interview them away from their employer’s eyes.”
“The butler and the maid probably live in the Robinson house, though,” Mr. Cable pointed out. “And the butler, at least, is likely to be very loyal to the family—at least if he’s been in service with them for any length of time.”
“Yes,” I said, “but the man who paid the servants is dead, and if what the cook says is correct, the widow may not be as well-liked by the servants. That might make them readier to talk, especially to help one of their own.”
“I have an idea; let me think,” said Mr. Clemens. He paced around the room a few moments, then turned to face us. “Why don’t we start with Leonard’s Aunt Tillie? If he was close to her, he may have told her about Robinson’s giving him back his pay, which would back up his story. I promised him I’d get word to her and tell her how he’s doing. She’ll probably be glad to help us if she knows we’re working to prove his innocence. Maybe she can get the butler and maid to come talk to us, away from the eyes and ears of the family. She was your cook back when you lived here, wasn’t she, George? Do you still know where she lives?”
“Of course!” said Cable. He jumped up and reached for his hat. “She took Leonard and his brother in after their parents died, and I believe she’s still in the same house. Come with me, and we’ll see her this very evening!”
“Easy now, George,” said Mr. Clemens. “You haven’t finished your drink, and neither has Wentworth. We’ve got plenty of time. Sit back down and let’s figure out what we’re going to say to Aunt Tillie. And while we’re doing that, I do believe I’ve got enough time for another drink, myself.”
Despite our leisure, it was still light when we went down to the street. We walked over to Jackson Square, where carriages were plentiful as usual, but the first two drivers we hailed claimed not to know how to get to the vicinity of First and Liberty, where Leonard Galloway lived with his aunt. I was surprised, since the area was clearly marked on my map—only a couple of miles away, north of Saint Charles Avenue. Had I not been with two older men, I would have thought nothing of walking it. Mr. Clemens began to frown, and I was in fear of an outburst of his formidable temper, when Mr. Cable hailed a jolly-looking Negro driver in a bright red vest, who looked down from the seat with a quizzical expression and said, “It ain’t really my business, but do you folks know that’s sort of a rough neighborhood you’re asking to go to?”
“I know it perfectly well,” said Mr. Cable. “We are on a mission of mercy, and do not fear for ourselves.”
“Sho ’nuff,” said the driver, looking at Mr. Cable’s sober dress, then at Mr. Clemens’s white suit, and finally at me, towering over the two of them. “Let me guess, now. You must be some kind of trump cards, to be goin’ there and not worried about it. You’s a preacher,” he said, pointing at Cable, “and he’s a doctor,” indicating Mr. Clemens. “And maybe this here fellow’s a lawyer.”
“No, no,” said Mr. Cable. “I am George Washington Cable, and this is Mark Twain, and the other fellow is Mr. Cabot, his secretary.”
“Hmmph,” said the driver, looking us over more carefully. “Well, maybe you is and maybe you ain’t. That fellow looks like the picture of Mark Twain they got up outside the lecture hall. But you look more like a jockey than George Washington, besides which, you ain’t near old enough. And maybe you’d best pretend this big fellow is a prizefighter so nobody messes with you, ’cause he sure don’t look like no secretary I ever saw. Git on board. I’ll take you there anyhows.”
It took us two or three minutes to get Mr. Clemens to stop laughing enough to climb on board, but eventually he did. The driver flicked his reins, and off we went.
We crossed Canal Street and drove southwest along Saint Charles Avenue, with the driver pointing out various places and sights. “That’s the Saint Charles Hotel, which is a mighty nice place to stay, if you got the money, and the Saint Charles Theater right next to it. You could get the streetcar here, but you’d have to walk a good piece at the other end, where you’re going, so you a lot better off ridin’ with me. I’ll take you right there. This here’s—Ho! Git that mule out the way! Folks ain’t got all day to ride behind you!” (This latter to another driver moving too slowly for his taste.) “This here’s Lafayette Square, and that’s City Hall, where all the trouble starts. That statue over there ain’t Lafayette, though—that’s Ben Franklin. Lafayette was a Frenchman from France, and Ben Franklin was a Yankee, but I reckon they’s both dead. Never saw no statue for a live man. Good evenin’, sister!” (To a fashionably dressed young Negress.) “And that’s the Academy of Music, where they plays all kinds of concerts and operas—What you think you doin’? I had a rig like that, I’d look out where I was goin’ ’fore somebody ran me down!—And up ahead we got Lee Circle, with a statue of General Lee, which is who they named it after.”
The driver kept up an endless stream of this sort of banter the whole way, commenting on the style and appointments of every other coach on the road and the competence or lack thereof of their drivers, not to forget remarking on pretty women we passed and generally making it impossible to get a word of our own in edgewise. Since I myself had no particular opinion on any of these subjects, I was content to let him babble on, but I could see that my companions were happy when he finally pulled up in front of the address we had given him.
The houses in this section were quite different from those in the Creole quarter we had come from: low, narrow buildings that our driver referred to as “shotgun shacks.” There was no elegant ironwork here, nothing picturesque, and the streets were muddy, with wooden sidewalks and planks laid for pedestrians to cross at the corners. But the houses were well kept, and there was an air, if not quite of prosperity, at least of putting on a respectable face for the world. I wondered at the driver’s having described the neighborhood as rough. Perhaps he took our dress and manner as an indication that we were used to more affluent surroundings. I had certainly seen less attractive neighborhoods in workingmen’s sections of New Haven, although not with quite as heterogenous a mixture of races as here. And from some of the stories he told, I suspected that Mr. Clemens had seen far worse than I had.
We paid off our driver, and as we dismounted, he said, “Now, you ain’t going to have much luck findin’ a ride back downtown from here. That’s why them other fellows didn’t want to take you, like as not. I ’spose you could walk to the streetcar, but that’s a bit of a hike on these streets. If you want, I can wait and pick you up when you’re ready to go back.”
Mr. Cable nodded his agreement to Mr. Clemens, who turned to the driver and said, “That sounds good to me. Tell you what. Go get yourself a drink somewhere, and come back in about an hour.” He tossed the driver a fifty cent piece. “If we’re not ready then, we’ll let you know when we will be.”
“Sho ’nuff,” said the driver, looking at the coin with a surprised expression. “You finish up your business early, just send somebody down to the grocery store on the corner of Howard and ask for Henry Dodds—that’s me—and I’ll be here directly.”
“We’ll do that, Henry,” said Mr. Clemens, and we walked up to the house.
Mr. Cable knocked on the screen door. A tall, slim Negro man answered the door and peered out at the three of us with a puzzled expression. He looked us up and down and said, “Can I help you, gen’lemen?”
Mr. Cable stepped forward and put his hand on the door handle. “Yes, we’re looking for Matilda Galloway. Is this the right house?” But Mr. Cable had barely finished speaking when a woman’s voice came from within. “Is that Mr. Cable? My lands, don’t keep him waiting, Charley, let him in!”
Charley
