Not their christened names, that is. There was Molasses, so titled humorously for his always harried pace. Esquire was a colored gentleman, a former cabman, who taught fencing and dancing in the Negro neighborhoods. Kitten was one of the females of this elite and grimy clique and could have charmed the drink right out of the hands of Whiskey Bill, another of their rivals.
It was Molasses, today, in a black neck cloth and moleskin jacket, who was a hair's breadth from sweet victory. Victory! During the War of the Rebellion, Molasses had been a professional bounty man, paid to take the place of rich lads in the draft who did not want to serve. Using various aliases to get his money and then vanishing as eagerly from each regiment, the powdery days of war helped Molasses pocket five thousand dollars in two and a half years. Since then he had taken to dying his hair and beard colors never known to grow on any man naturally. The beard was also overlong. He had sworn that he would not shave until a Democrat was president and those cheating Republicans out of business.
There. Right in front of Molasses's eyes was hidden what he wanted. He had been ordered by wire from Philadelphia to retrieve the treasure for a hefty reward. Stationing himself in one of the fish houses on the waterfront with his long spyglass, he had seen the young man in the suit hide it earlier that morning. Now it would be his.
A wharfinger was taking up an abandoned barrel.
“Beg pardon,” Molasses said, approaching and picking his tweed cap off his head as if in polite greeting. “I'll take that, sir.”
“Who are you?” asked the wharfinger in a firm German accent. “Go away from my barrels, wharf rat.”
Molasses kicked over the barrel with his unlaced boot. To his dismay, nothing but stray fish bones poured out. He couldn't believe it. He crouched down, rummaging through the mess. When he looked up, there was Esquire standing over him, gallantly chuckling. “Squire, you copper bottom rascal! Where are they?”
“They're not here! Calm down, ‘lasses, I didn't procure the papers neither. You didn't get them, I didn't get them, and I saw Kitten- I think she's working for C. today-at an old tug with a face like she'd been slapped on the back while eating a stick of butter. Why, they've likely vanished safely altogether by now to their rightful owner, I s'pose. Rotten luck.”
The German wharfinger became red in the face. “If you do not leave my wharf, I shall send for the police.”
Molasses kicked violently at the barrel until it was in pieces. Then he cried out a warning to the wharfinger in German. This time, the wharfinger backed away.
“Whiskey Bill? Was it him?” asked Molasses, turning back to Esquire.
“Nay, lasses,” Esquire answered grandly, raising himself onto the top of a bench, his feet dangling as he looked out at the water. “Bill didn't get sent on this mission.” A light breeze now played against the bay and the heavy sun illuminated the sailboats. In the distance, they could hear a bad snarl of traffic, the shouts of drivers, and whipping of horses, by Quincy Market.
Molasses, cleaning his reeking hands on his coat and pants, suddenly paused. “There was a whaler of a fellow following the young man-browned skin, lantern jaw, with a turbaned head. You think one of the bigwigs put him on the bounty, too, “squire?”
“Oh, I seen him earlier,” replied Esquire eerily. “His eyes big and black, like they were all hollow, and his mouth just like a skeleton's? No, he wasn't one of our kind, Molasses, that's sure. Not a man bent on dollars and dimes.”
JUST ABOUT THAT TIME in the middle of Dock Square, the omnibus called the “Alice Gray” rolled to a lumbering stop. Its driver and passengers dismounted to learn the source of the noise-that long blood-chilling crack they had all heard from below the vehicle a moment before.
“Good God!” “Why, he must've just been dragged!” “Crushed flat!” “Git the ladies away from here, will you?”
Below the back wheel, a pale young man in a torn wool suit. The first wheel had passed over his neck and the next over his leg, nearly severing it below the knee.
One of the gentlemen coming out of the bus was the first at the body. The young man's head jerked slightly. His pupils contracted and his mouth opened. “He's alive!” someone shouted. “Is there a doctor?”
“I am lawyer,” said the gentleman as if to improve on the question by answering a different one. “Sylvanus Bendall, attorney-at-law!” The dying man reached to grab this lawyer's collar with surprising insistence, as his mouth formed a word, then another. Bendall listened carefully, and then the lad's strength seemed to fail and he stopped.
After a few moments of sober examination befitting an actual doctor, the kneeling man who called himself Bendall removed his hat to signal the young man's death. A tall gentleman pointed to the bundle of papers in the dead man's hand. “What's he got? His will?” He chuckled at his own morbid joke.
“Pooh!” Bendall the lawyer said very seriously. Untying the string, he removed one sheet and put his eyeglass up to his face to examine it. “I have seen many wills before, and this is no will, sir! Wills do not tend to have engravings… See here,” he muttered, his lips opening silently as he read for a few moments. His expression slowly shifted. “I believe-yes! I believe this is…
“Well, man?” asked the tall bystander.
“Who could have told,” said Bendall, “whether he had ever known ambition or disappointment?”
The lawyer wasn't soliloquizing over the dead: he was reading the pages taken out of the man's hand. Sylvanus Bendall looked up from the page, his face flushed bright.
Chapter 3
JAMES R. OSGOOD HAD GREETED HIS VISITOR WITH, “MR. LEYPOLDT, a great pleasure,” which was the truth. Leypoldt was the editor of one of the principal journals for the book trade. The short-statured German immigrant was supremely well liked by those in publishing for his cordial manner and the fact that he reported with a fair, even hand.
“I hope to share with our readers the latest intelligence of your and Mr. Fields's firm, Mr. Osgood,” said Leypoldt.
“The firm is receiving A-1 notices lately on all sides,” Osgood remarked with an air of humble gratitude rather than pride.
The visitor cross-examined him. “Your publications upcoming? Very well, very good. Number of books published this year so far? I see, very good. Number of employees currently? Very well. I see you have many bookkeepers of the female sex.”
“Things have changed so quickly,” Osgood said.
“Indeed you're right, so many things in our field are changing, Mr. Osgood! I have even been weighing a change of title for our journal. So that it will reflect more a concentration on the trade.”
The visitor's journal was presently titled
“We wish something, in a word, that will stand out as memorable for a national readership. Here is what I am considering.” Leypoldt wrote:
Osgood said diplomatically, “Our firm should continue our subscription whatever the title you decide on.”
“Many thanks, Mr. Osgood.” A pause signified that Leypoldt turned now to the true subject of his interrogation. “Many in the trade who read our columns do wonder, Mr. Osgood, how you shall vie with so many of the larger publishers in New York. And with so many cheap republications of English editions threatening the ones published by your firm.”
“We shall choose the best-quality authors, print the best-quality books, and not yield to standards less than those that have brought us here, Mr. Leypoldt,” Osgood said earnestly. “I am confident we'll succeed if we uphold those principles.”
The visiting reporter hesitated. “Mr. Osgood, I would like our journal not only to report on publications of books but, in a word, the very story of publishing-its bloodstream, its soul, if you will. To encourage cooperation in the
