Lowell knew exactly where Randridge lived in Cambridge. He was mentally galloping through the neighborhood, looking two houses in every direction with the frenzy of Paul Revere. He commanded his eyes to adjust to the dark room, to search out the dark portraits lining the wall for a familiar face.
“No peace these days, my friends, I can tell you that,” the tailor continued with a sad lament. “Not even for the dead.”
“The dead?” Lowell repeated.
“The dead,” whispered Fields, passing Lowell an unclasped Bible. Its inside cover was neatly inked over with a complete family ancestry, written in the hand of the house’s late occupant, the Reverend Elisha Talbot.
XVI
University Hall, 8th October 1865
My dear Reverend Talbot,
I would like once more to emphasize the freedom you ought consider remains in your capable hands as to the language and form of the series.
Mr.________has given us his assurances that he looks forward with great honor to printing it in four parts for his literary review, one of the chief and last competitors to Mr. Fields’s Atlantic Monthly for the minds of the educated public. Only remember the most basic of guidelines to achieve the humble goals promoted by our Corporation in the present instance.
The first article should, employing your expert stroke on such matters, lay bare the poetry of Dante Alighieri on religious and moral grounds. The sequel ought find your doubtless inscrutable exposition of why such literary charlatanry the likes of Dante (and all alike foreign claptrap, increasingly encroaching on us) has no place on the bookshelves of upright American citizens, and why publishing houses with the “international influence” (as Mr. F. does frequently boast) of T., F. & Co. must be held responsible and must be submitted furthermore to the highest standards of social responsibility. The final two pieces of your series, dear Reverend, ought analyze Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Dante translation and reprove this heretofore “national” poet for attempting to conscript an immoral and irreligious literature into American libraries. With careful planning as to highest impact, the first two articles would precede the release of Longfellow’s translation by some months in order to arrange public sentiment in advance on our side; and the third and fourth would be released simultaneously with respect to the translation itself, with the aim of reducing sales among the socially conscious.
Of course, I needn’t emphasize the moral zeal we trust and expect shall be found in your writing on these topics. Though I suspect you require no reminder of your own experience as a young scholar at our institution, but rather feel its weight each day on your soul as do we, it might do well to contrast the barbaric strain of foreign poetry embodied in Dante with the proven classical program championed by Harvard College for now some two hundred years. The gust of righteousness from your pen, dear Reverend Talbot, will serve as sufficient means to send Dante’s unwanted steamer back to Italy and to the Pope who waits there, with victory in the name of Christo et ecclesiae.
I remain, ever Thine,
When the three scholars returned to Craigie House, they held four such letters, addressed to Elisha Talbot and headed by the emblazoned seal of Harvard, as well as a stack of Dante proof sheets—the ones missing from Riverside Press’s security vault.
“Talbot was the ideal hack for them,” said Fields. “A minister respected by all good Christians, an established critic of Catholics, and someone outside the Harvard faculty, so that he could give sugarplums to the College and sharpen his pens against us with the appearance of objectivity.”
“And I suppose one needn’t be an Ann Street fortune-teller to know the sum Talbot was awarded for his troubles,” Holmes said.
“One thousand dollars,” Rey said.
Longfellow nodded, showing them the letter to Talbot in which the amount was specified as payment. “We held it in our hands. One thousand dollars for miscellaneous ‘expenses’ related to the writing and research of the four articles. That money—we can now say it with certainty—cost Elisha Talbot his life.”
“Then the killer knew the precise amount he wished to take from Talbot’s safe,” said Rey. “He knew the particulars of this arrangement, of this letter.”
“ ‘Keep guard over your ill-gotten loot,’ “ Lowell recited, then added: “One thousand dollars was the bounty on Dante’s head.”
The first of Manning’s four letters invited Talbot to come to University Hall to discuss the Corporation’s proposal. The second letter outlined the content expected in each paper and forwarded the full payment, which had earlier been negotiated in person. Between the second and third letters, it seemed, Talbot had complained to his correspondent that no English translation of the Divine Comedy could be found at any Boston booksellers—apparently, the minister was trying to locate a British translation by the late Reverend H. F. Cary for the purposes of writing his critique. So Manning’s third letter, which was really more of a note, promised Talbot he would procure an advance sample directly from Longfellow’s translation.
Augustus Manning knew when he made this promise that the Dante Club would never hand over any proofs to him after the campaign he had already waged to derail them. So, the scholars surmised, the treasurer or one of his agents found a shady printer’s devil, in the person of Colby, and bribed him to smuggle out pages of Longfellow’s work.
Reason counseled where they would find answers to new questions regarding Manning’s scheme: University Hall. But Lowell could not examine the files of the Harvard Corporation during the day, when the fellows hovered over their territory, and he lacked the means to do so at night. A rash of pranks and tampering had led to a complex system of locks and combinations to seal up the records.
Penetrating the fortress seemed a hopeless aim until Fields recalled someone who could do it for them. “Teal!”
“Who, Fields?” asked Holmes.
“My nighttime shop boy. During that ugly episode we endured with Sam Ticknor, he was the one to save poor Miss Emory. He mentioned that in addition to his several nights a week at the Corner, he is in the daytime employ of the College.”
Lowell asked if Fields thought the shop boy would be willing to help.
“He is a loyal Ticknor and Fields man, isn’t he?” Fields answered.
When the loyal Ticknor & Fields man stepped out of the Corner around eleven that night, he found, to his great surprise, J. T. Fields waiting out front. Within minutes the shop boy was seated in the publisher’s chariot, where he was presented to his fellow passenger—Professor James Russell Lowell! How often had he pictured himself among such sterling men. Teal did not seem to know quite how to react to such rare treatment. He listened closely to their requests.
Once in Cambridge, he guided them through Harvard Yard, past the disapproving hum of the gas globes. He slowed to look over his shoulder several times, as though worried that his literary platoon might vanish as quickly as it had appeared.
“Come on. Move along, man. We’re right behind you!” Lowell assured him.
Lowell twisted the ends of his mustache. He was less nervous about the prospect of someone from the College finding them on campus than about what they might find in the files of the Corporation. He reasoned that as pro
fessor, he would have a sensible pretext if caught at such a late hour by one of the busybody resident faculty—he had forgotten some lecture notes, he could explain. Fields’s presence might seem less natural, but it could not be avoided, for he was needed to ensure the participation of the fretful shop boy, who did not seem much over twenty. Dan Teal had clean-shaven boyish cheeks, wide eyes, and a fine, almost feminine, mouth that constantly worked in a gnawing motion.