“What?”
“Bookselling. Your problem is the educational system. It’s become too good. Aristocrats enjoy spending as much money as possible on books. The greater portion of the population that learns to read, the more they will revolt against having to pay to do so. Now, your business.”
I explained how recently I had been given the unexpected chance to be of some service to some in his field, and that I thought, perhaps, that if he should ever need assistance similar to that which I had performed from time to time for his fellow bookaneers—not that he would, being so accomplished—but in the odd event, the unexpected and unlikely occasion, the rare spot that he did find that he did, I thought to leave him my card.
“Oh. You are finished?”
“Well, I—Sorry.”
“Do you know how many of the great bookaneers have passed through this room over the years?”
“No.”
“They were individuals who rose, usually without the name of a college or a family, to hold as much sway as rich publishers and esteemed authors, more so in some cases, in determining the public’s access to books. If they did wrong sometimes, well, so have the publishers—so have books themselves, which have started wars and have ended them, have saved lives and vanquished them without mercy. I understand you are a sort of encyclopedia when it comes to knowledge about our trade. I wonder if you noticed how I rate among the bookaneers—”
“Oh, the very top of the pile, I’d say! Pen Davenport? A master. Right up alongside Belial.”
Later, I would understand that Davenport was not to be read all at once, like a broadside, but unfolded gradually, as the pages of a long, multivolume set of books. I had made two mistakes in a single breath. I had interrupted his monologue, without intending to, and I had said Belial.
His deep annoyance showed itself only by the downward slope of his brow and the pursing of his fine mouth. He punished me with three long beats of silence before his face relaxed. “Belial,” he began in a grumbling voice. “Belial would eat your heart if given the chance. Tell me this, bookseller. Imagine Belial sitting beside me right now, and he offered you a place helping him, and I offered the same. You must accept one or the other, for we two are men of opposite principles.”
“How do you mean?”
“I am a man who respects the supremacy of books; he is one who seeks to gain supremacy from them. Which man would you accept?”
“Why, I suppose whoever needed my help more.”
I took his elaborately crumpled chin and his hunched shoulders to mean I had insulted him. “If you noticed how I rate among the bookaneers, if you possessed that modicum of knowledge, you would know that the reason I am first-rate is that I need no help. Certainly not the help of a man who believes I would do anything in the style as a ruffian such as Whiskey Bill.”
“My apologies.” I gave my spectacles a good polish and then took another quick glance around the room. “I am sorry I do not know what bookaneers have been in this place through history, Mr. Davenport. But I can tell you that Edgar Boehm said he made that statuette behind you in only two sittings with William Thackeray in 1860, but in fact he completed it only after the novelist’s death. One of those four seemingly identical—seemingly, I say—early editions of Shakespeare on that oval table in the far corner is a forgery, and I would venture to guess a misprint on the title page of the third novel from the left on the shelf to the right of you has led the librarian of this club to believe it is a much older volume than it is.”
“Listen to me, bookseller. I am going to ask you something, and if you can answer, I may give you a chance.”
Hope returned to me, and hearing the beating of my heart in my ears reminded me how much I craved what he held out. I prepared myself, took a deep breath, nodded.
“Understand, Mr. Fergins, that when a man does work for me, he works for no one else.”
“What is the question?”
“It is a simple and easy one—too easy. Whiskey Bill transferred a number of books over the past year and a half through your bookstall into other hands. What were in those books?”
I felt my racing heart skip. “I cannot answer.”
“You do not remember or—” He broke off. He studied me through a series of slow blinks, then nodded. “No. You are loyal to the man.”
I smiled and shook my head no. “I cannot answer, Mr. Davenport, simply because I do not know. You see, I never opened them.” I placed the unlit cigar down in front of him and began to gather myself to leave.
“Wait a minute.”
I paused at the threshold of the smoking room. I wasn’t even certain he was still addressing me. When I turned around, he was concentrating on his cigar for a while before he put it out and spoke again.
“Congratulations. You gave the one right answer, bookseller.”
“Did I?”
His hands were folded in his lap, the fingertips on one hand tapping the tips of his other hand as he considered me and waited for me to say something sensible.
I almost broke down laughing. Pen Davenport had congratulated me, and Thackeray and Macbeth were witnesses.
III