The Last Dickens

she is forbidden from joining Mr. Barton's trips.”

“That is why she is able to do as she pleases here,” Tom said.

Osgood nodded. “With her husband away, she is alone and free with her strange habits and money. She is harmless.”

“She struck an old woman at the Westminster Hotel!” Tom said.

“We cannot prove that. Don't you see what thin ground you stand on, Branagan?” Dolby replied. “What compelled you?”

“Perhaps I speak above my position, but I've acted on my instinct,” Tom replied.

Dolby shook his head again. “You speak and you acted above your position, Branagan. The Boston police hadn't any choice but to let her go.”

“What about the fact that she broke into Mr. Dickens's room, Mr. Dolby?”

“Well, what if it was her, Branagan? We may box her ears, have the police court fine her but not jail her, as she never threatened the Chief nor took any of his belongings. Save a hotel pillow, for which the most severe magistrate would order this Boston Brahmin to pay a dollar!”

“I think she might have been the one to take the Chief's pocket diary,” Tom said.

“And your evidence?” Dolby asked, pausing for an answer that didn't come. “Thought not. What would she want with an old diary, anyway?”

“To learn private details,” Tom persisted. “Mr. Dolby, I am only trying to see to the protection of the Chief.”

“Who asked you to do so?” Dolby asked.

“You instructed me to serve him,” Tom answered.

“Well, you've taken it too far,” Dolby said. “And you won't do it any longer.”

Osgood, taking a long drink of punch, shook his head sadly and added a comment with a thoughtful air. “You say you act upon instinct. Men like Mr. Dolby and myself act upon what is right and proper, what is within the rules. What is safe for people who put their trust in us. If we could, Mr. Branagan, we would be tempted to send you back to England. But that would bring attention in the newspapers.”

“Instead,” Dolby broke in with the voice of a disciplining father, “you are from this point on to act strictly a porter, as you were hired. You are to stay in the hotel, unless instructed otherwise, and carry out chores when asked. When we've returned to Ross, I shall decide on your future-if I hadn't paid three guineas for your livery, I'd give you walking papers now.”

Tom, deflating, gazed at the marble fireplace. “And the Chief? Does he agree with this?”

“Pray worry about your own condition! The Chief will be just fine under our care, thank you, Mr. Branagan,” Dolby said haughtily.

“Indeed,” Osgood added. “We'll make sure Mr. Dickens is busy enough while we finish dealing with the authorities, so there is no more attention paid to your fears. In fact, I have already recruited Oliver Wendell Holmes to show him the sights of Boston. If anyone can numb a man into distraction, it is Dr. Holmes.”

AFTER DOLBY WALKED Osgood out, he was stopped back in front of his door by a waiter.

“Mr. Dolby? There is a gentleman downstairs to see you-urgent business.”

“It's ten o'clock at night on Christmas Eve,” Dolby remarked, taking his watch from his coat. “Ten and a half, actually, and I have been running about the city tending to business since six this morning. Did the caller send up a card?”

“No, sir. He said the words very urgent, though. I should say from the way he looked that he was indeed urgent.”

Urgency indeed. It was probably another stranger who needed tickets to sold out readings for his blind, deaf, and mute sisters and aunts and wives. “Very important American writers,” whose names Dolby and Osgood had never heard before, wrote pleading for a single free pass, front row, to properly honor Dickens's visit to their city, plus five more for their friends, if you please.

Downstairs at the bar, Dolby searched the faces for his mystery caller. One man stood out. His arms stiffly folded across his chest. A fat, boyish face, but grizzled with scars and gray columns in his beard. He was short but had a robust, qualifying as stocky, build with an imposing presence. The man waved to Dolby.

“I'm afraid, my friend,” Dolby began an amiable but aloof speech, “our tickets for the next readings have been sold already. You may try again for the next series which we have added to accommodate more hearers.”

The man passed him a pile of documents and a badge.

“I'm not looking for tickets, Mr. Dolby. Or… not unless I must confiscate them along with every piece of property in your possession.” He smiled humorlessly.

Dolby examined the documents. Income-tax papers. The badge gave the name of Simon Pennock, tax collector.

“I understand you have been seen with paper bags piled with greenbacks from your ticket sales, Mr. Dolby,” Pennock said in the same tone he might have chosen if the bags had been human bones. The tax collector's chair was in front of a anthracite coal fire, which outlined the man in a disturbing haze of dark blue that served to distress Dolby further.

“Mr. Pennock, it is my understanding of your country's law that ‘occasional lectures’-that is the language in the act of Congress-by foreigners on your soil are exempt from taxation.”

“You've misunderstood the law. Not that it's my duty to explain it. You should begin payments to me from your proceeds now, Dolby, five percent precisely, to avoid more unpleasant business than you've had.”

“I assure you we haven't had any unpleasant business, sir.”

Pennock stared hard. “You are having it right now, Mr. Dolby.”

Dolby looked around the barroom as though he would find help. Instead, he saw a man who was in a sealskin cap and peacoat, the unbuttoned coat revealing the corner of another Treasury Department badge. Dolby did not like the idea that he had been watched by these men taking in his money from the ticket offices, and most of all he hated that he was outnumbered. He wished Tom were there with him, at least. Not that Dolby thought that government agents would attack him, yet with Tom, younger and sturdier, he thought he would have mustered more self-confidence.

“Even if you are correct in your assessment of this claim, Mr. Pennock,” Dolby began to reply.

“I am,” Pennock, interrupting, said flatly. “You will pay ten thousand, in gold or greenbacks, or you, each one of you-your beloved Boz included-will be locked away as a hostage before your steamer leaves the shore.”

“Even if I were to agree to five percent as a just claim,” Dolby said, trying hard not to appear irate. “Even so, I have sent in the receipts from our sales to England already. The money is banked. I couldn't pay you if I had to.”

“There are alternative solutions.” Pennock waved to the man in the sealskin cap, who moved toward the door. “Mr. Dolby, you are not the only theatrical manager with whom I have business. I understand Mr. Dickens is a man who likes things in good order. I suggest you de-liver your payments before the final readings in New York, or you shall bring Mr. Dickens into some hot water that he won't soon be out of, and shall make him regret stepping foot on American soil. Good night.”

THE NEXT MORNING, while Dickens had enjoyed his usual breakfast at the Fieldses of a rasher of bacon and an egg with tea, Osgood had asked whether there was anything else the novelist had wanted to see in Boston that had been overlooked. When Osgood pressed the question rather insistently, Dickens had said he was curious about the site of the extraordinary murder of George Parkman at the Medical College. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who'd joined them for breakfast, and who had up until then been boring Dickens with his incessant talk, happened to be a professor there and immediately offered an expedition.

“Careful now, careful, Mr. Dickens…” Dr. Holmes cautioned. They'd arrived at the site and were descending to an underground chamber beneath the Medical College. “Another two steps down.”

The two men raised their lanterns. Around them in the grim chamber, shelves and medical jars glimmered with anatomical broth. Dickens picked up one to study by the light. “Pieces of sour mortality,” he commented. “Like the forty robbers in Ali Baba after being scalded to death!”

“It is all terribly morbid!” Holmes said as Dickens returned the jar to the shelf with the others. “Our Mr. Fields would insist this is no subject for after breakfast. Quite terrible!”