Neither Belial, Kitten, nor Davenport were among the bookaneers who had employed my services. It was rather peevish of me to be discouraged by this. I confess that. I had been admitted into the world of the bookaneers by chance, and now all I wished, more than any earthly object, was to observe the absolute best. What is that Arab proverb old Mr. Stemmes would sometimes repeat? Beware the camel’s nose—for its whole body will soon follow. You have the gist. I had never been greedy, but in this instance I could not restrain myself. Though Belial might as well have been the invisible man, and Kitten was too intimidating to approach, I decided that the next time I happened to see Pen Davenport I would come right out and tell him my desire.
I must have been invigorated by the breeze one brisk spring evening, because I thought I’d try some places where he might be, and found my way to the district of Covent Garden. When I entered the dark Italianate rooms of the Garrick Club, the clocks inside were chiming midnight while the noise and bustle of men was fresh and unflagging. Here was a place that made the thought of ever sleeping seem foolish. I hoped that listening to the after-theater conversations I might overhear some gossip related to the bookaneers, and more specifically a hint of a recent sighting of Davenport around London, though for all I knew he was on a remote mission and far from English soil.
I was flattered when the unassuming usher bowed and told me to follow him. “We have a place waiting for you.”
How highly my new associations with the bookaneers had elevated my social status. Here in New York, culture is only occasionally more powerful than money, but in London, wealth will never be even a close second.
The Garrick was crammed with expensive collections of books and a range of paintings, modern and old, some of which the museums would consider too strange or obscene to display. Just as the wall space was split between art and literature, so was the roll of members and guests who frequented the place, these authors and artists also joined by many of the great actors of the theater. There were so many performers in wigs and false mustaches and heavy powders, you assumed everyone was in disguise even if they were not, and you felt that same feeling as in the best theaters of the day. Magical beings and not ordinary humans must reign here. There was one band of happy mummies and ghouls, raising glasses for a toast to a successful show. As I was conducted through a long passage off the main dining room, I prepared to ask the usher if there had been any interesting visitors that evening, when we stopped at the entrance of the smoking room.
The usher stepped to the side and I saw him. Pen Davenport was at a table in the center, the air around him a swirl of bitter tobacco scents—from musk to mustard. I glanced back over my shoulder. The usher had vanished into the dining room.
“I understand you have been looking for me.”
My jaw actually dropped.
Drowsy, thoughtful eyes the color of emeralds glanced up from beneath long lashes. His voice was quiet enough that I had to lean an ear toward him. Above him was a painting of David Garrick, the legendary actor whose name inspired the club’s, dressed as Macbeth and contemplating a dagger; to the left of the speaker, an elegant statuette of Thackeray.
I clapped my mouth closed. “Pardon?”
“Then you haven’t been searching for me?”
I was so amazed I could hardly reply. Before the Garrick I had paused at a few taverns and clubs of literary bent where, my previous notes reminded me, I had seen Davenport in the past, but I had not given any indication of my purpose.
I found my tongue. “I looked for you this evening, yes, but have not uttered your name to another living soul.”
“You did not have to. In the past four hours you visited the Beefsteak, the Green Room, the Canary House, the Hogarth, and now the Garrick, and did little else but whistle to yourself and hide behind your spectacles. I know who you are. You have performed trifling assignments for some middling bookaneers, and outside of that fact I would wager your life is rather plain. White-rim spectacles are only worn by a man who keeps clean. So if you are doing something unusual, it is surely connected to our profession, not yours. If two of the five places had been different, if you went to the Crown or Stone Tavern on your tour of London club life, even if only one of the five had been a favorite haunt of some other bookaneer, of Molasses’s or that redheaded lout Whiskey Bill’s, for instance, then it would have been less obvious you searched for me.”
“But how did you know where I’ve been? Were you . . .” I swallowed my next word.
“I have not had you followed,” he said, guessing my question. “I’m afraid, bookseller, you will never be important enough to follow.” It is difficult to accurately describe how Davenport could speak with sincerity but without much inflection; only he could manage pronouncing “you will never be important” not as an insult, but as an impersonal observation.
“No, of course I couldn’t. I didn’t mean—”
“I maintain multiple sets of eyes across the city wherever there are literary characters. The clubs, the drinking dens, the coffeehouses, the circulating libraries, the printers’ shops and their warehouses. I am informed of visitors’ routines, and breaks in those routines. Unlike some of my more grandiose challengers who fancy they are too distinguished to be viewed by fellow men, I make myself just visible enough to know when someone wishes to find me. Now, if you please.” He flicked his hand for me to take a seat.
Shaking off my nerves, I lowered myself into the chair opposite, almost slipping down the big leather cushion onto the floor. There was a sample of the club’s famous gin punch waiting for me on the table. I could not stop myself from staring at the man.
“When they dreamed of turning iron and metal into gold, they called it alchemy. The much more far-fetched dream of turning bound sheafs of plain paper into fortunes, they call publishing,” he mused with an arch expression on his face. Though I was nearly a decade his senior, at twenty-six years old he commanded a conversation in a way I never had. “Usually when a man seeks my company,” the bookaneer continued, “I expect him to do some of the talking.”
“Of course, Mr. Davenport.” He held out a cigar to me. “No, thank you; tobacco rather irritates my—”
“Hold it, at least. I will not be seen in the smoking room of the Garrick with a nonsmoker.”
I complied. “That’s sensible.”
“It is a doomed calling, you know.”