“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.
“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.”