red herring: the fallacy of raising an irrelevent issue to draw attention away from the real issue
"'If you'd been in town at first, Levi Bell-'
The King broke in and reached out his hand, and says:
'Why is this my poor dead brother's old friend that he's wrote so much about?'"
-Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain
In this passage the "king" and "duke" are being interrogated to determine if they are who they pretend to be. The king is here changing the subject by insinuating that he has heard of the lawyer. This action both reinforces his alias as the brother of the deceased, and therefore the heir of a fortune, and moves the subject further from questioning. The king is trying to dodge questions to escape with his life and as much wealth as possible. Twain uses this technique here to show the craftiness of the con men; they are not complete amateurs, but experienced and dangerous. He is using this as characterization by showing the depths of deception the con men will go to.
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