Tom Sawyer, Detective (Illustrated) E-Book

Mark Twain

• Herausgeber: Bauer Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Tom Sawyer, Detective is an 1896 novel by Mark Twain. It is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and a prequel to Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894). Tom Sawyer attempts to solve a mysterious murder in this burlesque of the immensely popular detective novels of the time. Like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the story is told using the first-person narrative voice of Huck Finn.

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Tom Sawyer, Detective (Illustrated Edition)

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Table of contents

CHAPTER I An Invitation for Tom and Huck

W ELL, it was the next spring after me and Tom Sawyer set our old nigger 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 aswimming. 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.

“Tom, I reckon you’ve got to pack up and go down to Arkansaw—your aunt Sally wants you.” “Well,” he says, “I’m right down sorry, Aunt Polly, but I reckon I got to be excused—for the present.” “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: She was setting there in a brown study, with it laying in her lap. We set down, and she says: “What a name—Jubiter! Where’d he get it?” “What’s t’other twin like?” 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 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, but he sick?” “I don’t know; maybe he is, but ’pears to me he’s just letting on.” “What makes you think that?” “The mischief he don’t! Not even when he goes to bed?” “No.” “I think he got aboard at Elexandria, up on the Iowa line.” “Anything peculiar about him?—the way he acts or talks?” “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.” “Why, Jubiter Dunlap, where’d come from?” 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 Jake. But looky here, how do you come to know us Dunlaps?” “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.” “No! Are you speaking true?—honor bright, now.” He jumped up, excited. “Honor bright. There ain’t anybody thinks you are alive.” “No,” Tom said; “there ain’t anything left that’s like him except the long hair.” Tom he studied awhile, then he says: “Sounded like cocking a gun! Lord, what a life to lead!” Then he sunk down in a chair all limp and sick like, and wiped the sweat off of his face. “Twelve—thousand—dollars!” Tom says. “Was they really worth all that money, do you reckon?” “What—one take everything, after all of you had helped to get it?” “Cert’nly.” “Oh, keep still, Huck Finn, can’t you, you’re only just hendering all you can. What it he bought, Jake?” “You’d never guess in the world. It was only just a screwdriver—just a wee little bit of a screwdriver.” “Well, I declare! What did he want with that?” “You bet I do,” says Tom, all excited. “Huck, ain’t it bully!” says Tom. “You bet your life it was!” says Tom, just full of admiration. “‘There’s one place we hain’t searched.’ “‘What place is that?’ he says. “‘His stomach.’ “Look!—what’s that?” “Look, I tell you. It’s something coming out of the sycamores.” We couldn’t stir for a minute or two; then it was gone We talked about it in low voices. Tom says: “They’re mostly dim and smoky, or like they’re made out of fog, but this one wasn’t.” “No,” I says; “I seen the goggles and the whiskers perfectly plain.” “Yes, and the very colors in them loud countrified Sunday clothes—plaid breeches, green and black—” “Cotton velvet westcot, fire-red and yaller squares—” “Leather straps to the bottoms of the breeches legs and one of them hanging unbottoned—” “Did you notice if its hair was the same, Huck?” “No—seems to me I did, then again it seems to me I didn’t.” “Yes, all he could lug. Nigger stealing corn from old Parson Silas, I judged.” “So did I. And so I allowed I wouldn’t let on to see him.” “That’s me, too.” That night was the second of September—a Saturday. I sha’n’t ever forget it. You’ll see why, pretty soon. “You wait—I’ll show you what. Did it have its boots on?” “Because they got chased away by them other two men before they could pull the boots off of the corpse.” “That’s so! I see it now. But looky here, Tom, why ain’t we to go and tell about it?” “But what are we going to tell your aunt Sally has made us so long getting down here from the village, Tom?” “Oh, I’ll leave that to you,” he says. “I reckon you can explain it somehow.” He was always just that strict and delicate. He never would tell a lie himself. So I done it. And I says: “It was when he was spading up some ground along with you, towards sundown or along there.” He only said, “Um,” in a kind of a disappointed way, and didn’t take no more intrust. So I went on. I says: I see I had slipped up, and I couldn’t say a word. She waited, still a-gazing at me, then she says: “And how’d they come to strike that idiot idea of going a-blackberrying in the night?” “Well, m’m, they—er—they told us they had a lantern, and—” “Oh, up—do! Looky here; what was they going to do with a dog?—hunt blackberries with it?” “I think, m’m, they—” Tom he looked considerable hurt, and says, very dignified: “It is a pity if Huck is to be talked to that way, just for making a little bit of a mistake that anybody could make.” “What mistake has he made?” “Why, only the mistake of saying blackberries when of course he meant strawberries.” “Tom Sawyer, I lay if you aggravate me a little more, I’ll—” “And yet, all the same, Aunt Sally—” “Shet up!” she says, “I don’t want to hear another word out of you.” So we was perfectly safe, then, and didn’t have no more trouble about that delay. Tom done it elegant. At last I give in, and went and took a look myself; and it was just as Tom said—there wasn’t a sign of a corpse. “Dern it,” I says, “the di’monds is gone. Don’t you reckon the thieves slunk back and lugged him off, Tom?” “Looks like it. It just does. Now where’d they hide him, do you reckon?” “Nor I neither,” I says; “I’d recognize it anywheres.” “So would I. It looks perfectly solid and genuwyne, just the way it done before it died.” So we kept a-gazing. Pretty soon Tom says: “That’s so, Tom—I never heard the like of it before.” “Lordy, Tom, don’t talk so! If you was to holler at it I’d die in my tracks.” “Don’t you worry, I ain’t going to holler at it. Look, Huck, it’s a-scratching its head—don’t you see?” “Well, what of it?” “Why, Tom, it’s so, sure! It’s as solid as a cow. I sort of begin to think—” “Mighty good reason. Hadn’t ever been any corpse there.” “Why, Tom, you know we heard—” “Quick, Huck, snatch on your clothes—I’ve got it! Bloodhound!” “The trail’s too old, Tom—and besides, it’s rained, you know.” That graveled him, and he says: “I never said anything about being glad; I only—” “Well, then, I’m as as you are. Any way you druther have it, that is the way druther have it. He—” “There ain’t any druthers it, Huck Finn; nobody said anything about druthers. And as for—” “Why, he—er—” “Answer up! You ain’t no fool. What does he kill him ” “Well, sometimes it’s for revenge, and—” “Come away, Huck—it’s found.” “Poor Jubiter; it’s his clothes, to the last rag!” Aunt Sally and Benny sprung up pale and astonished, but Uncle Silas fell right forward out of his chair on to the floor and groans out: “Oh, my God, you’ve found him ” “Uncle Silas, don’t you say another word like that. It’s dangerous, and there ain’t a shadder of truth in it.” “No—I done it; poor Jubiter, I done it!” “No, you ain’t going to be found out. You kill him. lick wouldn’t kill him. Somebody else done it.” “But hold on!—somebody him. Now who—” Tom and our lawyer asked them some questions; but it warn’t no use, they stuck to what they said. “Why didn’t you go and tell what you saw?” “Mr. Sheriff, arrest these two witnesses on suspicions of being accessionary after the fact to the murder.” The lawyer for the prostitution jumps up all excited, and says: “Your honor! I protest against this extraordi—” “Set down!” says the judge, pulling his bowie and laying it on his pulpit. “I beg you to respect the Court.” So he done it. Then he called Bill Withers. Then Jack Withers he come on the stand and told the same tale, just like Bill done. “ ” Up jumps Tom and shouts: “ , I’ve got it!” and waves his hand, oh, ever so fine and starchy, towards the old man, and says: “Set down! A murder done, but you never had no hand in it!” “Your honor, may I speak?” You could see everybody nestle now, and begin to listen for all they was worth. Tom waited a little here, for some more “effect”—then he says, very deliberate: “The man that put on that dead man’s disguise was — ” “Great Scott!” everybody shouted, all over the house, and old Uncle Silas he looked perfectly astonished. “Great Scott!” “And the man that buried him was— Dunlap, his brother!” “Great Scott!” “Tom Sawyer! Tom Sawyer! Shut up everybody, and let him go on! Go on, Tom Sawyer!” “Well, I believe that is all.” Why, you never heard such a howl!—and it come from the whole house: And then the judge he looked down over his pulpit and says: “No, your honor, I didn’t see any of them.” Tom says, kind of easy and comfortable: “Nothing of the kind! Not two in a million could ’a’ done it. You are a very remarkable boy.” “But are you certain you’ve got this curious history straight?” “Yes, sir. And he’s got them twelve-thousand-dollar di’monds on him.” By gracious, but it made a stir! Everybody went shouting: “Point him out, my lad. Sheriff, you will arrest him. Which one is it?” Tom says: —The End—