was exempted from all laws governing games of chance. Not that it kept the suckers from playing it.” He finished his coffee and, with a sigh, pushed away from the table.
After breakfast, a cab took us downtown to Desbrosses Street, through traffic so thick I was afraid we would never get through without an accident. The streets were crammed with everything from bicycles and dogcarts to overloaded freight wagons pulled by six or even eight huge Percherons. I was convinced that we had left the hotel too late, but Mr. Clemens merely sat back and smiled. “These New York cabdrivers would have given old Hank Monk a pretty good run for his money. This fellow’s got a good horse, and he knows he’s got an extra fifty cents coming if he gets us in on time, and by gum, he’ll do it.”
“Who was Hank Monk?” I inquired innocently.
Mr. Clemens gave me a strange look. “I can tell you a most laughable thing. . . .” He shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t be fair. He was a driver on the old Nevada stagecoach lines. There was an old story—not true, but that’s beside the point—about how he once carried Horace Greeley, who made the mistake of letting Hank Monk know he was in a hurry. Hank set off at a breakneck pace and like to have killed poor Horace, but he got him there on time—what was left of him.”
This anecdote did nothing to assuage my worries, but we arrived at the ferry slips in plenty of time—and miraculously, without mishap. Thence we took a ferry across the Hudson River to Jersey City, to catch our train: the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Limited Vestibule Express to Chicago. For this we arrived barely in time; luckily, Mr. Clemens had instructed me to send most of our luggage ahead the night before, leaving us to carry only one small carpetbag apiece, containing our toilet kits and a couple of changes of clothing. “Enough to hold us until we’re set up on board the boat,” said Mr. Clemens. “Never carry so much that it’ll slow you down when you’re in a rush.” I was vaguely pleased to think that I was already benefiting from the advice, however mundane, of a world traveler.
The train took us south through New Jersey, flat country with occasional muddy rivers and unattractive towns, then across the Delaware River to Philadelphia, whence it would take us west to Chicago and St. Paul. There we would board our steamer for the journey down the great Mississippi all the way to New Orleans, with numerous stops along the way to allow for sightseeing and lectures. The steamer was, in fact, a veritable floating lecture hall, which would dock at every city of any consequence for as many lectures as the local citizenry could be expected to attend.
I busied myself in reading over the detailed itinerary my predecessor (about whom Mr. Clemens had very little good to say) had prepared for our journey, and rapidly became befuddled by the complexity of our journey. I despaired of remembering all the riverside towns at which we planned to stop, let alone the hotels, restaurants, railroad stations, telegraph offices, post offices, and local people of note. At last, as we neared the outskirts of Philadelphia, I lay the thick portfolio across my lap and stared off into the pungent atmosphere of our smoking car. Surely I had gotten myself in deeper water than I had bargained for.
Mr. Clemens looked up from his newspaper and divined somehow what was on my mind. “Here, Wentworth, don’t fret. There’s no need to turn into a walking Baedeker; if that’s all I needed, I could get one a lot cheaper than a secretary, and carry it a lot easier, too. The details will come to you soon enough.”
“I’m sure I don’t know how. Learning Latin was child’s play to this, at least there’s some system to it. Here, I’ve got to remember a different set of facts for every town in twenty-five states.”
“Oh, you’re barely started. By the time we get to New Orleans, I’ll expect you to know something. If you don’t know anything useful by the time we’re back to New York, it’ll be time to worry. For the present, just look a day or two ahead every morning and make sure you know what’s coming up next. Do you know where we’re going when we arrive in Chicago?”
My blank expression must have spoken volumes. He pointed to the papers on my lap. With some embarrassment I fumbled through the pages until I found the information. “The Great Northern Hotel, on Dearborn Street.”
“Good boy. Never expect more of your memory than it can handle. That’s why people write things down. It’s better to know where you can find something than to try to remember it and come up empty. Besides, there are new buildings going up, businesses opening and closing, people moving in and out, a thousand changes every day. I can guarantee you there’ll be a dozen or more things that have changed since the last time I was in Chicago.”
“How am I ever to learn it, then?”
“The trick is to learn the general lay of the land and fill in the specific map in your head as you need to. If you know that the best place to look for a cab, any time of day or night, is in front of a big hotel, that information is as good for London or Vienna as for Boston. There are exceptions to everything, but better to have your eyes open than your memory stuffed with useless baggage.” He stared out the window a while, then turned back to me. “The sooner you get good at this job, the sooner I can forget about the details and let you handle them. So any time you have any questions about the arrangements, better to ask than to wonder what to do.”
We took our luncheon at the first seating, shortly before the train pulled into the Philadelphia station. The approach to this city is drab, with mills and manufacturing districts, but the center of Philadelphia is quite handsome, with broad parklands and a picturesque river—the Schuylkill, pronounced “skookill,” Mr. Clemens told me.
After a brief stop to take on passengers at Broad Street Station, we turned west, through pleasant farm country interspersed with patches of woods: the famous Pennsylvania Dutch country. The landscape became hilly, then (after we crossed the broad Susquehanna River) gradually turned rugged and mountainous. I commented on the grand scenery we were passing through. Mr. Clemens, busy writing letters, glanced out the window. “You should see the Rockies,” he said. “These are barely hummocks.” He turned back to his writing and scarcely raised his head until it was time for dinner. As for me, I had plenty to occupy my mind as some of the most picturesque scenery I have ever laid eyes on rolled by, a wonderful moving pageant of mountains and rivers and forests. If Mr. Clemens knew of something better than this, I looked forward to seeing it; for now, Pennsylvania was fine.
But while my eyes were busy with the view, my thoughts were on our mission to the west and Mr. Clemens’s odd story. Between the scenery and my speculations, I gradually lost track of time. It wasn’t until Mr. Clemens quietly asked whether I wanted a drink before dinner that I realized that the sun had moved well ahead of us. I glanced at my watch to see that it was nearly six.
The smoking car began to empty out as other passengers went to the diner, and so we found ourselves with enough breathing room to talk without anyone close by to overhear. I took the opportunity to bring up the questions I had been mulling over all afternoon.
“I’ve been thinking about Jack Hubbard,” I began.
Mr. Clemens gave me a calculating look. “And what exactly have you been thinking, Wentworth?”
“I’ve been wondering why you’re so convinced that what happened to Hubbard has anything to do with us. Couldn’t it be pure coincidence that he was trying to get in touch with you just before he died?”
“It could be a coincidence. But if it’s not, I’m walking into danger. I just don’t fancy the risk.”
“Then why not take the police into our trust when we had the opportunity?”
He took a long hard look out the window; the Appalachian Mountains were painted by a golden sunset. He tasted his drink, sighed, and said,
