A grain of glory mixed with humblenesseCures both a fever and lethargicknesse.
"Certainly running a second-hand bookstore is a pretty humble calling, but I've mixed a grain of glory with it, in my own imagination at any rate. You see, books contain the thoughts and dreams of men, their hopes and strivings and all their immortal parts. It's in books that most of us learn how splendidly worth-while life is. I never realized the greatness of the human spirit, the indomitable grandeur of man's mind, until I read Milton's Areopagitica. To read that great outburst of splendid anger ennobles the meanest of us simply because we belong to the same species of animal as Milton. Books are the immortality of the race, the father and mother of most that is worth while cherishing in our hearts. To spread good books about, to sow them on fertile minds, to propagate understanding and a carefulness of life and beauty, isn't that high enough mission for a man? The bookseller is the real Mr. Valiant-For-Truth.
"Here's my War-alcove," he went on. "I've stacked up here most of the really good books the War has brought out. If humanity has sense enough to take these books to heart, it will never get itself into this mess again. Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries. There's Hardy's Dynasts for example. When you read that book you can feel it blowing up your mind. It leaves you gasping, ill, nauseated—oh, it's not pleasant to feel some really pure intellect filtered into one's brain! It hurts! There's enough T. N. T. in that book to blast war from the face of the globe. But there's a slow fuse attached to it. It hasn't really exploded yet. Maybe it won't for another fifty years.
"In regard to the War, think what books have accomplished. What was the first thing all the governments started to do—publish books! Blue Books, Yellow Books, White Books, Red Books—everything but Black Books, which would have been appropriate in Berlin. They knew that guns and troops were helpless unless they could get the books on their side, too. Books did as much as anything else to bring America into the war. Some German books helped to wipe the Kaiser off his throne—I Accuse, and Dr. Muehlon's magnificent outburst The Vandal of Europe, and Lichnowsky's private memorandum, that shook Germany to her foundations, simply because he told the truth. Here's that book Men in War, written I believe by a Hungarian officer, with its noble dedication "To Friend and Foe." Here are some of the French books—books in which the clear, passionate intellect of that race, with its savage irony, burns like a flame. Romain Rolland's Au-Dessus de la Melee, written in exile in Switzerland; Barbusse's terrible Le Feu; Duhamel's bitter Civilization; Bourget's strangely fascinating novel The Meaning of Death. And the noble books that have come out of England: A Student in Arms; The Tree of Heaven; Why Men Fight, by Bertrand Russell—I'm hoping he'll write one on Why Men Are Imprisoned: you know he was locked up for his sentiments! And here's one of the most moving of all—The Letters of Arthur Heath, a gentle, sensitive young Oxford tutor who was killed on the Western front. You ought to read that book. It shows the entire lack of hatred on the part of the English. Heath and his friends, the night before they enlisted, sat up singing the German music they had loved, as a kind of farewell to the old, friendly joyous life. Yes, that's the kind of thing War does—wipes out spirits like Arthur Heath. Please read it. Then you'll have to read Philip Gibbs, and Lowes Dickinson and all the young poets. Of course you've read Wells already. Everybody has."
"How about the Americans?" said Titania. "Haven't they written anything about the war that's worth while?"
"Here's one that I found a lot of meat in, streaked with philosophical gristle," said Roger, relighting his pipe. He pulled out a copy of Professor Latimer's Progress. "There was one passage that I remember marking—let's see now, what was it?—Yes, here!
"It is true that, if you made a poll of newspaper editors, you might find a great many who think that war is evil. But if you were to take a census among pastors of fashionable metropolitan churches—"
"That's a bullseye hit! The church has done for itself with most thinking men.… There's another good passage in Professor Latimer, where he points out the philosophical value of dishwashing. Some of Latimer's talk is so much in common with my ideas that I've been rather hoping he'd drop in here some day. I'd like to meet him. As for American poets, get wise to Edwin Robinson——"
There is no knowing how long the bookseller's monologue might have continued, but at this moment Helen appeared from the kitchen.
"Good gracious, Roger!" she exclaimed, "I've heard your voice piping away for I don't know how long. What are you doing, giving the poor child a Chautauqua lecture? You must want to frighten her out of the book business."
Roger looked a little sheepish. "My dear," he said, "I was only laying down a few of the principles underlying the art of bookselling——"
"It was very interesting, honestly it was," said Titania brightly. Mrs. Mifflin, in a blue check apron and with plump arms floury to the elbow, gave her a wink—or as near a wink as a woman ever achieves (ask the man who owns one).
"Whenever Mr. Mifflin feels very low in his mind about the business," she said, "he falls back on those highly idealized sentiments. He knows that next to being a parson, he's got into the worst line there is, and he tries bravely to conceal it from himself."
"I think it's too bad to give me away before Miss Titania," said Roger, smiling, so Titania saw this was merely a family joke.
"Really truly," she protested, "I'm having a lovely time. I've been learning all about Professor Latimer who wrote The Handle of Europe, and all sorts of things. I've been afraid every minute that some customer would come in and interrupt us."
"No fear of that," said Helen. "They're scarce in the early morning." She went back to her kitchen.
"Well, Miss Titania," resumed Roger. "You see what I'm driving at. I want to give people an entirely new idea about bookshops. The grain of glory that I hope will cure both my fever and my lethargicness is my conception of the bookstore as a power-house, a radiating place for truth and beauty. I insist books are not absolutely dead things: they are as lively as those fabulous dragons' teeth, and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. How about Bernhardi? Some of my Corn Cob friends tell me books are just merchandise. Pshaw!"
"I haven't read much of Bernard Shaw" said Titania.
"Did you ever notice how books track you down and hunt you out? They follow you like the hound in Francis Thompson's poem. They know their quarry! Look at that book The Education of Henry Adams! Just watch the way it's hounding out thinking people this winter. And The Four Horsemen—you can see it racing in the veins of the reading people. It's one of the uncanniest things I know to watch a real book on its career—it follows you and follows you and drives you into a corner and MAKES you read it. There's a queer old book that's been chasing me for years: The Life and Opinions of John Buncle, Esq., it's called. I've tried to escape it, but every now and then it sticks up its head somewhere. It'll get me some day, and I'll be compelled to read it. Ten Thousand a Year trailed me the same way until I surrendered. Words can't describe the cunning of some books. You'll think you've shaken them off your trail, and then one day some innocent-looking customer will pop in and begin to talk, and you'll know he's an unconscious agent of book-destiny. There's an old sea-captain who drops in here now and then. He's simply the novels of Captain Marryat put into flesh. He has me under a kind of spell; I know I shall have to read Peter Simple before I die, just because the old fellow loves it so. That's why I call this place the Haunted Bookshop. Haunted by the ghosts of the books I haven't read. Poor uneasy spirits, they walk and walk around me. There's only one way to lay the ghost of a book, and that is to read it."
"I know what you mean," said Titania. "I haven't read much Bernard Shaw, but I feel I shall have to. He meets me at every turn, bullying me. And I know lots of people who are simply terrorized by H. G. Wells. Every time one of his books comes out, and that's pretty often, they're in a perfect panic until they've read it."
Roger chuckled. "Some have even been stampeded into subscribing to the New Republic for that very purpose."
"But speaking of the Haunted Bookshop, what's your special interest in that Oliver Cromwell book?"
"Oh, I'm glad you mentioned it," said Roger. "I must put it back in its place on the shelf." He ran back to the den to get it, and just then the bell clanged at the door. A customer came in, and the one-sided gossip was over for the time being.
I am sensible that Mr. Aubrey Gilbert is by no means ideal as the leading juvenile of our piece. The time still demands some explanation why the leading juvenile wears no gold chevrons on his left sleeve. As a matter of fact, our young servant of the Grey-Matter Agency had been declined by a recruiting station and a draft board on account of flat feet; although I must protest that their flatness detracts not at all from his outward bearing nor from his physical capacity in the ordinary concerns of amiable youth. When the army "turned him down flat," as he put it, he had entered the service of the Committee on Public Information, and had carried on mysterious activities in their behalf for over a year, up to the time when the armistice was signed by the United Press. Owing to a small error of judgment on his part, now completely forgotten, but due to the regrettable delay of the German envoys to synchronize with over-exuberant press correspondents, the last three days of the war had been carried on without his active assistance. After the natural recuperation necessary on the 12th of November, he had been re-absorbed by the Grey-Matter Advertising Agency, with whom he had been connected for several years, and where his sound and vivacious qualities were highly esteemed. It was in the course of drumming up post-war business that he had swung so far out of his ordinary orbit as to call on Roger Mifflin. Perhaps these explanations should have been made earlier.
At any rate, Aubrey woke that Saturday morning, about the time Titania began to dust the pavement-boxes, in no very world-conquering humour. As it was a half-holiday, he felt no compunction in staying away from the office. The landlady, a motherly soul, sent him up some coffee and scrambled eggs, and insisted on having a doctor in to look at his damage. Several stitches were taken, after which he had a nap. He woke up at noon, feeling better, though his head still ached abominably. Putting on a dressing gown, he sat down in his modest chamber, which was furnished chiefly with a pipe-rack, ash trays, and a set of O. Henry, and picked up one of his favourite volumes for a bit of solace. We have hinted that Mr. Gilbert was not what is called "literary." His reading was mostly of the newsstand sort, and Printer's Ink, that naive journal of the publicity professions. His favourite diversion was luncheon at the Advertising Club where he would pore, fascinated, over displays of advertising booklets, posters, and pamphlets with such titles as Tell Your Story in Bold-Face. He was accustomed to remark that "the fellow who writes the Packard ads has Ralph Waldo Emerson skinned three ways from the Jack." Yet much must be forgiven this young man for his love of O. Henry. He knew, what many other happy souls have found, that O. Henry is one of those rare and gifted tellers of tales who can be read at all times. No matter how weary, how depressed, how shaken in morale, one can always find enjoyment in that master romancer of the Cabarabian Nights. "Don't talk to me of Dickens' Christmas Stories," Aubrey said to himself, recalling his adventure in Brooklyn. "I'll bet O. Henry's Gift of the Magi beats anything Dick ever laid pen to. What a shame he died without finishing that Christmas story in Rolling Stones! I wish some boss writer like Irvin Cobb or Edna Ferber would take a hand at finishing it. If I were an editor I'd hire someone to wind up that yarn. It's a crime to have a good story like that lying around half written."
He was sitting in a soft wreath of cigarette smoke when his landlady came in with the morning paper.
"Thought you might like to see the Times, Mr. Gilbert," she said. "I knew you'd been too sick to go out and buy one. I see the President's going to sail on Wednesday."
Aubrey threaded his way through the news with the practiced eye of one who knows what interests him. Then, by force of habit, he carefully scanned the advertising pages. A notice in the HELP WANTED columns leaped out at him.
WANTED—For temporary employment at Hotel Octagon, 3 chefs, 5 experienced cooks, 20 waiters. Apply chef's office, 11 P.M. Tuesday.
"Hum," he thought. "I suppose, to take the place of those fellows who are going to sail on the George Washington to cook for Mr. Wilson. That's a grand ad for the Octagon, having their kitchen staff chosen for the President's trip. Gee, I wonder why they don't play that up in some real space? Maybe I can place some copy for them along that line."
An idea suddenly occurred to him, and he went over to the chair where he had thrown his overcoat the night before. From the pocket he took out the cover of Carlyle's Cromwell, and looked at it carefully.
"I wonder what the jinx is on this book?" he thought. "It's a queer thing the way that fellow trailed me last night—then my finding this in the drug store, and getting that crack on the bean. I wonder if that neighbourhood is a safe place for a girl to work in?"
He paced up and down the room, forgetting the pain in his head.
"Maybe I ought to tip the police off about this business," he thought. "It looks wrong to me. But I have a hankering to work the thing out on my own. I'd have a wonderful stand-in with old man Chapman if I saved that girl from anything.… I've heard of gangs of kidnappers.… No, I don't like the looks of things a little bit. I think that bookseller is half cracked, anyway. He doesn't believe in advertising! The idea of Chapman trusting his daughter in a place like that——"
The thought of playing knight errant to something more personal and romantic than an advertising account was irresistible. "I'll slip over to Brooklyn as soon as it gets dark this evening," he said to himself. "I ought to be able to get a room somewhere along that street, where I can watch that bookshop without being seen, and find out what's haunting it. I've got that old .22 popgun of mine that I used to use up at camp. I'll take it along. I'd like to know more about Weintraub's drug store, too. I didn't fancy the map of Herr Weintraub, not at all. To tell the truth, I had no idea old man Carlyle would get mixed up in anything as interesting as this."
He found a romantic exhilaration in packing a handbag. Pyjamas, hairbrushes, toothbrush, toothpaste—("What an ad it would be for the Chinese Paste people," he thought, "if they knew I was taking a tube of their stuff on this adventure!")—his .22 revolver, a small green box of cartridges of the size commonly used for squirrel-shooting, a volume of O. Henry, a safety razor and adjuncts, a pad of writing paper.… At least six nationally advertised articles, he said to himself, enumerating his kit. He locked his bag, dressed, and went downstairs for lunch. After lunch he lay down for a rest, as his head was still very painful. But he was not able to sleep. The thought of Titania Chapman's blue eyes and gallant little figure came between him and slumber. He could not shake off the conviction that some peril was hanging over her. Again and again he looked at his watch, rebuking the lagging dusk. At half-past four he set off for the subway. Half-way down Thirty-third Street a thought struck him. He returned to his room, got out a pair of opera glasses from his trunk, and put them in his bag.
It was blue twilight when he reached Gissing Street. The block between Wordsworth Avenue and Hazlitt Street is peculiar in that on one side—the side where the Haunted Bookshop stands—the old brownstone dwellings have mostly been replaced by small shops of a bright, lively character. At the Wordsworth Avenue corner, where the L swings round in a lofty roaring curve, stands Weintraub's drug store; below it, on the western side, a succession of shining windows beacon through the evening. Delicatessen shops with their appetizing medley of cooked and pickled meats, dried fruits, cheeses, and bright coloured jars of preserves; small modistes with generously contoured wax busts of coiffured ladies; lunch rooms with the day's menu typed and pasted on the outer pane; a French rotisserie where chickens turn hissing on the spits before a tall oven of rosy coals; florists, tobacconists, fruit-dealers, and a Greek candy-shop with a long soda fountain shining with onyx marble and coloured glass lamps and nickel tanks of hot chocolate; a stationery shop, now stuffed for the holiday trade with Christmas cards, toys, calendars, and those queer little suede-bound volumes of Kipling, Service, Oscar Wilde, and Omar Khayyam that appear every year toward Christmas time—such modest and cheerful merchandising makes the western pavement of Gissing Street a jolly place when the lights are lit. All the shops were decorated for the Christmas trade; the Christmas issues of the magazines were just out and brightened the newsstands with their glowing covers. This section of Brooklyn has a tone and atmosphere peculiarly French in some parts: one can quite imagine oneself in some smaller Parisian boulevard frequented by the petit bourgeois. Midway in this engaging and animated block stands the Haunted Bookshop. Aubrey could see its windows lit, and the shelved masses of books within. He felt a severe temptation to enter, but a certain bashfulness added itself to his desire to act in secret. There was a privy exhilaration in his plan of putting the bookshop under an unsuspected surveillance, and he had the emotion of one walking on the frontiers of adventure.
So he kept on the opposite side of the street, which still maintains an unbroken row of quiet brown fronts, save for the movie theatre at the upper corner, opposite Weintraub's. Some of the basements on this side are occupied now by small tailors, laundries, and lace-curtain cleaners (lace curtains are still a fetish in Brooklyn), but most of the houses are still merely dwellings. Carrying his bag, Aubrey passed the bright halo of the movie theatre. Posters announcing THE RETURN OF TARZAN showed a kind of third chapter of Genesis scene with an Eve in a sports suit. ADDED ATTRACTION, Mr. AND Mrs. SIDNEY DREW, he read.
A little way down the block he saw a sign VACANCIES in a parlour window. The house was nearly opposite the bookshop, and he at once mounted the tall steps to the front door and rang.
A fawn-tinted coloured girl, of the kind generally called "Addie," arrived presently. "Can I get a room here?" he asked. "I don't know, you'd better see Miz' Schiller," she said, without rancour. Adopting the customary compromise of untrained domestics, she did not invite him inside, but departed, leaving the door open to show that there was no ill will.
Aubrey stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. In an immense mirror the pale cheese-coloured flutter of a gas jet was remotely reflected. He noticed the Landseer engraving hung against wallpaper designed in facsimile of large rectangles of gray stone, and the usual telephone memorandum for the usual Mrs. J. F. Smith (who abides in all lodging houses) tucked into the frame of the mirror. Will Mrs. Smith please call Stockton 6771, it said. A carpeted stair with a fine old mahogany balustrade rose into the dimness. Aubrey, who was thoroughly familiar with lodgings, knew instinctively that the fourth, ninth, tenth, and fourteenth steps would be creakers. A soft musk sweetened the warm, torpid air: he divined that someone was toasting marshmallows over a gas jet. He knew perfectly well that somewhere in the house would be a placard over a bathtub with the legend: Please leave this tub as you would wish to find it. Roger Mifflin would have said, after studying the hall, that someone in the house was sure to be reading the poems of Rabbi Tagore; but Aubrey was not so caustic.
Mrs. Schiller came up the basement stairs, followed by a small pug dog. She was warm and stout, with a tendency to burst just under the armpits. She was friendly. The pug made merry over Aubrey's ankles.
"Stop it, Treasure!" said Mrs. Schiller.
"Can I get a room here?" asked Aubrey, with great politeness.
"Third floor front's the only thing I've got," she said. "You don't smoke in bed, do you? The last young man I had burned holes in three of my sheets——"
Aubrey reassured her.
"I don't give meals."
"That's all right," said Aubrey. "Suits me."
"Five dollars a week," she said.
"May I see it?"
Mrs. Schiller brightened the gas and led the way upstairs. Treasure skipped up the treads beside her. The sight of the six feet ascending together amused Aubrey. The fourth, ninth, tenth, and fourteenth steps creaked, as he had guessed they would. On the landing of the second storey a transom gushed orange light. Mrs. Schiller was secretly pleased at not having to augment the gas on that landing. Under the transom and behind a door Aubrey could hear someone having a bath, with a great sloshing of water. He wondered irreverently whether it was Mrs. J. F. Smith. At any rate (he felt sure), it was some experienced habitue of lodgings, who knew that about five-thirty in the afternoon is the best time for a bath—before cooking supper and the homecoming ablutions of other tenants have exhausted the hot water boiler.
They climbed one more flight. The room was small, occupying half the third-floor frontage. A large window opened onto the street, giving a plain view of the bookshop and the other houses across the way. A wash-stand stood modestly inside a large cupboard. Over the mantel was the familiar picture—usually, however, reserved for the fourth floor back—of a young lady having her shoes shined by a ribald small boy.
Aubrey was delighted. "This is fine," he said. "Here's a week in advance."
Mrs. Schiller was almost disconcerted by the rapidity of the transaction. She preferred to solemnize the reception of a new lodger by a little more talk—remarks about the weather, the difficulty of getting "help," the young women guests who empty tea-leaves down wash-basin pipes, and so on. All this sort of gossip, apparently aimless, has a very real purpose: it enables the defenceless landlady to size up the stranger who comes to prey upon her. She had hardly had a good look at this gentleman, nor even knew his name, and here he had paid a week's rent and was already installed.
Aubrey divined the cause of her hesitation, and gave her his business card.
"All right, Mr. Gilbert," she said. "I'll send up the girl with some clean towels and a latchkey."
Aubrey sat down in a rocking chair by the window, tucked the muslin curtain to one side, and looked out upon the bright channel of Gissing Street. He was full of the exhilaration that springs from any change of abode, but his romantic satisfaction in being so close to the adorable Titania was somewhat marred by a sense of absurdity, which is feared by young men more than wounds and death. He could see the lighted windows of the Haunted Bookshop quite plainly, but he could not think of any adequate excuse for going over there. And already he realized that to be near Miss Chapman was not at all the consolation he had expected it would be. He had a powerful desire to see her. He turned off the gas, lit his pipe, opened the window, and focussed the opera glasses on the door of the bookshop. It brought the place tantalizingly near. He could see the table at the front of the shop, Roger's bulletin board under the electric light, and one or two nondescript customers gleaning along the shelves. Then something bounded violently under the third button of his shirt. There she was! In the bright, prismatic little circle of the lenses he could see Titania. Heavenly creature, in her white V-necked blouse and brown skirt, there she was looking at a book. He saw her put out one arm and caught the twinkle of her wrist-watch. In the startling familiarity of the magnifying glass he could see her bright, unconscious face, the merry profile of her cheek and chin.… "The idea of that girl working in a second-hand bookstore!" he exclaimed. "It's positive sacrilege! Old man Chapman must be crazy."
He took out his pyjamas and threw them on the bed; put his toothbrush and razor on the wash-basin, laid hairbrushes and O. Henry on the bureau. Feeling rather serio-comic he loaded his small revolver and hipped it. It was six o'clock, and he wound his watch. He was a little uncertain what to do: whether to keep a vigil at the window with the opera glasses, or go down in the street where he could watch the bookshop more nearly. In the excitement of the adventure he had forgotten all about the cut on his scalp, and felt quite chipper. In leaving Madison Avenue he had attempted to excuse the preposterousness of his excursion by thinking that a quiet week-end in Brooklyn would give him an opportunity to jot down some tentative ideas for Daintybits advertising copy which he planned to submit to his chief on Monday. But now that he was here he felt the impossibility of attacking any such humdrum task. How could he sit down in cold blood to devise any "attention-compelling" lay-outs for Daintybits Tapioca and Chapman's Cherished Saratoga Chips, when the daintiest bit of all was only a few yards away? For the first time was made plain to him the amazing power of young women to interfere with the legitimate commerce of the world. He did get so far as to take out his pad of writing paper and jot down
These delicate wafers, crisped by a secret process, cherish in their unique tang and flavour all the life-giving nutriment that has made the potato the King of Vegetables——
But the face of Miss Titania kept coming between his hand and brain. Of what avail to flood the world with Chapman Chips if the girl herself should come to any harm? "Was this the face that launched a thousand chips?" he murmured, and for an instant wished he had brought The Oxford Book of English Verse instead of O. Henry.
A tap sounded at his door, and Mrs. Schiller appeared. "Telephone for you, Mr. Gilbert," she said.
"For ME?" said Aubrey in amazement. How could it be for him, he thought, for no one knew he was there.
"The party on the wire asked to speak to the gentleman who arrived about half an hour ago, and I guess you must be the one he means."
"Did he say who he is?" asked Aubrey.
"No, sir."
For a moment Aubrey thought of refusing to answer the call. Then it occurred to him that this would arouse Mrs. Schiller's suspicions. He ran down to the telephone, which stood under the stairs in the front hall.
"Hello," he said.
"Is this the new guest?" said a voice—a deep, gargling kind of voice.
"Yes," said Aubrey.
"Is this the gentleman that arrived half an hour ago with a handbag?"
"Yes; who are you?"
"I'm a friend," said the voice; "I wish you well."
"How do you do, friend and well-wisher," said Aubrey genially.
"I schust want to warn you that Gissing Street is not healthy for you," said the voice.
"Is that so?" said Aubrey sharply. "Who are you?"
"I am a friend," buzzed the receiver. There was a harsh, bass note in the voice that made the diaphragm at Aubrey's ear vibrate tinnily. Aubrey grew angry.
"Well, Herr Freund," he said, "if you're the well-wisher I met on the Bridge last night, watch your step. I've got your number."
There was a pause. Then the other repeated, ponderously, "I am a friend. Gissing Street is not healthy for you." There was a click, and he had rung off.
Aubrey was a good deal perplexed. He returned to his room, and sat in the dark by the window, smoking a pipe and thinking, with his eyes on the bookshop.
There was no longer any doubt in his mind that something sinister was afoot. He reviewed in memory the events of the past few days.
It was on Monday that a bookloving friend had first told him of the existence of the shop on Gissing Street. On Tuesday evening he had gone round to visit the place, and had stayed to supper with Mr. Mifflin. On Wednesday and Thursday he had been busy at the office, and the idea of an intensive Daintybit campaign in Brooklyn had occurred to him. On Friday he had dined with Mr. Chapman, and had run into a curious string of coincidences. He tabulated them:—
(1) The Lost ad in the Times on Friday morning.
(2) The chef in the elevator carrying the book that was supposed to be lost—he being the same man Aubrey had seen in the bookshop on Tuesday evening.
(3) Seeing the chef again on Gissing Street.
(4) The return of the book to the bookshop.
(5) Mifflin had said that the book had been stolen from him. Then why should it be either advertised or returned?
(6) The rebinding of the book.
(7) Finding the original cover of the book in Weintraub's drug store.
(8) The affair on the Bridge.
(9) The telephone message from "a friend"—a friend with an obviously Teutonic voice.
He remembered the face of anger and fear displayed by the Octagon chef when he had spoken to him in the elevator. Until this oddly menacing telephone message, he could have explained the attack on the Bridge as merely a haphazard foot-pad enterprise; but now he was forced to conclude that it was in some way connected with his visits to the bookshop. He felt, too, that in some unknown way Weintraub's drug store had something to do with it. Would he have been attacked if he had not taken the book cover from the drug store? He got the cover out of his bag and looked at it again. It was of plain blue cloth, with the title stamped in gold on the back, and at the bottom the lettering London: Chapman and Hall. From the width of the backstrap it was evident that the book had been a fat one. Inside the front cover the figure 60 was written in red pencil—this he took to be Roger Mifflin's price mark. Inside the back cover he found the following notations—
vol. 3—166, 174, 210, 329, 349329 ff. cf. W. W.
These references were written in black ink, in a small, neat hand. Below them, in quite a different script and in pale violet ink, was written
153 (3) 1, 2
"I suppose these are page numbers," Aubrey thought. "I think I'd better have a look at that book."
He put the cover in his pocket and went out for a bite of supper. "It's a puzzle with three sides to it," he thought, as he descended the crepitant stairs, "The Bookshop, the Octagon, and Weintraub's; but that book seems to be the clue to the whole business."
A few doors from the bookshop was a small lunchroom named after the great city of Milwaukee, one of those pleasant refectories where the diner buys his food at the counter and eats it sitting in a flat-armed chair. Aubrey got a bowl of soup, a cup of coffee, beef stew, and bran muffins, and took them to an empty seat by the window. He ate with one eye on the street. From his place in the corner he could command the strip of pavement in front of Mifflin's shop. Halfway through the stew he saw Roger come out onto the pavement and begin to remove the books from the boxes.
After finishing his supper he lit one of his "mild but they satisfy" cigarettes and sat in the comfortable warmth of a near-by radiator. A large black cat lay sprawled on the next chair. Up at the service counter there was a pleasant clank of stout crockery as occasional customers came in and ordered their victuals. Aubrey began to feel a relaxation swim through his veins. Gissing Street was very bright and orderly in its Saturday evening bustle. Certainly it was grotesque to imagine melodrama hanging about a second-hand bookshop in Brooklyn. The revolver felt absurdly lumpy and uncomfortable in his hip pocket. What a different aspect a little hot supper gives to affairs! The most resolute idealist or assassin had better write his poems or plan his atrocities before the evening meal. After the narcosis of that repast the spirit falls into a softer mood, eager only to be amused. Even Milton would hardly have had the inhuman fortitude to sit down to the manuscript of Paradise Lost right after supper. Aubrey began to wonder if his unpleasant suspicions had not been overdrawn. He thought how delightful it would be to stop in at the bookshop and ask Titania to go to the movies with him.
Curious magic of thought! The idea was still sparkling in his mind when he saw Titania and Mrs. Mifflin emerge from the bookshop and pass briskly in front of the lunchroom. They were talking and laughing merrily. Titania's face, shining with young vitality, seemed to him more "attention-compelling" than any ten-point Caslon type-arrangement he had ever seen. He admired the layout of her face from the standpoint of his cherished technique. "Just enough 'white space,'" he thought, "to set off her eyes as the 'centre of interest.' Her features aren't this modern bold-face stuff, set solid," he said to himself, thinking typographically. "They're rather French old-style italic, slightly leaded. Set on 22-point body, I guess. Old man Chapman's a pretty good typefounder, you have to hand it to him."
He smiled at this conceit, seized hat and coat, and dashed out of the lunchroom.
Mrs. Mifflin and Titania had halted a few yards up the street, and were looking at some pert little bonnets in a window. Aubrey hurried across the street, ran up to the next corner, recrossed, and walked down the eastern pavement. In this way he would meet them as though he were coming from the subway. He felt rather more excited than King Albert re-entering Brussels. He saw them coming, chattering together in the delightful fashion of women out on a spree. Helen seemed much younger in the company of her companion. "A lining of pussy-willow taffeta and an embroidered slip-on," she was saying.
Aubrey steered onto them with an admirable gesture of surprise.
"Well, I never!" said Mrs. Mifflin. "Here's Mr. Gilbert. Were you coming to see Roger?" she added, rather enjoying the young man's predicament.
Titania shook hands cordially. Aubrey, searching the old-style italics with the desperate intensity of a proof-reader, saw no evidence of chagrin at seeing him again so soon.
"Why," he said rather lamely, "I was coming to see you all. I—I wondered how you were getting along."
Mrs. Mifflin had pity on him. "We've left Mr. Mifflin to look after the shop," she said. "He's busy with some of his old crony customers. Why don't you come with us to the movies?"
"Yes, do," said Titania. "It's Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew, you know how adorable they are!"
No one needs to be told how quickly Aubrey assented. Pleasure coincided with duty in that the outer wing of the party placed him next to Titania.
"Well, how do you like bookselling?" he asked.
"Oh, it's the greatest fun!" she cried. "But it'll take me ever and ever so long to learn about all the books. People ask such questions! A woman came in this afternoon looking for a copy of Blase Tales. How was I to know she wanted The Blazed Trail?"
"You'll get used to that," said Mrs. Mifflin. "Just a minute, people, I want to stop in at the drug store."
They went into Weintraub's pharmacy. Entranced as he was by the proximity of Miss Chapman, Aubrey noticed that the druggist eyed him rather queerly. And being of a noticing habit, he also observed that when Weintraub had occasion to write out a label for a box of powdered alum Mrs. Mifflin was buying, he did so with a pale violet ink.
At the glass sentry-box in front of the theatre Aubrey insisted on buying the tickets.
"We came out right after supper," said Titania as they entered, "so as to get in before the crowd."
It is not so easy, however, to get ahead of Brooklyn movie fans. They had to stand for several minutes in a packed lobby while a stern young man held the waiting crowd in check with a velvet rope. Aubrey sustained delightful spasms of the protective instinct in trying to shelter Titania from buffets and pushings. Unknown to her, his arm extended behind her like an iron rod to absorb the onward impulses of the eager throng. A rustling groan ran through these enthusiasts as they saw the preliminary footage of the great Tarzan flash onto the screen, and realized they were missing something. At last, however, the trio got through the barrier and found three seats well in front, at one side. From this angle the flying pictures were strangely distorted, but Aubrey did not mind.
"Isn't it lucky I got here when I did," whispered Titania. "Mr. Mifflin has just had a telephone call from Philadelphia asking him to go over on Monday to make an estimate on a library that's going to be sold so I'll be able to look after the shop for him while he's gone."
"Is that so?" said Aubrey. "Well, now, I've got to be in Brooklyn on Monday, on business. Maybe Mrs. Mifflin would let me come in and buy some books from you."
"Customers always welcome," said Mrs. Mifflin.
"I've taken a fancy to that Cromwell book," said Aubrey. "What do you suppose Mr. Mifflin would sell it for?"
"I think that book must be valuable," said Titania. "Somebody came in this afternoon and wanted to buy it, but Mr. Mifflin wouldn't part with it. He says it's one of his favourites. Gracious, what a weird film this is!"
The fantastic absurdities of Tarzan proceeded on the screen, tearing celluloid passions to tatters, but Aubrey found the strong man of the jungle coming almost too close to his own imperious instincts. Was not he, too—he thought naively—a poor Tarzan of the advertising jungle, lost among the elephants and alligators of commerce, and sighing for this dainty and unattainable vision of girlhood that had burst upon his burning gaze! He stole a perilous side-glance at her profile, and saw the racing flicker of the screen reflected in tiny spangles of light that danced in her eyes. He was even so unknowing as to imagine that she was not aware of his contemplation. And then the lights went up.
"What nonsense, wasn't it?" said Titania. "I'm so glad it's over! I was quite afraid one of those elephants would walk off the screen and tread on us."
"I never can understand," said Helen, "why they don't film some of the really good books—think of Frank Stockton's stuff, how delightful that would be. Can't you imagine Mr. and Mrs. Drew playing in Rudder Grange!"
"Thank goodness!" said Titania. "Since I entered the book business, that's the first time anybody's mentioned a book that I've read. Yes—do you remember when Pomona and Jonas visit an insane asylum on their honeymoon? Do you know, you and Mr. Mifflin remind me a little of Mr. and Mrs. Drew."
Helen and Aubrey chuckled at this innocent correlation of ideas. Then the organ began to play "O How I Hate To Get Up in the Morning" and the ever-delightful Mr. and Mrs. Drew appeared on the screen in one of their domestic comedies. Lovers of the movies may well date a new screen era from the day those whimsical pantomimers set their wholesome and humane talent at the service of the arc light and the lens. Aubrey felt a serene and intimate pleasure in watching them from a seat beside Titania. He knew that the breakfast table scene shadowed before them was only a makeshift section of lath propped up in some barnlike motion picture studio; yet his rocketing fancy imagined it as some arcadian suburb where he and Titania, by a jugglery of benign fate, were bungalowed together. Young men have a pioneering imagination: it is doubtful whether any young Orlando ever found himself side by side with Rosalind without dreaming himself wedded to her. If men die a thousand deaths before this mortal coil is shuffled, even so surely do youths contract a thousand marriages before they go to the City Hall for a license.
Aubrey remembered the opera glasses, which were still in his pocket, and brought them out. The trio amused themselves by watching Sidney Drew's face through the magnifying lenses. They were disappointed in the result, however, as the pictures, when so enlarged, revealed all the cobweb of fine cracks on the film. Mr. Drew's nose, the most amusing feature known to the movies, lost its quaintness when so augmented.
"Why," cried Titania, "it makes his lovely nose look like the map of Florida."
"How on earth did you happen to have these in your pocket?" asked Mrs. Mifflin, returning the glasses.
Aubrey was hard pressed for a prompt and reasonable fib, but advertising men are resourceful.
"Oh," he said, "I sometimes carry them with me at night to study the advertising sky-signs. I'm a little short sighted. You see, it's part of my business to study the technique of the electric signs."
After some current event pictures the programme prepared to repeat itself, and they went out. "Will you come in and have some cocoa with us?" said Helen as they reached the door of the bookshop. Aubrey was eager enough to accept, but feared to overplay his hand. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I think I'd better not. I've got some work to do to-night. Perhaps I can drop in on Monday when Mr. Mifflin's away, and put coal on the furnace for you, or something of that sort?"
Mrs. Mifflin laughed. "Surely!" she said. "You're welcome any time." The door closed behind them, and Aubrey fell into a profound melancholy. Deprived of the heavenly rhetoric of her eye, Gissing Street seemed flat and dull.
It was still early—not quite ten o'clock—and it occurred to Aubrey that if he was going to patrol the neighbourhood he had better fix its details in his head. Hazlitt, the next street below the bookshop, proved to be a quiet little byway, cheerfully lit with modest dwellings. A few paces down Hazlitt Street a narrow cobbled alley ran through to Wordsworth Avenue, passing between the back yards of Gissing Street and Whittier Street. The alley was totally dark, but by counting off the correct number of houses Aubrey identified the rear entrance of the bookshop. He tried the yard gate cautiously, and found it unlocked. Glancing in he could see a light in the kitchen window and assumed that the cocoa was being brewed. Then a window glowed upstairs, and he was thrilled to see Titania shining in the lamplight. She moved to the window and pulled down the blind. For a moment he saw her head and shoulders silhouetted against the curtain; then the light went out.
Aubrey stood briefly in sentimental thought. If he only had a couple of blankets, he mused, he could camp out here in Roger's back yard all night. Surely no harm could come to the girl while he kept watch beneath her casement! The idea was just fantastic enough to appeal to him. Then, as he stood in the open gateway, he heard distant footfalls coming down the alley, and a grumble of voices. Perhaps two policemen on their rounds, he thought: it would be awkward to be surprised skulking about back doors at this time of night. He slipped inside the gate and closed it gently behind him, taking the precaution to slip the bolt.
The footsteps came nearer, stumbling down the uneven cobbles in the darkness. He stood still against the back fence. To his amazement the men halted outside Mifflin's gate, and he heard the latch quietly lifted.
"It's no use," said a voice—"the gate is locked. We must find some other way, my friend."
Aubrey tingled to hear the rolling, throaty "r" in the last word. There was no mistaking—this was the voice of his "friend and well-wisher" over the telephone.
The other said something in German in a hoarse whisper. Having studied that language in college, Aubrey caught only two words—Thur and Schlussel, which he knew meant door and key.
"Very well," said the first voice. "That will be all right, but we must act to-night. The damned thing must be finished to-morrow. Your idiotic stupidity—"
Again followed some gargling in German, in a rapid undertone too fluent for Aubrey's grasp. The latch of the alley gate clicked once more, and his hand was on his revolver; but in a moment the two had passed on down the alley.
The young advertising agent stood against the fence in silent horror, his heart bumping heavily. His hands were clammy, his feet seemed to have grown larger and taken root. What damnable complot was this? A sultry wave of anger passed over him. This bland, slick, talkative bookseller, was he arranging some blackmailing scheme to kidnap the girl and wring blood-money out of her father? And in league with Germans, too, the scoundrel! What an asinine thing for old Chapman to send an unprotected girl over here into the wilds of Brooklyn … and in the meantime, what was he to do? Patrol the back yard all night? No, the friend and well-wisher had said "We must find some other way." Besides, Aubrey remembered something having been said about the old terrier sleeping in the kitchen. He felt sure Bock would not let any German in at night without raising the roof. Probably the best way would be to watch the front of the shop. In miserable perplexity he waited several minutes until the two Germans would be well out of earshot. Then he unbolted the gate and stole up the alley on tiptoe, in the opposite direction. It led into Wordsworth Avenue just behind Weintraub's drug store, over the rear of which hung the great girders and trestles of the "L" station, a kind of Swiss chalet straddling the street on stilts. He thought it prudent to make a detour, so he turned east on Wordsworth Avenue until he reached Whittier Street, then sauntered easily down Whittier for a block, spying sharply for evidences of pursuit. Brooklyn was putting out its lights for the night, and all was quiet. He turned into Hazlitt Street and so back onto Gissing, noticing now that the Haunted Bookshop lights were off. It was nearly eleven o'clock: the last audience was filing out of the movie theatre, where two workmen were already perched on ladders taking down the Tarzan electric light sign, to substitute the illuminated lettering for the next feature.
After some debate he decided that the best thing to do was to return to his room at Mrs. Schiller's, from which he could keep a sharp watch on the front door of the bookshop. By good fortune there was a lamp post almost directly in front of Mifflin's house, which cast plenty of light on the little sunken area before the door. With his opera glasses he could see from his bedroom whatever went on. As he crossed the street he cast his eyes upward at the facade of Mrs. Schiller's house. Two windows in the fourth storey were lit, and the gas burned minutely in the downstairs hall, elsewhere all was dark. And then, as he glanced at the window of his own chamber, where the curtain was still tucked back behind the pane, he noticed a curious thing. A small point of rosy light glowed, faded, and glowed again by the window. Someone was smoking a cigar in his room.
Aubrey continued walking in even stride, as though he had seen nothing. Returning down the street, on the opposite side, he verified his first glance. The light was still there, and he judged himself not far out in assuming the smoker to be the friend and well-wisher or one of his gang. He had suspected the other man in the alley of being Weintraub, but he could not be sure. A cautious glance through the window of the drug store revealed Weintraub at his prescription counter. Aubrey determined to get even with the guttural gentleman who was waiting for him, certainly with no affectionate intent. He thanked the good fortune that had led him to stick the book cover in his overcoat pocket when leaving Mrs. Schiller's. Evidently, for reasons unknown, someone was very anxious to get hold of it.
An idea occurred to him as he passed the little florist's shop, which was just closing. He entered and bought a dozen white carnations, and then, as if by an afterthought, asked "Have you any wire?"
The florist produced a spool of the slender, tough wire that is sometimes used to nip the buds of expensive roses, to prevent them from blossoming too quickly.
"Let me have about eight feet," said Aubrey. "I need some to-night and I guess the hardware stores are all closed."
With this he returned to Mrs. Schiller's, picking his way carefully and close to the houses so as to be out of sight from the upstairs windows. He climbed the steps and unlatched the door with bated breath. It was half-past eleven, and he wondered how long he would have to wait for the well-wisher to descend.
He could not help chuckling as he made his preparations, remembering an occasion at college somewhat similar in setting though far less serious in purpose. First he took off his shoes, laying them carefully to one side where he could find them again in a hurry. Then, choosing a banister about six feet from the bottom of the stairs he attached one end of the wire tightly to its base and spread the slack in a large loop over two of the stair treads. The remaining end of the wire he passed out through the banisters, twisting it into a small loop so that he could pull it easily. Then he turned out the hall gas and sat down in the dark to wait events.
He sat for a long time, in some nervousness lest the pug dog might come prowling and find him. He was startled by a lady in a dressing gown—perhaps Mrs. J. F. Smith—who emerged from a ground-floor room passed very close to him in the dark, and muttered upstairs. He twitched his noose out of the way just in time. Presently, however, his patience was rewarded. He heard a door squeak above, and then the groaning of the staircase as someone descended slowly. He relaid his trap and waited, smiling to himself. A clock somewhere in the house was chiming twelve as the man came groping down the last flight, feeling his way in the dark. Aubrey heard him swearing under his breath.
At the precise moment, when both his victim's feet were within the loop, Aubrey gave the wire a gigantic tug. The man fell like a safe, crashing against the banisters and landing in a sprawl on the floor. It was a terrific fall, and shook the house. He lay there groaning and cursing.
Barely retaining his laughter, Aubrey struck a match and held it over the sprawling figure. The man lay with his face twisted against one out-spread arm, but the beard was unmistakable. It was the assistant chef again, and he seemed partly unconscious. "Burnt hair is a grand restorative," said Aubrey to himself, and applied the match to the bush of beard. He singed off a couple of inches of it with intense delight, and laid his carnations on the head of the stricken one. Then, hearing stirrings in the basement, he gathered up his wire and shoes and fled upstairs. He gained his room roaring with inward mirth, but entered cautiously, fearing some trap. Save for a strong tincture of cigar smoke, everything seemed correct. Listening at his door he heard Mrs. Schiller exclaiming shrilly in the hall, assisted by yappings from the pug. Doors upstairs were opened, and questions were called out. He heard guttural groans from the bearded one, mingled with oaths and some angry remark about having fallen downstairs. The pug, frenzied with excitement, yelled insanely. A female voice—possibly Mrs. J. F. Smith—cried out "What's that smell of burning?" Someone else said, "They're burning feathers under his nose to bring him to."
"Yes, Hun's feathers," chuckled Aubrey to himself. He locked his door, and sat down by the window with his opera glasses.