The Last Dickens

by Matthew Pearl

“Quiet!” Wakefield yelled. “Come, Osgood.”

  Osgood nodded obediently to Wakefield. “I will let go, Wakefield. I promised, and I do as I promise.”

  “I know it, Osgood.”

  “But you must hope,” Osgood continued, “that whole way between the Medical College and here I didn't stop for a moment to switch it for some worthless papers, or stuff this with leaves or blank stationery. Are you confident enough that I would destroy what I've searched for all this time, even for the sake of a woman? Are you absolutely certain?”

  “I am, Osgood. You love her.”

  “Yes,” Osgood said, unhesitating. Rebecca for a moment lost all her terror. “But tell me, Mr. Wakefield,” Osgood continued, “would you find it anywhere inside of you to ever do that, to destroy every-thing you've wanted to protect someone you love?”

  Wakefield's eyes widened, his brow poured sweat. Slowly, he stepped toward Osgood. Now he trained his gun on the publisher as he inched toward the satchel.

  “Don't think of moving a muscle, Osgood,” said Wakefield, steadying the gun at Osgood's forehead. The publisher nodded his head in surrender. Osgood's gaze shifted to Rebecca, and in that moment he looked in her eyes she knew what to do.

  Here Wakefield slipped his hand into the satchel and out came the thick bundle of papers covered in iron gall ink, with yellow shards of the plaster statue clinging to it. He held the gun steady in one hand while with the other he brought the pages to his face. After a moment of quiet suspense, a dark shadow passed over his expression. Awkwardly using two fingers of his gun-holding hand, he flipped the page back to see the next one, then the next one, then finally skipped ahead to the last one.

  His face concentrated, contorted with a baffled entrancement. As everything but the manuscript seemed to drift from Wakefield's sight, Rebecca raced forward. She pushed Wakefield from behind with all her strength. Man and manuscript entangled. His instincts empowering him, Wakefield's hand gripped the the ironworks and he raised his pistol at Osgood's head with his other hand-but the fire below had sent the heat through the iron, and now steam rose from under Wakefield's ungloved hand. His hand yielding, Wakefield went plunging down the elevator shaft, all the way down in a screaming drop into the inferno. As he fell, the pages fluttered through the air around him. They fed the flame like fresh wood in a winter hearth. Wakefield crashed and shrieked inhumanly.

  In his last moments, his eye seemed to fall on one of Dickens's final pages just as it curled into ashes. And all was devoured as one.

  Osgood, ashen pale, hugging his rib cage with his arms, dropped limply to his knees in exhaustion, terror, and relief. He watched the pages below them in various states of demise and ashes. To breathe was utter agony.

  “Mr. Osgood!” Rebecca called out. She pulled him out of the way just as Molasses lunged forward onto the edge of the elevator shaft. The Bookaneer was reaching for any stray pages.

  “The Mystery of Edwin Drood!” the Bookaneer called out. “Even one page would be priceless!” His hat tumbled off and caught fire as another explosion from the engine room shot up toward them.

  Osgood pushed himself to his feet and leaned into the red hot shaft, grabbing the back of the bookaneer's collar and coat, the bottom of which was already singeing.

  “One page!” the man was repeating. “Just one!”

  “Molasses! It's gone! It's already gone!”

  Osgood pulled Molasses backward as the engine room exploded once more and this time filled the buckling elevator shaft with a solid column of fire. Osgood had taken Rebecca into his arms as they watched from the precipice of the fifth floor.

  “Quickly!” urged a newly sensible Molasses as the fire and steam spread.

  As the three survivors ran down the stairs, Molasses periodically cried out in lament for the lost pages. “You couldn't, could you? How could you allow him to destroy the end of The Mystery of Edwin Drood! The last Dickens, in a column of smoke!”

  The poor Bookaneer, unwilling to accept the defeat, followed behind the firemen as they trooped into the building pulling their hoses from their nearby engines. In the meantime, Rebecca helped Osgood to a curb across from the building. He sat and coughed violently.

  “I shall go for a doctor,” said Rebecca.

  Osgood held up a hand to plead for her to wait. “I hope the lady shall not be offended,” he said at the first moment he could find his voice. He scraped the ash and grime off his hand, then inserted his hand under his torn shirt, into the bandages around his chest.

  He took out a thin collection of papers flattened against his skin.

  Rebecca gasped. “Is it…?”

  “The final chapter-while I was in the elevator alone, I hid it. Just in case…”

  “Mr. Osgood! Remarkable! Why, even without the rest of it, just to have the ending will change everything. What is Edwin Drood's fate?” She reached out her hand, then hesitated. “May I?”

  “You have earned it as much as I, Miss Sand,” he said, passing the pages to her.

  As she looked down, she passed her hand over the first page of the chapter as if its words could be touched. Her bright eyes glistened with curiosity and amazement.

  “Well?” asked Osgood knowingly. “What do you think of it, my darling? Can you read it?”

  “Not a word!” she said, then laughed. “Oh, it's beautiful!”

  Chapter 39

  CHARLES DICKENS HAD KNOWN HE HAD TO BE BETTER THAN ALL the others. He was not yet twenty years old and was trying to compete with the more experienced corps of London reporters. It had been their mission to provide verbatim reports of the speeches of the most important members of Parliament and the chief cases at chancery.

  There were two primary questions surrounding them: who could write the most accurately, and who could write fastest. The Gurney system of brachygraphy, or shorthand, brought him under its magical, mysterious spell. Brachygraphy, or an easy and compendious System of Shorthand rested on and under his pillow. It permitted an ordinary human, after some close training and prayer, to condense the usual long-winded language of their fellow beings into mere scratches and dots on a page. The reporter would copy down an orator's speech in this cobweb of markings, then rush out the door. If outside the city, in Edinburgh or some country village, he would bend over his paper while being driven in a carriage, scribbling furiously under a small wax lamp as he transformed onto blank slips of paper the strange symbols into full words-occasionally sticking his head out the window to prevent sickness along the rocky passage.

  The green reporter Dickens mastered the Gurney, just as his father had once done in brief employment as a shorthand writer, but that was not enough. Young Dickens altered and adjusted Gurney-he created his own shorthand-better and quicker than anyone else's. Soon, the most important English speeches were always certified at the bottom of the page by C. Dickens, Shorthand Writer, 5, Bell Yard, Doctors’ Commons.

  That was how he could write so much, even half a book, in the small cracks of a full schedule while in America. That was the only way his pen could keep pace with his mind and reveal the fate of Edwin Drood.

  The Gurney system had years ago been replaced by that of Taylor and then by Pitman's. Rebecca had been trained in Pitman's at the Bryant and Stratton Commercial School for women on Washington Street before applying to be a bookkeeper. Fields and Osgood, after depositing the pages from the satchel representing the last chapter of The Mystery of Edwin Drood in their fireproof safe at 124 Tremont Street, did consult some of the first-rate shorthand writers in Boston (several of whom, themselves the brainier Bookaneers, had been the ones attempting to copy down Dickens's improvisations at the Tremont Temple before Tom Branagan and Daniel Sand stopped them). They would only show them a page or two, for purposes of secrecy, and did not tell them the provenance of the document. No luck-it was useless. The system, even for those very familiar with Gurney, was too eccentric to decipher more than a few scattered words.

  They sent confidential cables to Chapman
& Hall seeking advice on the matter. Meanwhile, quietly, Fields and Osgood made preparations with their printer and illustrator for a special edition of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, complete with the exclusive final chapter.

  The first week after the retrieval of the manuscript there were endless consultations and interviews with the chief of police, customs agents, the state attorney, and the British consulate. Montague Midges, denying all accusations, was immediately dismissed from his post and interrogated by the police about his conversations with Wakefield and Herman. The Samaria was boarded by customs and an eager tax collector named Simon Pennock, using the information gathered by Osgood and the late Jack Rogers, and every member of the crew was taken into custody. The Royal Navy had been alerted, and over a matter of months the majority of Marcus Wakefield's operation was dismantled.

  One morning, Osgood was called into Fields's office where he was shocked to be staring straight into the mouth of a long rifle.

  “Halloa, old boy!”

  The double-barreled rifle was hanging loosely behind the shoulder of a burly, ruddy man in a tight-fitting sporting outfit with high leather gaiters, knee breeches, and a cartridge belt around his wide waist. Frederic Chapman.

  “Mr. Chapman, forgive me if I wear a look of astonishment,” Os-good began. “We sent our cables to you in London not two days ago.”

  Chapman gave his mighty laugh. “You see, Osgood, I was in New York on some dull business for the firm, and on my way in full force to a shooting party in the Adirondacks when the hotel messenger stopped me at the train station with a cable from my office in London passing along your intelligence. Naturally I boarded the next train into Boston. I always liked Boston-the streets are crooked and the New Englandism is down to a science. I say, these”-he delicately picked up the small sheaf of pages with care and awe-“are simply remarkable! Imagine!”

  “Can you make sense of it, then?” Fields asked.

  “Me? Not a single speck, not a single word, Mr. Fields!” Chapman declared without any diminished excitement. “Osgood, where did you go? There you are. Say, how is it you came upon this?”

  Osgood exchanged a questioning look with Fields.

  “Mr. Osgood is our most diligent man!” Fields exclaimed proudly.

  “Well, I should think this proves it,” said Chapman, resting his hands on his cartridge belt. “I could use men like you, Osgood. My clerks, they're worthless and hopeless creatures. Now we must set in motion a plan to read these at once.”

  Fields told him how the shorthand writers they'd consulted could not make it out, and they did not want to give them too much of it to see.

  “No, we mustn't let anyone else get wind of this. Clerk!” Chapman leaned out the door and waited for anyone to appear. Though it was one of the financial men who presented himself, Chapman snapped his fingers and said, “Some champagne in here, won't you?” Chapman then closed the door on the confused man and insisted on shaking both men's hands again with his hunter's iron grip. “Gentlemen, I have it! This shall be historical! Long after we are all-pardon the morbidity-out of print permanently, our names will be honored for this. The end of the last Dickens, for all the world to see! That is a triumph.

  “I happen to know several court reporters who worked alongside Dickens in the capacity of shorthand writers thirty years ago; in some cases, they competed with the younger rival, attempting to replicate his altered version of the shorthand technique. Some of them, though their heads have grown white with the creeping of age, still live retired lives in London and are known to me personally. I have no doubt that for the right price their success in ‘translating’ this text will be assured.”

  “Upon my word, we shall contribute liberally to such a fund,” Fields said.

  “Good. I'll book my passage back early to deal with this without delay,” Chapman said. “Say, you have made a copy of the chapter, haven't you?”

  Fields shook his head. “The truth is, this shorthand is of such a strange design, I fear any copies could be worthless. Dashes and lines and curly symbols not replicated exactly would render a word or paragraph potentially indecipherable. It would be like an illiterate copying out a page from a Chinese scroll. Perhaps with two or three of the best copyists checking each other. The best copyists in Boston are also the greediest, and it would be a risk to entrust them.”

  “You did not even make a copy for yourself?” Chapman asked, surprised.

  “Mr. Fields cannot, with his hand,” Osgood said. “We didn't know you were coming, Mr. Chapman. I would have tried, but I am afraid even the attempt to could take weeks.”

  “And tracing it is out of the question,” Chapman noted, “for these papers have not exactly been well kept, wherever it is you found them, and the chemicals of tracing paper could tamper with the ink. No matter, the original shall be safe”-here he stopped to caress the end of his rifle-“even from your so-called Bookaneers. Let them try me!”

  Chapman put the chapter in his case. As soon as the transcription was complete, Chapman would send a private messenger in whom he had complete trust to deliver the fully transcribed pages back to Boston, so the Fields, Osgood & Co. edition could appear well before any pirated editions.

  “Tell me-for a lark-before we finally know the truth, what do you think, Osgood?” asked Chapman as he prepared to depart from the office, his assistant handing him his overcoat and brown felt hat with its jaunty blue ribbon. “Tell us, do you think Drood lives or dies in the end?”

  “I don't know whether he lives or dies,” answered Osgood. “But I know he is not dead.”

  Chapman, shouldering his rifle, nodded but moved his mouth in a rehearsal of confusion at the enigmatic response.

  Some minutes later, after their guest's departure, some impulse or feeling gripped Osgood. It made him get up from his desk. He stood looking down at the palms of his own hands and the scars from their adventures.

  He could not have said why, but he was soon walking down the hall; hurrying down the stairs, dancing around the slower climbers; bursting through the reception hall, past the shining glass cases of Ticknor & Fields and Fields & Osgood books, out the front doors; pushing past the line at the peanut vendor and the Italian organ grinder, looking out, looking at the tourists to Boston in bright bonnets and light hats loitering under the shady elms of the Great Mall along the Common, looking over at squirrels scrambling for lost crumbs and pleading pitifully for donations of other scraps, looking for Fred Chapman in the dappled light of the summer scene. Osgood got as far as the tents pitched by the traveling circus, which were sheltering exhibitions of overheated animals and myriad humanity.

  It is impossible to claim to know what James Osgood thought to have said had he caught up with him. It wouldn't have mattered, though, because the strapping visitor from London and the pages in his case were already gone.

  Sixth Installment

  ***

  ALL THAT WAS LEFT OF “EDWIN DROOD” IS HERE published. Beyond the clues therein afforded to its conduct or catastrophe, nothing whatever remains; and it is believed that what the writer would himself have most desired is done, in placing before the reader, without further note or suggestion, the fragment of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.” The tale is left half told; the mystery remains a mystery forever.

  – 1870 EDITION,

  The Mystery of Edwin Drood, the first six installments only, published by Fields, Osgood & Co.

  Chapter 40

  Boston, December 1870, five months later

  CROSSING THE ORNATE LOBBY, THE MAN WITH THE FLOWING white beard made a graceful stop at the front desk.

  “Is Mr. Clark in?”

  He addressed this question to a definitively New England shop boy, whose dream was one day to turn thirteen years old and another day to write a book of his own like the ones in the shining glass cases. For now he was content to be sitting and reading one. “Guess he ain't,” was his reply, too absorbed to break his concentration.

  “Can you say when he'll re
turn?”

  “Guess I can't.”

  “Mr. Osgood or Mr. Fields, then?”

  “Mr. Osgood's out on business, and Mr. Fields, he's not to be disturbed today, guess I don't know why.”

  “Well,” the caller chuckled to himself. “I entrust these important papers with you, then, sir.”

  The lad looked up at the documents and took the card that sat on top with a surprised and astonished expression.

  “Mr. Longfellow,” he said, jumping to his feet from his stool. He stared at the visitor with the same intensity he had reserved for his book. “Say, old man! Do you mean to say you are really Long fellow?”

  “I am, young man.”

  “Wall! I wouldn't have thought it! Now, how old was you when you wrote Hiawatha? That's what I want to know.”

  After satisfying this and the shop boy's other burning questions, the poet turned toward the front doors as he secured his heavy coat, lowered his hat, and braced himself for the wintry air.

  “My dear Mr. Longfellow!”

  Longfellow looked up and saw it was James Osgood coming in. He greeted the young publisher.

  “Come upstairs and warm awhile by the fire in the Authors’ Room, Mr. Longfellow?” suggested Osgood.

  “The Authors’ Room,” Longfellow repeated, smiling dreamily. “How long since I idled there with our friends! The world was a holiday planet then, and things were precisely what they seemed. I've just left some papers for Mr. Clark that needed my signature. But I ought to return to Cambridge to my girls.”

  “I shall walk with you part of the way, if you'd allow it. I have my gloves on already.”

  Osgood put his arm through the author's as they walked up Tremont Street through the blustery afternoon. Their talk, interrupted at intervals by the freezing gusts, soon turned to The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The Fields, Osgood & Co. edition had just been published a few months earlier.