“Both ships sunk by ice and you miraculously saved by passing Yaks,” he says. “That’s quite a story you have to tell the waiting world.”
“Maybe so, but I won’t be telling it anytime soon.”
Baxter raises his eyebrows and takes a quick sip of his drink.
“And why is that?” he asks.
“I don’t wish to become known as the one man who survived the Volunteer. I should never have been on that ship. I should never have seen what I saw there.”
“There are widows and orphans aplenty in this town who would like nothing better than to meet a man who could tell them the first-hand truth about what happened. You’d be doing them a great kindness, I’d say.”
Sumner shakes his head.
“The truth won’t help them any. Not now.”
Baxter licks his lips and curls a strand of gray hair behind his darkly bristled ear. He smiles briefly, as if entertained by this idea.
“You may be right,” he says. “Keeping quiet may be the greater kindness, I suppose. Since the men are long dead, the details of their deaths hardly matter. What purpose will it serve to stir things up? Let the poor bastards rest in peace, I say. It was a terrible accident, but such things must be endured.”
Sumner shifts about in his seat. He rubs the nerveless tip of his healed-up tongue against his lips and teeth.
“Some of it was accident and some wasn’t,” he says. “You read my letter. You know about the killings.”
Baxter sighs and glances sideways across the room. He takes a drink and then peers down for a while at the gleaming toe ends of his patent leather pumps.
“Horrifying,” he whispers. “Just horrifying. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Cavendish? Brownlee? A fucking cabin boy?”
“When he signed on, you had no idea?”
“About Drax? Fuck no. What do you take me for? The man was a great heathen, of course, but he seemed no worse than average for a Greenland harpooner and a good deal better than some I’ve known.”
Sumner looks at Baxter and nods. He remembers Joseph Hannah and feels a sudden tightening in his chest.
“Someone should search for him,” he says. “Perhaps I should try it myself. He may still be alive.”
Baxter frowns and shakes his head.
“Henry Drax is either dead or he’s in Canada, which if you ask me is near enough the same thing. And you’re a surgeon, not a detective. What business do you have chasing after murderers?”
Baxter waits for his answer, but Sumner stays silent.
“You put Henry Drax behind you now, Patrick,” Baxter says, “far behind you, just like you’ve put the rest of it. That’s the wisest course for you by far. He’ll be judged soon enough one way or the other.”
“If I ever see him again, I expect I’ll know what to do,” Sumner says.
“Aye, but you won’t see him again,” Baxter says. “He’s gone for good now, and we should both be fucking grateful for that mercy.”
Sumner nods and reaches into his pocket for his clay pipe and tobacco pouch. When Baxter sees what he is doing, he goes to his desk and brings back a box of cigars. They take one each and light them.
“I need employment,” Sumner tells him. “I have a letter here.”
“Show me.”
He takes the priest’s letter from his pocket and passes it to Baxter. Baxter reads.
“And this is the missionary you wintered with?”
Sumner nods.
“Says here you saved his life.”
“I did what I could. Most of it was raw luck.”
Baxter refolds the letter and hands it back.
“I know a man down in London,” he says, “a surgeon name of Gregory, James Gregory. Ever heard of him?”
Sumner shakes his head.
“He’s a good fellow. He’ll find you something that pays,” Baxter says. “I’ll write to him today. We’ll get you a bed in the Pilgrim’s Arms for tonight, then when we hear back from Gregory, we can put you on the train. There’s fuck all for a man like you to do around here. The whaling trade is dying on its feet. You’re too young and bright for Hull. London’s the place for your kind.”
“I’ll need my wages from you,” Sumner says.
“Aye, aye, of course you will. I’ll get them now, and when you’re settled in at the Pilgrim’s, I’ll have Stevens send you round a pint of good brandy and a nice plump whore to ease you back into the ways of civilized living.”
After Sumner is gone, Baxter sits at his desk and ponders. His tongue, pink at the edges and yellow down the middle, flickers around inside his mouth, as if each of his ideas has a distinctive flavor and he is tasting each one in turn. Eventually, after nearly half an hour of thinking, he stands up, looks around the room quickly as if to check everything is in its place, then walks to the door and opens it. Out on the shadowed landing, instead of descending to the ground floor as he normally would, he climbs the narrow uncarpeted staircase up to the attic. When he reaches the top, he knocks once and enters. The room he steps into is small and steeply pitched; there is a circular window in the gable end and a dusty skylight cut into one side of the roof. The floorboards are splintery and unpolished and the walls lack plaster. There is a wooden chair and a metal camp bed for furniture, some empty brandy bottles on the floor, and a thunder pot brimming with dark brown piss and curled fragments of floating turd. Baxter, stooping and covering his nose, walks to the bed and shakes awake the man who is lying on it. The man grumbles and gasps, farts lengthily, then turns over and slowly shows an eyeball.
“So tell me,” he says.
“It won’t do, Henry,” Baxter answers. “He knows too much, and what he doesn’t know he can piece together easy enough. It was all I could do to stop him running off to the fucking magistrate.”
Drax swings his feet onto the rugless floor and pushes himself up into a sitting position. He yawns and scratches himself.
“He don’t know about the sinking,” he says. “He can’t know that.”
“He may not know, but he suspects. He knows it wasn’t right. Why turn the ship north when every other fucker’s sailing south?”
“He said that?”
“He did.”
Drax reaches under the bed, finds a nearly empty brandy bottle, and drinks it off.
“And what does he say about me?”
“He swears he’ll search until he finds you. He says he’ll hire a man if need be.”
“What man?”
“In Canada. To find out what became of you, to track your movements since.”
Drax licks his lips and shakes his head.
“He won’t find me,” he says.
“He won’t stop looking. He swore to it on his mother’s grave. I told him you were most likely dead by now, but he wouldn’t believe me. A man like Henry Drax doesn’t just die, he says, he must be killed.”
“Killed? He’s just a fucking surgeon.”
“He was in the army though, remember. The siege of Delhi. He’s got some vinegar in him, I’d say.”
Drax peers into the empty bottle and sniffs. His skin is puce and his eyes are sunk down into his face. Baxter wipes off the chair seat with his handkerchief and gingerly sits down.
“And where is he now?” Drax says.
“I’ve got him a room in the Pilgrim’s Arms. I’ll send a whore up to keep him occupied, but we need to do this tonight, Henry. We can’t delay. If he gets to the magistrate in the morning, there’s no telling what trouble he’ll cause for us.”
“I been drinking all day,” he says. “Get that lazy fucker Stevens to do it for you.”
“I can’t trust Stevens with a task like this one, Henry. All our fortune is riding on it, don’t you see that? If Sumner blabs, there’ll be no more money coming to either of us. They’ll hang you up by the neck and throw me into jail.”