Matthew Pearl - The Last Dickens

“Remarkable, Mr. Osgood!” Wakefield was saying, laughing as though they had reached the climax in a riotous joke. “And, lo, you've found these before anyone!”

A scene entered Osgood's mind from his first journey on the Samaria. Wakefield becoming his friend immediately. A rush of ideas, of facts. Wakefield had not just been on their steamer to London and back. Wakefield had followed them to London and back-just as Herman did. He and Herman had been in Boston at the same time, on the ship at the same time, and in London at the same time. Wakefield rushed to the police station after Herman's attack on him at the opium rooms.

“I think I should find Miss Sand now,” Osgood said quietly.

“Certainly, certainly,” Wakefield said.

“Will you be kind enough to stand guard over this for a moment?” Osgood asked, gesturing at the calf-leather case.

“I am your humble servant, sir,” Wakefield said. Just as Osgood had hurried halfway up the stairs, Wakefield added, “Oh, but hold on. I have a gift for you I brought from London! In all the excitement, I nearly forgot! To repay you for all the books aboard our passages.”

“That is generous,” Osgood murmured, judging in a sidelong glance the number of stairs remaining to the door.

“Watch out!” Wakefield called.

He tossed the heavy object through the air. Osgood caught it to his chest with one hand. Unwrapping the paper, he bathed the lumpy object in the light of the flaring lantern. It was a yellow plaster statue that had once been listed for auction under the title Turk Seated Smoking Opium. The statue from the home of Charles Dickens.

“You said,” Osgood commented offhandedly, “that the auction house had broken this.”

“Think of it as a farewell gift, of sorts, Mr. Osgood. Oh, and why should I guard a calf-leather case that I'd bet my best pair of kid gloves is empty? You did switch the pages into your own satchel already, didn't you?”

The loud echo of Wakefield snapping his fingers rang through the grim chamber. Two Chinese men appeared at the top of the stairs. One of the men scratched the back of his neck with his fingernail. Only it was no ordinary finger. The nail of the little finger on the left hand was between seven and eight inches long and perfectly clean and sharp, an appendage uniquely cultivated by the Chinese scharf for use in testing the counterfeit or genuine nature of specie used to pay for opium.

Rebecca, trembling, also appeared at the top of the stairs. Behind her, the silvery reflection of Osgood's lantern illuminated the jutting fangs of a Kylin's head.

OSGOOD BACKED DOWN the stairs to the bottom, where Rebecca joined him for protection. Wakefield joined Herman on the landing above them. Herman bowed his head at Wakefield, putting both hands on his forehead.

“I told you, Mr. Osgood,” pointed out Wakefield, “that Miss Sand was being carefully watched.”

“You arranged for Herman to assault me on the Samaria and for you to be the hero in the encounter, to ensure that I would trust and rely on you,” Osgood said. “You have been partners with him the whole time. You attempted to win Miss Sand's affections so that she would reveal to you our plans.”

“You are awarded the premium! You know, you have an earnest habit of thinking the world around you is as well meaning as you are, my friend,” Wakefield replied. “I admire that. Let us go somewhere more comfortable than this.”

“We shall go nowhere with you,” Osgood said. “You're no tea merchant, Mr. Wakefield.” As he spoke, Osgood casually slipped the Turkish statue into his satchel, and felt the increased weight of the bag on his shoulder.

“Oh, I am,” came the reply from Wakefield with a muted laugh shared by Herman. “Though not tea alone, of course. Tea, quite often, is how our friends in China pay for their opium shipments. Don't you see the larger picture yet, Mr. Osgood? No, you were always paying too close attention to sentences to understand the books-it has kept you insulated, worried over words that make no difference in the end, because the machinery of more powerful men overcome you. When I was a boy, I was sent away from home. I found refuge with a relative, but I gained a restless spirit that has never abandoned me.”

As Wakefield spoke, Osgood swung his satchel hard, striking the businessman in the leg. He did not flinch. There was a metallic clang and the statue shattered to pieces in the bag.

Osgood and Rebecca exchanged a startled glance. Wakefield lifted his trousers and revealed a mechanism on his foot consisting of straps, joints, and cogwheels.

“My God!” Osgood blurted out. “Edward Trood!”

HERMAN TOOK two menacing steps closer to him.

Wakefield waved his Parsee protector away and, standing erect, glared at Osgood. He spoke in sharp bursts of Chinese to the two scharfs , who nodded and left the building. Then he turned back to Osgood.

“No, Mr. Osgood, I am not he. That was my name once, yes-I was cowering little Eddie Trood with the club foot when I was sent away from Rochester by the cruel despotism of my father. But that part of me is dead, and so is Eddie Trood. I began to erase him when I escaped through opium ecstasies in the home of my uncle. But my body soon rebelled against it, placing me either in the agony of its power when I swallowed it, or in the depth of misery when I attempted to abstain from it. A physician advised me on the use of a syringe, a method that spread a greater sense of relaxation and deadening of the senses but did nothing to reduce my inner demand for it. It was a stimulation without satisfaction.

“Opium was an armor that kept me safe from the outside world but crushed my bones in the process. I was told that a sea voyage was the only way to force myself out of its control. After I sailed to China I was no longer enslaved. A new truth had come to me. An understanding of the unavoidable power of the drug-the need to oversee its arrangements not through the doctor or druggist but in the shadows and the cover of night. It was in Canton that a doctor fitted my foot with this. It corrected the position of deformity so that there is no noticeable deficiency in my step even under close scrutiny. That was when I knew I was ready to return to England a new man.”

Osgood's mind raced and his comprehension of their situation jumped three or four moves ahead. “Then Herman never tried to kill Eddie Trood-you-for knowing the secrets of his drug enterprise?”

“My drug enterprise, Mr. Osgood,” Wakefield said, smiling. “Herman has served as my agent ever since I helped him escape from the Chinese pirates. You see, in my travels, I determined that a smuggler, in order to survive long enough to prosper, would have to be an invisible man. On that basis, I started a new life when I came back, a life as Marcus Wakefield. Herman and Imam, our Turkish comrade, assisted in my scheme, but they were carpenters in its execution, and I, the lone architect. There was a young man who had at the time recently suffered the effects of an overdose of bad opium and died. We dressed the lad in some of my old clothes and Herman took a crowbar to the head so the body would not be recognized. One weekend, when my uncle was in the country, I went into hiding, while my collaborators tore down a wall in his home and hid the body of our false Edward Trood there.”

“Machiavellian to the last degree,” Osgood said, surmising his larger purpose. “Then Marcus Wakefield would be feared.”

“Well, yes, precisely, only not Wakefield exactly. I used that alias in my ordinary course of business. As an opium merchant, I have used as many names in as many places as would suit my purposes: Copeland, Hewes, Simonds, Tauka. But nobody would ever meet the keeper of any of the names. They would hear stories-legends of his remarkable and terrible deeds, stories of the dead, starting with Eddie Trood who had tried to infiltrate his opium lines. Otherwise, there was invisibility, and men like Herman and Imam served as my hands and feet out in the world.