In spite of the many problems perplexing her, Lucile soon fell asleep. Florence remained to keep vigil over her companion, the child and the supposedly valuable book.
They saw nothing more of the mysterious person who had apparently been following them. Arrived at the city, they were confronted with the problem of the immediate possession of the latest of the strangely acquired volumes. Should the child be allowed to carry it to the mysterious cottage or should they insist on taking it to their room for safe keeping? They talked the matter over in whispers just before arriving at their station.
“If you attempt to make her give it up,” Florence whispered, “she’ll make a scene. She’s just that sort of a little minx.”
“I suppose so,” said Lucile wearily.
“Might as well let her keep it. It’s as safe as any of the books are at that cottage, and, really, it’s not as much our business as you keep thinking it is. We didn’t take the book. True, we went along with her, but she would have gone anyway. We’re not the guardians of all the musty old books in Christendom. Let’s forget at least this one and let that rich young man get it back as best he can. He took the chance in allowing her to take it away.”
Lucile did not entirely agree to all this but was too tired to resist her companion’s logic, so the book went away under the child’s arm.
After a very few hours of restless sleep, Lucile awoke with one resolve firmly implanted in her mind: She would take Frank Morrow’s book back to him and place it in his hand, then she would tell him the part of the story that he did not already know. After that she would attempt to follow his advice in the matter.
With the thin volume of “The Compleat Angler” in the pocket of her coat, she made her way at an early hour to his shop. He had barely opened up for the day. No customers were yet about. Having done his nine holes of golf before coming down and having done them exceedingly well, he was feeling in a particularly good humor.
“Well, my young friend,” he smiled, “what is it I may do for you this morning? Why! Why!” he exclaimed, turning her suddenly about to the light, “you’ve been losing sleep about something. Tut! Tut! That will never do.”
She smiled in spite of herself. Here was a young-old man who was truly a dear. “Why I came,” she smiled again, as she drew the valuable book from her pocket, “to return your book and to tell you just how I came to have it.”
“That sounds interesting.” Frank Morrow, rubbing his hands together as one does who is anticipating a good yarn, then led her to a chair.
Fifteen minutes later, as the story was finished, he leaned back in his chair and gave forth a merry chuckle as he gurgled, “Fine! Oh, fine! That’s the best little mystery story I’ve heard in a long time. It’s costing me two hundred dollars, but I don’t begrudge it, not a penny of it. The yarn’s really worth it. Besides, I shall make a cool hundred on the book still, which isn’t so bad.”
“Two hundred dollars!” exclaimed Lucile in great perplexity.
“Yes, the reward for the return of the book. Now that the mystery is closed and the book returned, I shall pay it to you, of course.”
“Oh, the reward,” she said slowly. “Yes, of course. But, really, the mystery is not ended—it has only just begun.”
“As you like it,” the shopkeeper smiled back. “As matters go, I should call the matter closed. I have a book stolen. You recover it and are able to tell me that the persons who stole it are an old man, too feeble to work, and an innocent child. You are able to put your finger on them and to say, ‘These are the persons.’ I can have them arrested if I choose. I too am an old man; not so old as your Frenchman, yet old enough to know something of what he must feel, with the pinch of age and poverty dragging at the tail of his coat. I happen to love all little children and to feel their suffering quite as much as they do when they must suffer. I do not choose to have those two people arrested. That ends the affair, does it not? You have your reward; I my book; they go free, not because justice says they should but because a soft heart of an old man says they must.” He smiled and brushed his eyes with the back of his hands.
Having nothing to say, Lucile sat there in silence.
Presently Frank Morrow began, “You think this is unusual because you do not know how common it is. You have never run a bookstore. You would perhaps be a little surprised to have me tell you that almost every day of the year some book, more or less valuable, is stolen, either from a library or from a bookshop. It is done, I suppose, because it seems so very easy. Here is a little volume worth, we will say, ten dollars. It will slip easily into your pocket. When the shopkeeper is not looking, it does slip in. Then again, when he is not paying any particular attention to you, you slip out upon the street. You drink in a few breaths of fresh air, cast a glance to right and left of you, then walk away. You think the matter is closed. In reality it has just begun.
“In the first place, you probably did not take the book so you might have it for your library. Collectors of rare books are seldom thieves. They are often cranks, but honest cranks. More books are stolen by students than by any other class of people. They have a better knowledge of the value of books than the average run of folks, and they more often need the money to be obtained from the sale of such books.
“Nothing seems easier than to take a book from one store, to carry it to another store six or eight miles away and sell it, then to wash your hands of the whole matter. Nothing in reality is harder. All the bookstore keepers of every large city are bound together in a loosely organized society for mutual protection. The workings of their ‘underground railways’ are swifter and more certain than the United States Secret Service. The instant I discover that one of my books has been carried off, I sit down and put the name of it on a multigraph. This prints the name on enough post cards to go to all the secondhand bookshops in the city. When the shopkeepers get these cards, they read the name and know the book has been stolen. If they have already bought it, they start a search for the person who sold it to them. They generally locate him. If the book has not yet been disposed of, every shopkeeper is constantly on the lookout for it until it turns up. So,” he smiled, “you see how easy it is to steal books.
“And yet they will steal them,” he went on. “Why,” he smiled reminiscently, “not so long ago I had the same book stolen twice within the week.”
“Did you find out who it was?”
“In both cases, at once.”
“Different people.”
“Entirely different; never met, as far as I know. The first one was an out and out rascal; he wanted the money for needless luxuries. We treated him rough. Very rough! The other was a sick student who, we found, had used the money to pay carfare to his home. I did not even trouble to find out where his home was; just paid the ten dollars to the man who had purchased the book from him and charged it off on my books. That,” he stroked his chin thoughtfully, “that doesn’t seem like common sense—or justice, either, yet it is the way men do; anyway it’s the way I do.”
Again there was silence.
“But,” Lucile hesitated, “this case is different. The mystery still exists. Why does Monsieur Le Bon want the books? He has not sold a single volume. Something must be done about the books from the university, the Scientific Library and the Bindery.”
“That’s true,” said Frank Morrow thoughtfully. “There are angles to the case that are interesting, very interesting. Mind if I smoke?”
Lucile shook her head.
“Thanks.” He filled and lighted his pipe. “Mind going over the whole story again?”
“No, not a bit.”
She began at the beginning and told her story. This time he interrupted her often and it seemed that, as he asked question after question, his interest grew as the story progressed.
“Now I’ll tell you what to do,” he held up a finger for emphasis as she concluded. He leaned far forward and there was a light of adventure in his eye. “I’ll tell you what you do. Here’s a hundred dolla
rs.” He drew a roll of bills from his pocket. “You take this money and buy yourself a ticket to New York. You can spare the week-end at least. When you get to New York, go to Burtnoe’s Book Store and ask for Roderick Vining. He sold me that copy of ‘The Compleat Angler.’ I sent out a bid for such a book when I had a customer for it and he was one of two who responded. His book was the best of the two, so I took it. He is in charge of fine binding in the biggest book store in his city. They deal in new books, not secondhand ones, but he dabbles in rare volumes on the side. Tell him that I want to know where he got the book; take the book along, to show you are the real goods. When he tells you where, then find that person if you can and ask him the same question. Keep going until you discover something. You may have to hunt up a half dozen former owners but sooner or later you will come to an end, to the place where that book crossed the sea. And unless I miss my guess, that’s mighty important.
“I am sorry to have to send you—wish I could go myself,” he said after a moment’s silence. “It will be an interesting hunt and may even be a trifle dangerous, though I think not.”
“But this money, this hundred dollars?” Lucile hesitated, fingering the bills.
“Oh, that?” he smiled. “That’s the last of my profit on the little book. We’ll call that devoted to the cause of science or lost books or whatever you like.
“But,” he called after her, as she left the shop, “be sure to keep your fingers tight closed around the little book.”
This, Lucile was destined to discover, was not so easily done.
CHAPTER XIX
LUCILE SOLVES NO MYSTERY
Buried deep beneath the blankets of lower 9, car 20, bound for New York, Lucile for a time that night allowed her thoughts to swing along with the roll of the Century Limited. She found herself puzzled at the unexpected turn of events. She had never visited New York and she welcomed the opportunity. There was more to be learned by such a visit, brief though it was bound to be, than in a whole month of poring over books. But why was she going? What did Frank Morrow hope to prove by any discoveries she might make regarding the former ownership of the book she carried in her pocket?
She had never doubted but that the aged Frenchman when badly in need of funds had sold the book to some American. That he should have repented of the transaction and had wished the book back in his library, seemed natural enough. Lacking funds to purchase it back, he had found another way. That the ends justified the means Lucile very much doubted, yet there was something to be said for this old man because of his extreme age. It might be that he had reached the period of his second childhood and all things appeared to belong to him.
“But here,” she told herself, rising to a sitting posture and trying to stare out into the fleeing darkness, “here we suddenly discover that the book came from New York. What is one to make of that? Very simple, in a way, I suppose. This aged Frenchman enters America by way of New York. He needs funds to pay his passage and the freight on his books to Chicago, so he sells one or two books to procure the money. Yet I doubt if that would be Frank Morrow’s solution of the problem. Surely he would not sacrifice a hundred dollars to send me to New York merely to find out who the man was to whom the old Frenchman had sold the book. He must think there is more to it than that—and perhaps there is. Ho, well,” she sighed, as she settled back on her pillow, “let that come when it comes. I am going to see New York—N-e-w Y-o-r-k—” she spelled it out; “and that is a grand and glorious privilege.”
The next moment the swing of the Century Limited as it click-clicked over the rails and the onward rush of scenery meant nothing to her. She was fast asleep.
Morning found her much refreshed. After a half hour in the washroom and another in the diner, over coffee and toast, she felt equal to the facing of any events which might chance to cross her path that day. There are days in all our lives that are but blanks. They pass and we forget them forever. There are other days that are so pressed full and running over with vivid experience that every hour, as we look back upon it, seems a “crowded hour.” Such days we never forget, and this was destined to be such a day in the life of Lucile.
Precisely at nine o’clock she was at the door of Burtnoe’s Book Store. To save time she had taken a taxi. The clerk who unfastened the door looked at her curiously. When she asked for Roderick Vining, she was directed by a nod to the back corner of the room.
She made her way into a square alcove where an electric light shining brightly from the ceiling brought out a gleam of real gold from the backs of thousands of books done in fine bindings.
Bending over a desk telephone was the form of a tall, slender-shouldered man.
“Are—are you Roderick Vining?” she faltered, at the same time drawing “The Compleat Angler” half out of her pocket.
His only answer was to hold up one long, tapering finger as a signal for silence. Someone was speaking at the other end of the wire.
With burning cheeks and a whispered apology, the girl sank back into the shadows. Her courage faltered. This was her introduction to New York; she had made a faux pas as her first move; and this man, Roderick Vining, was no ordinary person, she could see that. There was time to study him now. His face was long, his features thin, but his forehead was high. He impressed her, seated though he was, as one who was habitually in a hurry. Pressing matters were, without doubt, constantly upon his mind.
Now he was speaking. She could not avoid hearing what he was saying without leaving the alcove, and he had not requested her to do that.
“Why, yes, Mrs. Nelson,” he was saying, “we can get the set for you. Of course you understand that is a very special, deluxe edition; only three hundred sets struck off, then the plates destroyed. The cost would be considerable.”
Again he pressed the receiver to his ear.
“Why, I should say, three thousand dollars; not less, certainly. All right, madam, I will order the set at once. Your address? Yes, certainly, I have it. Thank you. Good-bye.”
He placed the receiver on its hook with as little noise as if it had been padded, then turned to Lucile. “Pardon me; you wanted to see me? Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Frank Morrow sent me here to ask you where you purchased this book.” She held the thin volume out for his inspection.
He did not appear to look at it at all. Instead, he looked her squarely in the eye. “Frank Morrow sent you all the way from Chicago that you might ask me that question? How extraordinary! Why did he not wire me? He knows I would tell him.” A slight frown appeared on his forehead.
“I—I am—” she was about to tell him that she was to ask the next person where he got it, but thinking better of it said instead, “That is only part of my mission to New York. Won’t you please look at the book and answer my question?”
Still he did not look at the book but to her utter astonishment said, while a smile illumined his face, “I bought that copy of ‘The Compleat Angler’ right here in this alcove.”
“From whom?” she half whispered.
“From old Dan Whitner, who keeps a bookshop back on Walton place.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, much relieved. Here was no mystery; one bookshop selling a book to another. There was more to it. She must follow on.
“I suppose,” he smiled, as if reading her thoughts, “that you’d like me to tell you where Dan got it, but that I cannot answer. You must ask him yourself. His address is 45 Walton place. It is ten minutes’ walk from here; three blocks to your right as you leave our door, then two to your left, a block and a half to your left again and you are there. The sign’s easy to read—just ‘Dan Whitner, Books.’ Dan’s a prince of a chap. He’ll do anything for a girl like you; would for anyone, for that matter. Ever been to New York before?” he asked suddenly.
“No.”
“Come alone?”
“Yes.”
He whistled softly to himself, “You western girls will be the death of us.”
“When there’s some plac
e that needs to be gone to we go to it,” she smiled half defiantly. “There’s nothing so terrible about that, is there?”
“No, I suppose not,” he admitted. “Well, you go see Dan. He’ll tell you anything he knows.” With that he turned to his work.
Lucile, however, was not ready to go. She had one more question to ask, even though it might be another faux pas.
“Would you—would you mind telling me how you knew what book I had when you did not see it?” she said.
“I did see it,” he smiled, as if amused. “I didn’t see it when you expected me to see it, that was all. I saw it long before—saw it when I was at the phone. It’s a habit we book folks have of doing one thing with our ears and another with our eyes. We have to or we’d never get through in a day if we didn’t. Your little book protruded from your pocket. I knew you were going to say something about it; perhaps offer to sell it, so I looked at it. Simple, wasn’t it? No great mystery about it. Hope your other mysteries will prove as simple. Got any friends in New York?”
“No.”
He shook his head in a puzzled manner, but allowed her to leave the room without further comment.
CHAPTER XX
“THAT WAS THE MAN”
Dan Whitner was a somewhat shabby likeness of Roderick Vining; that is, he was a gray-haired, stoop-shouldered, young-old man who knew a great deal about books. His shelves were dusty, so too was a mouse-colored jacket.
Yes, he “remembered the book quite well.” Lucile began to get the notion that once one of these book wizards set eyes upon an ancient volume he never forgot it.
“Strange case, that,” smiled Dan as he looked at her over his glasses.
“Ah! Here is where I learn something of real importance,” was the girl’s mental comment.
“You see,” Dan went on, “I sometimes have dinner with a very good friend who also loves books—the Reverend Dr. Edward Edwards. Dinner, on such occasions, is served on a tea-wagon in his library; sort of makes a fellow feel at home, don’t you know?
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