The Last Bookaneer

by Matthew Pearl

  “I could wait outside,” I offered.

  “I always said a bookseller is one-quarter philosopher, one-quarter philanthropist, and . . .” He made a silent calculation. “. . . two-quarters pure rogue. You are a disloyal sort,” he said to me—still in a sadly weak warble compared with the voice as I remembered it, despite his rising emotion. “Disloyal as a Jacobite!”

  “You should thank Fergins for convincing me to see you,” Davenport said. “Nor is he treacherous or disloyal for ceasing your arrangement; he merely valued his skills enough to work for the best of our line. I’ve made a wager with Fergins. If you really are dying, I shall owe him a pair of gloves.”

  “Yes,” I chimed in. Davenport had a tendency to invent small moments that had not happened even when they did not serve a purpose. I had learned to accept them as real. “Calf leather, I hope, if I win, Davenport. But I pray you are not too unwell, Bill,” I added.

  “Now I would thank you to explain what we are doing here,” Davenport said, stepping over my sympathy. “We wasted time enough on the train here. What is this nonsense about my life depending on speaking with you? The only reason I allowed Fergins to drag me out here is that I am curious to see what trick you are planning.”

  “No trick! We have been flying at each other’s throats for so many years, Pen, but Lord knows I’ve always been honest about hating you. You’ll admit that. You are the fellow. You are the fellow.”

  “You have said.”

  “Be patient with an old man.”

  “An old devil.”

  Bill’s eyes widened and brightened. “Maybe so, Pen! I need to tell you some things, so take a seat and listen. Please. If you want the bookseller, let the old goat stay. He was always harmless as a butterfly.”

  Davenport rolled up his sleeves as if he were about to operate, and carried a stool close to the head of the bed. I took another stool by the foot of the bed.

  “Thank you. Pen, I have seen firsthand what a scoundrel you become when someone questions your way of thinking, but you always were a gentleman at heart. There is a new mission, one of phenomenal importance and, potentially, profit.”

  “Is this about your Poe obsession? It is the way of the commonplace bookaneer to go in for a Holy Grail.”

  “No!” Bill cried, coughing with exasperation as he tried to expel his words. “It’s not that. Something . . . bigger—Stevenson.”

  Stevenson. As in Robert Louis. One of the most popular living writers in the world. The author known for Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Treasure Island, and Kidnapped, whose work was demanded by readers around the world. We looked at each other. I knew Davenport’s mind was moving at great speed, though he did not look interested.

  “One of the more capricious but gifted writers ever to set pen to paper. He is sailing the Pacific by private means to improve his health,” Davenport said. “They say he will return to Scotland when he feels restored, but nobody knows how long it will be.”

  “He is never to return,” Bill said with somber finality.

  “Are you implying Stevenson died while at sea?” Davenport asked.

  “What do you know about the island of Upolu?” Bill asked.

  “I concentrate on the literary world. I do not know much about distant lands of illiterates. Fergins likes to know a little about everything.”

  “Upolu is one of the three primary Samoan islands,” I said, “formed by a volcano and still in its shadow. Samoa is also known as the Navigator Islands, because of the abilities of its natives to command the sea without any of our modern equipment. Upolu is its capital of government and commerce.”

  “I ask again. Is Stevenson dead?”

  “No—not dead yet, Pen.”

  “Then has he been taken by savages?”

  “Worse! He remains by his own will. From what I have learned, he alighted at the island of Upolu and decided never to leave. Stevenson, or the shade of Stevenson, lives in seclusion there, an exile from all civilized people and things. Do you realize what it all means? How close we are?”

  “Close to what?” Davenport asked, and he made the slightest gesture to me, at which I removed a pencil and my notebook.

  “Glory, dear Pen! These writers take the essence of every person around them, turn them into books and stories without permission or even a simple thank-you, and want all the credit and glory for themselves. We are the only ones who can stand in the way, who can take that glory right from their pockets. God as my witness, I’ve taken some for myself these long years. The intelligence I have been able to collect informs me Stevenson is finishing the most important book of his life. But he is a bag of bones now, unlikely to survive much longer, and if his illnesses do not claim him first, the island will. The place is a hell on earth, with roasting temperatures and consumed with deadly quarrels among the pagan tribes. Between the spears of the natives and the intervention of heavily armed foreign governments, plus the mischief of tropical disease, no white man is safe. The novel, this masterpiece, will perish out there—but if one were able to bring it back to civilization . . . I know when you want something you go at things like one o’clock, no matter how lackadaisical you seem to others. You are the one to do it, Pen!”

  “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.”

  “Perhaps Stevenson is the exception.”

  “I told you, Whiskey Bill is neither insane nor dying. Everything that Judas-haired swindler says to us is a lie. He is using the fact we cannot prove where Stevenson is while he is out at sea in order to catch us in his web. Count on the fact that it will not work. But he might try again through other means, and I will be prepared. I suspect he wants to lure me out of London, at which point he’ll leave the asylum and claim some prize for himself that is right under our noses, maybe having to do with Stevenson, maybe another litterateur of value with Stevenson a red herring to draw us away. The more elaborate his scheme, the more profit hidden behind it. I believe once we know why Bill dangled this before us, a lucrative mission will be revealed.”

  He added something else to my assignment: “Watch Bill’s activity in the asylum as closely as possible. When Bill is discharged, we’ll know something is about to happen. For now, he speaks of seeing aviaries in this asylum so they will believe he’s hallucinating, but when the time comes he will start speaking rationally enough. I will be ready, count on that.”

  I informed Davenport’s spies around the Liverpool ports and the London railway and coaches that money was available for information about any communication from the South Seas, in particular the Samoan islands, regarding literary visitors. I also wrote to ports in Scotland and Ireland providing incentives for the same. It had long been my responsibility to stay informed about the movements of every important literary man and woman on three or four continents, to know when they tended to visit their publishers; when and where they went on holidays. Ask me where Lewis Carroll takes tea on Tuesdays, I can tell you; wonder where Miss Rossetti markets every other Monday, I’ll answer. I pumped all our wells of intelligence in literary circles.

  Meanwhile, I volunteered my services at Caterham to pass out old, unwanted books from my inventory to the patients at the asylum. In Whiskey Bill’s room I explained to him that our visit had inspired great sympathy for the lunatics; the bald-headed bookaneer laughed, Davenport’s tactic naturally transparent and unsurprising. But he did not try to interrogate me or coax me into revealing anything else. The best times to observe Bill were when he was napping or otherwise engaged. I also found several occasions to review the doctors’ notes and records, though I was yet to uncover any meaningful clues.

  In addition to the Bible, he kept a few books of French writers nearby. He told me that he had hoped to go to Paris one more time, and to die there instead of in England, since the climate was better.

  “I am glad you found a rather kindred soul in our dear Pen,” Bill said to me during one of my visits. I was seated by his bed, waiting for him to make another move on the chessboard I had brought for him.

  I nodded halfheartedly and didn’t correct him, but I was certain Davenport would never describe us as kindred souls.

  “I cannot begrudge a man to do what he must, no, no, not even a lowly bookseller. You were a good fence, but there were plenty of others just like you. No grudges, not in this life!”

  “Check.”

  “He is too good for his own good, that Pen. If he does not succeed, he resents everyone else, and if he succeeds, he resents himself. Any one of us would have bowed to dear Kitten and followed at her skirts. But she chose him. Him. No, no grudges, but I’ll never forgive old Pen for that.” His words had begun to run together a little. My eyes traveled over his face and the frame of his body, which had steadily shrunk from the meager rations that were served to the patients. The whites of his eyes were veined with red. “And he gathered them together into a place called Armageddon.”

  “Rook to knight’s third square?” I asked, tracing the suggested move with my finger.

  “Do you realize why he chose you all those years back, Fergins?”

  I looked at him again. “You’re confused, Bill. I courted Davenport.”

  He pushed his tongue through the gap in his teeth and smiled. “I am not as confused as you think. Do you believe it? That Pen Davenport would engage the services of a stranger who happened to call on him unannounced? He had been waiting for you.”

  This idea astonished me. “Who am I?”

  “People in the book world always hated the bookaneers because our operations forced them to be honest with themselves about what the whole thing really is—that literature and money were two edges of a single sword. Bookmen of all stripes like to cling to the idea they have a nobler calling than most. But we were instrumental in bringing books to the masses. You were known to adore the idea of a bookaneer. To idolize us. You were never plagued with any conscience against it, like so many others had, which meant you could be safely used.”

  I remained unconvinced that Daven
port could have arrived at such conclusions about me by watching me—or having me watched—at my bookstall. But I did not press Bill about it. Besides, while his smile remained frozen, his eyelids had started to droop. I felt another wave of sadness come over me, seeing him this way. “He is not your friend . . . he is not dying.” Davenport’s words repeated in my ear, warning me against sentiment. But sentiment is hard to deny to a man in a sickbed. Close your eyes, Mr. Clover, and if you wait long enough it will seem like we are moving at a fast pace, because your brain knows we are sitting on a train, even though we remain idly waiting on that broken train’s repair. To know, intellectually, there is no movement, should be sufficient, but a man’s brain is stubborn when what is happening in life is different than what was expected. Do you see what I mean?

  —I can understand, Mr. Fergins, how you would be sympathetic to Whiskey Bill as the first of the bookaneers who trusted you. That would have meant the world to me if I were you. But I wonder about something else. Would it matter?

  Would what matter, Mr. Clover?

  —Sorry, my question wasn’t clear. What Whiskey Bill hinted about Pen Davenport. That Mr. Davenport chose you, rather than you choosing him. Would it make a difference if it were true, Mr. Fergins?

  Maybe. Maybe in some ways it would make a difference. Who knows?

  —What did Mr. Davenport say when you asked him if it was true?

  Asked him! Could my modest abilities of description give you such an improper portrait of the man? No, Davenport would never answer such a question. It would not happen once in a thousand times that he would tell you something about himself when asked—maybe once in a million times, or twice in a million times a million times. He could tell you something about himself on his own, but never if you asked, though he would ask you anything he pleased.