Tom Sawyer, Detective

It was at the table, just after breakfast; the sun shone in at the east windows, and the clattering of dishes and the scrape of chairs and the chattering of voices were pleasant to the ear. Huckleberry Finn sat opposite Tom. They had been out late the night before, and both were rather tired, but they were enjoying the restfulness and the brightness of the morning.

"I declare," said Tom, rising and stretching, "it feels like a holiday. I wish it was. There's nothing like a holiday to make a fellow feel good. I reckon I'd like to go to the circus, but I haven't got a penny--and I don't see where I'd get one if I had."

Huck took up his hat and looked out of the window toward the river where a tug was moving slowly along, towing a raft. "It ain't nothing of the sort," he said presently; "it ain't a holiday, Tom. School'll be in tomorrow if you don't hustle; you know that's the way it is; and you want to be there to learn your lessons. If you don't, you'll get beat up by the teacher."

Tom laughed mirthlessly. "I don't keer if I do; if she'd beat me all over, I wouldn't study. I never did like study. But I do want some fun. Huck, did you ever think about being a detective?"

Huck threw his hat on the floor, kicked it under the table, and stared at Tom. "What you mean?" he asked in a grave tone. "I hain't never 'tend to be a detective. I don't see what a detective's good for--specially here in this town, where there's no murders nor burglaries nor robberies nor anything. Besides, you wouldn't do," he added coolly; "you're too small."

Tom's face became serious. He had read a great many dime detective stories and had a profound respect for the profession. "Yes, I would," he said; "then, if a man wanted to find a thing, he'd find it if he was a detective. He wouldn't stop till he did. Why, somebody's been a-stealing things about this town for a long time."

Huck's eyes widened. "Who?" he inquired. "What things?"

Tom told him of the bank-clerk's discovery, and of the lost box of money and the mysterious footprints which had turned up near the office. Huck listened with interest; the affair grew in his imagination until it took on all the dignity and terror of a Whitechapel murder. "Well, we'll go to it," he said at last; "we'll be detectives. We'll track the villain down and bring him to justice. We'll begin right away."

They set about preparing themselves for their work with the zeal of two earnest boys. They made lists of questions to be asked, committees to be appointed, and plans for watches at night; they discussed disguises, signals, and the best ways to take a prisoner without giving alarm. They were sober and systematic and felt themselves clothed with an importance which intoxicated them.

That afternoon they sallied out with borrowed 'credentials'—Tom's white shirt-collar, which he wore as a badge, and Huckleberry's rusty jack-knife, which served as a badge of office in its way. They called upon such citizens as they held in suspicion, interrogated them with a gravity that was comic to behold, and in the end arrived, by a series of fortunate blunders, at a clue which, to their excited minds, shone like a revelation.

The clue led them to a shabby little house where an old woman lived alone. Tom, with as much solemnity as though he were officiating at a state trial, demanded entrance. The old woman, with more sense of humor than prudence, consented to be questioned, and the boys, by deft and pertinacious cross-examination, extracted from her an admission that she had seen a man pass by with a small package wrapped in brown paper. It was a slender lead, but it was something; they pursued it with the ardor of hounds.

They followed the trail to a warehouse by the river. There they found a startled clerk and a surly watchman, who regarded the youngsters with suspicion and contempt. The clerk, whose neatness and respectability were unruffled by the disorder of the world, communicated some information which looked like a new development. A box, similar to the one missing, had been seen embarked upon a steamer the night before, and a man answering to the description had been noticed to go aboard.

Tom and Huck, transported by this success, deemed it their duty to mount guard upon the quays. They sat through a night chill and uncomfortable, but their vigil was rewarded; at dawn they perceived a glimmer of light on the water and the silhouette of a vessel loosing her tackles. The boys, with childish craft, managed to get aboard the steamer, hid in a hay-bale, and thus became silent spectators of a scene which soon put them in the center of a real adventure.