Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0139/01391.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob01391}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life On The Mississippi
Chapter XXXI}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{night
time
how
last
now
adler
upon
hands
tell
tried}
$Date{1917}
$Log{}
Title:       Life On The Mississippi
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1917

Chapter XXXI

A Thumb-Print And What Came Of It

     We were approaching Napoleon, Arkansas.  So I began to think about my
errand there.  Time, noonday; and bright and sunny.  This was bad - not best,
anyway; for mine was not (preferably) a noonday kind of errand. The more I
thought, the more that fact pushed itself upon me - now in one form, now in
another.  Finally, it took the form of a distinct question: Is it good common
sense to do the errand in daytime, when by a little sacrifice of comfort and
inclination you can have night for it, and no inquisitive eyes around?  This
settled it.  Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of
most perplexities.

     I got my friends into my stateroom, and said I was sorry to create
annoyance and disappointment, but that upon reflection it really seemed best
that we put our luggage ashore and stop over at Napoleon.  Their disapproval
was prompt and loud; their language mutinous.  Their main argument was one
which has always been the first to come to the surface, in such cases, since
the beginning of time: "But you decided and agreed to stick to this boat,"
etc.; as if, having determined to do an unwise thing, one is thereby bound to
go ahead and make two unwise things of it, by carrying out that determination.
I tried various mollifying tactics upon them, with reasonably good success:
under which encouragement I increased my efforts; and, to show them that I had
not created this annoying errand, and was in no way to blame for it, I
presently drifted into its history - substantially as follows:

     Toward the end of last year I spent a few months in Munich, Bavaria. In
November I was living in Fraulein Dahlweiner's pension, Ia, Karlstrasse; but
my working quarters were a mile from there, in the house of a widow who
supported herself by taking lodgers.  She and her two young children used to
drop in every morning and talk German to me - by request.  One day, during a
ramble about the city, I visited one of the two establishments where the
government keeps and watches corpses until the doctors decide that they are
permanently dead, and not in a trance state.  It was a grisly place, that
spacious room.  There were thirty-six corpses of adults in sight, stretched on
their backs on slightly slanted boards, in three long rows - all of them with
wax-white, rigid faces, and all of them wrapped in white shrouds.  Along the
sides of the room were deep alcoves, like bay-windows; and in each of these
lay several marble- visaged babes, utterly hidden and buried under banks of
fresh flowers, all but their faces and crossed hands.  Around a finger of each
of these fifty still forms, both great and small, was a ring; and from the
ring a wire led to the ceiling, and thence to a bell in a watch-room yonder,
where, day and night, a watchman sits always alert and ready to spring to the
aid of any of that pallid company who, waking out of death, shall make a
movement - for any, even the slightest, movement will twitch the wire and ring
that fearful bell.  I imagined myself a death-sentinel drowsing there alone,
far in the dragging watches of some wailing, gusty night, and having in a
twinkling all my body stricken to quivering jelly by the sudden clamor of that
awful summons!  So I inquired about this thing; asked what resulted usually?
if the watchman died, and the restored corpse came and did what it could to
make his last moments easy? But I was rebuked for trying to feed an idle and
frivolous curiosity in so solemn and so mournful a place; and went my way with
a humbled crest.

     Next morning I was telling the widow my adventure when she exclaimed:

     "Come with me!  I have a lodger who shall tell you all you want to know.
He has been a night watchman there."

     He was a living man, but he did not look it.  He was abed and had his
head propped high on pillows; his face was wasted and colorless, his
deep-sunken eyes were shut; his hand, lying on his breast, was talonlike, it
was so bony and long-fingered.  The widow began her introduction of me.  The
man's eyes opened slowly, and glittered wickedly out from the twilight of
their caverns; he frowned a black frown; he lifted his lean hand and waved us
peremptorily away.  But the widow kept straight on, till she had got out the
fact that I was a stranger and an American.  The man's face changed at once,
brightened, became even eager - and the next moment he and I were alone
together.

     I opened up in cast-iron German; he responded in quite flexible English;
thereafter we gave the German language a permanent rest.

     This consumptive and I became good friends.  I visited him every day, and
we talked about everything.  At least, about everything but wives and
children.  Let anybody's wife or anybody's child be mentioned and three things
always followed: the most gracious and loving and tender light glimmered in
the man's eyes for a moment; faded out the next, and in its place came that
deadly look which had flamed there the first time I ever saw his lids unclose;
thirdly, he ceased from speech there and then for that day, lay silent,
abstracted, and absorbed, apparently heard nothing that I said, took no notice
of my good-bys, and plainly did not know by either sight or hearing when I
left the room.

     When I had been this Karl Ritter's daily and sole intimate during two
months, he one day said abruptly:

     "I will tell you my story."

A Dying Man's Confession

     Then he went on as follows:

     "I have never given up until now.  But now I have given up.  I am going
to die.  I made up my mind last night that it must be, and very soon, too.
You say you are going to revisit your river by and by, when you find
opportunity.  Very well; that, together with a certain strange experience
which fell to my lot last night, determines me to tell you my history - for
you will see Napoleon, Arkansas, and for my sake you will stop there and do a
certain thing for me - a thing which you will willingly undertake after you
shall have heard my narrative.

     "Let us shorten the story wherever we can, for it will need it, being
long.  You already know how I came to go to America, and how I came to settle
in that lonely region in the South.  But you do not know that I had a wife.
My wife was young, beautiful, loving, and oh, so divinely good and blameless
and gentle!  And our little girl was her mother in miniature.  It was the
happiest of happy households.

     "One night - it was toward the close of the war - I woke up out of a
sodden lethargy, and found myself bound and gagged, and the air tainted with
chloroform!  I saw two men in the room, and one was saying to the other in a
hoarse whisper: 'I told her I would, if she made a noise, and as for the child
- '

     "The other man interrupted in a low, half-crying voice:

     "'You said we'd only gag them and rob them, not hurt them, or I wouldn't
have come.'

     "'Shut up your whining; had to change the plan when they waked up. You
done all you could to protect them, now let that satisfy you.  Come, help
rummage.'

     "Both men were masked and wore coarse, ragged 'nigger' clothes; they had
a bull's-eye lantern, and by its light I noticed that the gentler robber had
no thumb on his right hand.  The rummaged around my poor cabin for a moment:
the head bandit then said in his stage whisper:

     "'It's a waste of time - he shall tell where it's hid.  Undo his gag and
revive him up.'

     "The other said:

     "'All right - provided no clubbing.'

     "'No clubbing it is, then - provided he keeps still.'

     "'They approached me.  Just then there was a sound outside, a sound of
voices and trampling hoofs; the robbers held their breath and listened; the
sounds came slowly nearer and nearer, then came a shout:

     "'Hello, the house!  Show a light, we want water.'

     "'The captain's voice, by G - !' said the stage-whispering ruffian, and
both robbers fled by the way of the back door, shutting off their bull's-eye
as they ran.

     "The stranger shouted several times more, then rode by - there seemed to
be a dozen of the horses - and I heard nothing more.

     "I struggled, but could not free myself from my bonds.  I tried to speak,
but the gag was effective, I could not make a sound.  I listened for my wife's
voice and my child's - listened long and intently, but no sound came from the
other end of the room where their bed was.  This silence became more and more
awful, more and more ominous, every moment. Could you have endured an hour of
it, do you think?  Pity me, then, who had to endure three.  Three hours?  it
was three ages!  Whenever the clock struck it seemed as if years had gone by
since I had heard it last. All this time I was struggling in my bonds, and at
last, about dawn, I got myself free and rose up and stretched my stiff limbs.
I was able to distinguish details pretty well.  The floor was littered with
things thrown there by the robbers during their search for my savings.  The
first object that caught my particular attention was a document of mine which
I had seen the rougher of the two ruffians glance at and then cast away.  It
had blood on it!  I staggered to the other end of the room. Oh, poor
unoffending, helpless ones, there they lay; their troubles ended, mine begun!

     "Did I appeal to the law - I?  Does it quench the pauper's thirst if the
king drink for him?  Oh, no, no, no!  I wanted no impertinent interference of
the law.  Laws and the gallows could not pay the debt that was owing to me!
Let the laws leave the matter in my hands, and have no fears: I would find the
debtor and collect the debt.  How accomplish this, do you say?  How accomplish
it and feel so sure about it, when I had neither seen the robbers' faces, nor
heard their natural voices, nor had any idea who they might be?  Nevertheless,
I was sure - quite sure, quite confident.  I had a clue - a clue which you
would not have valued - a clue which would not have greatly helped even a
detective, since he would lack the secret of how to apply it.  I shall come to
that presently - you shall see.  Let us go on now, taking things in their due
order.  There was one circumstance which gave me a slant in a definite
direction to begin with: Those two robbers were manifestly soldiers in tramp
disguise, and not new to military service, but old in it - regulars, perhaps;
they did not acquire their soldierly attitude, gestures, carriage, in a day,
nor a month, nor yet in a year.  So I thought, but said nothing.  And one of
them had said, 'The captain's voice, by G - !' - the one whose life I would
have.  Two miles away several regiments were in camp, and two companies of
U.S. cavalry.  When I learned that Captain Blakely of Company C had passed our
way that night with an escort I said nothing, but in that company I resolved
to seek my man.  In conversation I studiously and persistently described the
robbers as tramps, camp followers; and among this class the people made
useless search, none suspecting the soldiers but me.

     "Working patiently by night in my desolated home, I made a disguise for
myself out of various odds and ends of clothing; in the nearest village I
bought a pair of blue goggles.  By and by, when the military camp broke up,
and Company C was ordered a hundred miles north, to Napoleon, I secreted my
small hoard of money in my belt and took my departure in the night.  When
Company C arrived in Napoleon I was already there.  Yes, I was there, with a
new trade - fortune-teller.  Not to seem partial, I made friends and told
fortunes among all the companies garrisoned there, but I gave Company C the
great bulk of my attentions.  I made myself limitlessly obliging to these
particular men; they could ask me no favor, put on me no risk which I would
decline.  I became the willing butt of their jokes; this perfected my
popularity; I became a favorite.

     "I early found, a private who lacked a thumb - what joy it was to me!
And when I found that he alone, of all the company, had lost a thumb, my last
misgiving vanished; I was sure I was on the right track. This man's name was
Kruger, a German.  There were nine Germans in the company.  I watched to see
who might be his intimates, but he seemed to have no especial intimates.  But
I was his intimate, and I took care to make the intimacy grow.  Sometimes I so
hungered for my revenge that I could hardly restrain myself from going on my
knees and begging him to point out the man who had murdered my wife and child,
but I managed to bridle my tongue.  I bided my time and went on telling
fortunes, as opportunity offered.

     "My apparatus was simple: a little red paint and a bit of white paper.  I
painted the ball of the client's thumb, took a print of it on the paper,
studied it that night, and revealed his fortune to him next day.  What was my
idea in this nonsense?  It was this: When I was a youth, I knew an old
Frenchman who had been a prison-keeper for thirty years, and he told me that
there was one thing about a person which never changed, from the cradle to the
grave - the lines in the ball of the thumb; and he said that these lines were
never exactly alike in the thumbs of any two human beings.  In these days, we
photograph the new criminal, and hang his picture in the Rogues' Gallery for
future reference; but that Frenchman, in his day, used to take a print of the
ball of a new prisoner's thumb and put that away for future reference. He
always said that pictures were no good - future disguises could make them
useless.  'The thumb's the only sure thing,' said he;' you can't disguise
that.' And he used to prove his theory, too, on my friends and acquaintances;
it always succeeded.

     "I went on telling fortunes.  Every night I shut myself in, all alone,
and studied the day's thumb-prints with a magnifying-glass. Imagine the
devouring eagerness with which I poured over those mazy red spirals, with that
document by my side which bore the right-hand thumb and finger-marks of that
unknown murderer, printed with the dearest blood - to me - that was ever shed
on this earth!  And many and many a time I had to repeat the same old
disappointed remark, 'Will they never correspond!'

     "But my reward came at last.  It was the print of the thumb of the
forty-third man of Company C whom I had experimented on - Private Franz Adler.
An hour before I did not know the murderer's name, or voice, or figure, or
face, or nationality; but now I knew all these things!  I believed I might
feel sure; the Frenchman's repeated demonstrations being so good a warranty.
Still, there was a way to make sure.  I had an impression of Kruger's left
thumb.  In the morning I took him aside when he was off duty; and when we were
out of sight and hearing of witnesses, I said impressively:

     "'A part of your fortune is so grave that I thought it would be better
for you if I did not tell it in public.  You and another man, whose fortune I
was studying last night - Private Adler - have been murdering a woman and a
child!  You are being dogged.  Within five days both of you will be
assassinated.'

     "He!  dropped on his knees, frightened out of his wits; and for five
minutes he kept pouring cut the same set of words, like a demented person, and
in the same half-crying way which was one of my memories of that murderous
night in my cabin:

     "'I didn't do it; upon my soul I didn't do it; and I tried to keep him
from doing it.  I did, as God is my witness.  He did it alone.'

     "This was all I wanted.  And I tried to get rid of the fool; but no, he
clung to me, imploring me to save him from the assassin.  He said:

     "'I have money - ten thousand dollars - hid away, the fruit of loot and
thievery; save me - tell me what to do, and you shall have it, every penny.
Two-thirds of it is my cousin Adler's; but you can take it all. We hid it when
we first came here.  But I hid it in a new place yesterday, and have not told
him - shall not tell him.  I was going to desert, and get away with it all.
It is gold, and too heavy to carry when one is running and dodging; but a
woman who has been gone over the river two days to prepare my way for me is
going to follow me with it; and if I got no chance to describe the
hiding-place to her I was going to slip my silver watch into her hand, or send
it to her, and she would understand.  There's a piece of paper in the back of
the case which tells it all.  Here, take the watch - tell me what to do!'

     "He was trying to press his watch upon me, and was exposing the paper and
explaining it to me, when Adler appeared on the scene, about a dozen yards
away.  I said to poor Kruger:

     "'Put up your watch, I don't want it.  You sha'n't come to any harm. Go,
now.  I must tell Adler his fortune.  Presently I will tell you how to escape
the assassin; meantime I shall have to examine your thumb-mark again.  Say
nothing to Adler about this thing - say nothing to anybody.'

     "He went away filled with fright and gratitude, poor devil!  I told Adler
a long fortune - purposely so long that I could not finish it; promised to
come to him on guard, that night, and tell him the really important part of it
- the tragical part of it, I said - so must be out of reach of eavesdroppers.
They always kept a picket-watch outside the town - mere discipline and
ceremony - no occasion for it, no enemy around.

     "Toward midnight I set out, equipped with the countersign, and picked my
way toward the lonely region where Adler was to keep his watch. It was so dark
that I stumbled right on a dim figure almost before I could get out a
protecting word.  The sentinel hailed and I answered, both at the same moment.
I added, 'It's only me - the fortune-teller. Then I slipped to the poor
devil's side, and without a word I drove my dirk into his heart!  'Ja wohl,'
laughed I, 'it was the tragedy part of his fortune, indeed!' As he fell from
his horse he clutched at me, and my blue goggles remained in his hand; and
away plunged the beast, dragging him with his foot in the stirrup.

     "I fled through the woods and made good my escape, leaving the accusing
goggles behind me in that dead man's hand.

     "This was fifteen or sixteen years ago.  Since then I have wandered
aimlessly about the earth, sometimes at work, sometimes idle; sometimes with
money, sometimes with none; but always tired of life, and wishing it was done,
for my mission here was finished with the act of that night; and the only
pleasure, solace, satisfaction I had, in all those tedious years, was in the
daily reflection, 'I have killed him!'

     "Four years ago my health began to fail.  I had wandered into Munich, in
my purposeless way.  Being out of money I sought work, and got it; did my duty
faithfully about a year, and was then given the berth of night watchman yonder
in that dead-house which you visited lately.  The place suited my mood.  I
liked it.  I liked being with the dead - liked being alone with them.  I used
to wander among those rigid corpses, and peer into their austere faces, by the
hour.  The later the time, the more impressive it was; I preferred the late
time.  Sometimes I turned the lights low; this gave perspective, you see; and
the imagination could play; always, the dim, receding ranks of the dead
inspired one with weird and fascinating fancies.  Two years ago - I had been
there a year then - I was sitting all alone in the watch-room, one gusty
winter's night, chilled, numb, comfortless; drowsing gradually into
unconsciousness; the sobbing of the wind and the slamming of distant shutters
falling fainter and fainter upon my dulling ear each moment, when sharp and
suddenly that dead-bell rang out a blood-curdling alarum over my head!  The
shock of it nearly paralyzed me; for it was the first time I had ever heard
it.

     "I gathered myself together and flew to the corpse-room.  About midway
down the outside rank, a shrouded figure was sitting upright, wagging its head
slowly from one side to the other - a grisly spectacle! Its side was toward
me.  I hurried to it and peered into its face. Heavens, it was Adler!

     "Can you divine what my first thought was?  Put into words, it was this:
'It seems, then, you escaped me once: there will be a different result this
time!'

     "Evidently this creature was suffering unimaginable terrors.  Think what
it must have been to wake up in the midst of that voiceless hush, and look out
over that grim congregation of the dead!  What gratitude shone in his skinny
white face when he saw a living form before him!  And how the fervency of this
mute gratitude was augmented when his eyes fell upon the life-giving cordials
which I carried in my hands!  Then imagine the horror which came into his
pinched face when I put the cordials behind me, and said mockingly:

     "'Speak up, Franz Adler - call upon these dead!  Doubtless they will
listen and have pity; but here there is none else that will.'

     "He tried to speak, but that part of the shroud which bound his jaws held
firm, and would not let him.  He tried to lift imploring hands, but they were
crossed upon his breast and tied.  I said:

     "'Shout, Franz Adler; make the sleepers in the distant streets hear you
and bring help.  Shout - and lose no time, for there is little to lose.  What,
you cannot?  That is a pity; but it is no matter - it does not always bring
help.  When you and your cousin murdered a helpless woman and child in a cabin
in Arkansas - my wife, it was, and my child! - they shrieked for help, you
remember; but it did no good; you remember that it did no good, is it not so?
Your teeth chatter - then why cannot you shout?  Loosen the bandages with your
hands - then you can.  Ah, I see - your hands are tied, they cannot aid you.
How strangely things repeat themselves, after long years; for my hands were
tied, that night, you remember?  Yes, tied much as yours are now - how odd
that is!  I could not pull free.  It did not occur to you to untie me; it does
not occur to me to untie you.  'Sh - !  there's a late footstep.  It is coming
this way.  Hark, how near it is!  One can count the footfalls - one - two -
three.  There - it is just outside.  Now is the time!  Shout, man, shout!  it
is the one sole chance between you and eternity!  Ah, you see you have delayed
too long - it is gone by.  There - it is dying out. It is gone!  Think of it -
reflect upon it - you have heard a human footstep for the last time.  How
curious it must be, to listen to so common a sound as that and know that one
will never hear the fellow to it again.'

     "Oh, my friend, the agony in that shrouded face was ecstasy to see! I
thought of a new torture, and applied it - assisting myself with a trifle of
lying invention:

     "'That poor Kruger tried to save my wife and child, and I did him a
grateful good turn for it when the time came.  I persuaded him to rob you; and
I and a woman helped him to desert, and got him away in safety.'

     "A look as of surprise and triumph shone out dimly through the anguish in
my victim's face.  I was disturbed, disquieted.  I said:

     "'What, then - didn't he escape?'

     "A negative shake of the head.

     "'No?  What happened, then?'

     The satisfaction in the shrouded face was still plainer.  The man tried
to mumble out some words - could not succeed; tried to express something with
his obstructed hands - failed; paused a moment, then feebly titled his head,
in a meaning way, toward the corpse that lay nearest him.

     "'Dead?  I asked.  'Failed to escape?  caught in the act and shot?'

     "Negative shake of the head.

     "'How, then?'

     "Again the man tried to do something with his hands.  I watched closely,
but could not guess the intent.  I bent over and watched still more intently.
He had twisted a thumb around and was weakly punching at his breast with it.

     "'Ah - stabbed, do you mean?'

     "Affirmative nod, accompanied by a spectral smile of such devilishness
that it struck an awakening light through my dull brain, and I cried:

     "'Did I stab him, mistaking him for you?  for that stroke was meant for
none but you."

     "The affirmative nod of the re-dying rascal was as joyous as his failing
strength was able to put into its expression.

     "'Oh, miserable, miserable me, to slaughter the pitying soul that stood a
friend to my darlings when they were helpless, and would have saved them if he
could!  miserable, oh, miserable, miserable me!'

     "I fancied I heard the muffled gurgle of a mocking laugh.  I took my face
out of my hands, and saw my enemy sinking back upon his inclined board.

     "He was a satisfactory long time dying.  He had a wonderful vitality, an
astonishing constitution.  Yes, he was a pleasant long time at it.  I got a
chair and a newspaper, and sat down by him and read. Occasionally I took a sip
of brandy.  This was necessary, on account of the cold.  But I did it partly
because I saw that, along at first, whenever I reached for the bottle, he
thought I was going to give him some.  I read aloud: mainly imaginary accounts
of people snatched from the grave's threshold and restored to life and vigor
by a few spoonfuls of liquor and a warm bath.  Yes, he had a long, hard death
of it - three hours and six minutes, from the time he rang his bell.

     "It is believed that in all these eighteen years that have elapsed since
the institution of the corpse-watch, no shrouded occupant of the Bavarian
deadhouses has ever rung its bell.  Well, it is a harmless belief.  Let it
stand at that.

     "The chill of that death-room had penetrated my bones.  It revived and
fastened upon me the disease which had been afflicting me, but which, up to
that night, had been steadily disappearing.  That man murdered my wife and my
child; and in three days hence he will have added me to his list.  No matter -
God!  how delicious the memory of it!  I caught him escaping from his grave,
and thrust him back into it!

     "After that night I was confined to my bed for a week; but as soon as I
could get about I went to the dead-house books and got the number of the house
which Adler had died in.  A wretched lodging-house it was.  It was my idea
that he would naturally have gotten hold of Kruger's effects, being his
cousin; and I wanted to get Kruger's watch, if I could.  But while I was sick,
Adler's things had been sold and scattered, all except a few old letters, and
some odds and ends of no value.  However, through those letters I traced out a
son of Kruger's, the only relative he left. He is a man of thirty, now, a
shoemaker by trade, and living at No. 14 Konigstrasse, Mannheim - widower,
with several small children.  Without explaining to him why, I have furnished
two-thirds of his support ever since.

     "Now, as to that watch - see how strangely things happen!  I traced it
around and about Germany for more than a year, at considerable cost in money
and vexation; and at last I got it.  Got it, and was unspeakably glad; opened
it, and found nothing in it!  Why, I might have known that bit of paper was
not going to stay there all this time.  Of course I gave up that ten thousand
dollars then; gave it up, and dropped it out of my mind; and most sorrowfully,
for I had wanted it for Kruger's son.

     "Last night, when I consented at last that I must die, I began to make
ready.  I proceeded to burn all useless papers; and sure enough, from a batch
of Adler's, not previously examined with thoroughness, out dropped that
long-desired scrap!  I recognized it in a moment.  Here it is - I will
translate it

     "Brick livery stable, stone foundation, middle of town, corner of Orleans
and Market.  Corner toward Court-house.  Third stone, fourth row. Stick notice
there, saying how many are to come.

     "There - take it, and preserve it!  Kruger explained that that stone was
removable; and that it was in the north wall of the foundation, fourth row
from the top, and third stone from the west.  The money is secreted behind it.
He said the closing sentence was a blind, to mislead in case the paper should
fall into wrong hands.  It probably performed that office for Adler.

     "Now I want to beg that when you make your intended journey down the
river, you will hunt out that hidden money, and send it to Adam Kruger, care
of the Mannheim address which I have mentioned.  It will make a rich man of
him, and I shall sleep the sounder in my grave for knowing that I have done
what I could for the son of the man who tried to save my wife and child -
albeit my hand ignorantly struck him down, whereas the impulse of my heart
would have been to shield and serve him."