CHAPTER III
He disappeared down one of the narrow passages in the Technology Department between the ceiling-high shelves of books. I let him go and made for the librarian on the desk. She was a friend of Ellen’s, and quite bored enough to exchange idle chat with anybody who came along—even me. Her name is Laura.
Laura and I had covered Laura’s health, mine, Ellen’s, the Oscar Awards on TV last week, and were just getting to the prospects for our local baseball club when my distinguished-looking thief, swinging his briefcase jauntily, appeared from the maze of bookshelves.
He cast a pleasant nod in our direction as he passed us before sauntering nonchalantly out the rear door of the library to the sidewalk.
I said, “You know that old bird, Laura?”
She nodded. “He’s a steady customer. Comes here several times a week. He’s a dear.”
“Interested in science and technology, is he?”
“Of course. He’s retired now, but he used to be a professor of electrical engineering at the University.”
“Well, well,” I said. I decided it wouldn’t be necessary to follow him any farther right now. “What’s his name, do you know?”
“Dr. Amos Satchell. Doctor as in Ph.D., not medicine.”
“And why does he come to your Technology Department so often if he’s retired?”
“He’s still writing books,” Laura said, “He has a lot of research to do for them naturally.”
“I see,” I said. But I didn’t.
“Textbooks,” Laura went on. “We have two or three of them here in the library as a matter of fact.” She squinted at me. “Why are you so curious about Dr. Satchell, Hal?”
I was tempted to answer her by advising her to check her shelves to see how many technical works on sexual subjects were missing, but decided against it. Instead I said, “Just curious,” and left her, returning to my own office.
There wasn’t any great rush, now. I knew the identity of the thief, and I could get his address from his library card if he had one, or from the telephone book, for that matter. And I wanted to think about Dr. Amos Satchell for a bit before I braced him.
So it wasn’t until the next morning that I drove my old Chevy out City Line toward the University and pulled up in front of a small but neatly-kept frame house, standing modestly well back from the street in a large lot, shielded from its nearest neighbors by high hedges. The Professor liked his privacy, apparently.
I left the Chevy parked in the street before Professor Satchell’s house and walked up the long path of stepping stones, parallel to his gravel driveway, that led to his front door. I pressed the doorbell. Faintly I could hear musical chimes inside, announcing my arrival.
I was earnestly hoping the Professor himself would be at home and that I wouldn’t have to deal with a loyal wife or daughter or son. For it’s not my idea of fun to inform a nice woman that her husband or father is a dirty-minded old man who steals sexy books from the public library. If you know what I mean.
I needn’t have worried. Dr. Amos Satchell himself opened the door to me, his thick white hair as smooth and neatly kept as his lawn and shrubbery outside. I felt suddenly unsure of myself. This venerable, respectable looking retired scientist couldn’t be a book thief. I’d made a mistake somewhere. To cover my embarrassment I said, “Are you Dr. Amos Satchell?” I almost added a “sir.” He was that kind of a guy.
He smiled cordially and nodded. “What can I do for you?”
I cleared my throat. “May I talk with you for a few minutes, Dr. Satchell? Alone?” I was still thinking about the possibility of a loving wife hovering around.
“Of course,” he said easily. He stepped back and held the door open, inviting me in. I thought that was a trifle odd, asking a stranger to come in, until I remembered that he’d probably noticed me talking to Laura, the librarian, yesterday.
Just for the record, though, I got out my identification card and showed it to him. “I’m from the public library,” I said. He peered at my ID through his rimless bifocals.
“Ah, yes, Mr. Johnson, is it? Come in, won’t you?”
He led me through a center hall, richly carpeted, and into a small den, book-lined and cozy. I looked for copies of our stolen books among his volumes, but failed to locate any. He waved me to an easy chair and sat down himself behind a beautifully made desk of dark satiny wood. “I’ve rather been expecting you, Mr. Johnson,” he said, “since yesterday afternoon.” So he had recognized me.
I didn’t say anything for a second or two. At that moment I was disliking my job intensely; I was reluctant to harry this harmless old fellow. At length I murmured, “I’m afraid I’ve come on a rather unpleasant errand, Dr. Satchell.”
He went right on smiling. “It’s about the books I’ve stolen from your library, isn’t it?”
I swallowed. “That’s right. You’ve…ah…appropriated quite a few of them, haven’t you?”
He seemed to be making a mental calculation. “A good many, it’s true. But only a few titles.” No apology in his voice, no shame, no guilt, just a quiet statement of fact.
“The Cult of Venus,” I said, “The Parallel Triangle, Harrigan’s Bag.”
Gravely he nodded his white-maned head. “Those are the ones, yes.”
“Why did you confine yourself to those three titles? And why steal so many copies of each?”
“Because those three books are the latest and most blatant examples of the filth that is being foisted on us in the name of literature today!”
Satchell wasn’t smiling now. His voice was sharp and high with angry passion. “I consider it immoral and disgraceful that a great public institution like the library should pander to the lowest tastes, should offer a free reading of lewd and obscene books to the citizens of this city!” So. A crusader. That’s what Dr. Satchell was. I remembered Ellen’s guess that our thief might be a nut who loved dirty books. He wasn’t, obviously. He was a nut who hated dirty books.
I said, “What good did you think you could do by stealing those few books from the library?”
“I hoped I could get them all, Mr. Johnson, before I was apprehended. Get at least those three disgusting books off the shelves where teenagers and yes, even children, are exposed to their insidious corrupting influence! I stole them as a protest, I suppose. Against the careless, pernicious, permissive book selections made by our Library Board. In the hope that future selections might be more seemly and decent than those abominations I have stolen!”
Quite a speech. Dr. Satchell sank back in his chair. I said, as soothingly as I could, “You’re absolutely right, Dr. Satchell. Some of the material our writers are turning out today is garbage of the worst kind. But surely you couldn’t have hoped to do much to turn the tide of what you call ‘filth’ by stealing only a few books from the public library?”
He ran a thin hand across his forehead, puzzled and distraught. “I don’t know,” he said vaguely. “I don’t know. Perhaps I was foolish to think I could accomplish anything in such a fashion. I…I realize that now…”
I interrupted him. “In that case,” I said, “maybe we can make a deal, sir.” I was feeling very sorry for the troubled old gentleman. And my own sympathies, I must admit, leaned toward his view of current fiction. “The library has no desire to be unduly harsh about your bookstealing, Dr. Satchell. To a certain extent, we can understand and sympathize with your views.”
I took a list from my pocket and held it out to him. He made no move to take it. “As nearly as we can figure it, these are the books you’ve stolen from us. If you’re willing to return them now, and pay a fine of ten cents per day per book for the period you’ve kept them, I think we can arrange to settle the matter without recourse to the police.” I was struck by a sudden thought. “You haven’t destroyed the books, have you?”
Dr. Satchell shook his head. “Oh, no. Not yet. I intended to gather them all together and burn them publicly in Woodhouse Square, as Savonarola did in Florence long ag
o. But I fully realize now that that would be an exercise in futility.”
“Good,” I said. “Then you’ll return the books and pay the fine?
He sighed. “Rather than go to prison, yes, of course. I need my freedom to carry on the work, Mr. Johnson. I do not admit defeat, you understand. I merely realize that sterner measures will be required to dam the flow of prurient material you peddle to the public.”
He stood up and turned toward a door in the corner of the den. “Your library books are here,” he said. “I’ve kept them in my closet, out of sight. You can understand why.”
I nodded and crossed the room to join him as he opened the closet door. “There they are, on the floor, Mr. Johnson.”
It was dark in the closet. I stepped past him and stooped in the doorway, reaching out my hands for the books, and feeling a wave of relief that we wouldn’t have to get tough, after all, with poor old Dr. Satchell, since he had turned out to be merely a pathetic crank and not a real criminal at all.
Poor old pathetic Dr. Satchell. I don’t know what he hit me with. Later I figured it might have been a heavy onyx ashtray I’d noticed on his desk. But hit me he did—a good solid belt on the back of the head that tumbled me into the closet like a sack of wet sand and made me see a variety of fireworks before I blacked all the way out.
CHAPTER IV
The blackout was only temporary, although when I opened my eyes I couldn’t see anything but blackness around me. Which meant that the closet door had been shut. And I knew I’d been out for only a few seconds because I heard the click of the key in the closet lock as Dr. Satchell turned it from outside.
Sounds reached me through the closet door, and my own returning senses told me what they were. Desk drawers being opened and closed in the den. Thumps as Dr. Satchell placed something on the desk or floor. The pad of footsteps then, leaving the room and returning after an interval. Then a repetition of the retreating and returning footsteps. I counted three such brief journeys out there before it occurred to me in my addled state to take any action myself.
I yelled through the door, “Hey, Dr. Satchell! Are you nuts?” Not a brilliant question to ask of a man who obviously was nuts. I wasn’t tracking too well yet. Besides I was suffering from a king-sized case of chagrin at allowing myself to have been conned by the likes of Dr. Satchell.
Dr. Satchell didn’t answer me, though the sounds of movement outside my door continued.
After several attempts, I stood upright in the dark closet and felt groggily around me with my hands and feet. My feet told me that there were no library books stacked on the floor of the closet as Satchell had claimed. And my searching hands told me that the rest of the closet was quite empty, too, except for Hal Johnson, the demon detective. There wasn’t even a doorknob on my side of the door. And the door wouldn’t budge, even when I leaned my weight against it.
I cleared my throat and bellowed, “Dr. Satchell?”
This time he answered me. “Yes, Mr. Johnson?” Deceptively mild.
“This is going to cost you a hell of a lot more than a fine! What’s the idea of slugging me?”
“I told you I had decided on sterner measures.”
“Knocking me on the head and locking me in a closet is what you call sterner measures?”
“No, no. Merely a necessary precaution. It is essential that I keep you…ah…safely incommunicado while I proceed.”
“With what?”
“Sterner measures, Mr. Johnson. Aren’t you listening?”
I felt a small bead of ice slide down my backbone. “What sterner measures?”
“They need not concern you.” He kept silent for a moment. Then, “I will tell you one thing, however, Mr. Johnson. I intend to return your filthy books to the library at once. In fact, that is where I am going right this moment.”
Did that explain his three sallies out of the den? To carry the stolen library books out to his car preparatory to returning them to the library? I could hear faint movement through the door before his voice came again. It was high, again, and thready with excitement. “Well, goodbye, Mr. Johnson.”
“Wait!” I yelled. “How’sbout me? When will you let me out of here?”
“In exactly fifteen minutes,” said Dr. Satchell. “You must try to be patient until then.” And surprisingly, he laughed. A low snickering kind of laugh that chilled me, somehow.
And another bead of ice slowly slid down my spine. Because it suddenly occurred to me that if he was driving to the library or any of its branches to return the stolen books as advertised, he couldn’t possibly be back home again in fifteen minutes to release me from the closet. Not even if he used a helicopter. And that funny laugh…
I decided not to be patient for fifteen minutes as advised. I decided I had to get out of that closet now. I shouted assorted threats and cajolery through the door at Satchell for several precious minutes without result. Then I shut up and listened. I heard a car start up at the rear of the house and scatter driveway gravel as it rolled out to the street. Satchell had departed. I attacked the closet door.
Maybe it was a thin door with an old rusty lock; maybe anger lent me extra strength; and maybe I was just scared stiff-legged. Whatever it was, my first kick at the door, in the region where the lock should be, split the wooden panel from top to bottom, ripped the lock tongue loose from the splintered door jamb, and catapulted me feet first into the den, where I brought up against Satchell’s satinwood desk edge with a rib-shaking jar.
I paused an instant to rub my bruises and catch my breath before launching myself in eager pursuit of Dr. Amos Satchell. And that instant was long enough for me to take startled note of a curious object on Satchell’s desk.
In the circumstances it seemed very curious to me. For there, lying beside the onyx ashtray Satchell must have used on my head, was a bright-jacketed copy of that dirty book to end all dirty books—The Parallel Triangle. I was sure it hadn’t been there before I entered the closet.
It was one of the library’s stolen copies. The library’s identification was plainly discernible on cover and spine. Yet for a frozen moment, the significance of its presence there on Satchell’s desk-top eluded me. I reached out automatically to pick it up. Then, as though arrested in midair by an invisible barrier, my reaching hand stopped dead. And I knew with sickening certainty what Dr. Satchell had meant when he spoke of ‘sterner measures.’
The Parallel Triangle was ticking.
Fifteen minutes, Satchell had said. I’ll let you out in fifteen minutes, Mr. Johnson. Oh yes, he’d let me out all right. By blowing his damned house down around my ears and killing me in the process. Very simple.
How many minutes were left of the promised fifteen? Not many, certainly. I’d dawdled for a good while in the closet before kicking my way out. And I’d dawdled away more precious time right here by this desk.
Besides, what if Satchell had been lying about the fifteen minute leeway? He’d lied about everything else, so why not? Maybe The Parallel Triangle would blow sky-high if I so much as touched it. Maybe Satchell had counted on my getting out of his rickety closet and seizing the book.
I shuddered. I tried hard to keep myself from panicking. For I can admit without shame that I’ve always been a practicing coward when it comes to explosives of any kind. And I’m all thumbs when it comes to anything electrical. So I didn’t even consider trying to disarm Satchell’s book-bomb. After all, he was an expert, an ex-professor of electrical engineering or something of the sort. I wasn’t about to mess with his ticking bomb.
But I had to do something. A terrifying picture flashed into my mind and stayed there—a picture of Ellen Crosby, my possible future bride, being blown into gory bits when Dr. Amos Satchell returned his stolen books to the library. He wouldn’t return them, of course, to the proper check-in desk; no, in all probability, if he returned them at all, he’d slip them quietly onto secluded library shelves where no one would hear them ticking until far too late to avert disaster.
&n
bsp; He wouldn’t overlook the branch libraries, either, I was pretty sure. After all, he had a whole car load of book-bombs to work with if he’d gimmicked every copy he’d stolen of those three novels.
So not only my Ellen, but all our librarians, our entire staff, and a lot of innocent men, women and children who would happen to be in the building when the books exploded, were probably in deadly danger, too.
The Parallel Triangle went on ticking merrily away, preventing me from thinking in my usual cool, logical, brilliant fashion. All I could think of to do at that moment was to grab the telephone sitting jauntily beside the book-bomb on Satchell’s desk-top, and dial the police emergency number with a trembling forefinger, and pray a lot. I had Lieutenant Randall, my old boss at the Detective Bureau, on the line in thirty seconds. It seemed like thirty minutes with that ticking in my ears.
Randall said, “Yeah?” in his bland, bored voice.
“This is Hal Johnson,” I said rapidly, “and I have only a minute or so to live, so don’t interrupt me, for God’s sake!” I jerked out my story to him in the fastest briefing anyone ever got, and when he snapped, “Okay, Hal, I got it,” I hung up the receiver very, very delicately to avoid jarring the ticking book nearby, and then took to my heels as though all the devils in hell were after me.
CHAPTER V
I made a new sprint record getting through the front door of Satchell’s house and down that long long path of stepping stones to the street where my car still stood at the curb. I jumped in, fired up the engine, made a U-turn and started south on City Line Avenue, heading for the main library.
It was not only closer to Satchell’s house than any of the branch libraries, but I was confident he’d want to blow it up first anyway, it being, you might say, the main offender in purveying dirty books to the public. I hadn’t covered half a block when I heard above the sound of my racing motor a kind of dull thumping boom behind me.
It took me twelve minutes to get downtown, even at my illegal rate of speed.
I screeched to a stop beside an unmarked car parked in the no-parking zone directly in front of the main library’s entrance. I could see Lieutenant Randall sitting behind the wheel of this unmarked car, talking into a hand mike. I got out of my car, ran around behind it and stuck my head in the open window of Randall’s command car and said, “Well?”
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