“The stinger is, I figured it was finally safe to go back for the gold when I heard that the larcenous old buzzard I’d suspected of tailing me was dead—he was a gambler and con man named George Devol, and you’d rather find a copperhead in your boot than tangle with him in his prime. But I don’t like it that Hubbard’s turned up—dead or alive—just as I’m about to go look for it again. Farmer Jack Hubbard and Slippery Ed McPhee were Devol’s main sidekicks in the old days—part of his gambling crew on the riverboats. For all I know, he managed to tip them both off to the German soldier’s gold before he died. So this little boat ride and lecture tour could turn out to be more dangerous than you had any right to believe—especially if McPhee shows up, with the idea of getting the gold for himself. It wouldn’t be fair not to let you know what you’re getting into if you go with me. Are you game?”
“Sir, you can rely on me.” I meant it as earnestly as I have ever meant anything, and Clemens nodded his approval.
“Good then, we’re a team.” We raised our glasses to seal the pact, and took a ritual sip. “Drink up now, Wentworth,” said Clemens. “We’ll see what sort of fare the cook has in store for us tonight, and I’ll tell you some of the other stories you’ve missed by not reading my books. What a pleasure to have a fresh audience for the old yarns!”
Early the next morning, Mr. Clemens sent me to buy newspapers, while he went to the telephone office. When I joined him there, he was just finishing an animated phone conversation. He extracted a promise from the other party to keep him informed, promised to feed him the best steak in New York for his trouble, and ended the connection. He took a few moments to chat with the “hello girls,” who operated the phones and who were clearly excited to have such a celebrity in their midst. He paid for the call, and we made our way to the breakfast table to fortify ourselves for the first leg of our trip. Our breakfast consisted of a thick, juicy beefsteak and hot coffee. In between bites, he told me what he had learned: mostly nothing. The source—evidently someone high on the police force—knew nothing more about the death of Hubbard, but confirmed that there was a Detective Berrigan assigned to the case. On the other hand, he (whoever he was) had heard nothing of the supposed connection to Mr. Clemens before the telephone call.
“This should put to rest your doubts about Detective Berrigan,” I said.
“You assume that the fellow we saw really is Berrigan,” said Mr. Clemens. “Easy enough to find the name of a real officer if you mean to impersonate one. Or to bribe one—which is even easier, if you get right down to it.”
“But why go to all the trouble? I can’t see what anyone’s gained by the charade, if such a thing it is.”
He frowned, took a sip of coffee, and shrugged. “You’re probably right. I suppose I’ll never be so old that I don’t get a little spooked when somebody I knew on the river is murdered. It’s the timing and the fact that he was looking for me that same day that really bother me. If I’d come home early, I’d probably have seen the poor old villain. He really could play billiards.”
“Who is this McPhee fellow you mentioned?”
“A no-good son of a rattlesnake. Has been, for as long as I can remember. He’s another one I met on the river, right after I became a pilot. He tried to swindle me out of the little bit I had, more or less for the principle of the thing, I suppose. Later that same trip, I saw him jump overboard to get away from a fellow who caught him with a couple of extra cards in his hand. He showed up on our next trip upriver, and acted as if nothing funny had happened, but the boys wouldn’t let him off that easily. They started calling him Slippery Ed, and the name stuck, although there’s few that remember how he got it.”
“How does he manage to continue his career if he’s a known cheater? Surely the authorities would be aware of him by now.”
“You might be surprised how many people will look the other way if you make it worth their while. There were plenty of riverboat captains who took in more in bribes than in salary. The better the gamblers did, the better the captain and crew did by turning a blind eye.”
“I’m afraid I’ve never understood the appeal of games of chance.”
“Ah, there’s the mistake everyone makes,” said Mr. Clemens. “The minute a professional gets involved, there’s no such thing as a game of chance. The professional is there to earn a living. I recall a court case in Nevada, where a miner was arrested for playing a game of chance on the Sabbath and defended himself by claiming that he was playing Red Dog, which was not a game of chance but of skill. The judge picked a jury of six chance men and six skill men, and sent ’em off with a deck of cards to determine the verdict. After a respectable interval for their deliberations, the chance men were broke to the wire, and the verdict was Not guilty. From that day on, Red Dog was exempted from all laws governing games of chance. Not that it kept the suckers from playing it.” He finished his coffee and, with a sigh, pushed away from the table.
After breakfast, a cab took us downtown to Desbrosses Street, through traffic so thick I was afraid we would never get through without an accident. The streets were crammed with everything from bicycles and dogcarts to overloaded freight wagons pulled by six or even eight huge Percherons. I was convinced that we had left the hotel too late, but Mr. Clemens merely sat back and smiled. “These New York cabdrivers would have given old Hank Monk a pretty good run for his money. This fellow’s got a good horse, and he knows he’s got an extra fifty cents coming if he gets us in on time, and by gum, he’ll do it.”
“Who was Hank Monk?” I inquired innocently.
Mr. Clemens gave me a strange look. “I can tell you a most laughable thing. . . .” He shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t be fair. He was a driver on the old Nevada stagecoach lines. There was an old story—not true, but that’s beside the point—about how he once carried Horace Greeley, who made the mistake of letting Hank Monk know he was in a hurry. Hank set off at a breakneck pace and like to have killed poor Horace, but he got him there on time—what was left of him.”
This anecdote did nothing to assuage my worries, but we arrived at the ferry slips in plenty of time—and miraculously, without mishap. Thence we took a ferry across the Hudson River to Jersey City, to catch our train: the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Limited Vestibule Express to Chicago. For this we arrived barely in time; luckily, Mr. Clemens had instructed me to send most of our luggage ahead the night before, leaving us to carry only one small carpetbag apiece, containing our toilet kits and a couple of changes of clothing. “Enough to hold us until we’re set up on board the boat,” said Mr. Clemens. “Never carry so much that it’ll slow you down when you’re in a rush.” I was vaguely pleased to think that I was already benefiting from the advice, however mundane, of a world traveler.
The train took us south through New Jersey, flat country with occasional muddy rivers and unattractive towns, then across the Delaware River to Philadelphia, whence it would take us west to Chicago and St. Paul. There we would board our steamer for the journey down the great Mississippi all the way to New Orleans, with numerous stops along the way to allow for sightseeing and lectures. The steamer was, in fact, a veritable floating lecture hall, which would dock at every city of any consequence for as many lectures as the local citizenry could be expected to attend.
I busied myself in reading over the detailed itinerary my predecessor (about whom Mr. Clemens had very little good to say) had prepared for our journey, and rapidly became befuddled by the complexity of our journey. I despaired of remembering all the riverside towns at which we planned to stop, let alone the hotels, restaurants, railroad stations, telegraph offices, post offices, and local people of note. At last, as we neared the outskirts of Philadelphia, I lay the thick portfolio across my lap and stared off into the