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I NEXT ENCOUNTERED BELIAL less than two hours later. In the entrance to the building occupied by the publishing house known as Charles Scribner’s Sons is their bookstore, to use one of your most unfortunate Americanisms, with galleries of volumes arranged by theme and glass cases of the most expensive editions. By the time I arrived, I had only to wait for fifteen minutes before Belial also appeared. I rushed to his side. “Good afternoon,” I called out. I was still short on breath. I had hurried through the crowded streets, down to an underground train, up the steps outside the four-story building, and inside the spacious elevator, which floated like a slow rocket to the third floor, where the publishing offices were located.
“What the deuce are you doing here?” he demanded. “How did you know where . . .” he stopped himself because the answer was obvious. From the years at Davenport’s side I knew which of the New York publishers would pay the most for a Stevenson novel, according to its history and finances; Scribner’s not only was a well-known book publisher that had published Stevenson before, but it also had its own monthly magazine that would benefit from serializing a new book. Belial would start here and, were the terms offered not lucrative enough, would move on to the next publishing firm.
Belial had also come straight there, but in a less hurried manner, befitting his philosophy of dignity. His leisurely pace served to make a point.
“I wanted to see it. To be a witness,” I began. “You yourself said our journey was not over.”
His eyes burned into me, causing me to stumble backward, nearly falling over some furniture and into a bronze sculpture of an Amazonian woman locked in battle with a leaping tiger. “I do not understand you. I give you the chance to be the first reader of this historic addition to literature, and you reject me. You, a lowly peddler!”
“Peddler?”
“Our journey together ended when I left you in the streets. Do you have brains enough left in your head to understand? I left you behind, left you with the empty-handed barnacles. Now you pop up again. You little pig. You dare make yourself a pest to me. You were nothing but an amusement while I was trapped on that ship. Did you invade Whiskey Bill’s life like this, too, and Davenport’s?”
“No . . .” I tried to protest.
He held the thick manuscript in front of me, then pushed it against my spectacles until the metal pinched the skin around my eyes. I asked him to stop, with no effect. The spear of the sculpture’s female warrior pinched my back.
“Do you really think this is how you’ll finish your friend Davenport’s story? By taking this from me? What will you do in order to accomplish it, shoot me for it, stab me?”
“Of course not! You said—”
“Go on, try to take it! Try! No, coward, you cannot. If you ever speak to me again, if you even look at me, I’ll tear you in half, am I understood?”
I was completely startled by the degree of his anger, even though I had seen it before directed to others. By this point, some publishing clerks, a male and two young females, had come from their desks to stare at the spectacle. “Belial, please,” I said with quiet embarrassment. “I really just supposed you would expect me to guess where you were going. . . . After all, you spoke of the chess pieces, of our roles in the match, the pawn and king, and I thought—”
“You were the pawn!” He pointed at my head with his cane and I thought of poor Tulagi, bent over with the life bleeding out of him.
I suppose I must have appeared greatly cowed by the memory of the deceased dwarf’s pain, for Belial suddenly seemed satisfied with himself. His well-slimed tongue smacked his lips. Perhaps you notice that when I am happy, I chatter; when anxious or scared, still I chatter. It would be obvious to you, as a reasonable and assiduous young man, that I should have said no more in the face of this volatility. But I could not help it: “There was one last thing, though, something I thought about, Belial, after we parted, that might be of some help and importance to you—”
In one grand movement his broad back was turned on me and he marched away through the main door of the office, closing it in my face. I tried to make my suit look a little more decent, though it was wrinkled and had patches of sweat at odd angles, like streams coming to a common crossing. There was loud noise from outside, like a series of gunshots, but my attention was too consumed for the moment by what had just happened. I dropped myself onto a bench against the wall.
Only a few minutes later the same door opened again, revealing Belial. This time there was another man directly behind him. I could not yet see who he was because of the shadows thrown by the doorway.
“I know you asked that I not speak to you for a while, but, as I was saying, I realized there is one other thing I need to tell you,” I said to the bookaneer, as though he had returned in order to complete our conversation, or to apologize. “The dates. I believe while we were at sea we might have miscalculated.”
Now he stepped forward, closer to where I stood, or rather was pushed forward. The man behind him was a New York City policeman and his brown-gloved hand was encircling Belial’s arm. Then yet another man, whom I can only describe as grimly mirthful, walked out behind the other two, holding the big manuscript under his arm.
“How dare you manhandle me! Do you know who I am?” Belial shouted, rearing back.
The policeman cracked his baton against Belial’s face. “Don’t care who you are, but you’ll learn to talk with respect to one of our city’s attorneys.”