The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain (66 page)

The uproar shook the building, so hearty was the feeling the boys put into their welcome. Up-stairs the uncle reproached the nephew gently, saying:

“What did you get me into that engagement for?”

“I reckon you don’t want to be unpopular, do you, uncle? Well, then, don’t you put on any exclusiveness in a mining-camp, that’s all. The boys admire you; but if you was to leave without taking a drink with them, they’d set you down for a snob. And besides, you said you had home talk enough in stock to keep us up and at it half the night.”

The boy was right, and wise—the uncle acknowledged it. The boy was wise in another detail which he did not mention—except to himself: “Uncle and the others will come handy—in the way of nailing an
alibi
where it can’t be budged.”

He and his uncle talked diligently about three hours. Then, about midnight, Fetlock stepped down-stairs and took a position in the dark a dozen steps from the tavern, and waited. Five minutes later Flint Buckner came rocking out of the billiard-room and almost brushed him as he passed.

“I’ve
got
him!” muttered the boy. He continued to himself, looking after the shadowy form: “Good-by—good-by for good, Flint Buckner; you called my mother a—well, never mind what: it’s all right, now; you’re taking your last walk, friend.”

He went musing back into the tavern. “From now till one is an hour. We’ll spend it with the boys: it’s good for the
alibi
.”

He brought Sherlock Holmes to the billiard-room, which was jammed with eager and admiring miners; the guest called the drinks, and the fun began. Everybody was happy; everybody was complimentary; the ice was soon broken, songs, anecdotes, and more drinks followed, and the pregnant minutes flew. At six minutes to one, when the jollity was at its highest—

Boom!

There was silence instantly. The deep sound came rolling and rumbling from peak to peak up the gorge, then died down, and ceased. The spell broke, then, and the men made a rush for the door, saying:

“Something’s blown up!”

Outside, a voice in the darkness said, “It’s away down the gorge; I saw the flash.”

The crowd poured down the cañon—Holmes, Fetlock, Archy Stillman, everybody. They made the mile in a few minutes. By the light of a lantern they found the smooth and solid dirt floor of Flint Buckner’s cabin; of the cabin itself not a vestige remained, not a rag nor a splinter. Nor any sign of Flint. Search-parties sought here and there and yonder, and presently a cry went up.

“Here he is!”

It was true. Fifty yards down the gulch they had found him—that is, they had found a crushed and lifeless mass which represented him. Fetlock Jones hurried thither with the others and looked.

The inquest was a fifteen-minute affair. Ham Sandwich, foreman of the jury, handed up the verdict, which was phrased with a certain unstudied literary grace, and closed with this finding, to wit: that “deceased came to his death by his own act or some other person or persons unknown to this jury not leaving any family or similar effects behind but his cabin which was blown away and God have mercy on his soul amen.”

Then the impatient jury rejoined the main crowd, for the storm-center of interest was there—Sherlock Holmes. The miners stood silent and reverent in a half-circle, inclosing a large vacant space which included the front exposure of the site of the late premises. In this considerable space the Extraordinary Man was moving about, attended by his nephew with a lantern. With a tape he took measurements of the cabin site; of the distance from the wall of chaparral to the road; of the height of the chaparral bushes; also various other measurements. He gathered a rag here, a splinter there, and a pinch of earth yonder, inspected them profoundly, and preserved them. He took the “lay” of the place with a pocket-compass, allowing two seconds for magnetic variation. He took the time (Pacific) by his watch, correcting it for local time. He paced off the distance from the cabin site to the corpse, and corrected that for tidal differentiation. He took the altitude with a pocket-aneroid, and the temperature with a pocket-thermometer. Finally he said, with a stately bow:

“It is finished. Shall we return, gentlemen?”

He took up the line of march for the tavern, and the crowd fell into his wake, earnestly discussing and admiring the Extraordinary Man, and interlarding guesses as to the origin of the tragedy and who the author of it might be.

“My, but it’s grand luck having him here—hey, boys?” said Ferguson.

“It’s the biggest thing of the century,” said Ham Sandwich. “It ’ll go all over the world; you mark my words.”

“
You
bet!” said Jake Parker, the blacksmith. “It ’ll boom this camp. Ain’t it so, Wells-Fargo?”

“Well, as you want my opinion—if it’s any sign of how
I
think about it, I can tell you this: yesterday I was holding the Straight Flush claim at two dollars a foot; I’d like to see the man that can get it at sixteen to-day.”

“Right you are, Wells-Fargo! It’s the grandest luck a new camp ever struck. Say, did you see him collar them little rags and dirt and things? What an eye! He just can’t overlook a clue—’tain’t
in
him.”

“That’s so. And they wouldn’t mean a thing to anybody else; but to him, why, they’re just a book—large print at that.”

“Sure’s you’re born! Them odds and ends have got their little old secret, and they think there ain’t anybody can pull it; but, land! when he sets his grip there they’ve got to squeal, and don’t you forget it.”

“Boys, I ain’t sorry, now, that he wasn’t here to roust out the child; this is a bigger thing, by a long sight. Yes, sir, and more tangled up and scientific and intellectual.”

“I reckon we’re all of us glad it’s turned out this way. Glad? ’George! it ain’t any name for it. Dontchuknow, Archy could ’ve
learnt
something if he’d had the nous to stand by and take notice of how that man works the system. But no; he went poking up into the chaparral and just missed the whole thing.”

“It’s true as gospel; I seen it myself. Well, Archy’s young. He’ll know better one of these days.”

“Say, boys, who do you reckon done it?”

That was a difficult question, and brought out a world of unsatisfying conjecture. Various men were mentioned as possibilities, but one by one they were discarded as not being eligible. No one but young Hillyer had been intimate with Flint Buckner; no one had really had a quarrel with him; he had affronted every man who had tried to make up to him, although not quite offensively enough to require bloodshed. There was one name that was upon every tongue from the start, but it was the last to get utterance—Fetlock Jones’s. It was Pat Riley that mentioned it.

“Oh, well,” the boys said, “of course we’ve all thought of him, because he had a million rights to kill Flint Buckner, and it was just his plain duty to do it. But all the same there’s two things we can’t get around: for one thing, he hasn’t got the sand; and for another, he wasn’t anywhere near the place when it happened.”

“I know it,” said Pat. “He was there in the billiard-room with us when it happened.”

“Yes, and was there all the time for an hour
before
it happened.”

“It’s so. And lucky for him, too. He’d have been suspected in a minute if it hadn’t been for that.”

8

The tavern dining-room had been cleared of all its furniture save one six-foot pine table and a chair. This table was against one end of the room; the chair was on it; Sherlock Holmes, stately, imposing, impressive, sat in the chair. The public stood. The room was full. The tobacco-smoke was dense, the stillness profound.

The Extraordinary Man raised his hand to command additional silence; held it in the air a few moments; then, in brief, crisp terms he put forward question after question, and noted the answers with “Um-ums,” nods of the head, and so on. By this process he learned all about Flint Buckner, his character, conduct, and habits, that the people were able to tell him. It thus transpired that the Extraordinary Man’s nephew was the only person in the camp who had a killing-grudge against Flint Buckner. Mr. Holmes smiled compassionately upon the witness, and asked, languidly:

“Do any of you gentlemen chance to know where the lad Fetlock Jones was at the time of the explosion?”

A thunderous response followed:

“In the billiard-room of this house!”

“Ah. And had he just come in?”

“Been there all of an hour!”

“Ah. It is about—about—well, about how far might it be to the scene of the explosion?”

“All of a mile!”

“Ah. It isn’t
much
of an alibi, ’tis true, but—”

A storm-burst of laughter, mingled with shouts of “By jiminy, but he’s chain-lightning!” and “Ain’t you sorry you spoke, Sandy?” shut off the rest of the sentence, and the crushed witness drooped his blushing face in pathetic shame. The inquisitor resumed:

“The lad Jones’s somewhat
distant
connection with the case” (
laughter
) “having been disposed of, let us now call the
eye
-witnesses of the tragedy, and listen to what they have to say.”

He got out his fragmentary clues and arranged them on a sheet of cardboard on his knee. The house held its breath and watched.

“We have the longitude and the latitude, corrected for magnetic variation, and this gives us the exact location of the tragedy. We have the altitude, the temperature, and the degree of humidity prevailing—inestimably valuable, since they enable us to estimate with precision the degree of influence which they would exercise upon the mood and disposition of the assassin at that time of the night.”

(
Buzz of admiration; muttered remark, “By George, but he’s deep!”
) He fingered his clues. “And now let us ask these mute witnesses to speak to us.

“Here we have an empty linen shot-bag. What is its message? This: that robbery was the motive, not revenge. What is its further message? This: that the assassin was of inferior intelligence—shall we say light-witted, or perhaps approaching that? How do we know this? Because a person of sound intelligence would not have proposed to rob the man Buckner, who never had much money with him. But the assassin might have been a stranger? Let the bag speak again. I take from it this article. It is a bit of silver-bearing quartz. It is peculiar. Examine it, please—you—and you—and you. Now pass it back, please. There is but one lode on this coast which produces just that character and color of quartz; and that is a lode which crops out for nearly two miles on a stretch, and in my opinion is destined, at no distant day, to confer upon its locality a globe-girdling celebrity, and upon its two hundred owners riches beyond the dreams of avarice. Name that lode, please.”

“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 hundred 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 bloodmark 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.”