reflection set him to admiring, for the hundredth time,
the shrewd ingenuities by which he had insured himself against
detection--more, against even suspicion.
"Nearly always in cases like this there is some little detail or other
overlooked, some wee little track or trace left behind, and detection
follows; but here there's not even the faintest suggestion of a trace
left. No more than a bird leaves when it flies through the air--yes,
through the night, you may say. 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