The Last Dickens

relief. He watched the pages below them in various states of demise and ashes. To breathe was utter agony.

“Mr. Osgood!” Rebecca called out. She pulled him out of the way just as Molasses lunged forward onto the edge of the elevator shaft. The Bookaneer was reaching for any stray pages.

“The Mystery of Edwin Drood!” the Bookaneer called out. “Even one page would be priceless!” His hat tumbled off and caught fire as another explosion from the engine room shot up toward them.

Osgood pushed himself to his feet and leaned into the red hot shaft, grabbing the back of the bookaneer's collar and coat, the bottom of which was already singeing.

“One page!” the man was repeating. “Just one!”

“Molasses! It's gone! It's already gone!”

Osgood pulled Molasses backward as the engine room exploded once more and this time filled the buckling elevator shaft with a solid column of fire. Osgood had taken Rebecca into his arms as they watched from the precipice of the fifth floor.

“Quickly!” urged a newly sensible Molasses as the fire and steam spread.

As the three survivors ran down the stairs, Molasses periodically cried out in lament for the lost pages. “You couldn't, could you? How could you allow him to destroy the end of The Mystery of Edwin Drood! The last Dickens, in a column of smoke!”

The poor Bookaneer, unwilling to accept the defeat, followed behind the firemen as they trooped into the building pulling their hoses from their nearby engines. In the meantime, Rebecca helped Osgood to a curb across from the building. He sat and coughed violently.

“I shall go for a doctor,” said Rebecca.

Osgood held up a hand to plead for her to wait. “I hope the lady shall not be offended,” he said at the first moment he could find his voice. He scraped the ash and grime off his hand, then inserted his hand under his torn shirt, into the bandages around his chest.

He took out a thin collection of papers flattened against his skin.

Rebecca gasped. “Is it…?”

“The final chapter-while I was in the elevator alone, I hid it. Just in case…”

“Mr. Osgood! Remarkable! Why, even without the rest of it, just to have the ending will change everything. What is Edwin Drood's fate?” She reached out her hand, then hesitated. “May I?”

“You have earned it as much as I, Miss Sand,” he said, passing the pages to her.

As she looked down, she passed her hand over the first page of the chapter as if its words could be touched. Her bright eyes glistened with curiosity and amazement.

“Well?” asked Osgood knowingly. “What do you think of it, my darling? Can you read it?”

“Not a word!” she said, then laughed. “Oh, it's beautiful!”

Chapter 39

CHARLES DICKENS HAD KNOWN HE HAD TO BE BETTER THAN ALL the others. He was not yet twenty years old and was trying to compete with the more experienced corps of London reporters. It had been their mission to provide verbatim reports of the speeches of the most important members of Parliament and the chief cases at chancery.

There were two primary questions surrounding them: who could write the most accurately, and who could write fastest. The Gurney system of brachygraphy, or shorthand, brought him under its magical, mysterious spell. Brachygraphy, or an easy and compendious System of Shorthand rested on and under his pillow. It permitted an ordinary human, after some close training and prayer, to condense the usual long-winded language of their fellow beings into mere scratches and dots on a page. The reporter would copy down an orator's speech in this cobweb of markings, then rush out the door. If outside the city, in Edinburgh or some country village, he would bend over his paper while being driven in a carriage, scribbling furiously under a small wax lamp as he transformed onto blank slips of paper the strange symbols into full words-occasionally sticking his head out the window to prevent sickness along the rocky passage.

The green reporter Dickens mastered the Gurney, just as his father had once done in brief employment as a shorthand writer, but that was not enough. Young Dickens altered and adjusted Gurney-he created his own shorthand-better and quicker than anyone else's. Soon, the most important English speeches were always certified at the bottom of the page by C. Dickens, Shorthand Writer, 5, Bell Yard, Doctors’ Commons.

That was how he could write so much, even half a book, in the small cracks of a full schedule while in America. That was the only way his pen could keep pace with his mind and reveal the fate of Edwin Drood.

The Gurney system had years ago been replaced by that of Taylor and then by Pitman's. Rebecca had been trained in Pitman's at the Bryant and Stratton Commercial School for women on Washington Street before applying to be a bookkeeper. Fields and Osgood, after depositing the pages from the satchel representing the last chapter of The Mystery of Edwin Drood in their fireproof safe at 124 Tremont Street, did consult some of the first-rate shorthand writers in Boston (several of whom, themselves the brainier Bookaneers, had been the ones attempting to copy down Dickens's improvisations at the Tremont Temple before Tom Branagan and Daniel Sand stopped them). They would only show them a page or two, for purposes of secrecy, and did not tell them the provenance of the document. No luck-it was useless. The system, even for those very familiar with Gurney, was too eccentric to decipher more than a few scattered words.

They sent confidential cables to Chapman & Hall seeking advice on the matter. Meanwhile, quietly, Fields and Osgood made preparations with their printer and illustrator for a special edition of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, complete with the exclusive final chapter.

The first week after the retrieval of the manuscript there were endless consultations and interviews with the chief of police, customs agents, the state attorney, and the British consulate. Montague Midges, denying all accusations, was immediately dismissed from his post and interrogated by the police about his conversations with Wakefield and Herman. The Samaria was boarded by customs and an eager tax collector named Simon Pennock, using the information gathered by Osgood and the late Jack Rogers, and every member of the crew was taken into custody. The Royal Navy had been alerted, and over a matter of months the majority of Marcus Wakefield's operation was dismantled.

One morning, Osgood was called into Fields's office where he was shocked to be staring straight into the mouth of a long rifle.

“Halloa, old boy!”

The double-barreled rifle was hanging loosely behind the shoulder of a burly, ruddy man in a tight-fitting sporting outfit with high leather gaiters, knee breeches, and a cartridge belt around his wide waist. Frederic Chapman.

“Mr. Chapman, forgive me if I wear a look of astonishment,” Os-good began. “We sent our cables to you in London not two days ago.”

Chapman gave his mighty laugh. “You see, Osgood, I was in New York on some dull business for the firm, and on my way in full force to a shooting party in the Adirondacks when the hotel messenger stopped me at the train station with a cable from my office in London passing along your intelligence. Naturally I boarded the next train into Boston. I always liked Boston-the streets are crooked and the New Englandism is down to a science. I say, these”- he delicately picked up the small sheaf of pages with care and awe-“are simply remarkable! Imagine!”

“Can you make sense of it, then?” Fields asked.

“Me? Not a single speck, not a single word, Mr. Fields!” Chapman declared without any diminished excitement. “Osgood, where did you go? There you are. Say, how is it you came upon this?”

Osgood exchanged a questioning look with Fields.

“Mr. Osgood is our most diligent man!” Fields exclaimed proudly.

“Well, I should think this proves it,” said Chapman, resting his hands on his cartridge belt. “I could use men like you, Osgood. My clerks, they're worthless and hopeless creatures. Now we must set in motion a plan to