“That’s the one.” He looked at me quizzically. “She also told me I’d run into a spiritual counterpart from another dimension. Said it with tolerable gravity. Even seemed a mite troubled to be informing me. It gave me pause at the time, though I didn’t exactly hang fire over it.”
My pulse quickened. I was following a path, I must be. “What would you say,” I asked him, “if I told you my full name was Samuel Clemens Fowler, and that I’d come here from another century?”
He sipped his whiskey. “My historical double?”
“I don’t think—well, in a way, maybe.”
He regarded me impassively. “What century’d you have in mind?”
“Oh, say the next one—the 1980s, let’s imagine.”
“They still know about me up then?”
“You’d be surprised.”
He ran his hand through his hair. “And folks say I suffer from overblown imagination. Would you care to know what I’m wondering?”
“Whether I’m crazy?”
“No,” he said, hooded eyes alert. “It’s manifest you’re a lunatic. I’m wondering if somehow you managed to steal that letter off me.”
“I didn’t, I swear. Anyway, why would I return it?”
He nodded slowly, seeming to agree.
From whiskey we moved to champagne cocktails. Then sherry cobblers. Then brandy smashes. Twain showed the skeptical bartender how to make what he called “Californy Concoctions.” They carried names like Santa Cruz Punch, Eye-Opener, and Earthquake. He bought rounds for the car, celebrating, he said, the prodigality of his love. We raised our glasses to Livy.
Later he let himself be coaxed up beside the bar, where he slouched with thumbs hooked in his vest and told stories in a flat drawl. His style was that of a frontier Jack Benny, I thought; he maintained an unshakable deadpan, pausing often for effect, feigning puzzlement when interrupted by guffaws—a frequent occurrence.
From somebody else his material might have bombed—a preacher who spilled faro cards hidden in his gown during a sermon; a huckster who charged admission to see an eclipse from a topless tent—but Twain made it work. His cappers were tall tales—“stretchers,” he called them—about a corporation of mean men who docked an explosives worker for time lost in the air while being blown up; or a champion liar who claimed that his horse outran the edge of a thunderstorm for eighteen miles while his dog swam behind the wagon all the way.
Well into morning, when most of the others had gone, Twain and I sat bleary-eyed. He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Sam, want in on a proposition that could make us richer than Solomon?”
“Sure.” I remembered that he loved get-rich-quick schemes, and that several would prove ruinous.
“I mentioned Freddy Marriott earlier. He puts out that infernal Advertiser in Frisco. You read it?”
I shook my head, glad I hadn’t told him I was a reporter. “What about him?”
“Later this summer Freddy’ll announce news so grand it’ll make the Pacific Railroad blush. He worked with Henson in England, you know, and never gave up the notion of aerial transport. Using every dime from his paper, Freddy’s been hiring engineers on the sly.” Twain gave me his foxy look. “At last he’s developed a flying steam carriage!”
If it was meant to shock, it failed. I stifled a yawn and said, “You believe that?”
“I’m satisfied Freddy believes. He’s happy as a lord, laughing at all the doubting sapheads. A working model goes on display next month. Then he’ll offer stock in his new company.”
“A company to build and sell flying machines?”
“Nope, Freddy figures imitators’ll swarm in like insects, soon as the word gets out. He couldn’t do much to stop them. He’s primed for something bigger.”
“Bigger than airplanes?”
“Aerial carriages,” he corrected, looking around to make sure we were alone. “Freddy’s going after a monopoly on transcontinental passenger service.”
“What!” I almost laughed out loud. “He intends to fly people coast to coast?”
“These are revolutionary times, Sam,” said Twain firmly. “What sounds lunatic one year is thundering reality the next. Those who don’t take risks swallow the dust of those who do. Think of the hidebound wretches who didn’t invest in steamboats and trains, canals, the telegraph—a host of modern inventions. There’ll soon be steam trolleys and Lord knows what else. Anyway, Freddy’s letting his friends know about it now, so we can get in before things go sky high.” He paused to make sure I caught the pun. “I’d be of a mind to plunge, if I had cash at the ready. Picture the returns!”
I didn’t get much of a picture. “Why are you telling me about it?”
He looked hurt. “As a favor, my man! For the service you did. You struck me as a likely gent for a brave new game.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t have the cash either.”
“A damnable shame. Well, when you get back to Frisco”—he gave me a penetrating look—“that is, if it happens to be in this century, maybe you’ll see fit to hunt up Freddy and look into it. Are you headed back soon?”
I explained that I was meeting the Stockings in New York.
“Ah, baseball. The game’s everywhere now, puffed up like a dime-show marvel. I’ve stood reg’lar watches on Elmira’s bleaching boards, observing our two local clubs trying to humble each other. Played myself as a boy in Missouri—called it town ball then. One afternoon Tom Blankenship struck a ball through Widow Holliday’s kitchen window. Overturned a painkiller bottle from the sill. The widow’s old yellow cat, Last Judgment, took a stiff wallop of the stuff and streaked out to settle accounts with every dog in the township.”
I laughed, again aware of his scrutiny.
“You look done in,” Twain said. “Let’s get some sleep.”
It seemed only seconds after I’d fallen on my bunk that the shout came: “Jersey City! All off!”
We crossed the Hudson—here it was called the North River—on one of the small side-wheelers packed along the Jersey docks. I climbed to the observation deck, hoping to see the Manhattan skyline, but fog formed a dense curtain. The ferry’s pealing bell was answered by invisible craft on all sides. I stared into the mist
