“Thank you, Porter,” Stevenson replied. “I’ll bring more of the tobacco inside.”
Davenport began to walk and Belial followed with a light step. I remained behind them by a few paces.
“Do you wish to yield the mission to me now or later?” Belial asked when we were out of Stevenson’s hearing. “I’m amenable to either.”
Davenport looked over at the native servant walking at Belial’s elbow.
“You can talk openly in front of him. He knows only four words of English,” Belial said. “It’s a shame, really; the boy has a devilish sense of humor in his own tongue and would appreciate the strangeness of our situation. Is there anything in that little brown brain of yours, Samu? Go ahead,” he suggested to Davenport as the native turned and nodded reverentially at his master, “test the brute for yourself if you don’t believe me. Say whatever you like to him.”
Davenport waved away the offer.
“You have been learning their language, I suspect.”
“Trying to.”
Belial nodded. “Its grammar is labyrinthine, but at least the alphabet resembles ours. Never was your strong suit—languages, I mean. How many were you speaking when we met in Zurich? Was it still only eight?”
“Understanding people’s minds is just as important as their words, Belial.”
Belial appeared amused. He threw a glance in my general direction.
“That’s—” Davenport began.
“Fergins, your shadow, yes,” Belial said, pleasing me very much, even though the bookaneers all kept informed of each other’s associates and it reflected no actual personal interest in me. He stopped to examine me more closely. “Fergins, the bookseller and bibliomaniac. Is it true what they say about you?”
“What do they say?” I asked eagerly.
“That you know all there is to know about our profession.”
I shrugged, since Davenport would not like me trying to impress him. “As much as anyone else, perhaps.”
“Come, Mr. Fergins. Humility is too often self-deception disguised. Who was it who first coined the term ‘bookaneer’?”
Davenport nodded permission to answer.
“There are several versions, actually, but the one I find most convincing involves a notoriously parsimonious publisher active in the 1820s and ’30s. After he agreed to terms with a member of the earliest crop of agents to uncover closely guarded information about a serial novel starting in a rival magazine, he found out that the same fellow, two months earlier, had swiped a valuable manuscript out from under his own nose. ‘Never again will I give a penny to these nasty bookaneers!’ he was said to have groused. Whatever the veracity of this, the name spread with the anecdote.”
“You forgot the best part, which is that the same publisher found need to hire a bookaneer again only a few months later.” He turned back to my companion. “What next? I know you are not armed and so do not plan to assault me.”
“Are you certain?” Davenport asked.
“The intelligence I’ve gathered indicates that you are—stupidly, if you permit my opinion—posing as a gentleman of letters writing about travel. Were the Subject to notice you with a dagger or pistol, or anything more than a bush knife, even by happenstance, you would risk exciting his curiosity and foreclose your access. It is ever more pressing to protect your identity for a mission than to protect your body.”
Davenport tried to remain stone-faced, but could not hold back his irritation at the veracity of Belial’s description.
“You know,” Belial continued, “I am always unarmed. You remember my philosophy on that topic, I suspect, from the old days.”
“The armed man is always more feared, and therefore less dangerous than the unarmed man.”
“You have heard my philosophy, as well, Mr. Fergins.” Belial nodded at my recital of his rule. “I have been in the South Seas for three months already, Davenport. I miss Christina dearly, of course, but it is worth it for the greater good of the mission. However comfortable you think you and Sancho Panza back there have become here, I am more so. You know, it is not a bad thing, playing the role of a missionary. Their missions are not so different from our missions, for what do we do as bookaneers but go among the heathen world and spread our higher purpose? I have become a veritable bishop in Upolu and at Vailima. I have fully prepared my groundwork for this triumph. For every ten facts you’ve learned, I have a hundred. If you even attempt a single move against me, your purpose will be instantly revealed.”
“You may have been here first, but I can expose you just as quickly.”
Belial gave an order to his man, who passed him a cutlass. “Thank you, Samu,” Belial said in Samoan, then turned back to Davenport. He ran his finger along the sharp edge of the weapon. “I am never armed, as your Mr. Fergins correctly remembered. But the barbarians are—they must be, if not to protect themselves from the elements then from each other, or the runaway blacks in the forest.”
“Runaways?” I asked.
“The cannibals,” Belial clarified. “The Germans import them from the Solomon Islands to work their plantations, which cover thousands of acres. It is because of the profits from those lands that the Germans have so much more money and influence than the British or Americans. But sometimes the cannibals escape, so one must be leery. Look at me, schooling the two of you to my own detriment.”
I could see Davenport ready to lunge for the deadly weapon but the other man put it down in the low neck of a tree.
“Please,” Belial said, taking a step back.