San Bernardino last week," added Ferguson, clinching
the matter, "whilst he was searching around after you. Mistook him for
another man. They're sorry, but they can't help it now."

"They're a-building him a monument," said Ham Sandwich, with the air of a
person who had contributed to it, and knew.

"James Walker" drew a deep sigh--evidently a sigh of relief--and said
nothing; but his eyes lost something of their wildness, his countenance
cleared visibly, and its drawn look relaxed a little. We all went to our
cabin, and the boys cooked him the best dinner the camp could furnish the
materials for, and while they were about it Hillyer and I outfitted him
from hat to shoe-leather with new clothes of ours, and made a comely and
presentable old gentleman of him. "Old" is the right word, and a pity,
too: old by the droop of him, and the frost upon his hair, and the marks
which sorrow and distress have left upon his face; though he is only in
his prime in the matter of years. While he ate, we smoked and chatted;
and when he was finishing he found his voice at last, and of his own
accord broke out with his personal history. I cannot furnish his exact
words, but I will come as near it as I can.


THE "WRONG MAN'S" STORY

It happened like this: I was in Denver. I had been there many years;
sometimes I remember how many, sometimes I don't--but it isn't any
matter. All of a sudden I got a notice to leave, or I would be exposed
for a horrible crime committed long before--years and years before--in
the East.

I knew about that crime, but I was not the criminal; it was a cousin of
mine of the same name. What should I better do? My head was all
disordered by fear, and I didn't know. I was allowed very little time
--only one day, I think it was. I would be ruined if I was published,
and the people would lynch me, and not believe what I said. It is always
the way with lynchings: when they find out it is a mistake they are
sorry, but it is too late--the same as it was with Mr. Holmes, you see.
So I said I would sell out and get money to live on, and run away until
it blew over and I could come back with my proofs. Then I escaped in the
night and went a long way off in the mountains somewhere, and lived
disguised and had a false name.

I got more and more troubled and worried, and my troubles made me see
spirits and hear voices, and I could not think straight and clear on any
subject, but got confused and involved and had to give it up, because my
head hurt so. It got to be worse and worse; more spirits and more
voices. They were about me all the time; at first only in the night,
then in the day too. They were always whispering around my bed and
plotting against me, and it broke my sleep and kept me fagged out,
because I got no good rest.

And then came the worst. One night the whispers said, "We'll never
manage, because we can't see him, and so can't point him out to the
people."

They sighed; then one said: "We must bring Sherlock Holmes. He can be
here in twelve days."

They all agreed, and whispered and jibbered with joy. But my heart
broke; for I had read about that man, and knew what it would be to have
him upon my track, with his superhuman penetration and tireless energies.

The spirits went away to fetch him, and I got up at once in the middle of
the night and fled away, carrying nothing but the hand-bag that had my
money in it--thirty thousand dollars; two-thirds of it are in the bag
there yet. It was forty days before that man caught up on my track.
I just escaped. From habit he had written his real name on a tavern
register, but had scratched it out and written "Dagget Barclay" in the
place of it. But fear gives you a watchful eye and keen, and I read the
true name through the scratches, and fled like a deer.

He has hunted me all over this world for three years and a half--the
Pacific states, Australasia, India--everywhere you can think of; then
back to Mexico and up to California again, giving me hardly any rest; but
that name on the registers always saved me, and what is left of me is
alive yet. And I am so tired! A cruel time he has given me, yet I give
you my honor I have never harmed him nor any man.

That was the end of the story, and it stirred those boys to blood-heat,
be sure of it. As for me--each word burnt a hole in me where it struck.

We voted that the old man should bunk with us, and be my guest and
Hillyer's. I shall keep my own counsel, naturally; but as soon as he is
well rested and nourished, I shall take him to Denver and rehabilitate
his fortunes.

The boys gave the old fellow the bone-smashing good-fellowship handshake
of the mines, and then scattered away to spread the news.

At dawn next morning Wells-Fargo Ferguson and Ham Sandwich called us
softly out, and said, privately:

"That news about the way that old stranger has been treated has spread
all around, and the camps are up. They are piling in from everywhere,
and are going to lynch the P'fessor. Constable Harris is in a dead funk,
and has telephoned the sheriff. Come along!"

We started on a run. The others were privileged to feel as they chose,
but in my heart's privacy I hoped the sheriff would arrive in time; for I
had small desire that Sherlock Holmes should hang for my deeds, as you
can easily believe. I had heard a good deal about the sheriff, but for
reassurance's sake I asked:

"Can he stop a mob?"

"Can he stop a mob! Can Jack Fairfax stop a mob! Well, I should smile!
Ex-desperado--nineteen scalps on his string. Can he! Oh, I say!"

As we tore up the gulch, distant cries and shouts and yells rose faintly
on the still air, and grew steadily in strength as we raced along. Roar
after roar burst out, stronger and stronger, nearer and nearer; and at
last, when we closed up upon the multitude massed in the open area in
front of the tavern, the crash of sound was deafening. Some brutal
roughs from Daly's gorge had Holmes in their grip, and he was the calmest
man there; a contemptuous smile played about his lips, and if any fear of
death was in his British heart, his iron personality was master of it and
no sign of it was allowed to appear.