The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

The Robber Robbed

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.

—­Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar

Behold, the fool saith, “Put not all thine eggs in the one basket” —­which is but a manner of saying, “Scatter your money and your attention”; but the wise man saith, “Put all your eggs in the one basket and—­watch that basket!”

—­Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar

What a time of it Dawson’s Landing was having!  All its life it had been asleep, but now it hardly got a chance for a nod, so swiftly did big events and crashing surprises come along in one another’s wake:  Friday morning, first glimpse of Real Nobility, also grand reception at Aunt Patsy Cooper’s, also great robber raid; Friday evening, dramatic kicking of the heir of the chief citizen in presence of four hundred people; Saturday morning, emergence as practicing lawyer of the long-submerged Pudd’nhead Wilson; Saturday night, duel between chief citizen and titled stranger.

The people took more pride in the duel than in all the other events put together, perhaps.  It was a glory to their town to have such a thing happen there.  In their eyes the principals had reached the summit of human honor.  Everybody paid homage to their names; their praises were in all mouths.  Even the duelists’ subordinates came in for a handsome share of the public approbation:  wherefore Pudd’nhead Wilson was suddenly become a man of consequence.  When asked to run for the mayoralty Saturday night, he was risking defeat, but Sunday morning found him a made man and his success assured.

The twins were prodigiously great now; the town took them to its bosom with enthusiasm.  Day after day, and night after night, they went dining and visiting from house to house, making friends, enlarging and solidifying their popularity, and charming and surprising all with their musical prodigies, and now and then heightening the effects with samples of what they could do in other directions, out of their stock of rare and curious accomplishments.  They were so pleased that they gave the regulation thirty days’ notice, the required preparation for citizenship, and resolved to finish their days in this pleasant place.  That was the climax.  The delighted community rose as one man and applauded; and when the twins were asked to stand for seats in the forthcoming aldermanic board, and consented, the public contentment was rounded and complete.

Tom Driscoll was not happy over these things; they sunk deep, and hurt all the way down.  He hated the one twin for kicking him, and the other one for being the kicker’s brother.

Now and then the people wondered why nothing was heard of the raider, or of the stolen knife or the other plunder, but nobody was able to throw any light on that matter.  Nearly a week had drifted by, and still the thing remained a vexed mystery.

On Sunday Constable Blake and Pudd’nhead Wilson met on the street, and Tom Driscoll joined them in time to open their conversation for them.  He said to Blake:  “You are not looking well, Blake; you seem to be annoyed about something.  Has anything gone wrong in the detective business?  I believe you fairly and justifiably claim to have a pretty good reputation in that line, isn’t it so?”—­which made Blake feel good, and look it; but Tom added, “for a country detective”—­which made Blake feel the other way, and not only look it, but betray it in his voice.

“Yes, sir, I have got a reputation; and it’s as good as anybody’s in the profession, too, country or no country.”

“Oh, I beg pardon; I didn’t mean any offense.  What I started out to ask was only about the old woman that raided the town—­the stoop-shouldered old woman, you know, that you said you were going to catch; and I knew you would, too, because you have the reputation of never boasting, and—­well, you—­you’ve caught the old woman?”

“Damn the old woman!”

“Why, sho! you don’t mean to say you haven’t caught her?”

“No, I haven’t caught her.  If anybody could have caught her, I could; but nobody couldn’t, I don’t care who he is.”

I am sorry, real sorry—­for your sake; because, when it gets around that a detective has expressed himself confidently, and then—­”

“Don’t you worry, that’s all—­don’t you worry; and as for the town, the town needn’t worry either.  She’s my meat—­make yourself easy about that.  I’m on her track; I’ve got clues that—­”

“That’s good!  Now if you could get an old veteran detective down from St. Louis to help you find out what the clues mean, and where they lead to, and then—­”

“I’m plenty veteran enough myself, and I don’t need anybody’s help.  I’ll have her inside of a we—­inside of a month.  That I’ll swear to!”

Tom said carelessly: 

“I suppose that will answer—­yes, that will answer.  But I reckon she is pretty old, and old people don’t often outlive the cautious pace of the professional detective when he has got his clues together and is out on his still-hunt.”

Blake’s dull face flushed under this gibe, but before he could set his retort in order Tom had turned to Wilson, and was saying, with placid indifference of manner and voice: 

“Who got the reward, Pudd’nhead?”

Wilson winced slightly, and saw that his own turn was come.

“What reward?”

“Why, the reward for the thief, and the other one for the knife.”

Wilson answered—­and rather uncomfortably, to judge by his hesitating fashion of delivering himself: 

“Well, the—­well, in face, nobody has claimed it yet.”

Tom seemed surprised.

“Why, is that so?”

Wilson showed a trifle of irritation when he replied: 

“Yes, it’s so.  And what of it?”

“Oh, nothing.  Only I thought you had struck out a new idea, and invented a scheme that was going to revolutionize the timeworn and ineffectual methods of the—­” He stopped, and turned to Blake, who was happy now that another had taken his place on the gridiron.  “Blake, didn’t you understand him to intimate that it wouldn’t be necessary for you to hunt the old woman down?”

“’B’George, he said he’d have thief and swag both inside of three days —­he did, by hokey! and that’s just about a week ago.  Why, I said at the time that no thief and no thief’s pal was going to try to pawn or sell a thing where he knowed the pawnbroker could get both rewards by taking HIM into camp with the swag.  It was the blessedest idea that ever I struck!”

“You’d change your mind,” said Wilson, with irritated bluntness, “if you knew the entire scheme instead of only part of it.”

“Well,” said the constable, pensively, “I had the idea that it wouldn’t work, and up to now I’m right anyway.”

“Very well, then, let it stand at that, and give it a further show.  It has worked at least as well as your own methods, you perceive.”

The constable hadn’t anything handy to hit back with, so he discharged a discontented sniff, and said nothing.

After the night that Wilson had partly revealed his scheme at his house, Tom had tried for several days to guess out the secret of the rest of it, but had failed.  Then it occurred to him to give Roxana’s smarter head a chance at it.  He made up a supposititious case, and laid it before her.  She thought it over, and delivered her verdict upon it.  Tom said to himself, “She’s hit it, sure!” He thought he would test that verdict now, and watch Wilson’s face; so he said reflectively: 

“Wilson, you’re not a fool—­a fact of recent discovery.  Whatever your scheme was, it had sense in it, Blake’s opinion to the contrary notwithstanding.  I don’t ask you to reveal it, but I will suppose a case—­a case which you will answer as a starting point for the real thing I am going to come at, and that’s all I want.  You offered five hundred dollars for the knife, and five hundred for the thief.  We will suppose, for argument’s sake, that the first reward is advertised and the second offered by private letter to pawnbrokers and—­”

Blake slapped his thigh, and cried out: 

“By Jackson, he’s got you, Pudd’nhead!  Now why couldn’t I or any fool have thought of that?”

Wilson said to himself, “Anybody with a reasonably good head would have thought of it.  I am not surprised that Blake didn’t detect it; I am only surprised that Tom did.  There is more to him than I supposed.”  He said nothing aloud, and Tom went on: 

“Very well.  The thief would not suspect that there was a trap, and he would bring or send the knife, and say he bought it for a song, or found it in the road, or something like that, and try to collect the reward, and be arrested—­wouldn’t he?”

“Yes,” said Wilson.

“I think so,” said Tom.  “There can’t be any doubt of it.  Have you ever seen that knife?”

“No.”

“Has any friend of yours?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Well, I begin to think I understand why your scheme failed.”

“What do you mean, Tom?  What are you driving at?” asked Wilson, with a dawning sense of discomfort.

“Why, that there isn’t any such knife.”

“Look here, Wilson,” said Blake, “Tom Driscoll’s right, for a thousand dollars—­if I had it.”

Wilson’s blood warmed a little, and he wondered if he had been played upon by those strangers; it certainly had something of that look.  But what could they gain by it?  He threw out that suggestion.  Tom replied: 

“Gain?  Oh, nothing that you would value, maybe.  But they are strangers making their way in a new community.  Is it nothing to them to appear as pets of an Oriental prince—­at no expense?  Is it nothing to them to be able to dazzle this poor town with thousand-dollar rewards—­at no expense?  Wilson, there isn’t any such knife, or your scheme would have fetched it to light.  Or if there is any such knife, they’ve got it yet.  I believe, myself, that they’ve seen such a knife, for Angelo pictured it out with his pencil too swiftly and handily for him to have been inventing it, and of course I can’t swear that they’ve never had it; but this I’ll go bail for—­if they had it when they came to this town, they’ve got it yet.”

Blake said: 

“It looks mighty reasonable, the way Tom puts it; it most certainly does.”

Tom responded, turning to leave: 

“You find the old woman, Blake, and if she can’t furnish the knife, go and search the twins!”

Tom sauntered away.  Wilson felt a good deal depressed.  He hardly knew what to think.  He was loath to withdraw his faith from the twins, and was resolved not to do it on the present indecisive evidence; but—­well, he would think, and then decide how to act.

“Blake, what do you think of this matter?”

“Well, Pudd’nhead, I’m bound to say I put it up the way Tom does.  They hadn’t the knife; or if they had it, they’ve got it yet.”

The men parted.  Wilson said to himself: 

“I believe they had it; if it had been stolen, the scheme would have restored it, that is certain.  And so I believe they’ve got it.”

Tom had no purpose in his mind when he encountered those two men.  When he began his talk he hoped to be able to gall them a little and get a trifle of malicious entertainment out of it.  But when he left, he left in great spirits, for he perceived that just by pure luck and no troublesome labor he had accomplished several delightful things:  he had touched both men on a raw spot and seen them squirm; he had modified Wilson’s sweetness for the twins with one small bitter taste that he wouldn’t be able to get out of his mouth right away; and, best of all, he had taken the hated twins down a peg with the community; for Blake would gossip around freely, after the manner of detectives, and within a week the town would be laughing at them in its sleeve for offering a gaudy reward for a bauble which they either never possessed or hadn’t lost.  Tom was very well satisfied with himself.

Tom’s behavior at home had been perfect during the entire week.  His uncle and aunt had seen nothing like it before.  They could find no fault with him anywhere.

Saturday evening he said to the Judge: 

“I’ve had something preying on my mind, uncle, and as I am going away, and might never see you again, I can’t bear it any longer.  I made you believe I was afraid to fight that Italian adventurer.  I had to get out of it on some pretext or other, and maybe I chose badly, being taken unawares, but no honorable person could consent to meet him in the field, knowing what I knew about him.”

“Indeed?  What was that?”

“Count Luigi is a confessed assassin.”

“Incredible.”

“It’s perfectly true.  Wilson detected it in his hand, by palmistry, and charged him with it, and cornered him up so close that he had to confess; but both twins begged us on their knees to keep the secret, and swore they would lead straight lives here; and it was all so pitiful that we gave our word of honor never to expose them while they kept the promise.  You would have done it yourself, uncle.”

“You are right, my boy; I would.  A man’s secret is still his own property, and sacred, when it has been surprised out of him like that.  You did well, and I am proud of you.”  Then he added mournfully, “But I wish I could have been saved the shame of meeting an assassin on the field on honor.”

“It couldn’t be helped, uncle.  If I had known you were going to challenge him, I should have felt obliged to sacrifice my pledged word in order to stop it, but Wilson couldn’t be expected to do otherwise than keep silent.”

“Oh, no, Wilson did right, and is in no way to blame.  Tom, Tom, you have lifted a heavy load from my heart; I was stung to the very soul when I seemed to have discovered that I had a coward in my family.”

“You may imagine what it cost ME to assume such a part, uncle.”

“Oh, I know it, poor boy, I know it.  And I can understand how much it has cost you to remain under that unjust stigma to this time.  But it is all right now, and no harm is done.  You have restored my comfort of mind, and with it your own; and both of us had suffered enough.”

The old man sat awhile plunged in thought; then he looked up with a satisfied light in his eye, and said:  “That this assassin should have put the affront upon me of letting me meet him on the field of honor as if he were a gentleman is a matter which I will presently settle—­but not now.  I will not shoot him until after election.  I see a way to ruin them both before; I will attend to that first.  Neither of them shall be elected, that I promise.  You are sure that the fact that he is an assassin has not got abroad?”

“Perfectly certain of it, sir.”

“It will be a good card.  I will fling a hint at it from the stump on the polling day.  It will sweep the ground from under both of them.”

“There’s not a doubt of it.  It will finish them.”

“That and outside work among the voters will, to a certainty.  I want you to come down here by and by and work privately among the rag-tag and bobtail.  You shall spend money among them; I will furnish it.”

Another point scored against the detested twins!  Really it was a great day for Tom.  He was encouraged to chance a parting shot, now, at the same target, and did it.

“You know that wonderful Indian knife that the twins have been making such a to-do about?  Well, there’s no track or trace of it yet; so the town is beginning to sneer and gossip and laugh.  Half the people believe they never had any such knife, the other half believe they had it and have got it still.  I’ve heard twenty people talking like that today.”

Yes, Tom’s blemishless week had restored him to the favor of his aunt and uncle.

His mother was satisfied with him, too.  Privately, she believed she was coming to love him, but she did not say so.  She told him to go along to St. Louis now, and she would get ready and follow.  Then she smashed her whisky bottle and said: 

“Dah now!  I’s a-gwine to make you walk as straight as a string, Chambers, en so I’s bown, you ain’t gwine to git no bad example out o’ yo’ mammy.  I tole you you couldn’t go into no bad comp’ny.  Well, you’s gwine into my comp’ny, en I’s gwine to fill de bill.  Now, den, trot along, trot along!”

Tom went aboard one of the big transient boats that night with his heavy satchel of miscellaneous plunder, and slept the sleep of the unjust, which is serener and sounder than the other kind, as we know by the hanging-eve history of a million rascals.  But when he got up in the morning, luck was against him again:  a brother thief had robbed him while he slept, and gone ashore at some intermediate landing.