“‘You are trying to start a war,’ I replied, unconsciously echoing the words of the embittered prisoner, Banner.
“‘Not so. If the German Firm continues its way of overthrowing inconvenient monarchs and oppressing the other consuls, they will be the ones to let loose the dogs of war. I am trying to stop the island from being destroyed, Mr. Fergins. We haven’t much time left before we need Belial to play his part in fulfilling your plan. He must think he has stolen this free and clear, and once he makes it past the other thieves—what did you call that lowest class of scum? The barnacles of the bookaneers—and is arrested in New York, you find a way to copy the Samoa pages from this pile to bring to the publishing house of Scribner’s,’ he urged. ‘As soon as I am well enough, I will ride to the British consulate and telegraph a lawyer I know in Washington so the proper copyright will be registered the moment the law changes on the first of July, before you reach American soil. If the book is to help this island, this scheme must come to pass soon. If they will not publish it, I will pay for it to be printed myself. The best part is, any of your bookaneers still in business whom you encounter before the change in law will not even know what they look for. Even Belial will not know what he has in his own hands. This is what I relish about Samoa: you can be in a new conspiracy every day. Oh, and make sure to burn Newton French, won’t you? I don’t want to risk making money from it.’
“‘You were working on this all along, knowing this was what mattered, and meanwhile Belial and Davenport chased each other around the island going after a novel that had no consequence to you. This was hiding right in the center of the maelstrom.’
“‘Unchecked, the island will come to war again; before that to many bankruptcies and profiteering, and after that, as usual, to famine. Here, under the microscope, we can see all history at work. I find it is no fun to meddle in politics, but there comes a day where a man says: this can go on no longer.’”
Though Mr. Fergins was quoting Stevenson’s words, the bookseller said the phrase with such conviction and clarity, he might have announced his own maxim for life.
I interrupted: “Then the letter you recited to Davenport in which Whiskey Bill revealed everything to Stevenson . . .”
“A fiction, Mr. Clover. I invented it as I was ‘reciting’ it to Davenport!” Mr. Fergins said with a gleeful smile. “When I saw Davenport was convinced by it, I knew my entire plan could succeed.”
There were, he pointed out, certain real and unforeseeable obstacles: His release from prison was quickly arranged by Stevenson, but they had not anticipated the vengeful guards would drop him into the bush. Then there was Vao, discovering him in the mountains—though her help was crucial to return him to Apia, the bookseller now had to find a way to distract her from completing her sworn vendetta against Belial, whom she hated more than ever because of Tulagi’s death, since Mr. Fergins and Stevenson needed Belial to get safely off the island with the manuscript. It was like walking across a tightrope. Had Mr. Fergins tried to divert her by telling her Davenport had contributed to Tulagi’s woes, it might have taken her off Belial’s trail, but she might not have been inclined to help a friend of Davenport’s escape the bush. Meanwhile, Stevenson had promised to tell no one else at Vailima of their secret plan, and after the rescue from the cannibals the novelist abetted him by escorting away Vao and charging John Chinaman and Lloyd with bringing Mr. Fergins to the beach.
Mr. Fergins went on to explain to me how events transpired while he was operating his temporary book cart in New York. Judge Salisbury had Mr. Fergins assigned to authenticate the manuscript as having been written by Robert Louis Stevenson. As Mr. Fergins spent hours at a time examining the manuscript in a room at the courthouse, the bookseller carefully identified and copied the pages on Samoan history that were interspersed on the opposite side of the novel’s pages. He later brought the transcribed copy to Scribner’s as planned.
“That little book was published and brought new attention to Samoa, just as Stevenson intended,” Mr. Fergins said. “The American presence was bolstered. Consuls were removed and replaced. Extraordinary, what a little volume no thicker than a penny’s worth of gingerbread could do!”
“Yet the wars did not end.”
“No, new men brought fresh arrogance and old hostilities remained. I’m afraid war continues in Samoa, as awful as before,” Mr. Fergins said. “Perhaps it is a good thing Stevenson did not live to see it. He had his hopes that the book might change things once and for all but, in truth, every writer believes that about everything he writes.”
“And the novel that you all once believed would be his masterpiece? The Shovels of Newman French?”
“Newton French. Burned. Just as Stevenson wished,” he said with satisfaction. “Once I had the transcriptions I needed.”
“The fire in the evidence room. You . . . you weren’t caught in it. You didn’t rush in to put it out, nor were you trapped there by some shadowy confederates of Belial. You started the fire yourself!” I cried.
“Well, naturally, but I did try to put it out, too. It got out of hand, I admit, and spread faster than I imagined. The sensation of burning those pages, the only copy of the work of a master, stopped me cold and was a feeling like none other I had experienced before. It quite literally almost killed me. I certainly did not think I would inhale so much smoke so quickly.” He paused, and seemed embarrassed. “I am eternally grateful to you for nursing me to health, Mr. Clover, whatever the cause.”