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Double Barrelled Detectiveby Mark Twaindetective gagged PART I
"We ought never to do wrong when people are looking."
I
The first scene is in the country, in Virginia; the time, 1880. There
has been a wedding, between a handsome young man of slender means and a
rich young girl--a case of love at first sight and a precipitate
marriage; a marriage bitterly opposed by the girl's widowed father.
Jacob Fuller, the bridegroom, is twenty-six years old, is of an old but
unconsidered family which had by compulsion emigrated from Sedgemoor, and
for King James's purse's profit, so everybody said--some maliciously the
rest merely because they believed it. The bride is nineteen and
beautiful. She is intense, high-strung, romantic, immeasurably proud of
her Cavalier blood, and passionate in her love for her young husband.
For its sake she braved her father's displeasure, endured his reproaches,
listened with loyalty unshaken to his warning predictions and went from
his house without his blessing, proud and happy in the proofs she was
thus giving of the quality of the affection which had made its home in
her heart.
The morning after the marriage there was a sad surprise for her. Her
husband put aside her proffered caresses, and said:
"Sit down. I have something to say to you. I loved you. That was
before I asked your father to give you to me. His refusal is not my
grievance--I could have endured that. But the things he said of me to
you--that is a different matter. There--you needn't speak; I know quite
well what they were; I got them from authentic sources. Among other
things he said that my character was written in my face; that I was
treacherous, a dissembler, a coward, and a brute without sense of pity or
compassion: the 'Sedgemoor trade-mark,' he called it--and 'white-sleeve
badge.' Any other man in my place would have gone to his house and shot
him down like a dog. I wanted to do it, and was minded to do it, but a
better thought came to me: to put him to shame; to break his heart; to
kill him by inches. How to do it? Through my treatment of you, his
idol! I would marry you; and then--Have patience. You will see.
From that moment onward, for three months, the young wife suffered all
the humiliations, all the insults, all the miseries that the diligent and
inventive mind of the husband could contrive, save physical injuries
only. Her strong pride stood by her, and she kept the secret of her
troubles. Now and then the husband said, "Why don't you go to your
father and tell him?" Then he invented new tortures, applied them, and
asked again. She always answered, "He shall never know by my mouth," and
taunted him with his origin; said she was the lawful slave of a scion of
slaves, and must obey, and would--up to that point, but no further; he
could kill her if he liked, but he could not break her; it was not in the
Sedgemoor breed to do it. At the end of the three months he said, with a
dark significance in his manner, "I have tried all things but one"--and
waited for her reply. "Try that," she said, and curled her lip in
mockery. ebooks That night he rose at midnight and put on his clothes, then said to her:
"Get up and dress!"
She obeyed--as always, without a word. He led her half a mile from the
house, and proceeded to lash her to a tree by the side of the public
road; and succeeded, she screaming and struggling. He gagged her then,
struck her across the face with his cowhide, and set his bloodhounds on
her. They tore the clothes off her, and she was naked. He called the
dogs off, and said:
"You will be found--by the passing public. They will be dropping along
about three hours from now, and will spread the news--do you hear? Good-
by. You have seen the last of me."
He went away then. She moaned to herself:
"I shall bear a child--to him! God grant it may be a boy!"
The farmers released her by and by--and spread the news, which was
natural. They raised the country with lynching intentions, but the bird
had flown. The young wife shut herself up in her father's house; he shut
himself up with her, and thenceforth would see no one. His pride was
broken, and his heart; so he wasted away, day by day, and even his
daughter rejoiced when death relieved him.
Then she sold the estate and disappeared.
II
In 1886 a young woman was living in a modest house near a secluded New
England village, with no company but a little boy about five years old.
She did her own work, she discouraged acquaintanceships, and had none.
The butcher, the baker, and the others that served her could tell the
villagers nothing about her further than that her name was Stillman, and
that she called the child Archy. Whence she came they had not been able
to find out, but they said she talked like a Southerner. The child had
no playmates and no comrade, and no teacher but the mother. She taught
him diligently and intelligently, and was satisfied with the results--
even a little proud of them. One day Archy said:
"Mamma, am I different from other children?"
"Well, I suppose not. Why?"
"There was a child going along out there and asked me if the postman had
been by and I said yes, and she said how long since I saw him and I said
I hadn't seen him at all, and she said how did I know he'd been by, then,
and I said because I smelt his track on the sidewalk, and she said I was
a dum fool and made a mouth at me. What did she do that for?"
The young woman turned white, and said to herself, "It's a birth mark!
The gift of the bloodhound is in him." She snatched the boy to her
breast and hugged him passionately, saying, "God has appointed the way!"
Her eyes were burning with a fierce light, and her breath came short and
quick with excitement. She said to herself: "The puzzle is solved now;
many a time it has been a mystery to me, the impossible things the child
has done in the dark, but it is all clear to me now."
She set him in his small chair, and said:
"Wait a little till I come, dear; then we will talk about the matter."
She went up to her room and took from her dressing-table several small
articles and put them out of sight: a nail-file on the floor under the
bed; a pair of nail-scissors under the bureau; a small ivory paper-knife
under the wardrobe. Then she returned, and said:
"There! I have left some things which I ought to have brought down."
She named them, and said, "Run up and bring them, dear."
The child hurried away on his errand and was soon back again with the
things.
"Did you have any difficulty, dear?"
"No, mamma; I only went where you went."
During his absence she had stepped to the bookcase, taken several books
from the bottom shelf, opened each, passed her hand over a page, noting
its number in her memory, then restored them to their places. Now she
said:
"I have been doing something while you have been gone, Archy. Do you
think you can find out what it was?" "girl detective' gagged http://www.buy-ebook.com/double-barrelled-detective/
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