“Mr. Chapman, I suppose you have already thoroughly investigated what else might remain of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. We would benefit greatly if you'd share whatever intelligence you have gained.”
“Investigated? Why, Mr. Osgood, you speak like one of the detectives in all the new novels. You tickle my belly with your American notions.”
“I don't mean to,” Osgood returned seriously.
“No?” Chapman asked, disappointed. “But what would be investigated about it?”
Osgood, flabbergasted, said, “Whether Mr. Dickens left any clues, any indications about where his story was to go.”
Chapman interrupted with a satisfyingly hearty laugh, proving the alleged tickling. “See here, Osgood, old boy,” he said, “you are a laugh in the real American fashion, aren't you? Why, I'm perfectly content with what we have of Drood. Six excellent installments.”
“They are superb, I agree. But if I understand correctly, you paid quite a sum for the book,” Osgood said incredulously.
“Seventy-five hundred pounds! The highest sum ever paid to an author for a new book.” This he pointed out boastfully in Rebecca's direction.
“I would think your firm would wish to do whatever were possible to protect your investment,” Osgood said.
“I will tell you how I see it. Every reader who picks up the book, finding it unfinished, can spend their time guessing what the ending should be. And they'll tell their friends to buy a copy and do the same, so it can be argued.”
“In America, its unfinished state will bait all the freebooters, as they are called,” Osgood said.
“That scoundrel Major Harper and his ilk,” Chapman said, tipping his glass high and ingesting his port with a predatory swiftness as he glanced up at the congregation of animal heads. His hunting eyes, always roving, paused back on Osgood. “That's the thing you're worried about, isn't it?” he finally added. He leaned in toward Rebecca-not exactly unfriendly to Osgood's predicament but entirely lacking in interest relative to the pretty bookkeeper sitting across. “Say, I suppose your employer fought bravely in your War of Rebellion, didn't be? Lucky. Why, here we haven't any wars to speak of lately-small ones, but nothing worth suiting up for. Nothing to show oneself to the world as a man or to impress the ladies.”
“I see, Mr. Chapman,” Rebecca replied, refusing to shrink from the intensity of his attention.
“Remind me which battles you fought in, then, old boy?” Chapman asked, turning to Osgood.
“Actually,” Osgood said, “I had suffered the bad effects of rheumatism when I was younger, Mr. Chapman.”
“Shame!”
“I am all better now. However, it prevented any notion of being a soldier.”
“Still, sir, Mr. Osgood helped publish those books and poems,” Rebecca interjected, “that contributed to the enthusiasm and commitment of the Union to persevere in the cause.”
“What a pity not to have soldiered!” Chapman responded. “You have my sympathy, Osgood.”
“Thank you, Mr. Chapman. About Drood,” Osgood said pointedly, changing the path of his persuasion. “Think of the value of our being able to better understand Dickens's final work. For the sake of literature.”
It seemed by the twinkle in his eye and the draw of his mouth that Chapman might start another laughing fit. Instead, his impressive frame bounded to his window and he put a fingertip against the glass. “Why, you sound like some of the young clerks out there. I can't tell them apart most of the time, they're rather indistinct, don't you think, Miss Sand?”
“I suppose I do not know, Mr. Chapman,” Rebecca began. “They seem dedicated to their work.”
“You!” Chapman's strong brow curled up on itself and he leaned out the door where some clerks were packing up a shipment of books into boxes.
A clerk nervously stepped inside the office. The other clerks all stopped what they were doing and waited on their colleague's fate.
“Say, clerk, can't you go more quickly than that packing the books?” Chapman demanded.
“Sir,” answered the clerk, “quite sorry, it's the smell that slows us down.”
“The smell!” Chapman repeated with an indignation suggesting he had been accused of personally originating the odor. He unleashed a series of furious expletives describing the clerk's incompetence. When the publisher finished, the clerk meekly explained that Chapman's latest addition to the larder room, a haunch of venison, had become too malodorous in the summer heat.
Chapman, putting up his nose as a test, relented, nodding. “All right. Put the venison on a four-wheeler, and I'll take it home for dinner,” he ordered.
Chapman had punctuated his insults by lighting a cigar, while the clerk was waiting for dismissal. When Chapman turned back to the young man again he looked on him as though he did not know where he had come from.
“You don't look very well!” Chapman remarked to the young man.
“Sir?”
“Not at all well. Pale, even. Say, can you drink a glass of port?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Tell them to send you up a couple of bottles from the basement.” The clerk fled.
“This office runs like a clock,” Chapman said with impatient sarcasm to his visitors. “Now, you were-you were commenting about literature.” He picked up a bundle of papers. “You see this poetry book? Quite lovely. What they call literature. This, I will save in the closet to burn in my hearth in the winter. Why? Because poetry doesn't pay. Never has paid, never will. No use for it, you see, Miss Sand.”
“Why, Mr. Chapman, I quite adore novels,” Rebecca said, sitting more erect and looking right at their host. “But in our saddest or happiest time, when we are all alone, what would we do without poetry to speak to us?”
Chapman poured another glass of port for himself. “A fiver is plenty to give for any poem, especially as all poets are hard up. Five pounds would buy the best any of them could do. No, no, it's adventure, out-of-air expeditions, that people want to read these days, with the wretched state of the trade. Ouida, Edmund Yates, Hawley Smart, your American rye-and-Indian novels, that's the new literature that people will remember-God bless Dickens, with all his social causes and sympathies, but we must forget the past and move forward. Yes, we must not look back.”
OUTSIDE THE OFFICE, in the deep shadows of the back alley, the slight clerk who had been reprimanded by Chapman, his head buzzing with port, climbed onto the back of a wagon. He tried to drag the massive, smelly venison haunch up by a rope. He struggled and puffed until a stronger hand easily slid it up from the ground.
“Thanky, gov'n'r!” said the clerk. “Blast this venison. Blast venison, generally.”
The man who had helped him was cloaked in the shadows. He now tossed a coin in the air, which the clerk clumsily caught to his chest with both hands.
“Why, shouldn't I pay you, gov'n'r?”
“You hear what your boss was saying to Mr. Osgood?” asked the stranger.
“That American?” The clerk thought about it, then nodded.
“Then there's more of this for you. Come.” He held out his hand to help the clerk step down from the wagon, though as it emerged from the shadow, it was clear that it was not a hand at all. It was a gold beasty head at the top of a walking stick. Its glittering black eyes shined out like holes bored through the shadows.
“Come. It won't bite,” the dark stranger said.
“Why'd you want to know about Mr. Osgood, anyway?” the clerk asked as he took hold of the cane and stepped down from the wagon.
“Let's say I'm a-learning the book trade.”
Chapter 16
BACK AT THE DICKENS FAMILY HOME OF GADSHILL, OSGOOD and Rebecca had turned to the books and documents in the library. Osgood observed the library with a publisher's jealous interest in another man's books. There was a row of Wilkie Collins volumes and an English edition of Poe's poetry-as well as many editions from Fields, Osgood & Co.