Free The Last Bookaneer by Matthew Pearl Page A

been afraid of the bigger missions since she’s been gone. You loved her. We all loved her, you know, in our own ways.”
    Davenport rose to his feet and drew back as though to slap the man’s face. I was about to try to catch him when he extended his hand down toward the bed. They shook.
    â€œI have nothing more to say,” said Davenport. “I trust I will meet you in the field again one day, Whiskey Bill. Godspeed.”
    â€œThat day, I will finally best you.”
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    I MUST HAVE APOLOGIZED a dozen times for having persuaded Davenport to take that trip to the asylum—I could hardly remember if it really had been a matter of my convincing him, but that was how he saw it and so it was fact. A few days passed. He had some business back at the Garrick Club and I received a message to go there. I found him in the same smoking room where we first met. He was sitting next to a well-known German printer, who excused himself to the card room.
    â€œYour notebook, Fergins,” he said.
    He snatched it out of my hands. Turning the pages furiously, he found the notes I took at Caterham. He held it out to a spot where there was a little more light than smoke.
    â€œI do apologize for talking you into that awful place. You were right, I shouldn’t have bothered you. I should have torn up Bill’s letter when I received it—and burned it in the fire, too.”
    â€œTry not to speak for a minute.” He hummed to himself. “Did you think there was any truth to what Whiskey Bill tried to sell us?”
    â€œThat nonsense about Samoa, you mean?” The fact was, I would have preferred Davenport drop the whole matter. I did not like the glimmer I had noticed in his eye at the talk of Samoa. But I had to be honest. “Something in his voice—well, I could not help but think that at least some of it rang true.”
    Davenport showed my comment the respect of a slow nod. “It was a ruse, a trap to send me on a wild goose chase far from here. The very fact that you believe it shows how well planned it was. The question remains this: Why would he want to do that? I want you to make inquiries into Stevenson so we can prove Bill’s deceit. Meanwhile, I need fresh reports on Ruskin, Swinburne, Hardy, Tennyson, any author of esteem living or passing through London this season. Do you understand?”
    â€œThen you do not believe what he said? Any of it?”
    â€œLook around us.” Pen gestured around the room at the plush leather furniture and the large portraits hanging in rows around the walls. “ Here is the environment of a man of literary eminence such as Robert Louis Stevenson. Somewhere that feels just dangerous enough to excite the imagination, but is actually as safe as could be. That is what a writer craves, and that’s why when it’s time for writers to die, they die in their beds.”
    â€œPerhaps Stevenson is the exception.”
    â€œI told you, Whiskey Bill is neither insane nor dying. Everything that Judas-haired swindler says to us is a lie. He is using the fact we cannot prove where Stevenson is while he is out at sea in order to catch us in his web. Count on the fact that it will not work. But he might try again through other means, and I will be prepared. I suspect he wants to lure me out of London, at which point he’ll leave the asylum and claim some prize for himself that is right under our noses, maybe having to do with Stevenson, maybe another litterateur of value with Stevenson a red herring to draw us away. The more elaborate his scheme, the more profit hidden behind it. I believe once we know why Bill dangled this before us, a lucrative mission will be revealed.”
    He added something else to my assignment: “Watch Bill’s activity in the asylum as closely as possible. When Bill is discharged, we’ll know something is about to happen. For now, he speaks of seeing aviaries in