“What about The Christian Warfare?” I asked.
She smiled. “Let me check.” She typed into the computer, and scribbled something down on a piece of scratch paper. She turned to the bookcase directly behind her and pulled out several binders until she found the one she wanted. “This will tell us something,” she said, leafing through the crinkled pages.
I tried following what she was doing, but the numbers and librarian notations read like a foreign language. So, I just waited for her to finish her search.
“Today’s your lucky day,” she said. “We have those records downstairs. I’ll have someone go down and get them for you.”
I was proud of myself as I sat down at the table. Reading the accession records could go a long way in helping me figure out the ownership history of The Christian Warfare and whether those two pages had gone missing before or after the book entered the Harvard system.
Ten minutes later, I saw the runner who had gone to retrieve the file. She returned empty-handed. I got up from my seat and met her at the front desk.
“There’s nothing there,” she said to Peggy.
“Are you certain?” Peggy said.
“I checked everywhere.”
“Maybe it was misfiled.”
“I thought the same thing, so I checked all the records. They’re all on the same shelf in the subbasement.”
“That’s strange,” Peggy said. “Where else could it be?”
The runner shrugged her shoulders.
“This is highly unusual,” she said. “Let me go down and take a look with you.” She turned back toward me and said, “Please be patient. Every once in a while, a file gets misplaced.”
I nodded, with a sinking feeling. Could it be just bad luck that the record of the one book that might hold the answers was missing? Or was something more sinister at work? The events of the last couple of weeks persuaded me of the latter.
A few minutes later, Peggy was back behind the front desk frowning at the computer monitor. I knew it was bad news.
“I don’t understand what happened,” she said as I approached. “I checked the entire room, and it wasn’t there.”
“Maybe someone borrowed it,” I said.
“Impossible,” she said. “You can’t borrow from our files. We don’t lend things out like the circulating libraries. You can sign things out only to be viewed in this room.” She worked on the computer a little more. She paused and said, “Even stranger, it was here two days ago.” She wrote down a number on a piece of paper. “A visitor signed it out at ten forty-three in the morning.”
“What’s that number you just wrote?” I asked.
“The ID of the person who requested it,” she said, walking to another computer. “I can’t give you the name, but let me see who it is.”
When she put her head down, I slid around the side of the counter just enough so that I could read the monitor as she typed in the ID number. Within seconds, the name and address popped up: Godfrey Channing, 108 Brattle Street in Cambridge. I didn’t recognize the name, but the address practically jumped off the screen. It was the address of the Delphic cocktail party, the home of Stanford L. Jacobs III.
* * *
“JACOBS RESIDENCE,” A woman answered.
I was back in my room and had dialed the number Jacobs had written on the business card he gave me the night of the cocktail party.
“May I speak to Mr. Channing, the secretary,” I said in a nasally disguised voice.
“I’m sorry, but Mr. Channing is currently out,” she said. “May I take a message?”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“Who may I ask is calling?”
“It’s a personal call.”
“Mr. Channing doesn’t receive calls on this line,” she said. “You’ve called a private number.”
“I see. This is the only number I have for him.”
“Mr. Channing will be back within the hour.” She gave me the main house number and asked me to use it when I called back. She seemed slightly annoyed.
“Thank you very much for your help,” I said. “Next time I’ll be sure to use the right number.”
“That would be appreciated,” she said. “And just as a point of clarification, I’m Mr. Jacobs’s secretary. Mr. Channing is his butler.”
33
“SPENSE, GET THE hell over here,” Dalton said.
I was lying in my bed, looking at the digital numbers of my clock burn in the darkness. It was 2:35 A.M. I thought I was dreaming. I wasn’t sure how the phone had gotten into my hand.
“Spense, are you there?” he said.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“Someone broke into my room.”
“It’s two thirty in the morning, Dalton.”
“They took Abbott’s urn.”
Those four words sat me up.
“What?”
“I went to look at it after I got home from the Hong Kong,” Dalton said. “It’s gone.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Did they take the succession book?”
“Nope,” Dalton said. “I’m sure they were looking for it, but I hid it in my bedroom at my parents’ house.”
“I’m on my way.”
* * *
DALTON WAS SITTING in the middle of the common room on the floor with his legs crossed. His eyes were glazed, and he had a blank expression on his face. He hadn’t yet taken off his jacket and hat. A small lamp on the mantelpiece was the only light on in the room.
“Are you all right?” I asked, extending a hand to help him up.
“A little shaken up, that’s all,” he said, looking toward his room.
“Where are your roommates?”
“Asleep.”
“Are they missing anything?”
“I don’t know. Their doors were closed when I got home. I was out scorpion bowling at the Kong.”
He grabbed ahold of my hand and stood up. His legs were wobbly as he fell back on the couch.
“You’re drunk,” I said.
“Not too drunk to know someone’s been in my room. And they knew what they were looking for.”
I followed Dalton across the common room and into his bedroom.
“What the hell!” I said, panning the room. It looked like a cyclone had blown through. The desk drawers had been pulled out and turned upside down on the floor. Most of his books had been snatched from the bookcase and piled up on the floor. His closet door was open, and the clothes had been balled up and scattered across the room.
“The urn was hidden in the bottom of my closet,” Dalton said. “I don’t think anything else is missing. My grandfather’s watch was right there in the open and wasn’t touched.”
“And you’re sure the succession book wasn’t here?” I asked.
“Positive. Right after you told me Brathwaite had stopped you in your courtyard, I took the book to my house and hid it there.”
Dalton walked to his desk and lifted the phone.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m calling University Police,” he said.
“The hell you are,” I said, snatching the receiver from his hand and placing it back in the cradle. “What exactly are you going to tell them?”
“Someone broke into my room.”
“And stole an urn that we stole from a grave?”
Dalton rested his head against the wall and covered his face with both hands. “I’m not thinking clearly,” he said.
“You’re not thinking at all. Take your clothes off and go to bed. You need to sleep off all those scorpion bowls before you do something stupid.”
“They’re out there waiting for us.”
“I think they’ve been out there waiting for us since the very beginning.”
“What do you mean?”
“You said it yourself that first night we talked about the invitation to the cocktail party. You said it doesn’t make a damn bit of sense why I would get punched by the Delph
ic. I’m completely the opposite of what they’re looking for in new members.”
“I wasn’t knocking you, Spense, but I said that because you don’t fit their club image.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Whoever punched me had specific intentions. They wanted to monitor my movements for some reason. It’s the only way to explain a lot of stuff that happened. For example, how did Brathwaite know I was at Widener that night he followed me to the Crimson? Why was Jacobs asking me all those personal questions at the cocktail party? How did he know things about me that I had told very few people?”
“But of all people, why you?” Dalton said.
“And why was my name in the back of your uncle’s succession book?”
* * *
TWO DAYS LATER, Peggy Rosendale from University Archives left a message on my machine. The microfilm I had requested finally arrived. I skipped lunch and biked over to Pusey. Save for an old woman with her face buried in an oversized book, the reading room was empty. Peggy had the film waiting for me when I arrived. I loaded it into a viewer. The newspaper was so dark and the print so faded that I could barely read certain portions. But I could clearly see the pale, youthful face of forty-nine-year-old Joel Clifton Williams. He wore large round glasses and a felt fedora and looked more like an absentminded professor than he did a book thief. The headline was plastered across the page.
HARVARD BOOK THEFTS SOLVED
_____
Dedham, MA, October 17, 1931. 1,804 Volumes Stolen from Widener Library Found in Dedham Home of Joel C. Williams—Graduate of College and Holder of Two Degrees Is Arrested
_____
Claims He Purchased Books—Apprehended When Trying to Sell Them in Harvard Sq.
The first couple of paragraphs opened like an item in a local police blotter:
Trapped by an alert clerk in a Harvard Square bookshop, where he is alleged to have attempted to sell stolen volumes, Joel Clifton Williams, 49, Harvard graduate, holder of two degrees, and a highly respected lifelong resident of Dedham, was taken yesterday by Dedham and Cambridge police, who have charged him with the larceny of 1,804 volumes from the famous Widener Library at Harvard.
_____
BOOKS WORTH $100,000 STOLEN
Thefts from the Widener Library during the last 10 years, in which books worth more than $100,000 have mysteriously been taken from the shelves, were partially solved, police believed last night, with the removal of a five-ton truck load of volumes, many of them rare, from Williams’ home in Dedham. The recovered books have a valuation of about $25,000.
The article went on to explain that Williams once served as an instructor at the exclusive Groton preparatory school and he claimed to have been a principal at several prominent high schools. Then it spelled out the details of his demise.
Williams is declared to have denied to police that he stole the books, declaring that he bought them from a mysterious man named “Hendricks,” whom he often met by appointment in Harvard Square.
He was unable to give the first name of the “seller.” The Harvard graduate’s home was found filled with books, nearly 3,000 volumes in cases and on shelves. He told police that he was a book-lover.
The downfall of the scholarly appearing ex-schoolmaster came Thursday when he appeared at Phillips’ Book Store, Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, in the very sight of Widener Library, and offered to sell two books to a clerk.
The books were almost instantly identified as two of the missing Widener volumes, an examination showing where attempts had been made to remove identifying marks, according to the police.
Williams received both Master of Arts and Master of Education degrees from Harvard. He had been stealing books from Widener for eight to ten years but stopped after a turnstile was erected near the exit, where guards had been specifically installed to inspect suspicious bundles. When Williams was told by police that he was to be locked up, he asked if he should bring his nightshirt, then inquired about the accommodations at the Cambridge lockup.
Williams’s deceit, while grand in the scale of its accomplishment, was simple in its methodology. The entire time books had been mysteriously disappearing from Widener, he had been wandering about the library, exercising certain privileges that were denied even to enrolled undergraduates. He was well known to the library staff, always carrying his briefcase and even greeting them with a pleasant “good night” as he sauntered past university security guards with some of the library’s most valuable books. The article mentioned that Williams had snatched at least one complete set of books on a naval topic, but it didn’t specifically name any of the other titles he had stolen. Was it possible that Joel Williams had stolen The Christian Warfare and clipped those two pages?
* * *
THREE DAYS LATER, I found myself waiting outside the locked doors of Houghton Library. I had skipped that morning’s organic chemistry lecture, which was like committing heresy for a premed student. I couldn’t concentrate on anything but the missing pages and the Delphic. At precisely nine o’clock, the lock clicked back and the same security guard whom I had encountered on my first visit opened the door.
“How can I help you today?” he said, taking a seat behind the small desk in the middle of the cold lobby. He was out of uniform, instead sporting a blazer a couple of sizes too small and a pair of wool trousers that were badly in need of a hem job.
I looked toward the glass-encased bookcase on the left and spotted my target. A crimson leather box with bright gold lettering boldly announced its legendary contents—John Harvard’s Christian Warfare.
“I’d like to speak to one of the reference assistants,” I said.
“Do you have an appointment?” he said, opening the top desk drawer and pulling out a clipboard.
“No, but I figured since it was first thing in the morning, they wouldn’t be busy yet. I came last week and signed up for a session, but no one has called me. The deadline for my project is almost here.”
“ID?” he asked.
I showed him.
“I’m really not supposed to do this,” he said. “They’re very strict about schedules. But let me see if someone can help you.”
I held my breath as he picked up the phone and gave someone my name, then repeated almost verbatim what I had told him. He nodded his head a couple of times, then hung up the phone.
“They don’t normally make exceptions like this, but Thomas Forde, one of the reference assistants, is willing to meet with you. His first appointment isn’t for another hour.”
“Thanks for your help,” I said, quickly heading toward the glass doors.
“Hold on,” he called out. “You need to sign in and get a key for a locker before you can enter the reading room. All items except for the books and papers that you carry in your hand must be kept outside and locked up. You can retrieve them when you leave.”
I signed the sheet, and he directed me to the other end of the lobby and into a small room containing two rows of standing metal lockers and a wobbly coatrack leaning against the wall. I stripped myself of all the prohibited items, then with a pad and couple of pens walked back across the lobby toward the reading room.
“There’s a buzzer located on the left wall,” he said. “Press it once, and someone at the desk will let you in.”
I did exactly as he had instructed, and a few seconds later the lock released. I took a deep breath as I walked into one of the greatest houses of rare books and manuscripts in the world. Five long immaculate tables lined the room on a floor waxed to a mirror shine. Floor-to-ceiling windows were symmetrically spaced along the walls with the open blinds admitting a rush of sun that brightened the airy room.
“Spenser, my name is Thomas Forde,” a man called out as I stood just inside the entrance. “I’m one of the reference assistants. How can I help you today?”
I turned toward a large, polished semicircular reference desk. Like everything else in the room, it looked like it had been built with great effort. The man standing behind it wor
e small oval glasses and had shoulder-length graying hair that was parted straight down the middle with little attention to style. His faded corduroys and wrinkled oxford belied his crisp and efficient voice.
“I’m doing some research on the book The Christian Warfare,” I said, walking up to the desk. “I was hoping to take a look at it.”
“Is this your first time here at Houghton?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Professor Davenport from the Divinity School told me that this is the place where I can actually read that book.”
“What he told you is absolutely correct,” Forde said. “We know Professor Davenport quite well here. We have several editions of the book you’ve mentioned. Which one would you like to see?”
“I thought I’d start with the 1634 edition.”
“The one from John Harvard’s personal collection?”
“Exactly.”
“It’s one of our most requested books,” he said. “We typically show it by appointment only, but there’s no one here right now, so I can get it for you without too much trouble. Even though it’s locked in the case just outside, I still need you to fill out a call slip for documentation purposes. Our collection is also open to the public at large, so we must keep traceable records of who has seen which items.”
“Of course,” I said. I filled out the requested information.
“And that will be your last usage of a pen,” he said with a tolerant but stern smile. “Only pencils are allowed inside the reading room. You can pick this up on your way out.” He handed me two pencils in return for the pens. “Now, if I could see two forms of identification. I need to enter them into the computer.”
I gave him my license and school ID and wondered if a blood test and eye scan would be next.
“If you’ll have a seat, I’ll be right with you,” he said.
He disappeared through a door behind the desk, and I got comfortable at a table in the corner of the room. Shortly thereafter, another man, younger, taller, bearded, emerged through the same door Forde had exited. He sat behind the desk, and I caught him sneaking glances in my direction as I waited.
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