The Complete Works of Mark Twain. Mark Twain
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and will be detained at least as a witness.
P. S. One of the persons present in the parlor says that after Laura Hawkins had fired twice, she turned the pistol towards herself, but that Brierly sprung and caught it from her hand, and that it was he who threw it on the floor.
Further particulars with full biographies of all the parties in our next edition.
Philip hastened at once to the Southern Hotel, where he found still a great state of excitement, and a thousand different and exaggerated stories passing from mouth to mouth. The witnesses of the event had told it over so many times that they had worked it up into a most dramatic scene, and embellished it with whatever could heighten its awfulness. Outsiders had taken up invention also. The Colonel’s wife had gone insane, they said. The children had rushed into the parlor and rolled themselves in their father’s blood. The hotel clerk said that he noticed there was murder in the woman’s eye when he saw her. A person who had met the woman on the stairs felt a creeping sensation. Some thought Brierly was an accomplice, and that he had set the woman on to kill his rival. Some said the woman showed the calmness and indifference of insanity.
Philip learned that Harry and Laura had both been taken to the city prison, and he went there; but he was not admitted. Not being a newspaper reporter, he could not see either of them that night; but the officer questioned him suspiciously and asked him who he was. He might perhaps see Brierly in the morning.
The latest editions of the evening papers had the result of the inquest. It was a plain enough case for the jury, but they sat over it a long time, listening to the wrangling of the physicians. Dr. Puffer insisted that the man died from the effects of the wound in the chest. Dr. Dobb as strongly insisted that the wound in the abdomen caused death. Dr. Golightly suggested that in his opinion death ensued from a complication of the two wounds and perhaps other causes. He examined the table waiter, as to whether Col. Selby ate any breakfast, and what he ate, and if he had any appetite.
The jury finally threw themselves back upon the indisputable fact that Selby was dead, that either wound would have killed him (admitted by the doctors), and rendered a verdict that he died from pistolshot wounds inflicted by a pistol in the hands of Laura Hawkins.
The morning papers blazed with big type, and overflowed with details of the murder. The accounts in the evening papers were only the premonitory drops to this mighty shower. The scene was dramatically worked up in column after column. There were sketches, biographical and historical. There were long “specials” from Washington, giving a full history of Laura’s career there, with the names of men with whom she was said to be intimate, a description of Senator Dilworthy’s residence and of his family, and of Laura’s room in his house, and a sketch of the Senator’s appearance and what he said. There was a great deal about her beauty, her accomplishments and her brilliant position in society, and her doubtful position in society. There was also an interview with Col. Sellers and another with Washington Hawkins, the brother of the murderess. One journal had a long dispatch from Hawkeye, reporting the excitement in that quiet village and the reception of the awful intelligence.
All the parties had been “interviewed.” There were reports of conversations with the clerk at the hotel; with the call-boy; with the waiter at table with all the witnesses, with the policeman, with the landlord (who wanted it understood that nothing of that sort had ever happened in his house before, although it had always been frequented by the best Southern society,) and with Mrs. Col. Selby. There were diagrams illustrating the scene of the shooting, and views of the hotel and street, and portraits of the parties.
There were three minute and different statements from the doctors about the wounds, so technically worded that nobody could understand them. Harry and Laura had also been “interviewed” and there was a statement from Philip himself, which a reporter had knocked him up out of bed at midnight to give, though how he found him, Philip never could conjecture.
What some of the journals lacked in suitable length for the occasion, they made up in encyclopaedic information about other similar murders and shootings.
The statement from Laura was not full, in fact it was fragmentary, and consisted of nine parts of, the reporter’s valuable observations to one of Laura’s, and it was, as the reporter significantly remarked, “incoherent”, but it appeared that Laura claimed to be Selby’s wife, or to have been his wife, that he had deserted her and betrayed her, and that she was going to follow him to Europe. When the reporter asked:
“What made you shoot him, Miss Hawkins?”
Laura’s only reply was, very simply,
“Did I shoot him? Do they say I shot him?”. And she would say no more.
The news of the murder was made the excitement of the day. Talk of it filled the town. The facts reported were scrutinized, the standing of the parties was discussed, the dozen different theories of the motive, broached in the newspapers, were disputed over.
During the night subtle electricity had carried the tale over all the wires of the continent and under the sea; and in all villages and towns of the Union, from the Atlantic to the territories, and away up and down the Pacific slope, and as far as London and Paris and Berlin, that morning the name of Laura Hawkins was spoken by millions and millions of people, while the owner of it — the sweet child of years ago, the beautiful queen of Washington drawing rooms — sat shivering on her cot-bed in the darkness of a damp cell in the Tombs.
CHAPTER XLVII.
Philip’s first effort was to get Harry out of the Tombs. He gained permission to see him, in the presence of an officer, during the day, and he found that hero very much cast down.
“I never intended to come to such a place as this, old fellow,” he said to Philip; “it’s no place for a gentleman, they’ve no idea how to treat a gentleman. Look at that provender,” pointing to his uneaten prison ration. “They tell me I am detained as a witness, and I passed the night among a lot of cutthroats and dirty rascals — a pretty witness I’d be in a month spent in such company.”
“But what under heavens,” asked Philip, “induced you to come to New York with Laura! What was it for?”
“What for? Why, she wanted me to come. I didn’t know anything about that cursed Selby. She said it was lobby business for the University. I’d no idea what she was dragging me into that confounded hotel for. I suppose she knew that the Southerners all go there, and thought she’d find her man. Oh! Lord, I wish I’d taken your advice. You might as well murder somebody and have the credit of it, as get into the newspapers the way I have. She’s pure devil, that girl. You ought to have seen how sweet she was on me; what an ass I am.”
“Well, I’m not going to dispute a poor prisoner. But the first thing is to get you out of this. I’ve brought the note Laura wrote you, for one thing, and I’ve seen your uncle, and explained the truth of the case to him. He will be here soon.”
Harry’s uncle came, with other friends, and in the course of the day made such a showing to the authorities that Harry was released, on giving bonds to appear as a witness when wanted. His spirits rose with their usual elasticity as soon as he was out of Centre Street, and he insisted on giving Philip and his friends a royal supper at Delmonico’s, an excess which was perhaps excusable in the rebound of his feelings, and which was committed with his usual reckless generosity. Harry ordered the supper, and it is perhaps needless to say that Philip paid the bill.
Neither of the young men felt like attempting to see Laura that day, and she saw no company except the newspaper reporters, until the arrival of Col. Sellers and Washington Hawkins, who had hastened to New York with all speed.
They found Laura in a cell in the upper tier of the women’s department. The cell was somewhat larger than those in the men’s department, and might be eight feet by ten square, perhaps