“Aha, but can you do it?” said Clemens. “Have you ever dealt with a theater manager?”
I stretched my memory, and had to admit that I had not.
“Ever bribed a hotel clerk?”
That was also beyond my range of experience.
“Ever been seasick? Been shot at? Ever ridden in a stagecoach? Gone up in a balloon? Speak Dutch, or Hindu, or Fiji Island pidgin?” I confessed my lack of these qualifications, and my ignorance of the principal hotels in London, currency exchange rates, customs, and nearly everything else he could think of having to do with his vocation. Finally he asked me, “Damnation, boy, have you ever been outside Connecticut before?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve been to Newport several times, and I’ve been to Boston to visit family.”
“Boston!” He looked at me with a curious gleam in his eye. “Are you one of those Boston Cabots?”
“My grandfather was from Boston. The majority of my family still live there.”
“And Howells tells me you went to Yale.”
“I completed my studies just this June, sir.”
He looked me up and down, like a man inspecting a horse he means to buy. “And still such an innocent,” he said at last. “Well, I’m glad of it in a way. Better to have a cub you can train than somebody who knows it all already. Listen here, Wentworth Cabot, I’ve half a mind to hire you in spite of everything. Could you be ready for a seven-week journey by Friday?” I told him that would be sufficient time; he named a figure for my salary, and I accepted without further ado.
I returned to New London on the next morning’s train, said my farewells to my friends and family (who gave my enterprise their reluctant blessings), and packed a trunk for the journey. Thursday, I returned on the early train to New York and checked into the Union Square Hotel, where Mr. Clemens was staying. I paid the driver, and soon found myself in a room adjacent to my employer. I opened the window to let in a breath of fresh air—while I have no general brief against smokers, the previous tenant had evidently been frugal in his choice of pipe tobacco, although far from sparing in its use. The summer sun shone brightly over the buildings on the west side of the little park, and the sound of urban industry and hustle-bustle rose from the street below, mixed with the cries of children at play.
When I checked into my hotel room, the clerk had given me a message from Mr. Clemens: he had gone uptown to meet with his financial backers and a clerk from the steamboat company, and gave me my liberty for the rest of the day. I took a cab all the way uptown to the great Metropolitan Art Museum on Central Park, and spent a pleasant afternoon viewing the paintings of Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Rubens, and other European masters. Feeling that I was not entirely unsuited for my chosen profession as world traveler, I returned to the hotel mentally reviewing the stunning canvases I had seen, intending to spend the hour or so until supper jotting impressions of them in my notebook.
When I stopped by the desk to retrieve my key, I asked if Mr. Clemens had returned yet. “Not yet, but there’s another man here to see him,” said the clerk. To my surprise, he indicated a solidly built, red-faced man in a cheap-looking suit and weather-beaten slouch hat. Upon my approach, he put aside his newspaper—The Police Gazette—and looked up at me. “Sure, and you’re not Mr. Clemens, are you?”
“No, I’m his traveling secretary, Wentworth Cabot,” I said, smiling to myself at being mistaken for a man so much older. “Mr. Clemens had business uptown, but I expect him back shortly. How can I help you?”
“Paul Berrigan, detective, New York City police,” he said, showing a badge. “I was pretty sure you weren’t him—a bit young, for one thing—but you might be trying to impersonate the fellow. You never know, in this business. Anyhow, that’s him yonder, so the question’s moot.” He gestured toward the desk, where Mr. Clemens had indeed come in and was talking to the clerk, who pointed in our direction.
I caught his eye and waved him over. The plainclothes-man introduced himself again, and asked whether there was someplace private we could speak.
“Come on up to my room,” said Mr. Clemens. “I assume you don’t mind if my secretary joins us.”
Berrigan nodded. “Your room’s good as anyplace. I’d ask you to come by the station if you were a suspect,” he said to Mr. Clemens, “but I think we can be pretty sure Mr. Mark Twain doesn’t go around murdering people.”
“Murder!” I said then looked around quickly to see if anyone in the lobby had noticed. If they had, they evidently had the good breeding not to make it obvious. Mr. Clemens gestured toward the elevator, and we rode up in silence to the room.
Once there, Mr. Clemens lit one of his cigars, and Berrigan began his story. “One of our men found a fellow dead in an alleyway, a few blocks east of here; not quite the sort of neighborhood where you’d expect that sort of trouble. He’d been stabbed in the belly. Looked as if there’d been a struggle—there were cuts on his hands. This was just over an hour ago, and the body was still warm. We found this was in his pocket.”
He handed us a smudged slip of paper with MR MARK TWAIN, Union Square Hotel written on it in lead pencil in a decidedly ill-bred hand. “Do you recognize the handwriting?”
My employer looked at it casually; then his brow furrowed and he reached into his side pocket. He handed the detective another, cleaner slip of paper, which appeared to be hotel stationery. “This was waiting for me at the desk. See what you think of the match.”
“Bejasus, it’s a dead ringer,” he said. I looked over his shoulder; even to my untrained eye, the slip was clearly in the same hand, although this note was in ink. It read: MR TWAIN: heard you was in town and waited here but you dint come back—Need to talk—come to 103 Mulberry St. tomorrow morning. Yr old buddy: JACK HUBBARD.
The detective spread the two pieces of paper on the table. “So, now at least we have a name and address—dead center in the worst part of town. What can you tell me about this Hubbard?”
My new employer thought for a moment. “I first met him when I was a river pilot—that’d make it over thirty years ago. He started off as a character actor on one of the old showboats, and he was a pretty good one, from what I hear. But he was making more money on the side at billiards, and after a while he left the stage and just played billiards.
“He used to walk into a place wearing a farmer’s outfit: straw hat, dungarees and all. Farmer Jack, the boys called him—and he could talk about chicken feed and henhouses and eggs till you expected him to cackle, but it was all an act, to draw the suckers into a game. I’d bet you a nickel he never laid eyes on a chicken in his life, except on his dinner plate. If he’d stayed in the theater, he’d have been a wonder. But he was a wizard at billiards, too—once you put a cue in his hand, he was the best player I ever saw. Took six dollars of my money, before I learned who he was. But it was worth it, just to see him at the table.”
“And what did he look like?”
“Big heavyset fellow about his height,” Mr. Clemens said, pointing to me, “with squinty blue eyes and a bushy red beard, at least when I used to know him. None too clean a dresser. That was quite some time ago; he may have changed his act since.”