The Detective and Mr. Dickens Read Online Free PDF

Micawber of Copperfield out of the raw material of John Dickens, but Dickens had always steadfastly denied it. When his father died, Dickens took it hard, sank into a near wordless state of depression for days afterwards.
    Two days after the funeral, I supped with Dickens. The offices of Household Words were in a homey, three-storey building with a gracefully bowed-out front about halfway up Wellington Street, Strand, on the right hand side. It wore the number sixteen on its right lapel. Its bowed front provided its character. The bow reached up for two storeys, and was all expansive bay window, which provided a perfect flood of light of the sort absolutely necessary for literary work. The master’s office was on the drawing room floor, ten steps up from the ground-floor entrance, where Wills guarded all comings and goings like some overly polite Cerberus. Dickens’s desk and the cushioned wooden chair in which he sat were nestled into the curve of the bay window. His office more closely resembled a handsomely furnished study in some wealthy bachelor’s flat than a newspaper office. Two smaller offices, sparsely furnished with desks and chairs, took up the back of that second floor, and provided spartan work space for itinerant contributors who needed to be on hand to consult with the master in the process of readying their articles for the magazine.
    Dickens had put in a feverish day. He had, by my imprecise count, bounded up and down that short flight of stairs to consult with Wills on editorial details no less than twenty to thirty times. When not vaulting the stairs, he paced back and forth before his desk, like some caged resident of the Zoological Gardens. It didn’t require a high degree of intelligence to realize that his father’s death hung heavy on his mind, and to sense the pressure building within him. I was there, working in one of the back offices, the whole afternoon. About five, Dickens popped his head in with a strained smile.
    “Wilkie, can you stay and dine with me? I’ve got another hour or so of work, and then perhaps some bachelor fare, brandy and cigars, eh?”
    He wanted company, and I, as always, was honored to provide it. Being a friend of Dickens then gave me a status in the London literary world which I had not yet earned with my pen. People didn’t identify me as Collins, the young writer with the rough edges, but rather as “Dickens’s protégé , who would soon, no doubt, produce great things.”
    It wasn’t a very witty dinner. We dined on chops catered in. He picked morosely at his food. We sat silently smoking our cigars afterward.
    “Wilkie, this will simply not do,” he said, finally breaking our morbid silence. “Let us walk out and get some air, see what amusement might be abroad tonight.”
    I was more than happy, in fact eager, to oblige him. In short minutes we were hatted, gloved, scarved, walking-sticked and on our way.
    It was a cool (verging on raw), damp April night. A slight mist hung in the halos of the gas lamps in the Strand. He walked briskly with his typical long stride. As usual, he headed into the darkness of the city in the direction of the river. For some reason, some kind of magnetic attraction perhaps, he was always drawn toward that pestilent ribbon of water that bisected the great city.
    As we walked through darkened neighborhoods, his pace quickened. Normally, his head swiveled from side to side, eyes darting into every doorway and dustbin, alleyway and dusky mews, but not this night. He wasn’t looking for the chance encounter with some rookery character, whom he could observe and file in his capacious memory for use in some future novel. This night he walked as if he knew his destination.
    Somewhere in the West End—we had moved so briskly that, in my struggle to keep up, I had lost all sense of direction—he braked to a sudden stop beneath a lone gaslight at the dark junction of three streets.
    “I wonder…” he mused aloud, as I came up