“I’m sure I don’t know how. Learning Latin was child’s play to this, at least there’s some system to it. Here, I’ve got to remember a different set of facts for every town in twenty-five states.”
“Oh, you’re barely started. By the time we get to New Orleans, I’ll expect you to know something. If you don’t know anything useful by the time we’re back to New York, it’ll be time to worry. For the present, just look a day or two ahead every morning and make sure you know what’s coming up next. Do you know where we’re going when we arrive in Chicago?”
My blank expression must have spoken volumes. He pointed to the papers on my lap. With some embarrassment I fumbled through the pages until I found the information. “The Great Northern Hotel, on Dearborn Street.”
“Good boy. Never expect more of your memory than it can handle. That’s why people write things down. It’s better to know where you can find something than to try to remember it and come up empty. Besides, there are new buildings going up, businesses opening and closing, people moving in and out, a thousand changes every day. I can guarantee you there’ll be a dozen or more things that have changed since the last time I was in Chicago.”
“How am I ever to learn it, then?”
“The trick is to learn the general lay of the land and fill in the specific map in your head as you need to. If you know that the best place to look for a cab, any time of day or night, is in front of a big hotel, that information is as good for London or Vienna as for Boston. There are exceptions to everything, but better to have your eyes open than your memory stuffed with useless baggage.” He stared out the window a while, then turned back to me. “The sooner you get good at this job, the sooner I can forget about the details and let you handle them. So any time you have any questions about the arrangements, better to ask than to wonder what to do.”
We took our luncheon at the first seating, shortly before the train pulled into the Philadelphia station. The approach to this city is drab, with mills and manufacturing districts, but the center of Philadelphia is quite handsome, with broad parklands and a picturesque river—the Schuylkill, pronounced “skookill,” Mr. Clemens told me.
After a brief stop to take on passengers at Broad Street Station, we turned west, through pleasant farm country interspersed with patches of woods: the famous Pennsylvania Dutch country. The landscape became hilly, then (after we crossed the broad Susquehanna River) gradually turned rugged and mountainous. I commented on the grand scenery we were passing through. Mr. Clemens, busy writing letters, glanced out the window. “You should see the Rockies,” he said. “These are barely hummocks.” He turned back to his writing and scarcely raised his head until it was time for dinner. As for me, I had plenty to occupy my mind as some of the most picturesque scenery I have ever laid eyes on rolled by, a wonderful moving pageant of mountains and rivers and forests. If Mr. Clemens knew of something better than this, I looked forward to seeing it; for now, Pennsylvania was fine.
But while my eyes were busy with the view, my thoughts were on our mission to the west and Mr. Clemens’s odd story. Between the scenery and my speculations, I gradually lost track of time. It wasn’t until Mr. Clemens quietly asked whether I wanted a drink before dinner that I realized that the sun had moved well ahead of us. I glanced at my watch to see that it was nearly six.
The smoking car began to empty out as other passengers went to the diner, and so we found ourselves with enough breathing room to talk without anyone close by to overhear. I took the opportunity to bring up the questions I had been mulling over all afternoon.
“I’ve been thinking about Jack Hubbard,” I began.
Mr. Clemens gave me a calculating look. “And what exactly have you been thinking, Wentworth?”
“I’ve been wondering why you’re so convinced that what happened to Hubbard has anything to do with us. Couldn’t it be pure coincidence that he was trying to get in touch with you just before he died?”
“It could be a coincidence. But if it’s not, I’m walking into danger. I just don’t fancy the risk.”
“Then why not take the police into our trust when we had the opportunity?”
He took a long hard look out the window; the Appalachian Mountains were painted by a golden sunset. He tasted his drink, sighed, and said, “A hunch. I have a bad feeling about that detective.”
He paused as a tall gentleman with a full head of gray hair, cut short, and wearing a dark suit of semimilitary cut passed by us, nodding and smiling in our direction as he passed. Mr. Clemens nodded back, absently; I was already becoming used to the fact that a large fraction of the population recognized my employer by sight. As he continued on in the direction of the dining car, I heard the door open again, and a sour look came over Mr. Clemens’s face as he spotted the person who’d just entered.
Before I could even decide whether or not to look around, a familiar voice behind me solved my problem. “Sure, and it’s Mr. Mark Twain again. And Mr. Wentworth.”
“Wentworth Cabot,” I corrected him. It was the New York detective, Berrigan.
“And are you traveling on business, Berrigan, or is this a vacation?” my employer asked him.
“Business, Mr. Twain, and there’s a bit of a funny twist to it. Do you mind if I sit with you a moment?” He took off his hat and plopped himself in the chair adjacent to me without waiting for an answer. Then he fished out a pipe and tobacco pouch, and began loading it.
“I checked with the desk clerk at your hotel, asking who had left the note for you. It was a tall fellow with a red beard, a bit shabbily dressed, which is why the clerk noticed him. He waited around for another fifteen minutes, then left. The clerk was just as glad to see him go—said he was making the quality folks uncomfortable.”
“That sounds like Farmer Jack to me,” said Mr. Clemens. “He used to act so countrified that most city folks wouldn’t believe he had two cents’ worth of brains. It made it easier to find suckers to play billiards with him.”
The detective nodded. “We went to the address on the note he’d left for you, and it was a shabby little rented room down in Five Points, which isn’t a part of town decent folk go into after dark—not and come back out with a whole skin. The landlord said the tenant was there a few months. And it took a little persuasion, but we got him to look at the body,” he said. He popped the filled pipe into his mouth and began searching his jacket pockets.
“There’s matches on the table,” said Mr. Clemens.
“Right you are,” said the detective, taking them. “Well, he recognized the dead man, all right. But he swore he’d never seen him with that phony red beard. And he’d never heard of Jack Hubbard—the room was rented under a different name, probably an alias.” He dug into his pocket again, and came up with an envelope. “So we’re back to you again, Mr. Twain. Take a look at this.”
Mr. Clemens opened the envelope and extracted a photograph, which he looked at, then shrugged and passed to me without saying a word. It showed the garishly lit face of a shabbily dressed man whose eyes were closed in death—or so I had to assume. The sepia tints of the glossy photographic print gave no hint as to the color of the man’s hair or complexion. But I had the feeling I had seen him before, though I couldn’t for the life of me say where. I told the detective so, and he nodded.
“What about you, Mr. Twain?”
“It’s not Farmer Jack Hubbard, even allowing for ten years and the false beard. You think Hubbard killed him?”
“That’s one possibility. Killed him and planted evidence to make it look as if he were the one that died.”
“Why?” I asked.
“If I knew that, I’d have a better