as he passed. Mr. Clemens nodded back, absently; I was already becoming used to the fact that a large fraction of the population recognized my employer by sight. As he continued on in the direction of the dining car, I heard the door open again, and a sour look came over Mr. Clemens’s face as he spotted the person who’d just entered.
Before I could even decide whether or not to look around, a familiar voice behind me solved my problem. “Sure, and it’s Mr. Mark Twain again. And Mr. Wentworth.”
“Wentworth Cabot,” I corrected him. It was the New York detective, Berrigan.
“And are you traveling on business, Berrigan, or is this a vacation?” my employer asked him.
“Business, Mr. Twain, and there’s a bit of a funny twist to it. Do you mind if I sit with you a moment?” He took off his hat and plopped himself in the chair adjacent to me without waiting for an answer. Then he fished out a pipe and tobacco pouch, and began loading it.
“I checked with the desk clerk at your hotel, asking who had left the note for you. It was a tall fellow with a red beard, a bit shabbily dressed, which is why the clerk noticed him. He waited around for another fifteen minutes, then left. The clerk was just as glad to see him go—said he was making the quality folks uncomfortable.”
“That sounds like Farmer Jack to me,” said Mr. Clemens. “He used to act so countrified that most city folks wouldn’t believe he had two cents’ worth of brains. It made it easier to find suckers to play billiards with him.”
The detective nodded. “We went to the address on the note he’d left for you, and it was a shabby little rented room down in Five Points, which isn’t a part of town decent folk go into after dark—not and come back out with a whole skin. The landlord said the tenant was there a few months. And it took a little persuasion, but we got him to look at the body,” he said. He popped the filled pipe into his mouth and began searching his jacket pockets.
“There’s matches on the table,” said Mr. Clemens.
“Right you are,” said the detective, taking them. “Well, he recognized the dead man, all right. But he swore he’d never seen him with that phony red beard. And he’d never heard of Jack Hubbard—the room was rented under a different name, probably an alias.” He dug into his pocket again, and came up with an envelope. “So we’re back to you again, Mr. Twain. Take a look at this.”
Mr. Clemens opened the envelope and extracted a photograph, which he looked at, then shrugged and passed to me without saying a word. It showed the garishly lit face of a shabbily dressed man whose eyes were closed in death—or so I had to assume. The sepia tints of the glossy photographic print gave no hint as to the color of the man’s hair or complexion. But I had the feeling I had seen him before, though I couldn’t for the life of me say where. I told the detective so, and he nodded.
“What about you, Mr. Twain?”
“It’s not Farmer Jack Hubbard, even allowing for ten years and the false beard. You think Hubbard killed him?”
“That’s one possibility. Killed him and planted evidence to make it look as if he were the one that died.”
“Why?” I asked.
“If I knew that, I’d have a better idea where to find him, wouldn’t I?” Berrigan’s pipe was finally lit, and he puffed a couple of times before continuing. “But all the signs point to some connection to you, Mr. Twain. For one thing, he had your name in his pocket; for another, you had a note in the same handwriting at your hotel, signed by this Hubbard. And for a third, the dead man had Hubbard’s phony beard. That’s a few too many coincidences, says I. That’s why we were hoping you could tell us who the victim is.”
Mr. Clemens took the photograph again and stared at it a while longer. “If I ever knew him, the name’s escaped me. He’s a bit too young to be one of the old crew I knew along the river,” he finally said, passing it back to me.
“But Hubbard’s from the river, and he wanted to see you,” said the detective. “And now you’re headed back there. Are you sure there’s not more involved in this trip than you’ve told me?”
Mr. Clemens shook his head. “A lecture tour and research for a book,” he said. “My backer says my last Mississippi book was a great success, and he suggests I do another one. As it happens, I need the money, so I’m willing to listen to suggestions.”
“Aye,” said Berrigan, “I brought along a copy of that very book for reading on the train. I was of a mind it might give me an idea what to look out for.”
“I see,” said Mr. Clemens, raising one eyebrow. “So you’ll be traveling with us down the river?”
“Unless I catch my man first. Maybe Hubbard planted the beard on this fellow to cover his own escape, or maybe the dead man grabbed it from him. Either way, I think he’ll come looking for you. That’s why I’m on the train with you, and it’s why I’ll be riding on the steamboat with you. And it’s why I’m wondering if there isn’t more to this story than you’ve told me so far, Mr. Twain.” He paused, then continued in a lower tone. “This is a murder we’re talking about, Mr. Twain. You could be putting yourself in a lot of danger by withholding information from us.”
“I’m well aware of that,” said my employer. “I’ve been around some rough characters in my time, and lived to tell the tale so far, so I know what they’re capable of. I didn’t get these white hairs by taking foolish chances, and I’m not about to start. Believe me, if I see hide or hair of Farmer Jack Hubbard, you’ll be the first to know.”
I had picked up the grisly photograph for another look, racking my memory, and suddenly recalled where I’d seen the dead man. “This fellow was at your lecture the other night,” I blurted, and both of them turned to stare at me. “He sat slightly ahead of me, on the right-side aisle.”
“Now I’m sure I’m on the right trail,” crowed Berrigan.
For his part, Mr. Clemens just took the picture from my hands, and looked at it, frowning. “What name did the landlord say this fellow gave him?” he asked at last.
“Lee Russell,” said Berrigan.
“Never heard of him,” said Mr. Clemens, and his frown went even darker. “But I’m afraid we haven’t seen the last of him.”
At dinner, Mr. Clemens ordered us a bottle of champagne—“to celebrate the start of the tour,” he said. In keeping with the occasion, he maintained a constant stream of amusing, if trifling, patter all through the meal, entertaining not only me but our fellow diners; but it seemed to me that his mind was elsewhere. After dinner, in a quiet corner of the smoking car, he confirmed my suspicions.
“Murder or no murder,” he growled, “a man ought to have a right to his privacy, instead of the police dogging his heels halfway across the blasted continent. You’d think we were the suspects, instead of that old swindler Hubbard. Still, I never would have thought Jack had it in him to stab a man.”
“Yes, I wonder what he wanted with you. It makes me shiver to think that you and I might have returned to the hotel to find a killer waiting for us.”
“Well, not for you, strictly
