“If Belial did try to harm you at the courthouse, Mr. Fergins, he might try again. I know it’s awfully hard for you to ask for help, and I can be bashful about that, too. But I believe I can help you. I can even go to the police on your behalf. My mother’s cousin is acquainted with important men in the department. But I must know more.”
He seemed to be weighing in his mind what might come of not telling the rest of the story, and what could come if he did. “If you really wish it . . .” he said finally.
“I would not want to tire you out, of course,” I added, though my eyes surely betrayed me.
“As one of the only female practitioners of bookaneering, certainly its most successful example, Kitten inspired extreme reactions from the other members of the trade. Many were hostile toward her presence, threatened by a woman’s position among them. Others were intimidated, still others paternalistic. Almost every practitioner, to a man, was envious of Davenport for having earned her affections. To protect his relationship with her, he had to wall himself in. It created an isolated situation for him, especially once she was gone.
“But back to Samoa. Did I describe to you the way Robert Louis Stevenson’s brown eyes, usually so genial, were always . . . what’s the word I want . . . busy? Tulagi—that was Vao’s dwarf. Yes. His warning to me, I believe that’s near where we left off when we were on the train together. The rainy season coming. Davenport and I are about to make a quest to the mangrove swamp to visit jail. To find Belial and ensure he would not interfere with . . .” He paused, then spoke very slowly to me. “I will tell you what happened, Mr. Clover, but only so you understand why you must not involve yourself any deeper with Belial or the aftermath of the Samoa affair, no matter what happens to me. Do you promise that the rest of the story will appease your cravings?”
I raised my right hand and swore the same by God.
VIII
FERGINS
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
You might as well join me.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
With the Stevenson household distracted by the anticipation of having their tobacco replenished, I set off with Davenport the following morning to investigate the dwarf’s story about the white man arrested at Vailima prior to our arrival. I sent Cipaou to the German consul with a letter to arrange for our tour of the native prison, officially an institution of Samoans but unofficially—like everything that was part of the ruling regime—under the thumb of the Germans. In the meantime, Davenport had asked Charlie and some other servants for information and learned that the man in question, “Banner,” had visited Vailima at least twice asking for work, but was told Stevenson only hired natives as labor. Some of the servants later caught him trying to break into the house. He remained locked up until the native authorities could sit in judgment.
“Is that how Belial would go about this?” I asked on our ride to the prison. Cipaou was ahead of us, showing us the way.
“Presenting oneself as a poor white beachcomber and laborer would be rather clever,” Davenport said. “If hired, you would be on the grounds by rights, but ignored by the people who live there. Ingenious, really.”
“It did not work, though.”
“That is the problem with ingenuity.”
Tale-Pui-Pui was the native name for the island’s prison. There was a central passage running through the building with a number of cells on each side. In the courtyard, the guards, armed with rifles, sat talking with each other.
There were no bars on the cells—they were small rooms with doors that seemed to be left open. We were led through the humid, murky central passage. The guard who walked ahead of us told us about some of the prisoners, rebellious natives who had defied King Tamasese and the Germans’ governing initiatives. There were about twenty or thirty prisoners altogether, I would estimate, and they seemed on the whole happy to see visitors, if only to break up the monotony of their days. Some stopped to speak with us. Justice operated quite slowly in Samoa. Some had been there for months, others for years, without so much as a trial. We reached a room at the end of the passage where we were told we could find the man we sought. At first, we could only see the prisoner’s feet, callused and yellow, as he was lying flat on some coarse mats, very different from the fine material and brilliant colors of those in our own cottage or at Vailima. His arms blocked his face from the particles of dirt and grime blown into the prison through the window.
“Belial,” Davenport called out in a voice that made me jump.
The man slowly lifted his head, which was rather bullet shaped with an open mouth full of drool. “Who are you?”
“No,” Davenport whispered to me, disappointment and a little embarrassment in his voice. “It’s not him.”
“I said, who the plague are you?” The man whined rather than spoke. After his sentences he would make a loud noise through his nose and then pinch the bridge of it, as one who has taken too much snuff.
“Excuse the interruption, sir. Our mistake,” I said.
“Tusitala sent you, didn’t he?” The prisoner had light brown hair and a flabby face made more misshapen by a patchy beard. “Damn him down to hell.”
Davenport paused and turned back to the man without any sign of understanding the question. “Who?”
“Stevenson. That Scotch scribbler. I wrote him asking for work and he wrote back promising it. Then he reneged, accused me of smelling like liquor. I lost the letter, but if I hadn’t, it would prove his promise. He looked in my eyes and said I could not be trusted. I was just trying to get what was owed me, see!”
“I believe it,” Davenport said. “Where do you come from?”
“New South Wales before this.”
“Tusitala did not send us, but I can carry your message back to him,” Davenport said. I knew he was trying to end the exchange without the man causing a scene that would call attention to us.
He sniffed harder. “He’s no mere writer like he claims.”