My dear Mr. Stephenson (I interrupted myself here to explain to Davenport that any letter spelling Stevenson with “ph” was usually torn up without reading any further, but for some reason the novelist made an exception), justly celebrated author, sir,
I write to warn you of two visitors to expect to Samoa, or who have already arrived by the time you receive this letter depending on the speed of the mails to no man’s land. I speak of one man called Belial and another named Penrose (Pen, to friends, like me) Davenport. They will both enter your life, separately, in ways that might seem natural but are in actuality highly calculated. Belial will likely come to you first, is a man standing six feet one or two inches in height, and seeming taller than a man with greater height, teeth like diamonds in the sun, his hair like a clump of pretty seaweed, and his voice like the thunder and trumpets that might greet the day of judgment. Davenport? Well, he is the one somewhere near you intent on being intent, always tormenting himself about one trivial thing or another as if he were Christ himself, and who has a face as serious as a dead German, as Heine says. Make no mistake. He is as scheming, in his way, as the other one. I’ll wait a moment while you wonder who they are, for of course they come with false names and purposes.
Davenport might’ve brought his inseparable caddie, his shadow, if you will, though a rounder and shorter and balder shadow. A whistling, book-lugging fool. Second thought, I’d wager he was wise enough to leave disloyal old Fergins the bookseller behind this time, like a train needing to move faster would unhook its rusty caboose.
Finished? Know everyone we’re talking about? Excellent. These two snakes come from the line of men and women known as Bookaneers—a brave and necessary and dying breed, alas—and they come to you to steal your latest masterpiece for the sake of profit and glory. The high seas of literature swarm with plunderers. Certainly, if I could have I would have been there, too, and I would have been so honored, sir, so much so I cannot tell you. Not since Lord Byron nearly became King of Greece, had he not had the misfortune of dying instead, has a literary man exiled himself so grandly as you. If I had come, I would have presented myself as a doctor with the newest cures from Europe, to try to tempt you in your state as an invalid, but those fools might not have thought of that. Feed them to the cannibals, if you permit suggestions.
Your servant,
William Perkins Richmond
P.S. In your position as an esteemed author, if you should ever be made privy to the whereabouts of a novel called Life of an Artist at Home and Abroad, supposedly once printed anonymously in a French newspaper, written by Edgar Poe but wrongly attributed to Eugene Sue before being lost forever and forgotten, please order a copy to be left on my grave, and from the spirit-world I should be thankful.
“We have to get out of here!” I cried after finishing. “Stevenson knows all. He knows who you really are. We have to leave now!”
“Belial.” Davenport cringed while grabbing his leg. “Where is Belial?”
I shook my head. “Stevenson called John Chinaman into his sanctum after reading the letter to me and ordered him to immediately protect the manuscript and hunt for Belial. That is when I slipped out of the room.”
For the second time since our arrival in Samoa, the first being the death of Charlie, I saw what I would describe as absolute fear reflected in the deep green of Davenport’s eyes. “What does he plan to do, Fergins?”
“I couldn’t say. Stevenson fell into one of his uncanny fits—you know how he does. He was speaking so quickly in Samoan, I could hardly understand any of it. Are you well enough to move, Davenport?”
I tried to help him but he remained on the bed. I knew he understood he had no choice and minutes, maybe seconds, to act. Yet he could not help groping for some other way out than flight. He knew, as I knew, that the moment he rose from that bed and snuck out of the room, this mission was lost. That his career, in essence, was over. That he could never match Kitten’s achievement nor—in some profound way—reverse its consequences to her.
“Davenport. Now is the time. All is up; he knows everything. We haven’t another moment to spare. We must get away from Vailima and to the American consulate to beg for protection.”
He nodded. The nod itself seemed to cause him as much pain as his mangled leg. After he accepted my hand, I pulled him to his feet.
His leg was leaden, dragging behind him. We progressed slowly to the door. I opened it and Stevenson was waiting on the other side, holding a cigarette out in one hand, inspecting us, first him and then me. His wide-set eyes had a kind of mesmerizing effect.
The novelist put the cigarette back to his mouth. “Look at me, I almost forgot to smoke just then.”
“I suppose there is nothing I can say to satisfy you, Tusitala,” Davenport spoke quietly, the respectful tone of a truehearted soldier captured in war. “Whiskey Bill seems to have made certain of that.”
“I see your co-adventurer has already relayed news of the letter. There is something you can do. It will not help you much, but I still recommend complying. You can satisfy my curiosities. Did you ever steal from me before, in this storied so-called vocation of yours, Mr. Davenport?”
Davenport took a few unsteady steps back into the room. “It’s not so simple as that.”
“Grown men, hunting books like pheasants in the wild. Lord in heaven! Now, did you steal from me before you came here or not?”
“Not really.”
“Indirectly, then?” Stevenson’s question really did seem to contain more curiosity than anger, as if speaking about someone other than himself.
“You will remember a map you drew to be printed in Treasure Island.”
“I ought to; it took a great amount of my time and strength. My publisher lost it, after all that, and engaged an illustrator to do the far inferior one printed in the book.”
“The publisher did not lose it,” Davenport said.