“Have at it yourself when you decide to leave this palace.”
“You see I am no longer in any condition to do anything of the sort. I have spent my fortune and my health hunting for Poe’s lost novel, alas, which is never to see the light of day. If you can retrieve Stevenson’s book, my dear Pen, you will yield a terrific fortune. You can bring the publishers and their damned monopolies to their knees begging you for it.”
“Even if any of what you say is true, you must know I would not give you the satisfaction of following a lead brought by you, Whiskey Bill.”
Bill looked him up and down. “I used to know you as having a grander sense of destiny, of our profession. A man who sought to transcend mere errands parceled out by the gluttonous publishers. A man not quite so . . . calculating in everything.”
“Fergins.”
I began to collect our coats and hats. Then I noticed Davenport had tilted his head back and was looking at the ceiling. Knowing what he was thinking, I spoke softly to him: “Samoa. Warlike tribes, dangerous climate. Too risky, treasure or not, my dear Davenport.”
Whiskey Bill scowled at me, then stretched his hand out to the other bookaneer, though he could not reach him. “This will be the final gift to posterity, to the world at large, from our work. I am dying,” Bill said in a quieter voice filled with pain. “You are the only one who can do this. My ambitions must vanish—but I need not vanish from history. When the yarn is told, I will be spoken of as the man to have passed the mission along to you, and that will be something. I will have played a part. That will be—it will have to be enough. Your permanence in the legends of the bookaneers—your life as it exists beyond these earthly skins—depends upon this chance, Pen Davenport. I know you long for such a laurel. I know that like me, you do not yet feel our calling completed.”
“You know nothing about me.” There was an unusual tremor in his voice.
“To the devil with laurels, then. With the copyright treaty about to go into effect on the first of July, Pen, how many missions are still left for you? The end comes. Why, it would be the most lucrative pursuit since the discovery of Shelley’s lost novelette. Do you know how much money you would walk away with if you managed to do this?”
I had already started calculating this in my notebook—factoring in Stevenson’s last three contracts, the scarcity of major successes over the last twelve to eighteen months, and the unique value to the public of an author’s last work. “Twenty thousand pounds, at least,” I said. When I met Davenport’s glare, I felt my cheeks flush with color and I looked down at my hands.
Bill, heartened by my mistake, straightened himself on his pillows. “Talk of a true ‘treasure island.’” His bearing now grew funereal. “In making myself your enemy, Pen, I believe I have served almost in a role similar to a friend—goading and encouraging you to do more.”
“There are no friends in our line of work,” Davenport said.
“No,” Bill said, his eyes darting over my face before continuing. “Then perhaps you would say I have served as something of a mentor to you.”
“I’ve had only one.”
“You have been afraid of the bigger missions since she’s been gone. You loved her. We all loved her, you know, in our own ways.”
Davenport rose to his feet and drew back as though to slap the man’s face. I was about to try to catch him when he extended his hand down toward the bed. They shook.
“I have nothing more to say,” said Davenport. “I trust I will meet you in the field again one day, Whiskey Bill. Godspeed.”
“That day, I will finally best you.”
? ? ?
I MUST HAVE APOLOGIZED a dozen times for having persuaded Davenport to take that trip to the asylum—I could hardly remember if it really had been a matter of my convincing him, but that was how he saw it and so it was fact. A few days passed. He had some business back at the Garrick Club and I received a message to go there. I found him in the same smoking room where we first met. He was sitting next to a well-known German printer, who excused himself to the card room.
“Your notebook, Fergins,” he said.
He snatched it out of my hands. Turning the pages furiously, he found the notes I took at Caterham. He held it out to a spot where there was a little more light than smoke.
“I do apologize for talking you into that awful place. You were right, I shouldn’t have bothered you. I should have torn up Bill’s letter when I received it—and burned it in the fire, too.”
“Try not to speak for a minute.” He hummed to himself. “Did you think there was any truth to what Whiskey Bill tried to sell us?”
“That nonsense about Samoa, you mean?” The fact was, I would have preferred Davenport drop the whole matter. I did not like the glimmer I had noticed in his eye at the talk of Samoa. But I had to be honest. “Something in his voice—well, I could not help but think that at least some of it rang true.”
Davenport showed my comment the respect of a slow nod. “It was a ruse, a trap to send me on a wild goose chase far from here. The very fact that you believe it shows how well planned it was. The question remains this: Why would he want to do that? I want you to make inquiries into Stevenson so we can prove Bill’s deceit. Meanwhile, I need fresh reports on Ruskin, Swinburne, Hardy, Tennyson, any author of esteem living or passing through London this season. Do you understand?”
“Then you do not believe what he said? Any of it?”
“Look around us.” Pen gestured around the room at the plush leather furniture and the large portraits hanging in rows around the walls. “Here is the environment of a man of literary eminence such as Robert Louis Stevenson. Somewhere that feels just dangerous enough to excite the imagination, but is actually as safe as could be. That is what a writer craves, and that’s why when it’s time for writers to die, they die in their beds.”