The man that can track a bird through the air in the dark
and find that bird is the man to track me out and find the
judge’s assassin–no other need apply. And that is the job that
has been laid out for poor Pudd’nhead Wilson, of all people in the world!
Lord, it will be pathetically funny to see him
grubbing and groping after that woman that don’t exist, and the
right person sitting under his very nose all the time!”
The more he thought the situation over, the more the humor of it
struck him. Finally he said, “I’ll never let him hear the last of
that woman. Every time I catch him in company, to his dying day,
I’ll ask him in the guileless affectionate way that used to gravel
him so when I inquired how his unborn law business was coming along,
‘Got on her track yet–hey, Pudd’nhead?'” He wanted to laugh,
but that would not have answered; there were people about, and he
was mourning for his uncle. He made up his mind that it would be
good entertainment to look in on Wilson that night and watch him
worry over his barren law case and goad him with an exasperating
word or two of sympathy and commiseration now and then.
Wilson wanted no supper, he had no appetite. He got out all
the fingerprints of girls and women in his collection of records
and pored gloomily over them an hour or more, trying to convince
himself that that troublesome girl’s marks were there somewhere
and had been overlooked. But it was not so. He drew back his
chair, clasped his hands over his head, and gave himself up to
dull and arid musings.
Tom Driscoll dropped in, an hour after dark, and said with a
pleasant laugh as he took a seat:
“Hello, we’ve gone back to the amusements of our days of
neglect and obscurity for consolation, have we?” and he took up
one of the glass strips and held it against the light to inspect it.
“Come, cheer up, old man; there’s no use in losing your grip
and going back to this child’s play merely because this big
sunspot is drifting across your shiny new disk. It’ll pass,
and you’ll be all right again”–and he laid the glass down.
“Did you think you could win always?”
“Oh, no,” said Wilson, with a sigh, “I didn’t expect that,
but I can’t believe Luigi killed your uncle, and I feel very
sorry for him. It makes me blue. And you would feel as I do, Tom,
if you were not prejudiced against those young fellows.”
“I don’t know about that,” and Tom’s countenance darkened,
for his memory reverted to his kicking. “I owe them no good will,
considering the brunet one’s treatment of me that night.
Prejudice or no prejudice, Pudd’nhead, I don’t like them,
and when they get their deserts you’re not going to find me sitting
on the mourner’s bench.”
He took up another strip of glass, and exclaimed:
“Why, here’s old Roxy’s label! Are you going to ornament
the royal palaces with nigger paw marks, too? By the date here,
I was seven months old when this was done, and she was nursing me
and her little nigger cub. There’s a line straight across her thumbprint.
How comes that?” and Tom held out the piece of glass to Wilson.
“That is common,” said the bored man, wearily.
“Scar of a cut or a scratch, usually”–and he took the strip
of glass indifferently, and raised it toward the lamp.
All the blood sank suddenly out of his face; his hand quaked,
and he gazed at the polished surface before him with the
glassy stare of a corpse.
“Great heavens, what’s the matter with you, Wilson?
Are you going to faint?”
Tom sprang for a glass of water and offered it, but Wilson
shrank shuddering from him and said:
“No, no!–take it away!” His breast was rising and falling,
and he moved his head about in a dull and wandering way, like a
person who had been stunned. Presently he said, “I shall feel
better when I get to bed; I have been overwrought today;