him, you wouldn’t have to say take your choice; it
was a thing that would regulate itself. Because in my
nature I have always run to pie, whilst in his nature he
has always run to mystery. People are made different.
And it is the best way. Tom says to the waiter:
“What’s the man’s name?”
“Phillips.”
“Where’d he come aboard?”
“I think he got aboard at Elexandria, up on the
Iowa line.”
“What do you reckon he’s a-playing?”
“I hain’t any notion — I never thought of it.”
I says to myself, here’s another one that runs to pie.
“Anything peculiar about him? — the way he acts or
talks?”
“No — nothing, except he seems so scary, and
keeps his doors locked night and day both, and when
you knock he won’t let you in till he opens the door a
crack and sees who it is.”
“By jimminy, it’s int’resting! I’d like to get a
look at him. Say — the next time you’re going in
there, don’t you reckon you could spread the door
and –”
“No, indeedy! He’s always behind it. He would
block that game.”
Tom studied over it, and then he says:
“Looky here. You lend me your apern and let me
take him his breakfast in the morning. I’ll give you a
quarter.”
The boy was plenty willing enough, if the head
steward wouldn’t mind. Tom says that’s all right, he
reckoned he could fix it with the head steward; and he
done it. He fixed it so as we could both go in with
aperns on and toting vittles.
He didn’t sleep much, he was in such a sweat to get
in there and find out the mystery about Phillips; and
moreover he done a lot of guessing about it all night,
which warn’t no use, for if you are going to find out
the facts of a thing, what’s the sense in guessing out
what ain’t the facts and wasting ammunition? I
didn’t lose no sleep. I wouldn’t give a dern to know
what’s the matter of Phillips, I says to myself.
Well, in the morning we put on the aperns and got a
couple of trays of truck, and Tom he knocked on the
door. The man opened it a crack, and then he let us in
and shut it quick. By Jackson, when we got a sight of
him, we ‘most dropped the trays! and Tom says:
“Why, Jubiter Dunlap, where’d YOU come from?”
Well, the man was astonished, of course; and first
off he looked like he didn’t know whether to be scared,
or glad, or both, or which, but finally he settled down
to being glad; and then his color come back, though at
first his face had turned pretty white. So we got to
talking together while he et his breakfast. And he
says:
“But I aint Jubiter Dunlap. I’d just as soon tell
you who I am, though, if you’ll swear to keep mum,
for I ain’t no Phillips, either.”
Tom says:
“We’ll keep mum, but there ain’t any need to tell
who you are if you ain’t Jubiter Dunlap.”
“Why?”
“Because if you ain’t him you’re t’other twin, Jake.
You’re the spit’n image of Jubiter.”
“Well, I’m Jake. But looky here, how do you
come to know us Dunlaps?”
Tom told about the adventures we’d had down there
at his uncle Silas’s last summer, and when he see that
there warn’t anything about his folks — or him either,
for that matter — that we didn’t know, he opened out
and talked perfectly free and candid. He never made
any bones about his own case; said he’d been a hard
lot, was a hard lot yet, and reckoned he’d be a hard lot
plumb to the end. He said of course it was a danger-
ous life, and —
He give a kind of gasp, and set his head like a person
that’s listening. We didn’t say anything, and so it
was very still for a second or so, and there warn’t no
sounds but the screaking of the woodwork and the chug-
chugging of the machinery down below.
Then we got him comfortable again, telling him about