We paused a moment at the corner of Bourbon Street as a fully laden beer wagon rumbled past, the big horses straining at the traces, headed for some saloon.
We crossed the dusty street and Mr. Clemens continued. “That’s why I don’t want to jump into the case just on Cable’s say-so, Wentworth. Is Leonard Galloway a convenient victim chosen to appease the public, or is he a poisoner? If he really is a murderer, and I lend my name to the battle to defend him, who does it help? It doesn’t help the blacks, it doesn’t help Cable, it doesn’t help the people of New Orleans, and it sure doesn’t help me. So I want to be sure I know what kind of man Galloway is, and the best way I know to decide that is to talk to him. I can tell more about a man in five minutes of talking to him, face-to-face, than in a year of hearing what other people say about him. So here’s a chance to talk to him and see what I can learn.
“Besides, this is as good a chance as I’ll ever have to get a look around the old Parish Prison. It’s a New Orleans landmark in a dismal sort of way, on the order of the Bastille. It dates from before I was born, and there are a lot of strange stories about it. They’ve finally decided to build a new prison up on Tulane Avenue, and tear the old one down. So this is probably my last chance to see the inside of the place. I imagine I’m unlikely to see it as an overnight guest, now that I’m supposedly an honest citizen.”
“I should hope not!” I said, shocked at the notion of my employer spending a night in prison. Perhaps respected authors of mature years were still imprisoned in Russia, or other barbaric places with no constitution, but I could not imagine Mr. Clemens being jailed. Well, perhaps it might have happened in the bygone era of debtor’s prisons—but hardly in these enlightened times.
We walked up Orleans Street to the corner of Tremé, where we found a grim-looking structure, three stories high and covering an entire city block. We presented ourselves at the entrance, where the policeman on duty instantly recognized “Mark Twain,” and waved us through the doors where many wretches undoubtedly met a much less congenial welcome and entered with far less hope of a timely exit than we experienced.
Even at first glance it was clear that the building sadly needed repair—better yet, replacement. One of the senior keepers, Mr. DeBusschere, appointed himself our guide and led us into the heart of the ancient dungeon.
Mr. DeBusschere was a thick, muscular man with a full white mustache and a clean-shaven head. He wore a blue uniform with a holstered pistol at the waist, along with a large ring of keys. He was obviously impressed at the chance to escort a world-famous author, and so he took us on a roundabout route, giving us a full commentary on all the sights and history of the Parish Prison, smiling broadly all the time, although the smile stopped short of his eyes. Mr. Clemens looked at everything with lively interest, and so I refrained from expressing my annoyance that we were not taken directly to see the cook.
Mr. DeBusschere put great emphasis on the lynching of the Italians accused of shooting the police chief a few years earlier; his theme appeared to be the valiant but unsuccessful efforts of the guards (himself prominent among them) to protect the prisoners. “Here’s Cell Number Two, where six of the Italians hid the night the lynch mob came,” he said. “We left the dagos free to run inside the prison, hoping they’d have a chance to save themselves, but the citizens followed them down that way into the courtyard—we’ll see that in a little while—and shot them down.”
I peered into the gloomy cell, lit by a single gas flame from the hall where we stood. Several prisoners stared back, with no sign of recognizing their distinguished visitor. “What a terrible place! It must be a very hotbed of vermin and disease,” I said.
“Well, we have the very answer for that,” said Mr. DeBusschere, proudly. He pointed to the ceiling with a sweeping gesture. “We let the bats nest in the rafters undisturbed so they can kill off the flies and mosquitos. That’s a sure preventative to yellow fever, you know.” I peered into the dark, but could not make out anything. Still, the notion of bats swooping down over the poor souls in the cells sent a chill up my back.
“Yes, and Cable tells me they fumigated the place back in ’82,” said Mr. Clemens, conversationally. “They took out over a hundred barrels full of dead rats.”
“Well, that’s what the newspapers claimed, but it’s an exaggeration,” said the keeper. “I was here at the time, and I doubt there were more than ninety-five barrels. But good riddance to the filthy vermin, says I.” He rattled his keys self-importantly and led us on to the next section of the prison. I resisted the temptation to ask whether the place had been given a proper cleaning since.
Mr. DeBusschere took us through several different sections of the prison, pointing out places he thought we might find interesting: a doghouse where two of the arrested Italians had hidden and escaped the mob; bullet holes in the wall where two others had been found and shot to death; and the infamous sweatbox that, until very recently, had been used to coerce recalcitrant prisoners to confess. At every turn, prisoners crowded forward, some of them pleading pathetically, asking for their lawyers, for food, for their wives or mothers. A few of them tried to beckon me over to the bars, but Mr. DeBusschere had warned me not to listen to such invitations. “I can’t guarantee your safety,” he said. Still, my indignation grew to see such inhumane and uncivilized treatment, even of murderers and thieves, let alone the unfortunates whose only crimes were mental deficiency or lunacy, but who were indiscriminately thrown in with the worst kind of hardened criminal.
I think our guide must have detected my revulsion at the barbaric conditions prevailing within the prison, for at last he took us up a stairway to a different section of the building. “Now, I don’t want you to think we don’t know how to treat decent folks who somehow fall afoul of the law,” he said. Much to my surprise, we found ourselves surrounded by cells far cleaner and more roomy than those we had just seen.
We entered a large common room with comfortable chairs and writing tables and curtains concealing the bars on the windows. A couple of guards stood casually by the door, conversing with the prisoners as if they were the best of friends. The inmates here were far better fed and dressed than their fellows in the cells we had just left. Mr. DeBusschere told us that they were even allowed to order dinner sent in from restaurants in the neighboring community. One fellow was being measured for a suit of clothes, and another, a stout man with long stringy hair combed upward across his skull in a futile attempt to cover a large bald spot, recognized Mr. Clemens and had the audacity to walk over and offer him a cigar. “You’ll find this as good a smoke as you’ll get this side of Cuba,” he told him. Mr. Clemens stared at the fellow, but took the cigar and put it in his breast pocket, politely thanking the prisoner.
After a short while in this comparatively comfortable section of the prison, we headed for the courtyard where we would meet Leonard Galloway, the cook arrested for Robinson’s murder. “Who was that rascal who gave me the cigar?” asked Mr. Clemens, as we came down the stairs.
“Adolf Mueller,” said Mr. DeBusschere. “He’s a precinct worker in the Fourth Ward. He beat up a policeman who went to question him about extorting money from a house over on Customhouse Street, and the cop pressed charges. The madam and the girls were too scared to testify, but the cop wouldn’t be scared off or bought off, and neither would the judge. Now Adolf’s doing ninety days in the Orleans Hotel,” the prison guard concluded, chuckling. Upon hearing this, Mr. Clemens took the cigar out of his pocket and sniffed the wrapper with an expression that combined evident relish and profound regret. Then, as we passed an open window, he flung it through the bars.
“Waste of a good cigar,” said Mr. DeBusschere, with a surprised look on his face.
“Damned good cigar, unless my nose has failed me in my old age,” said Mr. Clemens. “But somebody else is bound to find it before it gets rained on, and I hope he’ll enjoy it more than I ever could
