


Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger





TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE

By Mark Twain


Contents

   CHAPTER I.    AN INVITATION FOR TOM AND HUCK
   CHAPTER II.   JAKE DUNLAP
   CHAPTER III.  A DIAMOND ROBBERY
   CHAPTER IV.   THE THREE SLEEPERS
   CHAPTER V.    A TRAGEDY IN THE WOODS
   CHAPTER VI.   PLANS TO SECURE THE DIAMONDS
   CHAPTER VII.  A NIGHT'S VIGIL
   CHAPTER VIII. TALKING WITH THE GHOST
   CHAPTER IX.   FINDING OF JUBITER DUNLAP
   CHAPTER X.    THE ARREST OF UNCLE SILAS
   CHAPTER XI.   TOM SAWYER DISCOVERS THE MURDERERS




CHAPTER I. AN INVITATION FOR TOM AND HUCK


     [Note: Strange as the incidents of this story are, they
     are not inventions, but facts--even to the public confession
     of the accused.  I take them from an old-time Swedish
     criminal trial, change the actors, and transfer the scenes
     to America.  I have added some details, but only a couple of
     them are important ones. -- M. T.]

WELL, it was the next spring after me and Tom Sawyer set our old <DW65>
Jim free, the time he was chained up for a runaway slave down there on
Tom's uncle Silas's farm in Arkansaw. The frost was working out of the
ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer
onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next
mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right
away it would be summer and going in a-swimming. It just makes a boy
homesick to look ahead like that and see how far off summer is. Yes, and
it sets him to sighing and saddening around, and there's something the
matter with him, he don't know what. But anyway, he gets out by himself
and mopes and thinks; and mostly he hunts for a lonesome place high up
on the hill in the edge of the woods, and sets there and looks away off
on the big Mississippi down there a-reaching miles and miles around the
points where the timber looks smoky and dim it's so far off and still,
and everything's so solemn it seems like everybody you've loved is dead
and gone, and you'most wish you was dead and gone too, and done with it
all.

Don't you know what that is? It's spring fever. That is what the name of
it is. And when you've got it, you want--oh, you don't quite know what
it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it
so! It seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away; get away
from the same old tedious things you're so used to seeing and so tired
of, and set something new. That is the idea; you want to go and be a
wanderer; you want to go wandering far away to strange countries where
everything is mysterious and wonderful and romantic. And if you can't do
that, you'll put up with considerable less; you'll go anywhere you CAN
go, just so as to get away, and be thankful of the chance, too.

Well, me and Tom Sawyer had the spring fever, and had it bad, too; but
it warn't any use to think about Tom trying to get away, because, as he
said, his Aunt Polly wouldn't let him quit school and go traipsing off
somers wasting time; so we was pretty blue. We was setting on the front
steps one day about sundown talking this way, when out comes his aunt
Polly with a letter in her hand and says:

"Tom, I reckon you've got to pack up and go down to Arkansaw--your aunt
Sally wants you."

I'most jumped out of my skin for joy. I reckoned Tom would fly at his
aunt and hug her head off; but if you believe me he set there like a
rock, and never said a word. It made me fit to cry to see him act so
foolish, with such a noble chance as this opening up. Why, we might lose
it if he didn't speak up and show he was thankful and grateful. But he
set there and studied and studied till I was that distressed I didn't
know what to do; then he says, very ca'm, and I could a shot him for it:

"Well," he says, "I'm right down sorry, Aunt Polly, but I reckon I got
to be excused--for the present."

His aunt Polly was knocked so stupid and so mad at the cold impudence of
it that she couldn't say a word for as much as a half a minute, and this
gave me a chance to nudge Tom and whisper:

"Ain't you got any sense? Sp'iling such a noble chance as this and
throwing it away?"

But he warn't disturbed. He mumbled back:

"Huck Finn, do you want me to let her SEE how bad I want to go? Why,
she'd begin to doubt, right away, and imagine a lot of sicknesses and
dangers and objections, and first you know she'd take it all back. You
lemme alone; I reckon I know how to work her."

Now I never would 'a' thought of that. But he was right. Tom Sawyer was
always right--the levelest head I ever see, and always AT himself and
ready for anything you might spring on him. By this time his aunt Polly
was all straight again, and she let fly. She says:

"You'll be excused! YOU will! Well, I never heard the like of it in all
my days! The idea of you talking like that to ME! Now take yourself off
and pack your traps; and if I hear another word out of you about what
you'll be excused from and what you won't, I lay I'LL excuse you--with a
hickory!"

She hit his head a thump with her thimble as we dodged by, and he let on
to be whimpering as we struck for the stairs. Up in his room he
hugged me, he was so out of his head for gladness because he was going
traveling. And he says:

"Before we get away she'll wish she hadn't let me go, but she won't know
any way to get around it now. After what she's said, her pride won't let
her take it back."

Tom was packed in ten minutes, all except what his aunt and Mary would
finish up for him; then we waited ten more for her to get cooled down
and sweet and gentle again; for Tom said it took her ten minutes to
unruffle in times when half of her feathers was up, but twenty when they
was all up, and this was one of the times when they was all up. Then we
went down, being in a sweat to know what the letter said.

She was setting there in a brown study, with it laying in her lap. We
set down, and she says:

"They're in considerable trouble down there, and they think you and
Huck'll be a kind of diversion for them--'comfort,' they say. Much of
that they'll get out of you and Huck Finn, I reckon. There's a neighbor
named Brace Dunlap that's been wanting to marry their Benny for three
months, and at last they told him point blank and once for all, he
COULDN'T; so he has soured on them, and they're worried about it. I
reckon he's somebody they think they better be on the good side of, for
they've tried to please him by hiring his no-account brother to help
on the farm when they can't hardly afford it, and don't want him around
anyhow. Who are the Dunlaps?"

"They live about a mile from Uncle Silas's place, Aunt Polly--all the
farmers live about a mile apart down there--and Brace Dunlap is a long
sight richer than any of the others, and owns a whole grist of <DW65>s.
He's a widower, thirty-six years old, without any children, and is proud
of his money and overbearing, and everybody is a little afraid of him. I
judge he thought he could have any girl he wanted, just for the asking,
and it must have set him back a good deal when he found he couldn't get
Benny. Why, Benny's only half as old as he is, and just as sweet and
lovely as--well, you've seen her. Poor old Uncle Silas--why, it's pitiful,
him trying to curry favor that way--so hard pushed and poor, and yet
hiring that useless Jubiter Dunlap to please his ornery brother."

"What a name--Jubiter! Where'd he get it?"

"It's only just a nickname. I reckon they've forgot his real name long
before this. He's twenty-seven, now, and has had it ever since the first
time he ever went in swimming. The school teacher seen a round brown
mole the size of a dime on his left leg above his knee, and four little
bits of moles around it, when he was naked, and he said it minded him
of Jubiter and his moons; and the children thought it was funny, and so
they got to calling him Jubiter, and he's Jubiter yet. He's tall,
and lazy, and sly, and sneaky, and ruther cowardly, too, but kind of
good-natured, and wears long brown hair and no beard, and hasn't got a
cent, and Brace boards him for nothing, and gives him his old clothes to
wear, and despises him. Jubiter is a twin."

"What's t'other twin like?"

"Just exactly like Jubiter--so they say; used to was, anyway, but he
hain't been seen for seven years. He got to robbing when he was nineteen
or twenty, and they jailed him; but he broke jail and got away--up North
here, somers. They used to hear about him robbing and burglaring now and
then, but that was years ago. He's dead, now. At least that's what they
say. They don't hear about him any more."

"What was his name?"

"Jake."

There wasn't anything more said for a considerable while; the old lady
was thinking. At last she says:

"The thing that is mostly worrying your aunt Sally is the tempers that
that man Jubiter gets your uncle into."

Tom was astonished, and so was I. Tom says:

"Tempers? Uncle Silas? Land, you must be joking! I didn't know he HAD
any temper."

"Works him up into perfect rages, your aunt Sally says; says he acts as
if he would really hit the man, sometimes."

"Aunt Polly, it beats anything I ever heard of. Why, he's just as gentle
as mush."

"Well, she's worried, anyway. Says your uncle Silas is like a changed
man, on account of all this quarreling. And the neighbors talk about it,
and lay all the blame on your uncle, of course, because he's a preacher
and hain't got any business to quarrel. Your aunt Sally says he hates
to go into the pulpit he's so ashamed; and the people have begun to cool
toward him, and he ain't as popular now as he used to was."

"Well, ain't it strange? Why, Aunt Polly, he was always so good and kind
and moony and absent-minded and chuckle-headed and lovable--why, he was
just an angel! What CAN be the matter of him, do you reckon?"





CHAPTER II. JAKE DUNLAP

WE had powerful good luck; because we got a chance in a stern-wheeler
from away North which was bound for one of them bayous or one-horse
rivers away down Louisiana way, and so we could go all the way down the
Upper Mississippi and all the way down the Lower Mississippi to that
farm in Arkansaw without having to change steamboats at St. Louis; not
so very much short of a thousand miles at one pull.

A pretty lonesome boat; there warn't but few passengers, and all old
folks, that set around, wide apart, dozing, and was very quiet. We was
four days getting out of the "upper river," because we got aground so
much. But it warn't dull--couldn't be for boys that was traveling, of
course.

From the very start me and Tom allowed that there was somebody sick in
the stateroom next to ourn, because the meals was always toted in there
by the waiters. By and by we asked about it--Tom did and the waiter said
it was a man, but he didn't look sick.

"Well, but AIN'T he sick?"

"I don't know; maybe he is, but 'pears to me he's just letting on."

"What makes you think that?"

"Because if he was sick he would pull his clothes off SOME time or
other--don't you reckon he would? Well, this one don't. At least he don't
ever pull off his boots, anyway."

"The mischief he don't! Not even when he goes to bed?"

"No."

It was always nuts for Tom Sawyer--a mystery was. If you'd lay out a
mystery and a pie before me and 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
dangerous 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 his people, and how
Brace's wife had been dead three years, and Brace wanted to marry Benny
and she shook him, and Jubiter was working for Uncle Silas, and him and
Uncle Silas quarreling all the time--and then he let go and laughed.

"Land!" he says, "it's like old times to hear all this tittle-tattle,
and does me good. It's been seven years and more since I heard any. How
do they talk about me these days?"

"Who?"

"The farmers--and the family."

"Why, they don't talk about you at all--at least only just a mention,
once in a long time."

"The nation!" he says, surprised; "why is that?"

"Because they think you are dead long ago