Datchery said, “Miss Rebecca, I wish to help. I can help, you know. Let the idea ripen in your mind.”
“I think you have helped enough,” she said. “And you may refer to my employer as Mr. Osgood, if you please.”
Datchery chewed his lip in frustration, then turned to the patient in bed and then back to Rebecca. “Perhaps there are some things I must say that shall help you trust me as your employer has so quickly learned to do.”
“Ah, Mr. ‘Datchery,’ is it?” This was Dr. Steele coming into the room. “May I have a private word with you?”
Datchery, looking over the drowsy face of Osgood above the blankets, nodded and left the room. To Rebecca's great relief, the visitor did not come back that afternoon.
The next time Osgood woke, he asked for the suit of clothes he had been wearing during the attack, now hanging in the wardrobe. Searching the pockets, he removed the green pamphlet he had taken from that filthy floor.
“Edwin Drood! Look.”
There it was. The cover was a kaleidoscope of illustrated scenes from Dickens's novel. The pamphlet was in fact the fifth installment published of the serial of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Dr. Steele, just arriving for another inspection, came over to the bed when he saw Osgood had stirred. This doctor, a lanky and studious man, had become a tyrant over Osgood's care. He commanded that light only be allowed through the window blinds at short intervals.
“I have asked that Mr. Datchery to leave Mr. Osgood in peace,” Dr. Steele explained to Rebecca. “He only seems to agitate him, I can assure you.”
“I think so too,” Rebecca said firmly.
The doctor now discouraged Osgood from studying the booklet that apparently also agitated him. Rebecca consented to remove the object from the patient, though she pondered the terrific coincidence of the item having appeared in such a place. Had Osgood's misfortunes in the low streets really been due to the region's usual dangers or somehow connected to their singular mission in England? She opened the booklet and noticed the pages looked like they had been read, perhaps multiple times. She placed the installment in a drawer.
“I do not understand,” Osgood sighed as the doctor unwrapped his dressings and applied fresh bandages. “I do not see how the opiates I breathed could have had such a strong effect on me.”
“Oh, you are quite right,” Dr. Steele said conclusively. “On their own, the fumes could not do such harm. I hope the lady present will not be too embarrassed,” he said as a caution, and waited for Rebecca to turn away. When she did not, he folded up Osgood's flannel sleeve and revealed what he had seen in his examination.
“I do not understand,” Rebecca protested.
“There,” Dr. Steele said, “a single puncture wound in Mr. Osgood's arm-from a hypodermic syringe. You see it?”
The doctor continued with detached interest. “Someone inserted into your tissue a very high dosage of the narcotic, sir. That is why it has required a long time to be ejected from your body.”
Rebecca felt herself shaking. Osgood sat bolt upright. They caught each other in a mutual moment of unreserved shock. They had come halfway around the world, in part in an effort to leave Daniel's tragedy behind and yet came round to face the same poisonous injection marking in Osgood's own skin as Daniel had suffered. Everything seemed to be brought into a single line of sinister action, though why and where it had all started was more of a mystery than ever.
Rebecca knew that if Dr. Steele believed any conversation overexcited the patient he would intervene to end it. So she waited, pretending to the best of her ability that the puncture wound was the least interesting sight ever witnessed. The doctor soon moved into the next room, giving long-winded instructions to a messenger boy to secure more vials of medicine from the town druggist.
“Mr. Osgood, is it the same as what you saw on… on Daniel's body?” Rebecca asked in as calm a whisper as she could manage, so the doctor could not hear them from outside the door. “You mustn't hold anything from me. It is, isn't it?”
“Yes,” Osgood whispered in return.
“What could it mean?”
“We have faced the same adversary since the morning of Daniel's death.”
“But who?”
“I don't know.” Then Osgood whispered half brokenhearted and half triumphant, “It wasn't Daniel who injected himself with opium. We know that now for certain. He was poisoned, Miss Sand, just as I was!”
“Do you believe that?”
“It must be! Dickens himself could not write such a discovery as coincidence! This knocks the wind out of the whole thing. We must seek a clearer view of everything: of Daniel, of the opium fiends, of Brood. Miss Sand,” he added with an abrupt urgency. “Miss Sand, some paper!”
Rebecca brought him hotel stationery and a lead pencil and a book to rest them on.
Osgood wrote on the stationery, crossing words out then trying again until he got it:
It is God's.
Itisgod's.
ItsOsgoods. It's Osgood's.
Daniel Sand didn't exclaim a sentiment of religious peace, but the words carried a beautiful meaning nonetheless. “Look,” he said. “Bendall was wrong. Daniel didn't leave out a final word before he died. Daniel didn't want me to be angry, even at the edge of life. He never failed the firm at all.”
When Dr. Steele came back to complete his examination, the darkness of the room hid the hot tears in Rebecca's eyes.
IT HAD NOT ONLY been Osgood's physical but his legal standing that had been in jeopardy the balmy morning of the attack. When he had first partially recovered his senses, he had found himself carried out of the sewer tunnels by two toshers, the sewer hunters, to a police station house. He could not explain to the constables how he had come to be there.
Moreover, Osgood's state at the time-his now-tattered and wet clothing, his slurred speech and senses, and the harsh smell of burned narcotics and rubbish-subjected him to reproach by the officials as if he were another bothersome tosher. When he described what had happened, other constables were dispatched and the dead bodies of a Lascar sailor and a Bengalee known as Booboo by local residents were found in the squalid rooms described by Osgood.
“That is not good for us,” the station sergeant said to Osgood. “Not good for you, sir. Your story is not complete.”
“Because I know not what has happened to me, sir!” Osgood protested.
“Then who would?” the sergeant demanded.
Only the arrival of a respected London man of business, Marcus Wakefield, had saved him from being charged as a public nuisance. Mr. Wakefield had been alerted about the presence of an unknown American brought to the station house because Osgood had had Wakefield's calling card on his suit when he was found.
“You know this poor soul, sir?” the sergeant asked skeptically. “Or perhaps he stole your card from your possession.”
Osgood was stretched out on a bench, mangled with pain and delirium.
Wakefield slammed his fist against the table. “This is outrageous! Release him straightaway, gentlemen. I crossed the ocean with him- his name is Osgood, James Osgood. He is no vagrant at all but a respected publisher from Boston who preferred a cabin on the sunny side of a steamship. You have a gentleman in your custody. It was my understanding he was to be residing in the country near Rochester conducting his business.”
The sergeant looked Osgood up and down. “I have never met a publisher that would choose to dress and, shall I mention, stink like that, sir! We shall have to write a report.”