and was going to say, “If you will throw the surreptitious and
disreputable part of your business my way, it may amount to something,”
but thought better of it and said,
“However, this matter doesn’t fit well in a general conversation.”
“All right, we’ll change the subject; I guess you were about
to give me another dig, anyway, so I’m willing to change.
How’s the Awful Mystery flourishing these days? Wilson’s got a scheme
for driving plain window glass panes out of the market by decorating it
with greasy finger marks, and getting rich by selling it at famine
prices to the crowned heads over in Europe to outfit their palaces with.
Fetch it out, Dave.”
Wilson brought three of his glass strips, and said:
“I get the subject to pass the fingers of his right through his hair,
so as to get a little coating of the natural oil on them,
and then press the balls of them on the glass. A fine an delicate
print of the lines in the skin results, and is permanent,
if it doesn’t come in contact with something able to rub it off.
You begin, Tom.”
“Why, I think you took my finger marks once or twice before.”
“Yes, but you were a little boy the last time, only about
twelve years old.”
“That’s so. Of course, I’ve changed entirely since then,
and variety is what the crowned heads want, I guess.”
He passed his fingers through his crop of short hair, and pressed
them one at a time on the glass. Angelo made a print of his fingers
on another glass, and Luigi followed with a third. Wilson marked the
glasses with names and dates, and put them away. Tom gave one of
his little laughs, and said:
“I thought I wouldn’t say anything, but if variety is what you are after,
you have wasted a piece of glass. The hand print of one twin is the
same as the hand print of the fellow twin.”
“Well, it’s done now, and I like to have them both, anyway,”
said Wilson, returned to his place.
“But look here, Dave,” said Tom, you used to tell people’s fortunes,
too, when you took their finger marks. Dave’s just an all-round genius–
a genius of the first water, gentlemen; a great scientist running to
seed here in this village, a prophet with the kind of honor that
prophets generally get at home–for here they don’t give shucks for
his scientifics, and they call his skull a notion factory–hey, Dave,
ain’t it so? But never mind, he’ll make his mark someday–finger mark,
you know, he-he! But really, you want to let him take a shy at
your palms once; it’s worth twice the price of admission or your
money’s returned at the door. Why, he’ll read your wrinkles as easy
as a book, and not only tell you fifty or sixty things that’s going to
happen to you, but fifty or sixty thousand that ain’t. Come, Dave,
show the gentlemen what an inspired jack-at-all-science we’ve got in
this town, and don’t know it.”
Wilson winced under this nagging and not very courteous chaff,
and the twins suffered with him and for him. They rightly judged,
now, that the best way was to relieve him would be to take the thing
in earnest and treat it with respect, ignoring Tom’s rather
overdone raillery; so Luigi said:
“We have seen something of palmistry in our wanderings, and know very
well what astonishing things it can do. If it isn’t a science,
and one of the greatest of them too, I don’t know what its other
name ought to be. In the Orient–”
Tom looked surprised and incredulous. He said:
“That juggling a science? But really, you ain’t serious, are you?”
“Yes, entirely so. Four years ago we had our hands read out to us as
if our plans had been covered with print.”
“Well, do you mean to say there was actually anything in it?” asked Tom,
his incredulity beginning to weaken a little.
“There was this much in it,” said Angelo: “what was told us
of our characters was minutely exact–we could have not have
bettered it ourselves. Next, two or three memorable things that