Roy J. Snell

“ That she had reached the limit of her resources, her power to reason and to endure, Lucile knew right well. To go on as she had been day after day, each day adding some new responsibility to her already overburdened shoulders, was to invite disaster. It was not fair to others. The set of Shakespeare, the volume of Portland charts, the hand-bound volume from the bindery and this book just taken from the summer home of the millionaire, were all for the moment in the hands of the old man and the child. How long would they remain there? No one could tell save the old man and perhaps the child. ”

“ Much to her surprise, just when she had expected to be trudging back to the station alone, Lucile found herself seated by a table in the mystery room. She was sipping a delicious cup of hot chocolate and talking to the mystery child and her mysterious godfather. Every now and again she paused to catch her breath. It was hard for her to realize that she was in the mystery room of the mysterious cottage on Tyler street. Yet there she certainly was. The child had invited her in.
A dim, strangely tinted light cast dark shadows over everything. The strange furniture took on grotesque forms. ”

“ At last Frank Morrow wheeled about in his chair and spoke.
“You know, Miss Lucile,” he said slowly, “I am no longer a child, except in spirit. I have read a great deal. I have thought a great deal, sitting alone in this chair, both by day and by night. Very often I have thought of us, of the whole human race, of our relation to the world, to the being who created us and to one another. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They were nearing the plank bridge. She felt certain that she heard a footstep upon it. But now as she listened she heard nothing but the onrush of distant waters.
“Just your nerves,” answered Florence.
“It was not. I was not thinking of the child’s foolish chatter. I was thinking of our problem, of the gargoyle’s secret. Someone is crossing the bridge.”
Even as she spoke, as if in proof of her declaration, there came a faint pat-pat-pat, as of someone moving on the bridge on tiptoe.
“Someone is shadowing us,” Lucile whispered. ”

“ He may desire to become rich, to secure power, to write a book, to paint a great picture. There is always something. As for me, I wished but one thing, a very little thing: to die with the books, those precious volumes I had inherited. The foolish wish of a childish old man, perhaps, but that was my wish. The war has taken my family. They cannot gather by my bedside; I have only my books. And, thanks to this child,” he attempted to place his hand on the child’s bowed head, “thanks to her, there are but few missing at this, the last moment.” ”

“ Often and often we find this true in life; we face seemingly unbearable situations—something is to happen to us, we are to go somewhere, be something different, do some seemingly undoable thing and we say, “We cannot endure it,” yet we pass through it as through a fog to come out smiling on the other side. We are better, happier and stronger for the experience. It was to be so with Lucile. ”

“ Could an old man, tottering to his grave, revealing in spite of his shabby clothing a one-time more than common intellect and a breeding above the average, stoop to theft, the theft of a book? And could he, above all, induce an innocent child to join him in the deed? ”

“ Lucile exclaimed. “I am only trying to treat everyone fairly.”
“Which can’t be done,” laughed Florence. “There is an old proverb which runs like this: ‘To do right by all men is an art which no one knows.’”
Lucile approached the shop of Frank Morrow in a troubled state of mind. She had Frank Morrow’s valuable book. She wished to play fair with him. She must, sooner or later, return it to him. Perhaps even at this moment he might have a customer for the book. Time lost might mean a sale lost, yet she did not wish to return it, not at this time. ”

“ If the university authorities or the police handled the case, would they take time to solve these mysteries, to handle the case in such a way as would not hasten the death of this feeble old man nor blight the future of this strange child? She feared not.
“Life, the life of a child, is of greater importance than is an ancient volume,” she told herself at last. “And with the help of Florence and perhaps of Frank Morrow I will solve the mystery myself. Yes, even if it costs me my position and my hope for an education!” She paused to stamp the pavement, then hurried away toward the university. ”

“ They reached the station just as the last train was pulling in. Florence and the child had climbed aboard and Lucile had her hand on the rail when she saw a skulking figure emerge from the shadows of the station. The person, whoever he might be, darted down the track to climb upon the back platform just as the train pulled out.
“That,” Lucile told herself, “is the person who crossed the bridge ahead of us. He is spying on us. I wonder who he is and what he knows.” A cold chill swept over her as if a winter blast had passed down the car. ”

“ There is no place in all the world where a thunderstorm seems more terrible than in the deserted streets in the heart of a great city at night. Echoing and re-echoing between the towering walls of buildings, the thunder seems to be speaking to the universe. Flashing from a thousand windows to ten thousand others, the lightning seems to be searching the haunts and homes of men. ”

“ She had paused to steady her shaken nerves, to collect her wits, to determine what her next move should be.
“Who can it be?” her madly thumping heart kept asking her.
And, indeed, who, besides herself, could be in the book stacks at this hour of the night?
About her, ranging tier on tier, towering from floor to ceiling, were books, thousands on thousands of books. The two floors above were full of books. The two below were the same. This place was a perfect maze of books. It was one of the sections of a great library, the library of one of the finest universities of the United States. ”

“ A famous bindery is a place of many wonders. The stitching machines, the little and great presses, the glowing fires that heat irons for the stamping, all these and many more lend an air of industry, mystery and fine endeavor to the place.
Not in the general bindery, where thousands of books are bound each day, did Lucile find her chief interest, however. ”

“ Every morning hundreds of thousands of people swarm to their work or their shopping in the heart of the city and they find all the carpets swept, desks and tables dusted, floors and stairs scrubbed, and I’ll bet that not one in a hundred of them ever pauses to wonder how it all comes about. Not one in a thousand gives a passing thought to the poor women who toil on hands and knees with rag and brush during the dark hours of night that everything may be spick and span in the morning. ”

“ What right has a university, or anyone else for that matter, to have books worth thousands of dollars? Books are just tools or playthings. That’s all they are. Men use them to shape their intellects just as a carpenter uses a plane, or they use them for amusement. What would be the sense of having a wood plane worth eighteen thousand dollars when a five dollar one would do just as good work? ”

“ His shop, like himself, reflected the new era which has dawned in the old book business. Men have come to realize that age lends worth to books that possessed real worth in the beginning and they are coming to house them well. On one of the upper floors of a modern business block Frank Morrow’s shop was flooded with sunshine and fresh air. A potted plant bloomed on his desk. The books, arranged neatly without a painful effort at order, presented the appearance of some rich gentleman’s library. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When she went back to her work on Monday night a whole busy day had passed in the library. Thousands of books had shot up the dummy elevator to have their cards stamped and to be given out. Thousands had been returned to their places on their shelves. Was a single book missing? Were two or three missing? Lucile had no way of knowing. Every book that had gone out had been recorded, but to look over these records, then to check back and see if others were missing, would be the work of weeks. She could only await developments. ”

“ I think of the whole human race as being on a huge raft in mid-ocean. There’s food and water enough for everyone if all of us are saving, careful and kind. Not one of us knows how we came on the raft. No one knows whither we are bound. From time to time we hear the distant waves break on some shore, but what shore we cannot tell. The earth, of course, is our raft and the rest of the universe our sea. ”

“ Her blood ran cold. Chills raced up her spine. What was the man’s purpose? Certainly nothing good. Whatever these people were to the child, whatever the child might be, the thing must be stopped. The child had at least done one heroic deed; she had come back for that book, the book which at this moment rested in Lucile’s own room, Frank Morrow’s book. She had come for it knowing what she must face and had come not through fear but through love for her patriarchal friend, Monsieur Le Bon. Somehow she must be saved. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lucile fancied she could see the child’s frightened eyes gleaming out of the night, “about the men who were lost at sea; brave seamen who go on ships and brave soldiers too. Their bodies get washed all about on the bottom of the water; the fishes eat them and by and by they are all gone. But their souls can’t be eaten. ”

“ All day I have been descending step by step; first the wonderful Burtnoe’s Book Store with all its magnificence and its genius of a bookman, then Dan Whitner and the doctor, now this place, and then perhaps, whoever the person is who sold the book to this pitiful specimen of a bookseller. ”

“ Conversation on the way to the university grounds rambled along over commonplaces. Each studiously avoided any reference to the mystery of the missing books.
Lucile was distinctly relieved as he left her at the dormitory door.
[72]
“Well,” she heaved a sigh, “whatever could have come over him? He has always been so frank and fine. I wonder if he suspects—but, no, how could he?”
As she hung her wrap in the corner of her room, her eye fell upon the papier-mache lunch box. Her hand half reached for it, then she drew it back and flung herself into a chair. ”