“That’s it; that’s good grit! I like to see it. I’ve a notion to throw all my business your way. My business and your law-practice ought to make a pretty gay team, Dave,” and the young fellow laughed again.
“If you will throw—” Wilson had thought of the girl in Tom’s bedroom, and was going to say, “If you will throw the surreptitious and disreputable part of your business my way, it may amount to something;” but thought better of it and said, “However, this matter doesn’t fit well in a general conversation.”
“All right, we’ll change the subject; I guess you were about to give me another dig, anyway, so I’m willing to change. How’s the Awful Mystery flourishing these days? Wilson’s got a scheme for driving plain window-glass out of the market by decorating it with greasy fingermarks, and getting rich by selling it at famine prices to the crowned heads over in Europe to outfit their palaces with. Fetch it out, Dave.”
Wilson brought three of his glass strips, and said—
“I get the subject to pass the fingers of his right hand through his hair, so as to get a little coating of the natural oil on them, and then press the balls of them on the glass. A fine and delicate print of the lines in the skin results, and is permanent, if it doesn’t come in contact with something able to rub it off. You begin, Tom.”
“Why, I think you took my fingermarks once or twice before.”
“Yes; but you were a little boy the last time, only about twelve years old.”
“That’s so. Of course I’ve changed entirely since then, and variety is what the crowned heads want, I guess.”
He passed his fingers through his crop of short hair, and pressed them one at a time on the glass. Angelo made a print of his fingers on another glass, and Luigi followed with the third. Wilson marked the glasses with names and date, and put them away. Tom gave one of his little laughs, and said—
“I thought I wouldn’t say anything, but if variety is what you are after, you have wasted a piece of glass. The hand-print of one twin is the same as the hand-print of the fellow-twin.”
“Well, it’s done now, and I like to have them both, anyway,” said Wilson, returning to his place.
“But look here, Dave,” said Tom, “you used to tell people’s fortunes, too, when you took their fingermarks. Dave’s just an all-round genius—a genius of the first water, gentlemen; a great scientist running to seed here in this village, a prophet with the kind of honor that prophets generally get at home—for here they don’t give shucks for his scientifics, and they call his skull a notion-factory—hey, Dave, ain’t it so? But never mind; he’ll make his mark some day—fingermark, you know, he-he! But really, you want to let him take a shy at your palms once; it’s worth twice the price of admission or your money’s returned at the door. Why, he’ll read your wrinkles as easy as a book, and not only tell you fifty or sixty things that’s going to happen to you, but fifty or sixty thousand that ain’t. Come, Dave, show the gentlemen what an inspired Jack-at-all-science we’ve got in this town, and don’t know it.”
Wilson winced under this nagging and not very courteous chaff, and the twins suffered with him and for him. They rightly judged, now, that the best way to relieve him would be to take the thing in earnest and treat it with respect, ignoring Tom’s rather overdone raillery; so Luigi said—
“We have seen something of palmistry in our wanderings, and know very well what astonishing things it can do. If it isn’t a science, and one of the greatest of them, too, I don’t know what its other name ought to be. In the Orient—”
Tom looked surprised and incredulous. He said—
“That juggling a science? But really, you ain’t serious, are you?”
“Yes, entirely so. Four years ago we had our hands read out to us as if our palms had been covered with print.”
“Well, do you mean to say there was actually anything in it?” asked Tom, his incredulity beginning to weaken a little.
“There was this much in it,” said Angelo: “what was told us of our characters was minutely exact—we could not have bettered it ourselves. Next, two or three memorable things that had happened to us were laid bare—things which no one present but ourselves could have known about.”
“Why, it’s rank sorcery!” exclaimed Tom, who was now becoming very much interested. “And how did they make out with what was going to happen to you in the future?”
“On the whole, quite fairly,” said Luigi. “Two or three of the most striking things foretold have happened since; much the most striking one of all happened within that same year. Some of the minor prophecies have come true; some of the minor and some of the major ones have not been fulfilled yet, and of course may never be: still, I should be more surprised if they failed to arrive than if they didn’t.”
Tom was entirely sobered, and profoundly impressed. He said, apologetically—
“Dave, I wasn’t meaning to belittle that science; I was only chaffing—chattering, I reckon I’d better say. I wish you would look at their palms. Come, won’t you?”
“Why certainly, if you want me to; but you know I’ve had no
