“All right, Mr. Scott?” Tom asked, concerned.
Henry looked right at Tom, thankful to find a witness. He dropped his usual reticence and slumped into one of the plush armchairs. “Baggage handlers? Baggage smashers!”
The trunks of Dickens's clothing from the Cuba had been delivered to the hotel crushed and dented. Tom sat down on the rug and helped Henry reorganize the clothes.
“Thank you, Tom Branagan,” Henry said, embarrassed. “It's more outrageous than a man could bear when one's work is treated like this. Beastly country!”
As soon as the two men had restored sufficient order to the wardrobe, there was another disturbance from across the hall. George Dolby was braying and shouting. He stood with Dickens and the others in the hallway of the hotel passing around a copy of Harper's Weekly. Tom asked if they were all right.
“See for yourself, Branagan,” said Dolby, pronouncing his name with a most stately explosion of the tongue that conveyed a measure of censure. “All right? Certainly not!”
In the magazine was a cartoon showing in grotesque caricature the figures of Dickens and Dolby barring the door of a room labeled “Parker House” against hordes of Americans on the other side. The cowardly Mr. Dickens was crying out, “Not at home!”
“I don't suppose this artist was actually present here,” Tom said after a moment of deliberation. “This drawing shows Mr. Dickens hiding in his room from the onlookers, which was not the case.”
“Of course he wasn't hiding!” said Dolby, aghast.
Dickens stroked the slight iron gray streak in his beard and, punching his cheek out with his tongue as he did at uncomfortable times, looked up wearily from the cartoon. “Weren't we? Didn't I come here to do just that: hide, then sneak out from my hole long enough to collect my profit?” The novelist sighed and limped into the room on his lame right leg, an old injury reawakened by the sea travel.
THAT NIGHT TOM woke up in the small hours. His eyes danced in the darkness of the hotel room to the mantel clock.
“Did you hear that, Scott?” he whispered across the room to Henry.
Henry Scott stirred in his bed.
“A noise,” Tom explained. “Did you hear a noise?”
Henry's face was in his pillow. “Go to sleep, Tom Branagan.”
Tom had been having trouble sleeping in the Parker House-there was something about its opulence that disoriented him. Tom was not certain he had actually heard a noise-or at least not a noise different from the usual ones from the busy streets of Boston outside-but he was glad to justify his uneasy wakefulness. The clock's ticking teased him out of bed.
He took a candle into the hallway, wearing a pilot coat over his long white flannels. Passing Dickens's rooms, he noticed that the door to the novelist's bedroom was open.
It looked like it had been kicked open. The inside latch broken.
“Mr. Dickens?” Tom knocked.
Tom went inside. For a moment, a strange thought flashed through him: how wrong it would be for anyone to ever see Charles Dickens sleeping. But the bed was in disarray and empty, and the novelist nowhere in sight.
Tom ran through the novelist's parlor glancing around for other signs of struggle and pounded with his fist on the door that adjoined with Dolby's rooms. As he entered, Dolby was pulling his dressing gown around himself. “What is it, Branagan? You'll wake the Chief!”
“Mr. Dolby,” Tom said, pointing. “Dickens is missing.”
“What? Heavens,” Dolby began to stammer, barely able to order to send for the “p-p-pol-l-lice!”
Just then Dickens himself strode in. “What is going on in here?” he asked, alarmed. He'd entered from the back staircase that connected by the private door to his room.
“Chief!” Dolby cried, rushing over to the novelist at full speed and embracing him. “Thank heavens! Is everything all right?”
“Surely, my good Dolby.” Dickens explained that thinking about the awful Harper's cartoon-and the shooting pain in his foot-had disrupted his sleep and he had decided to take a breather outside.
Dolby, tying the cord waist of his gown in a dignified fashion, turned to his assistant. “You see, Branagan, all is quite well in here. The Chief went down the back!”
“But it is the front door that was forced open, and the latch broken,” Tom said.
Dickens suddenly looked concerned as they confirmed this by examining the door. “Dolby, ring for a hotel clerk. No, don't! I don't want the whole staff to hear the bell. Fetch someone quietly.” Dickens hastily went to his desk and checked the center drawer. He appeared relieved at finding it locked.
“Do you think someone has been in here, Mr. Branagan?” Dickens asked.
“Sir, I feel it is very likely.” After a few moments of examining the room, Tom noticed a scrap of paper on the bed.
Dolby returned to the room. “I've sent Kelly downstairs. Is anything missing, Chief?”
Dickens had been surveying his belongings. “Nothing of consequence. Except…”
“What is it?” Dolby asked.
“Well, strange to say, isn't it, you'll likely laugh. But I notice there is a pillow taken from my bed, Dolby.”
“A pillow, Chief?” Dolby asked. “Branagan, what have you found?”
“A letter, sir. It is difficult to read the hand.”
I am your utmost favorite reader in all of these vulgar American states. I anticipate with delicious fervor holding your next book in my hands. Your next book will be your utmost best, I know without qualification, because you are…
Dolby and Dickens both burst into relieved laughter, interrupting Tom's reading.
“Mr. Dickens, Mr. Dolby. I hardly find this comical. Worrisome indeed,” Tom pleaded.
“Mr. Branagan, it wasn't a renegade soldier of the Fenian Brotherhood, at least!” Dickens said.
“Just some harmless fellow who worships at the feet of the Chief,” said Dolby. “We shall never exhaust them. Let's leave it at that,” added Dolby.
Tom persisted. “Someone forcibly entered the room and then stole from it. What if Mr. Dickens had been inside at the time? What if this ‘harmless fellow’ comes back when Mr. Dickens is alone?”
“Stole? Did you say ‘stole’? A nothing, a mere pillow!” said Dolby, now almost jolly about the incident. “Haven't you seen the hotel barroom? Why, you may liquor up with all creation. It is quite the place to give people the courage for such pranks.”
Henry Scott procured another pillow for the Chief and straightened his bedclothes. Tom relayed the story in truncated form to Richard Kelly, but the ticket agent, too, found the conclusion of the events a singular source of amusement. “All that for a stone hard pillow!” Richard raved. “The American republic!”
“Mr. Dolby, I would like to stay on watch outside of Mr. Dickens's door,” Tom said, turning to his employer.
“Out of the question! I'll tell you what you will do, Branagan,” Dolby replied grandiloquently with a wave of his hand. Dolby's hand traveled down to the end of his mustache as though yanking a bell -pull, but before he could finish he was interrupted.
It was Dickens: “If Mr. Branagan should like to wrestle with humanity outside my room, I give my blessing.”
“Thank you, sir,” Tom said, bowing to Dickens.
Tom kept the note, folding it into his pocket as he took his place of vigilance at the door.
Chapter 13
THE ENGLISH VISITORS QUICKLY EMBRACED THE ODDITY OF LIFE in America-everything had to be difficult in order to be worthwhile. Friday had been the incident in Dickens's rooms. By Saturday afternoon it was decided that either one of the staff or one of Parker's waiters would be in front of Dickens's room at all times, and someone would always walk with him on his daily breathers. Dolby informed Tom Branagan of this procedure at Sunday's breakfast with a proprietary air, but Tom suspected that Dickens himself had requested the change. The novelist outwardly took a light approach to his own safety, yet he had seen something more serious in Dickens's eye.