Matthew Pearl - The Last Dickens

“So, too, did my means of transport have to achieve invisibility. Though there were not many countries like China willing to fight wars to prevent the import of opium to its people, there are many governments, like your own, gleeful to extract tariffs and hold inspections on incoming supplies of the narcotics. My organization secured ownership of a line of steamships, the Samaria being the fastest, and specially fitted them not only so they could be converted to warships but with ample hidden storage space. Since ours is a passenger steamer, the customs officials would examine the luggage being brought on shore. But in the dark of the night, my crew would bring out the chests of opium, disguised in cheap vases or sardine boxes to deliver to the enterprising scoundrels in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. They would supply them to eager customers unable or unwilling to purchase their opium from doctors and pharmacists, who have in the last years been forced to record the names of every purchaser of ‘poisons.’”

“Why Daniel?” Rebecca asked, shocked and overwhelmed by the betrayal. “Why harm my little brother?”

Wakefield looked disapprovingly at Herman. “I'm afraid, my dear girl, that his death was incidental to our purpose. After Dickens died, Herman had found an urgent telegram from Fields and Osgood at the office of Dickens's executor requesting all that remained of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. We set out for Boston immediately to intercept the shipment, and bribing a willing employee of yours named Mr. Midges, it was discovered that Daniel Sand had been assigned the task of receiving the latest installments of any novels coming from England.”

They learned further from Midges-who was disgruntled at rumors of Daniel's having been a drunkard and even more disgruntled that women were taking too many positions at the firm-that Daniel was to be waiting at the harbor early in the morning for more pages of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The ship from England was already docked. But by the time Herman detained the young man in the too-heavy suit, Daniel had suspected he was being followed and had nothing in the canvas sack hung from his shoulder. And to their astonishment, he would take no money in exchange for telling them where he had hidden the pages.

“No, sir,” Daniel had said. “I am very sorry, I cannot.” They had led him into the second story of a warehouse on Long Wharf where they stored smuggled opium.

Wakefield had put a hand on the young clerk's shoulder. “Young man, we know you've had some troubles in the past with certain intoxicating agents. We surely wouldn't want your employer, who trusts you with such important errands, to know about that. We're not some cheap reprinters looking to steal copy. We just need to see what's in those Dickens pages, and then we'll give them back.”

Daniel had hesitated, studying his interrogators, then shook his head vigorously. “No, sir! I must not!” He was repeating, “It's Os-good's! It's Osgood's!”

Herman lunged forward, but Wakefield signaled him to stop.

“Now, think carefully, my dear lad,” Wakefield had urged, the friendly expression on his face flagging, and a fog of violence replacing it. “How disappointed Fields, Osgood and Company would be after putting their faith in you to find out who you really are beneath that youthful and charming face. An inveterate drunkard.”

“Mr. Osgood would be disappointed if I didn't do my job I'm paid for,” the boy had said bullheadedly. “I would rather account for my history to Mr. Osgood myself than to fail his instructions.”

Wakefield's full smile returned, almost breaking into a warm laugh, before he gave the slightest flick of his hand.

Herman tore open the clerk's shirt and cut shallow, straight slits into his chest with the Kylin cane's shimmering fangs. Daniel winced but did not cry. As the blood dripped, Herman let it fall into a cup and then drank it down in front of Daniel with a rising grin until his lips were bright. Daniel, recovering from the pain, shook hard but tried staring straight ahead.

“For God's sake,” Wakefield had said. He cracked Daniel over the head with a bludgeon. Daniel crumpled to the floor.

“Can't you see,” Wakefield had explained to Herman, “you could beat this boy until his head rolls off and scare him until his hair stands up on its ends and he wouldn't say a word this Osgood hadn't authorized? He is a lesson in loyalty, Herman.”

At this, Herman grunted irritably.

Wakefield instructed Herman to inject the lad with opium and re-lease him onto the wharf. If Wakefield's instinct was right, in his confused state the boy would go to retrieve the pages wherever they were hidden. But his senses would be impaired enough to allow Herman to easily overtake him; and, to make the affair even cleaner, if the boy reported the theft to the police they wouldn't listen because he'd be stuck in the aura of the drug.

But Daniel, upon retrieving the bundle from a stray barrel, lost Herman in the crowded piers of the wharf and the commotion of the waterfront. When Herman grabbed him at Dock Square, Daniel pulled away and was struck by the omnibus. There were too many people around for Herman to get the papers. But Wakefield joined the circle of observers around Daniel's body and heard the name of Sylvanus Bendall, the lawyer who would greedily confiscate the pages.

“YOU WERE THERE,” said Osgood to Wakefield with an unexpected tinge of envy. “You were there when poor Daniel died.”

“No,” Rebecca whispered, horrified by the thought and the new vividness of her brother's final moments.

Wakefield nodded. “Yes, I was among the many curious spectators as he expired. The poor boy still called your name, Osgood. By the time Herman retrieved the pages from Bendall-the two-penny lawyer carried them around with him on his person, leaving us little choice how to serve him-we learned even those later installments of the serial, the fourth, fifth, and sixth, had no reliable clues to the ending of the book. We were about to return to England. Then our stool pigeon in your firm told us that you were going to sail to Gadshill to find the end of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Why do you think it was so easy for Mr. Fields to get you passage at the last minute, my dear Osgood, when he decided to send you? The Samaria was the only liner with any room left-because I made certain of it. Because the Samaria and all its crew all belong to me.”

“When Herman disappeared in the middle of the ocean, where had you hidden him? The captain, the stewards, the ship detective all looked for him,” Osgood said.

“They work for me. Me, me, Osgood. Herman no more disappeared in the middle of the ocean than you did. It didn't occur to us that you'd pay a visit without escort days after the charade of locking him up. He was safely stored away in our secret rooms below the captain's quarters as he was on the passage back to Boston we've just completed. But by that point you trusted me, dare I say, with your life. As well you should have. Herman protected you in London from the opium fiends when those fools attacked you for your purse and left you where you were sure to be given help. He saved you.”

“So I could live long enough to find what you were after.”

Wakefield nodded. “In the meantime, my entire business began to suffer-payments gone unmade, opium managers avoiding my suppliers. Why do you think those opium fiends salivated at the sight of you? They'd kill any stranger for a shilling. The whole field of opium dealers had become dry as they all read The Mystery of Edwin Drood in its serial parts along with the rest of the world.”

“But why?” Osgood asked.

“Because my trade had very quickly recognized in Dickens's words what you've unearthed, the story of Edward Trood, and saw in those hints of Drood's survival a looming danger to our enterprise. Nor could we afford any further attention on the ‘murderers’ of Trood- that is why Herman stole the statue from the auction house. That Turk, in the statue, you see, was done by some interfering artist of the real man, Imam, one of the opium pushers who helped conceal ‘my’ body. We didn't need Imam's face on display at the biggest auction to be held at Christie's in the last hundred years! This attention to everything related to Dickens's final days and book was all nothing less than disaster!”