Yes,
I was there, with a new trade - fortune-teller. Not to seem partial, I
made friends and told fortunes among all the companies garrisoned there;
but I gave Company C the great bulk of my attentions. I made myself
limitlessly obliging to these particular men; they could ask me no
favor, put upon me no risk, which I would decline. I became the willing
butt of their jokes; this perfected my popularity; I became a favorite.
I early found a private who lacked a thumb - what joy it was to me! And
when I found that he alone, of all the company, had lost a thumb, my
last misgiving vanished; I was SURE I was on the right track. This
man's name was Kruger, a German. There were nine Germans in the company.
I watched, to see who might be his intimates; but he seemed to have no
especial intimates. But I was his intimate; and I took care to make the
intimacy grow. Sometimes I so hungered for my revenge that I could
hardly restrain myself from going on my knees and begging him to point
out the man who had murdered my wife and child; but I managed to bridle
my tongue. I bided my time, and went on telling fortunes, as
opportunity offered.
My apparatus was simple: a little red paint and a bit of white paper. I
painted the ball of the client's thumb, took a print of it on the paper,
studied it that night, and revealed his fortune to him next day. What
was my idea in this nonsense? It was this: When I was a youth, I knew
an old Frenchman who had been a prison-keeper for thirty years, and he
told me that there was one thing about a person which never changed,
from the cradle to the grave - the lines in the ball of the thumb; and he
said that these lines were never exactly alike in the thumbs of any two
human beings. In these days, we photograph the new criminal, and hang
his picture in the Rogues' Gallery for future reference; but that
Frenchman, in his day, used to take a print of the ball of a new
prisoner's thumb and put that away for future reference. He always said
that pictures were no good - future disguises could make them useless;
'The thumb's the only sure thing,' said he; 'you can't disguise that.'
And he used to prove his theory, too, on my friends and acquaintances;
it always succeeded.
I went on telling fortunes. Every night I shut myself in, all alone,
and studied the day's thumb-prints with a magnifying-glass. Imagine the
devouring eagerness with which I pored over those mazy red spirals, with
that document by my side which bore the right-hand thumb-and-finger-
marks of that unknown murderer, printed with the dearest blood - to me -
that was ever shed on this earth! And many and many a time I had to
repeat the same old disappointed remark, 'will they NEVER correspond!'
But my reward came at last. It was the print of the thumb of the forty-
third man of Company C whom I had experimented on - Private Franz Adler.
An hour before, I did not know the murderer's name, or voice, or figure,
or face, or nationality; but now I knew all these things! I believed I
might feel sure; the Frenchman's repeated demonstrations being so good a
warranty. Still, there was a way to MAKE sure. I had an impression of
Kruger's left thumb. In the morning I took him aside when he was off
duty; and when we were out of sight and hearing of witnesses, I said,
impressively -
'A part of your fortune is so grave, that I thought it would be better
for you if I did not tell it in public. You and another man, whose
fortune I was studying last night, - Private Adler, - have been murdering
a woman and a child! You are being dogged: within five days both of you
will be assassinated.'
He dropped on his knees, frightened out of his wits; and for five
minutes he kept pouring out the same set of words, like a demented
person, and in the same half-crying way which was one of my memories of
that murderous night in my cabin -
'I didn't do it; upon my soul I didn't do it; and I tried to keep HIM
from doing it; I did, as God is my witness. He did it alone.'
This was all I wanted. And I tried to get rid of the fool; but no, he
clung to me, imploring me to save him from the assassin. He said -
'I have money - ten thousand dollars - hid away, the fruit of loot and
thievery; save me - tell me what to do, and you shall have it, every
penny. Two-thirds of it is my cousin Adler's; but you can take it all.
We hid it when we first came here. But I hid it in a new place
yesterday, and have not told him - shall not tell him. I was going to
desert, and get away with it all. It is gold, and too heavy to carry
when one is running and dodging; but a woman who has been gone over the
river two days to prepare my way for me is going to follow me with it;
and if I got no chance to describe the hiding-place to her I was going
to slip my silver watch into her hand, or send it to her, and she would
understand. There's a piece of paper in the back of the case, which
tells it all.
