Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain [111]
Oh, my friend, the agony in that shrouded face was ecstasy to see! I thought of a new torture, and applied it—assisting myself with a trifle of lying invention:
“That poor Kruger tried to save my wife and child, and I did him a grateful good turn for it when the time came. I persuaded him to rob you; and I and a woman helped him to desert, and got him away to safety.”
A look as of surprise and triumph shone out dimly through the anguish in my victim’s face. I was disturbed, disquieted. I said—
“What, then—didn’t he escape?”’
A negative shake of the head.
“No? What happened, then?”
The satisfaction in the shrouded face was still plainer. The man tried to mumble out some words—could not succeed; tried to express something with his obstructed hands —failed; paused a moment, then feebly tilted his head, in a meaning way, toward the corpse that lay nearest him.
“Dead?” I asked. “Failed to escape? Caught in the act and shot?”’
Negative shake of the head.
“How, then?”
Again the man tried to do something with his hands. I watched closely, but could not guess the intent. I bent over and watched still more intently. He had twisted a thumb around and was weakly punching at his breast with it.
“Ah—stabbed, do you mean?”
Affirmative nod, accompanied by a spectral smile of such peculiar devilishness, that it struck an awakening light through my dull brain, and I cried—
“Did I stab him, mistaking him for you? For that stroke was meant for none but you.”
The affirmative nod, of the redying rascal was as joyous as his failing strength was able to put into its expression.
“O, miserable, miserable me, to slaughter the pitying soul that stood a friend to my darlings when they were helpless, and would have saved them if he could! Miserable, oh, miserable, miserable me!”
I fancied I heard the muffled gurgle of a mocking laugh. I took my face out of my hands, and saw my enemy sinking back upon his inclined board.
He was a satisfactory long time dying. He had a wonderful vitality, an astonishing constitution. Yes, he was a pleasant long time at it. I got a chair and a newspaper, and sat down by him and read. Occasionally I took a sip of brandy. This was necessary, on account of the cold. But I did it partly because I saw, that along at first, whenever I reached for the bottle, he thought I was going to give him some. I read aloud: mainly imaginary accounts of people snatched from the grave’s threshold and restored to life and vigor by a few spoonsful of liquor and a warm bath. Yes, he had a long, hard death of it—three hours and six minutes, from the time he rang his bell.
It is believed that in all these eighteen years that have elapsed since the institution of the corpse watch, no shrouded occupant of the Bavarian dead-houses has ever rung its bell. Well, it is a harmless belief. Let it stand at that.
The chill of that deathroom had penetrated my bones. It revived and fastened upon me the disease which had been afflicting me, but which, up to that night, had been steadily disappearing. That man murdered my wife and my child; and in three days hence he will have added me to his list. No matter—God! how delicious the memory of it!—I caught him escaping from his grave, and thrust him back into it!
After that night, I was confined to my bed for a week; but as soon as I could get about, I went to the dead-house books and got the number of the house which Adler had died in. A wretched lodginghouse, it was. It was my idea that he would naturally have gotten hold of Kruger’s effects, being his cousin; and I wanted to get Kruger’s watch, if I could. But while I was sick, Adler’s things had been sold and scattered, all except a few old