“Perhaps some are like me, and merely in financial embarrassment and looking for help. Who knows but perhaps I shall marry one of them. Never marrying has been a regret. Do you know in London one person in every nine hundred is thought to be insane?”
“Knowing that figure should disqualify you from being one of them. You are always enthusiastic at the wrong time, Bill.”
“Pen,” Bill continued, moving his body up and down. “Press down on the mattress. This bed is not half-uncomfortable. Did they tell you this ward has its own aviary? There is only one condition. Every day and a half or so I must do something rather outré so that the doctors do not declare me cured before I am ready. I see the old bookseller found you,” Bill said, turning toward me with a tight nod. “He was meant to serve a role as a go-between only.”
“I could wait outside,” I offered.
“I always said a bookseller is one-quarter philosopher, one-quarter philanthropist, and . . .” He made a silent calculation. “. . . two-quarters pure rogue. You are a disloyal sort,” he said to me—still in a sadly weak warble compared with the voice as I remembered it, despite his rising emotion. “Disloyal as a Jacobite!”
“You should thank Fergins for convincing me to see you,” Davenport said. “Nor is he treacherous or disloyal for ceasing your arrangement; he merely valued his skills enough to work for the best of our line. I’ve made a wager with Fergins. If you really are dying, I shall owe him a pair of gloves.”
“Yes,” I chimed in. Davenport had a tendency to invent small moments that had not happened even when they did not serve a purpose. I had learned to accept them as real. “Calf leather, I hope, if I win, Davenport. But I pray you are not too unwell, Bill,” I added.
“Now I would thank you to explain what we are doing here,” Davenport said, stepping over my sympathy. “We wasted time enough on the train here. What is this nonsense about my life depending on speaking with you? The only reason I allowed Fergins to drag me out here is that I am curious to see what trick you are planning.”
“No trick! We have been flying at each other’s throats for so many years, Pen, but Lord knows I’ve always been honest about hating you. You’ll admit that. You are the fellow. You are the fellow.”
“You have said.”
“Be patient with an old man.”
“An old devil.”
Bill’s eyes widened and brightened. “Maybe so, Pen! I need to tell you some things, so take a seat and listen. Please. If you want the bookseller, let the old goat stay. He was always harmless as a butterfly.”
Davenport rolled up his sleeves as if he were about to operate, and carried a stool close to the head of the bed. I took another stool by the foot of the bed.
“Thank you. Pen, I have seen firsthand what a scoundrel you become when someone questions your way of thinking, but you always were a gentleman at heart. There is a new mission, one of phenomenal importance and, potentially, profit.”
“Is this about your Poe obsession? It is the way of the commonplace bookaneer to go in for a Holy Grail.”
“No!” Bill cried, coughing with exasperation as he tried to expel his words. “It’s not that. Something . . . bigger—Stevenson.”
Stevenson. As in Robert Louis. One of the most popular living writers in the world. The author known for Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Treasure Island, and Kidnapped, whose work was demanded by readers around the world. We looked at each other. I knew Davenport’s mind was moving at great speed, though he did not look interested.
“One of the more capricious but gifted writers ever to set pen to paper. He is sailing the Pacific by private means to improve his health,” Davenport said. “They say he will return to Scotland when he feels restored, but nobody knows how long it will be.”
“He is never to return,” Bill said with somber finality.
“Are you implying Stevenson died while at sea?” Davenport asked.
“What do you know about the island of Upolu?” Bill asked.
“I concentrate on the literary world. I do not know much about distant lands of illiterates. Fergins likes to know a little about everything.”
“Upolu is one of the three primary Samoan islands,” I said, “formed by a volcano and still in its shadow. Samoa is also known as the Navigator Islands, because of the abilities of its natives to command the sea without any of our modern equipment. Upolu is its capital of government and commerce.”
“I ask again. Is Stevenson dead?”
“No—not dead yet, Pen.”
“Then has he been taken by savages?”
“Worse! He remains by his own will. From what I have learned, he alighted at the island of Upolu and decided never to leave. Stevenson, or the shade of Stevenson, lives in seclusion there, an exile from all civilized people and things. Do you realize what it all means? How close we are?”
“Close to what?” Davenport asked, and he made the slightest gesture to me, at which I removed a pencil and my notebook.
“Glory, dear Pen! These writers take the essence of every person around them, turn them into books and stories without permission or even a simple thank-you, and want all the credit and glory for themselves. We are the only ones who can stand in the way, who can take that glory right from their pockets. God as my witness, I’ve taken some for myself these long years. The intelligence I have been able to collect informs me Stevenson is finishing the most important book of his life. But he is a bag of bones now, unlikely to survive much longer, and if his illnesses do not claim him first, the island will. The place is a hell on earth, with roasting temperatures and consumed with deadly quarrels among the pagan tribes. Between the spears of the natives and the intervention of heavily armed foreign governments, plus the mischief of tropical disease, no white man is safe. The novel, this masterpiece, will perish out there—but if one were able to bring it back to civilization . . . I know when you want something you go at things like one o’clock, no matter how lackadaisical you seem to others. You are the one to do it, Pen!”