I straightened my apron and reached for my snow white waiter’s coat, which I had folded neatly over the back of my chair. I wanted to beg Mr. Fergins for a promise to continue next time, but instead I said apologetically, “I kept you too long.”
“I am due at the courthouse, aren’t I? But I am always pushing a cart on this locomotive and scrambling down before it lumbers away, and you are made to be on your feet at all times. If nothing else, we have been reminded of the sublime comforts of sitting,” the bookseller said before he left me a man famished.
I counted the days until Mr. Fergins returned to the train, but when I saw him again it was brief. I had to find another time and perhaps another place to satisfy my curiosity—to hear what happened when Pen Davenport encountered his rival Belial in the Samoan prison, how Belial managed to escape that prison (for I was certain he did), and if either bookaneer managed to take the prize of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel, and what stratagems they employed. I kept a sharp eye out whenever I happened to be in the sections of New York City where I had come across Mr. Fergins in the past. Still no luck. One occasion, I even found myself walking into the receiving room of his boardinghouse, but my entrance drew such an unwelcoming stare from the landlady that instead of asking for Mr. Fergins or leaving a card, I stood dumbfounded and turned on my heel as though I had the wrong address.
The bookseller’s mention of his duties at the trial seemed to present the best opportunity to encounter him away from the railroad. I rode the omnibus to the courthouse. The court we had entered together three weeks earlier was once again thronged with people. After remaining among the eager spectators for almost an hour I couldn’t see how any progress could have been made since the trial began. The judge would call the arguing lawyers to approach him in order to resolve some technicality of law, then direct them back to their tables, then summon them again for further discussions minutes later. I was surprised so many people were still in attendance for such endless repetition. Didn’t they have anything more important to do? It was a hollow thought on my part, since I, too, thought there was nothing better to do with the little free time I had.
The accused, for his part, was sitting in the witness stand with his head bent forward. He seemed bored. His eyes followed the lawyers as they volleyed arguments. His head didn’t move an inch; he just rolled his eyes in one direction and then the other, with the same enormous contempt for all involved, including his own representatives. His jaw was tight and clenched—and bruised.
The attorneys would emphasize words here and there apparently at random, spitting them out.
“Isn’t it true, sir,” said the prosecuting attorney, “that you were once among the class of persons known as ‘bookaneers,’ and in this capacity known by the name of Belial? If you look at this document, marked Exhibit A-6, estimating the amount of money authors were deprived of by this lot . . .”
“Your Honor,” replied the defense, “must we sit here and listen to these insinuations against my unfortunate client?”
“Surely, Your Honor, the counsel to the accused does not object to a question intended to establish a very simple fact.”
“Against a question that imperils the reputation of my client, I demand the protection of the court to silence the sharp and dangerous tongue of”—here the attorney for the defense pointed at the opposing lawyer—“this serpent.”
All without a word from the prisoner, who did not seem to expect that he would ever be required to talk. Again it happened: the men scurried up to the judge’s table to argue in quieter tones, then lurched back. When the court took its noon recess, the bookaneer was still in the witness seat, and the bailiff had to push spectators away. Women handed him scented letters and fruit; one man leaned into his face and stared, then went away without uttering a word. My eyes followed this odd bird walking to the back of the room, where he had an easel with a portrait in progress of the bookaneer, who, for some reason, was pictured in the unfinished canvas standing between a peacock and a human skull.
It was the man on trial, not the trial itself, not the lawyers, not the judge, that kept the audience enthralled. Just to look upon him in the flesh satisfied that crowd.
“He is a rare man,” said my neighbor to the right. He was a small-boned and neatly dressed fellow who had big, watery eyes; thin, white hair; and a crisp mustache that hugged the tips of his lips and showed traces of auburn. “Belial has hardly aged a day since I first met him in . . . ’56, I believe it was.”
“You know the bookaneer personally?” I asked.
“Yes, of course I do. I acquired many a book from that titan, many that turned great profits. I had been one of the old publishers of this city for nearly forty years, before I relinquished my offices to men with their first beards. Oh, New York City is a different place than it was. You cannot buy even an old house in a decent neighborhood today for less than ten thousand dollars. Believe it, young man.”
“I do,” I assured him.
He explained that so many publishers and authors had heard tales of Belial without ever having seen him, or the other notorious bookaneers, that literary men and women had come as far as Boston and Philadelphia, and one even traveled from California to gawk at him. The book world was captivated.
“You must be rather distraught by his predicament.”
He screwed up his face, his mustache now swallowing up his mouth. “What? How do you mean?”
“Only that a friend of yours—”
“No friend of mine!” he exclaimed. “If Belial met ten people, nine will be hypnotized by him into believing he is a righteous man. The tenth will be all alone on an island of truth. That man—I mean me—will know Belial is rotten to the core, as all bookaneers must be to do what they do. Yes, I dealt with him and with his brethren because we had no choice, but it was with deep loathing, believe it. I come here to watch him squirm.”