The Haunted Bookshop

by Christopher Morley

CHAPMAN'S CHERISHED CHIPS

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, 349
329 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."

Chapter VIII

Aubrey Goes to the Movies, and Wishes he Knew More German

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.

Chapter IX

Again the Narrative is Retarded

Roger had spent a quiet evening in the bookshop. Sitting at his desk under a fog of tobacco, he had honestly intended to do some writing on the twelfth chapter of his great work on bookselling. This chapter was to be an (alas, entirely conjectural) "Address Delivered by a Bookseller on Being Conferred the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters by a Leading University," and it presented so many alluring possibilities that Roger's mind always wandered from the paper into entranced visions of his imagined scene. He loved to build up in fancy the flattering details of that fine ceremony when bookselling would at last be properly recognized as one of the learned professions. He could see the great auditorium, filled with cultivated people: men with Emersonian profiles, ladies whispering behind their fluttering programmes. He could see the academic beadle, proctor, dean (or whatever he is, Roger was a little doubtful) pronouncing the august words of presentation—

A man who, in season and out of season, forgetting private gain for public weal, has laboured with Promethean and sacrificial ardour to instil the love of reasonable letters into countless thousands; to whom, and to whose colleagues, amid the perishable caducity of human affairs, is largely due the pullulation of literary taste; in honouring whom we seek to honour the noble and self-effacing profession of which he is so representative a member——

Then he could see the modest bookseller, somewhat clammy in his extremities and lost within his academic robe and hood, nervously fidgeting his mortar-board, haled forward by ushers, and tottering rubescent before the chancellor, provost, president (or whoever it might be) who hands out the diploma. Then (in Roger's vision) he could see the garlanded bibliopole turning to the expectant audience, giving his trailing gown a deft rearward kick as the ladies do on the stage, and uttering, without hesitation or embarrassment, with due interpolation of graceful pleasantry, that learned and unlaboured discourse on the delights of bookishness that he had often dreamed of. Then he could see the ensuing reception: the distinguished savants crowding round; the plates of macaroons, the cups of untasted tea; the ladies twittering, "Now there's something I want to ask you—why are there so many statues to generals, admirals, parsons, doctors, statesmen, scientists, artists, and authors, but no statues to booksellers?"

Contemplation of this glittering scene always lured Roger into fantastic dreams. Ever since he had travelled country roads, some years before, selling books from a van drawn by a fat white horse, he had nourished a secret hope of some day founding a Parnassus on Wheels Corporation which would own a fleet of these vans and send them out into the rural byways where bookstores are unknown. He loved to imagine a great map of New York State, with the daily location of each travelling Parnassus marked by a coloured pin. He dreamed of himself, sitting in some vast central warehouse of second-hand books, poring over his map like a military chief of staff and forwarding cases of literary ammunition to various bases where his vans would re-stock. His idea was that his travelling salesmen could be recruited largely from college professors, parsons, and newspaper men, who were weary of their thankless tasks, and would welcome an opportunity to get out on the road. One of his hopes was that he might interest Mr. Chapman in this superb scheme, and he had a vision of the day when the shares of the Parnassus on Wheels Corporation would pay a handsome dividend and be much sought after by serious investors.

These thoughts turned his mind toward his brother-in-law Andrew McGill, the author of several engaging books on the joys of country living, who dwells at the Sabine Farm in the green elbow of a Connecticut valley. The original Parnassus, a quaint old blue wagon in which Roger had lived and journeyed and sold books over several thousand miles of country roads in the days before his marriage, was now housed in Andrew's barn. Peg, his fat white horse, had lodging there also. It occurred to Roger that he owed Andrew a letter, and putting aside his notes for the bookseller's collegiate oration, he began to write:

THE HAUNTED BOOKSHOP
163 Gissing Street, Brooklyn,
November 30, 1918.

MY DEAR ANDREW:

It is scandalous not to have thanked you sooner for the annual cask of cider, which has given us even more than the customary pleasure. This has been an autumn when I have been hard put to it to keep up with my own thoughts, and I've written no letters at all. Like everyone else I am thinking constantly of this new peace that has marvellously come upon us. I trust we may have statesmen who will be able to turn it to the benefit of humanity. I wish there could be an international peace conference of booksellers, for (you will smile at this) my own conviction is that the future happiness of the world depends in no small measure on them and on the librarians. I wonder what a German bookseller is like?

I've been reading The Education of Henry Adams and wish he might have lived long enough to give us his thoughts on the War. I fear it would have bowled him over. He thought that this is not a world "that sensitive and timid natures can regard without a shudder." What would he have said of the four-year shambles we have watched with sickened hearts?

You remember my favourite poem—old George Herbert's Church Porch—where he says—

By all means use sometimes to be alone;
Salute thyself; see what thy soul doth wear;
Dare to look in thy chest, for 'tis thine own,
And tumble up and down what thou find'st there—

Well, I've been tumbling my thoughts up and down a good deal. Melancholy, I suppose, is the curse of the thinking classes; but I confess my soul wears a great uneasiness these days! The sudden and amazing turnover in human affairs, dramatic beyond anything in history, already seems to be taken as a matter of course. My great fear is that humanity will forget the atrocious sufferings of the war, which have never been told. I am hoping and praying that men like Philip Gibbs may tell us what they really saw.

You will not agree with me on what I am about to say, for I know you as a stubborn Republican; but I thank fortune that Wilson is going to the Peace Conference. I've been mulling over one of my favourite books—it lies beside me as I write—Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, edited by Carlyle, with what Carlyle amusingly calls "Elucidations." (Carlyle is not very good at "elucidating" anything!) I have heard somewhere or other that this is one of Wilson's favourite books, and indeed, there is much of the Cromwell in him. With what a grim, covenanting zeal he took up the sword when at last it was forced into his hand! And I have been thinking that what he will say to the Peace Conference will smack strongly of what old Oliver used to say to Parliament in 1657 and 1658—"If we will have Peace without a worm in it, lay we foundations of Justice and Righteousness." What makes Wilson so irritating to the unthoughtful is that he operates exclusively upon reason, not upon passion. He contradicts Kipling's famous lines, which apply to most men—

Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

In this instance, I think, Reason is going to win. I feel the whole current of the world setting in that direction.

It's quaint to think of old Woodrow, a kind of Cromwell-Wordsworth, going over to do his bit among the diplomatic shell-craters. What I'm waiting for is the day when he'll get back into private life and write a book about it. There's a job, if you like, for a man who might reasonably be supposed to be pretty tired in body and soul! When that book comes out I'll spend the rest of my life in selling it. I ask nothing better! Speaking of Wordsworth, I've often wondered whether Woodrow hasn't got some poems concealed somewhere among his papers! I've always imagined that he may have written poems on the sly. And by the way, you needn't make fun of me for being so devoted to George Herbert. Do you realize that two of the most familiar quotations in our language come from his pen, viz.:

Wouldst thou both eat thy cake, and have it?

and

Dare to be true: nothing can need a ly;
A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby.

Forgive this tedious sermon! My mind has been so tumbled up and down this autumn that I am in a queer state of mingled melancholy and exaltation. You know how much I live in and for books. Well, I have a curious feeling, a kind of premonition that there are great books coming out of this welter of human hopes and anguishes, perhaps A book in which the tempest-shaken soul of the race will speak out as it never has before. The Bible, you know, is rather a disappointment: it has never done for humanity what it should have done. I wonder why? Walt Whitman is going to do a great deal, but he is not quite what I mean. There is something coming—I don't know just what! I thank God I am a bookseller, trafficking in the dreams and beauties and curiosities of humanity rather than some mere huckster of merchandise. But how helpless we all are when we try to tell what goes on within us! I found this in one of Lafcadio Hearn's letters the other day—I marked the passage for you

Baudelaire has a touching poem about an albatross, which you would like—describing the poet's soul superb in its own free azure—but helpless, insulted, ugly, clumsy when striving to walk on common earth—or rather, on a deck, where sailors torment it with tobacco pipes, etc.

You can imagine what evenings I have here among my shelves, now the long dark nights are come! Of course until ten o'clock, when I shut up shop, I am constantly interrupted—as I have been during this letter, once to sell a copy of Helen's Babies and once to sell The Ballad of Reading Gaol, so you can see how varied are my clients' tastes! But later on, after we have had our evening cocoa and Helen has gone to bed, I prowl about the place, dipping into this and that, fuddling myself with speculation. How clear and bright the stream of the mind flows in those late hours, after all the sediment and floating trash of the day has drained off! Sometimes I seem to coast the very shore of Beauty or Truth, and hear the surf breaking on those shining sands. Then some offshore wind of weariness or prejudice bears me away again. Have you ever come across Andreyev's Confessions of a Little Man During Great Days? One of the honest books of the War. The Little Man ends his confession thus—

My anger has left me, my sadness returned, and once more the tears flow. Whom can I curse, whom can I judge, when we are all alike unfortunate? Suffering is universal; hands are outstretched to each other, and when they touch … the great solution will come. My heart is aglow, and I stretch out my hand and cry, "Come, let us join hands! I love you, I love you!"

And of course, as soon as one puts one's self in that frame of mind someone comes along and picks your pocket.… I suppose we must teach ourselves to be too proud to mind having our pockets picked!

Did it ever occur to you that the world is really governed by BOOKS? The course of this country in the War, for instance, has been largely determined by the books Wilson has read since he first began to think! If we could have a list of the principal books he has read since the War began, how interesting it would be.

Here's something I'm just copying out to put up on my bulletin board for my customers to ponder. It was written by Charles Sorley, a young Englishman who was killed in France in 1915. He was only twenty years old—

TO GERMANY

You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,
And no man claimed the conquest of your land.
But gropers both through fields of thought confined
We stumble and we do not understand.
You only saw your future bigly planned,
And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,
And in each other's dearest ways we stand,
And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.

When it is peace, then we may view again
With new-won eyes each other's truer form
And wonder. Grown more loving-kind and warm
We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,
When it is peace. But until peace, the storm
The darkness and the thunder and the rain.

Isn't that noble? You see what I am dumbly groping for—some way of thinking about the War that will make it seem (to future ages) a purification for humanity rather than a mere blackness of stinking cinders and tortured flesh and men shot to ribbons in marshes of blood and sewage. Out of such unspeakable desolation men MUST rise to some new conception of national neighbourhood. I hear so much apprehension that Germany won't be punished sufficiently for her crime. But how can any punishment be devised or imposed for such a huge panorama of sorrow? I think she has already punished herself horribly, and will continue to do so. My prayer is that what we have gone through will startle the world into some new realization of the sanctity of life—all life, animal as well as human. Don't you find that a visit to a zoo can humble and astound you with all that amazing and grotesque variety of living energy?

What is it that we find in every form of life? Desire of some sort—some unexplained motive power that impels even the smallest insect on its queer travels. You must have watched some infinitesimal red spider on a fence rail, bustling along—why and whither? Who knows? And when you come to man, what a chaos of hungers and impulses keep thrusting him through his cycle of quaint tasks! And in every human heart you find some sorrow, some frustration, some lurking pang. I often think of Lafcadio Hearn's story of his Japanese cook. Hearn was talking of the Japanese habit of not showing their emotions on their faces. His cook was a smiling, healthy, agreeable-looking young fellow whose face was always cheerful. Then one day, by chance, Hearn happened to look through a hole in the wall and saw his cook alone. His face was not the same face. It was thin and drawn and showed strange lines worn by old hardships or sufferings. Hearn thought to himself, "He will look just like that when he is dead." He went into the kitchen to see him, and instantly the cook was all changed, young and happy again. Never again did Hearn see that face of trouble; but he knew the man wore it when he was alone.

Don't you think there is a kind of parable there for the race as a whole? Have you ever met a man without wondering what shining sorrows he hides from the world, what contrast between vision and accomplishment torments him? Behind every smiling mask is there not some cryptic grimace of pain? Henry Adams puts it tersely. He says the human mind appears suddenly and inexplicably out of some unknown and unimaginable void. It passes half its known life in the mental chaos of sleep. Even when awake it is a victim of its own ill-adjustment, of disease, of age, of external suggestion, of nature's compulsions; it doubts its own sensations and trusts only in instruments and averages. After sixty years or so of growing astonishment the mind wakes to find itself looking blankly into the void of death. And, as Adams says, that it should profess itself pleased by this performance is all that the highest rules of good breeding can ask. That the mind should actually be satisfied would prove that it exists only as idiocy!

I hope that you will write to tell me along what curves your mind is moving. For my own part I feel that we are on the verge of amazing things. Long ago I fell back on books as the only permanent consolers. They are the one stainless and unimpeachable achievement of the human race. It saddens me to think that I shall have to die with thousands of books unread that would have given me noble and unblemished happiness. I will tell you a secret. I have never read King Lear, and have purposely refrained from doing so. If I were ever very ill I would only need to say to myself "You can't die yet, you haven't read Lear." That would bring me round, I know it would.

You see, books are the answer to all our perplexities! Henry Adams grinds his teeth at his inability to understand the universe. The best he can do is to suggest a "law of acceleration," which seems to mean that Nature is hustling man along at an ever-increasing rate so that he will either solve all her problems or else die of fever in the effort. But Adams' candid portrait of a mind grappling helplessly with its riddles is so triumphantly delightful that one forgets the futility of the struggle in the accuracy of the picture. Man is unconquerable because he can make even his helplessness so entertaining. His motto seems to be "Even though He slay me, yet will I make fun of Him!"

Yes, books are man's supreme triumph, for they gather up and transmit all other triumphs. As Walter de la Mare writes, "How uncomprehendingly must an angel from heaven smile on a poor human sitting engrossed in a romance: angled upon his hams, motionless in his chair, spectacles on nose, his two feet as close together as the flukes of a merman's tail, only his strange eyes stirring in his time-worn face."

Well, I've been scribbling away all this time and haven't given you any news whatever. Helen came back the other day from a visit to Boston where she enjoyed herself greatly. To-night she has gone out to the movies with a young protegee of ours, Miss Titania Chapman, an engaging damsel whom we have taken in as an apprentice bookseller. It's a quaint idea, done at the request of her father, Mr. Chapman, the proprietor of Chapman's Daintybits which you see advertised everywhere. He is a great booklover, and is very eager to have the zeal transmitted to his daughter. So you can imagine my glee to have a neophyte of my own to preach books at! Also it will enable me to get away from the shop a little more. I had a telephone call from Philadelphia this afternoon asking me to go over there on Monday evening to make an estimate of the value of a private collection that is to be sold. I was rather flattered because I can't imagine how they got hold of my name.

Forgive this long, incoherent scrawl. How did you like Erewhon? It's pretty near closing time and I must say grace over the day's accounts.
Yours ever,
ROGER MIFFLIN.

Chapter X

Roger Raids the Ice-Box

Roger had just put Carlyle's Cromwell back in its proper place in the History alcove when Helen and Titania returned from the movies. Bock, who had been dozing under his master's chair, rose politely and wagged a deferential tail.

"I do think Bock has the darlingest manners," said Titania.

"Yes," said Helen, "it's really a marvel that his wagging muscles aren't all worn out, he has abused them so."

"Well," said Roger, "did you have a good time?"

"An adorable time!" cried Titania, with a face and voice so sparkling that two musty habitues of the shop popped their heads out of the alcoves marked ESSAYS and THEOLOGY and peered in amazement. One of these even went so far as to purchase the copy of Leigh Hunt's Wishing Cap Papers he had been munching through, in order to have an excuse to approach the group and satisfy his bewildered eyes. When Miss Chapman took the book and wrapped it up for him, his astonishment was made complete.

Unconscious that she was actually creating business, Titania resumed.

"We met your friend Mr. Gilbert on the street," she said, "and he went to the movies with us. He says he's coming in on Monday to fix the furnace while you're away."

"Well," said Roger, "these advertising agencies are certainly enterprising, aren't they? Think of sending a man over to attend to my furnace, just on the slim chance of getting my advertising account."

"Did you have a quiet evening?" said Helen.

"I spent most of the time writing to Andrew," said Roger. "One amusing thing happened, though. I actually sold that copy of Philip Dru."

"No!" cried Helen.

"A fact," said Roger. "A man was looking at it, and I told him it was supposed to be written by Colonel House. He insisted on buying it. But what a sell when he tries to read it!"

"Did Colonel House really write it?" asked Titania.

"I don't know," said Roger. "I hope not, because I find in myself a secret tendency to believe that Mr. House is an able man. If he did write it, I devoutly hope none of the foreign statesmen in Paris will learn of that fact."

While Helen and Titania took off their wraps, Roger was busy closing up the shop. He went down to the corner with Bock to mail his letter, and when he returned to the den Helen had prepared a large jug of cocoa. They sat down by the fire to enjoy it.

"Chesterton has written a very savage poem against cocoa," said Roger, "which you will find in The Flying Inn; but for my part I find it the ideal evening drink. It lets the mind down gently, and paves the way for slumber. I have often noticed that the most terrific philosophical agonies can be allayed by three cups of Mrs. Mifflin's cocoa. A man can safely read Schopenhauer all evening if he has a tablespoonful of cocoa and a tin of condensed milk available. Of course it should be made with condensed milk, which is the only way."

"I had no idea anything could be so good," said Titania. "Of course, Daddy makes condensed milk in one of his factories, but I never dreamed of trying it. I thought it was only used by explorers, people at the North Pole, you know."

"How stupid of me!" exclaimed Roger. "I quite forgot to tell you! Your father called up just after you had gone out this evening, and wanted to know how you were getting on."

"Oh, dear," said Titania. "He must have been delighted to hear I was at the movies, on the second day of my first job! He probably said it was just like me."

"I explained that I had insisted on your going with Mrs. Mifflin, because I felt she needed the change."

"I do hope," said Titania, "you won't let Daddy poison your mind about me. He thinks I'm dreadfully frivolous, just because I LOOK frivolous. But I'm so keen to make good in this job. I've been practicing doing up parcels all afternoon, so as to learn how to tie the string nicely and not cut it until after the knot's tied. I found that when you cut it beforehand either you get it too short and it won't go round, or else too long and you waste some. Also I've learned how to make wrapping paper cuffs to keep my sleeves clean."

"Well, I haven't finished yet," continued Roger. "Your father wants us all to spend to-morrow out at your home. He wants to show us some books he has just bought, and besides he thinks maybe you're feeling homesick."

"What, with all these lovely books to read? Nonsense! I don't want to go home for six months!"

"He wouldn't take No for an answer. He's going to send Edwards round with the car the first thing to-morrow morning."

"What fun!" said Helen. "It'll be delightful."

"Goodness," said Titania. "Imagine leaving this adorable bookshop to spend Sunday in Larchmont. Well, I'll be able to get that georgette blouse I forgot."

"What time will the car be here?" asked Helen.

"Mr. Chapman said about nine o'clock. He begs us to get out there as early as possible, as he wants to spend the day showing us his books."

As they sat round the fading bed of coals, Roger began hunting along his private shelves. "Have you ever read any Gissing?" he said.

Titania made a pathetic gesture to Mrs. Mifflin. "It's awfully embarrassing to be asked these things! No, I never heard of him."

"Well, as the street we live on is named after him, I think you ought to," he said. He pulled down his copy of The House of Cobwebs. "I'm going to read you one of the most delightful short stories I know. It's called 'A Charming Family.'"

"No, Roger," said Mrs. Mifflin firmly. "Not to-night. It's eleven o'clock, and I can see Titania's tired. Even Bock has left us and gone in to his kennel. He's got more sense than you have."

"All right," said the bookseller amiably. "Miss Chapman, you take the book up with you and read it in bed if you want to. Are you a librocubicularist?"

Titania looked a little scandalized.

"It's all right, my dear," said Helen. "He only means are you fond of reading in bed. I've been waiting to hear him work that word into the conversation. He made it up, and he's immensely proud of it."

"Reading in bed?" said Titania. "What a quaint idea! Does any one do it? It never occurred to me. I'm sure when I go to bed I'm far too sleepy to think of such a thing."

"Run along then, both of you," said Roger. "Get your beauty sleep. I shan't be very late."

He meant it when he said it, but returning to his desk at the back of the shop his eye fell upon his private shelf of books which he kept there "to rectify perturbations" as Burton puts it. On this shelf there stood Pilgrim's Progress, Shakespeare, The Anatomy of Melancholy, The Home Book of Verse, George Herbert's Poems, The Notebooks of Samuel Butler, and Leaves of Grass. He took down The Anatomy of Melancholy, that most delightful of all books for midnight browsing. Turning to one of his favourite passages—"A Consolatory Digression, Containing the Remedies of All Manner of Discontents"—he was happily lost to all ticking of the clock, retaining only such bodily consciousness as was needful to dump, fill, and relight his pipe from time to time. Solitude is a dear jewel for men whose days are spent in the tedious this-and-that of trade. Roger was a glutton for his midnight musings. To such tried companions as Robert Burton and George Herbert he was wont to exonerate his spirit. It used to amuse him to think of Burton, the lonely Oxford scholar, writing that vast book to "rectify" his own melancholy.

By and by, turning over the musty old pages, he came to the following, on Sleep—

The fittest time is two or three hours after supper, whenas the meat is now settled at the bottom of the stomach, and 'tis good to lie on the right side first, because at that site the liver doth rest under the stomach, not molesting any way, but heating him as a fire doth a kettle, that is put to it. After the first sleep 'tis not amiss to lie on the left side, that the meat may the better descend, and sometimes again on the belly, but never on the back. Seven or eight hours is a competent time for a melancholy man to rest——

In that case, thought Roger, it's time for me to be turning in. He looked at his watch, and found it was half-past twelve. He switched off his light and went back to the kitchen quarters to tend the furnace.

I hesitate to touch upon a topic of domestic bitterness, but candor compels me to say that Roger's evening vigils invariably ended at the ice-box. There are two theories as to this subject of ice-box plundering, one of the husband and the other of the wife. Husbands are prone to think (in their simplicity) that if they take a little of everything palatable they find in the refrigerator, but thus distributing their forage over the viands the general effect of the depradation will be almost unnoticeable. Whereas wives say (and Mrs. Mifflin had often explained to Roger) that it is far better to take all of any one dish than a little of each; for the latter course is likely to diminish each item below the bulk at which it is still useful as a left-over. Roger, however, had the obstinate viciousness of all good husbands, and he knew the delights of cold provender by heart. Many a stewed prune, many a mess of string beans or naked cold boiled potato, many a chicken leg, half apple pie, or sector of rice pudding, had perished in these midnight festivals. He made it a point of honour never to eat quite all of the dish in question, but would pass with unabated zest from one to another. This habit he had sternly repressed during the War, but Mrs. Mifflin had noticed that since the armistice he had resumed it with hearty violence. This is a custom which causes the housewife to be confronted the next morning with a tragical vista of pathetic scraps. Two slices of beet in a little earthenware cup, a sliver of apple pie one inch wide, three prunes lowly nestling in a mere trickle of their own syrup, and a tablespoonful of stewed rhubarb where had been one of those yellow basins nearly full—what can the most resourceful kitcheneer do with these oddments? This atrocious practice cannot be too bitterly condemned.

But we are what we are, and Roger was even more so. The Anatomy of Melancholy always made him hungry, and he dipped discreetly into various vessels of refreshment, sharing a few scraps with Bock whose pleading brown eye at these secret suppers always showed a comical realization of their shameful and furtive nature. Bock knew very well that Roger had no business at the ice-box, for the larger outlines of social law upon which every home depends are clearly understood by dogs. But Bock's face always showed his tremulous eagerness to participate in the sin, and rather than have him stand by as a silent and damning critic, Roger used to give him most of the cold potato. The censure of a dog is something no man can stand. But I rove, as Burton would say.

After the ice-box, the cellar. Like all true householders, Roger was fond of his cellar. It was something mouldy of smell, but it harboured a well-stocked little bin of liquors, and the florid glow of the furnace mouth upon the concrete floor was a great pleasure to the bookseller. He loved to peer in at the dancing flicker of small blue flames that played above the ruddy mound of coals in the firebox—tenuous, airy little flames that were as blue as violets and hovered up and down in the ascending gases. Before blackening the fire with a stoking of coal he pulled up a wooden Bushmills box, turned off the electric bulb overhead, and sat there for a final pipe, watching the rosy shine of the grate. The tobacco smoke, drawn inward by the hot inhaling fire, seemed dry and gray in the golden brightness. Bock, who had pattered down the steps after him, nosed and snooped about the cellar. Roger was thinking of Burton's words on the immortal weed—

Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher's stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases.… a virtuous herb, if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and medicinally used; but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health, hellish, devilish, and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul——

Bock was standing on his hind legs, looking up at the front wall of the cellar, in which two small iron-grated windows opened onto the sunken area by the front door of the shop. He gave a low growl, and seemed uneasy.

"What is it, Bock?" said Roger placidly, finishing his pipe.

Bock gave a short, sharp bark, with a curious note of protest in it. But Roger's mind was still with Burton.

"Rats?" he said. "Aye, very likely! This is Ratisbon, old man, but don't bark about it. Incident of the French Camp: 'Smiling, the rat fell dead.'"

Bock paid no heed to this persiflage, but prowled the front end of the cellar, looking upward in curious agitation. He growled again, softly.

"Shhh," said Roger gently. "Never mind the rats, Bock. Come on, we'll stoke up the fire and go to bed. Lord, it's one o'clock."

Chapter XI

Titania Tries Reading in Bed

Aubrey, sitting at his window with the opera glasses, soon realized that he was blind weary. Even the exalted heroics of romance are not proof against fatigue, most potent enemy of all who do and dream. He had had a long day, coming after the skull-smiting of the night before; it was only the frosty air at the lifted sash that kept him at all awake. He had fallen into a half drowse when he heard footsteps coming down the opposite side of the street.

He had forced himself awake several times before, to watch the passage of some harmless strollers through the innocent blackness of the Brooklyn night, but this time it was what he sought. The man stepped stealthily, with a certain blend of wariness and assurance. He halted under the lamp by the bookshop door, and the glasses gave him enlarged to Aubrey's eye. It was Weintraub, the druggist.

The front of the bookshop was now entirely dark save for a curious little glimmer down below the pavement level. This puzzled Aubrey, but he focussed his glasses on the door of the shop. He saw Weintraub pull a key out of his pocket, insert it very carefully in the lock, and open the door stealthily. Leaving the door ajar behind him, the druggist slipped into the shop.

"What devil's business is this?" thought Aubrey angrily. "The swine has even got a key of his own. There's no doubt about it. He and Mifflin are working together on this job."

For a moment he was uncertain what to do. Should he run downstairs and across the street? Then, as he hesitated, he saw a pale beam of light over in the front left-hand corner of the shop. Through the glasses he could see the yellow circle of a flashlight splotched upon dim shelves of books. He saw Weintraub pull a volume out of the case, and the light vanished. Another instant and the man reappeared in the doorway, closed the door behind him with a gesture of careful silence, and was off up the street quietly and swiftly. It was all over in a minute. Two yellow oblongs shone for a minute or two down in the area underneath the door. Through the glasses he now made out these patches as the cellar windows. Then they disappeared also, and all was placid gloom. In the quivering light of the street lamps he could see the bookseller's sign gleaming whitely, with its lettering THIS SHOP IS HAUNTED.

Aubrey sat back in his chair. "Well," he said to himself, "that guy certainly gave his shop the right name. This is by me. I do believe it's only some book-stealing game after all. I wonder if he and Weintraub go in for some first-edition faking, or some such stunt as that? I'd give a lot to know what it's all about."

He stayed by the window on the qui vive, but no sound broke the stillness of Gissing Street. In the distance he could hear the occasional rumble of the Elevated trains rasping round the curve on Wordsworth Avenue. He wondered whether he ought to go over and break into the shop to see if all was well. But, like every healthy young man, he had a horror of appearing absurd. Little by little weariness numbed his apprehensions. Two o'clock clanged and echoed from distant steeples. He threw off his clothes and crawled into bed.

It was ten o'clock on Sunday morning when he awoke. A broad swath of sunlight cut the room in half: the white muslin curtain at the window rippled outward like a flag. Aubrey exclaimed when he saw his watch. He had a sudden feeling of having been false to his trust. What had been happening across the way?

He gazed out at the bookshop. Gissing Street was bright and demure in the crisp quietness of the forenoon. Mifflin's house showed no sign of life. It was as he had last seen it, save that broad green shades had been drawn down inside the big front windows, making it impossible to look through into the book-filled alcoves.

Aubrey put on his overcoat in lieu of a dressing gown, and went in search of a bathtub. He found the bathroom on his floor locked, with sounds of leisurely splashing within. "Damn Mrs. J. F. Smith," he said. He was about to descend to the storey below, bashfully conscious of bare feet and pyjamaed shins, but looking over the banisters he saw Mrs. Schiller and the treasure-dog engaged in some household manoeuvres. The pug caught sight of his pyjama legs and began to yap. Aubrey retreated in the irritation of a man baulked of a cold tub. He shaved and dressed rapidly.

On his way downstairs he met Mrs. Schiller. He thought that her gaze was disapproving.

"A gentleman called to see you last night, sir," she said. "He said he was very sorry to miss you."

"I was rather late in getting in," said Aubrey. "Did he leave his name?"

"No, he said he'd see you some other time. He woke the whole house up by falling downstairs," she added sourly.

He left the lodging house swiftly, fearing to be seen from the bookshop. He was very eager to learn if everything was all right, but he did not want the Mifflins to know he was lodging just opposite. Hastening diagonally across the street, he found that the Milwaukee Lunch, where he had eaten the night before, was open. He went in and had breakfast, rejoicing in grapefruit, ham and eggs, coffee, and doughnuts. He lit a pipe and sat by the window wondering what to do next. "It's damned perplexing," he said to himself. "I stand to lose either way. If I don't do anything, something may happen to the girl; if I butt in too soon I'll get in dutch with her. I wish I knew what Weintraub and that chef are up to."

The lunchroom was practically empty, and in two chairs near him the proprietor and his assistant were sitting talking. Aubrey was suddenly struck by what they said.

"Say, this here, now, bookseller guy must have struck it rich."

"Who, Mifflin?"

"Yeh; did ya see that car in front of his place this morning?"

"No."

"Believe me, some boat."

"Musta hired it, hey? Where'd he go at?"

"I didn't see. I just saw the bus standing front the door."

"Say, did you see that swell dame he's got clerking for him?"

"I sure did. What's he doing, taking her joy-riding?"

"Shouldn't wonder. I wouldn't blame him——"

Aubrey gave no sign of having heard, but got up and left the lunchroom. Had the girl been kidnapped while he overslept? He burned with shame to think what a pitiful failure his knight-errantry had been. His first idea was to beard Weintraub and compel him to explain his connection with the bookshop. His next thought was to call up Mr. Chapman and warn him of what had been going on. Then he decided it would be futile to do either of these before he really knew what had happened. He determined to get into the bookshop itself, and burst open its sinister secret.

He walked hurriedly round to the rear alley, and surveyed the domestic apartments of the shop. Two windows in the second storey stood slightly open, but he could discern no signs of life. The back gate was still unlocked, and he walked boldly into the yard.

The little enclosure was serene in the pale winter sunlight. Along one fence ran a line of bushes and perennials, their roots wrapped in straw. The grass plot was lumpy, the sod withered to a tawny yellow and granulated with a sprinkle of frost. Below the kitchen door—which stood at the head of a flight of steps—was a little grape arbour with a rustic bench where Roger used to smoke his pipe on summer evenings. At the back of this arbour was the cellar door. Aubrey tried it, and found it locked.

He was in no mood to stick at trifles. He was determined to unriddle the mystery of the bookshop. At the right of the door was a low window, level with the brick pavement. Through the dusty pane he could see it was fastened only by a hook on the inside. He thrust his heel through the pane. As the glass tinkled onto the cellar floor he heard a low growl. He unhooked the catch, lifted the frame of the broken window, and looked in. There was Bock, with head quizzically tilted, uttering a rumbling guttural vibration that seemed to proceed automatically from his interior.

Aubrey was a little dashed, but he said cheerily "Hullo, Bock! Good old man! Well, well, nice old fellow!" To his surprise, Bock recognized him as a friend and wagged his tail slightly, but still continued to growl.

"I wish dogs weren't such sticklers for form," thought Aubrey. "Now if I went in by the front door, Bock wouldn't say anything. It's just because he sees me coming in this way that he's annoyed. Well, I'll have to take a chance."

He thrust his legs in through the window, carefully holding up the sash with its jagged triangles of glass. It will never be known how severely Bock was tempted by the extremities thus exposed to him, but he was an old dog and his martial instincts had been undermined by years of kindness. Moreover, he remembered Aubrey perfectly well, and the smell of his trousers did not seem at all hostile. So he contented himself with a small grumbling of protest. He was an Irish terrier, but there was nothing Sinn Fein about him.

Aubrey dropped to the floor, and patted the dog, thanking his good fortune. He glanced about the cellar as though expecting to find some lurking horror. Nothing more appalling than several cases of beer bottles met his eyes. He started quietly to go up the cellar stairs, and Bock, evidently consumed with legitimate curiosity, kept at his heels.

"Look here," thought Aubrey. "I don't want the dog following me all through the house. If I touch anything he'll probably take a hunk out of my shin."

He unlocked the door into the yard, and Bock obeying the Irish terrier's natural impulse to get into the open air, ran outside. Aubrey quickly closed the door again. Bock's face appeared at the broken window, looking in with so quaint an expression of indignant surprise that Aubrey almost laughed. "There, old man," he said, "it's all right. I'm just going to look around a bit."

He ascended the stairs on tiptoe and found himself in the kitchen. All was quiet. An alarm clock ticked with a stumbling, headlong hurry. Pots of geraniums stood on the window sill. The range, with its lids off and the fire carefully nourished, radiated a mild warmth. Through a dark little pantry he entered the dining room. Still no sign of anything amiss. A pot of white heather stood on the table, and a corncob pipe lay on the sideboard. "This is the most innocent-looking kidnapper's den I ever heard of," he thought. "Any moving-picture director would be ashamed not to provide a better stage-set."

At that instant he heard footsteps overhead. Curiously soft, muffled footsteps. Instantly he was on the alert. Now he would know the worst.

A window upstairs was thrown open. "Bock, what are you doing in the yard?" floated a voice—a very clear, imperious voice that somehow made him think of the thin ringing of a fine glass tumbler. It was Titania.

He stood aghast. Then he heard a door open, and steps on the stair. Merciful heaven, the girl must not find him here. What WOULD she think? He skipped back into the pantry, and shrank into a corner. He heard the footfalls reach the bottom of the stairs. There was a door into the kitchen from the central hall: it was not necessary for her to pass through the pantry, he thought. He heard her enter the kitchen.

In his anxiety he crouched down beneath the sink, and his foot, bent beneath him, touched a large tin tray leaning against the wall. It fell over with a terrible clang.

"Bock!" said Titania sharply, "what are you doing?"

Aubrey was wondering miserably whether he ought to counterfeit a bark, but it was too late to do anything. The pantry door opened, and Titania looked in.

They gazed at each other for several seconds in mutual horror. Even in his abasement, crouching under a shelf in the corner, Aubrey's stricken senses told him that he had never seen so fair a spectacle. Titania wore a blue kimono and a curious fragile lacy bonnet which he did not understand. Her dark, gold-spangled hair came down in two thick braids across her shoulders. Her blue eyes were very much alive with amazement and alarm which rapidly changed into anger.

"Mr. Gilbert!" she cried. For an instant he thought she was going to laugh. Then a new expression came into her face. Without another word she turned and fled. He heard her run upstairs. A door banged, and was locked. A window was hastily closed. Again all was silent.

Stupefied with chagrin, he rose from his cramped position. What on earth was he to do? How could he explain? He stood by the pantry sink in painful indecision. Should he slink out of the house? No, he couldn't do that without attempting to explain. And he was still convinced that some strange peril hung about this place. He must put Titania on her guard, no matter how embarrassing it proved. If only she hadn't been wearing a kimono—how much easier it would have been.

He stepped out into the hall, and stood at the bottom of the stairs in the throes of doubt. After waiting some time in silence he cleared the huskiness from his throat and called out:

"Miss Chapman!"

There was no answer, but he heard light, rapid movements above.

"Miss Chapman!" he called again.

He heard the door opened, and clear words edged with frost came downward. This time he thought of a thin tumbler with ice in it.

"Mr. Gilbert!"

"Yes?" he said miserably.

"Will you please call me a taxi?"

Something in the calm, mandatory tone nettled him. After all, he had acted in pure good faith.

"With pleasure," he said, "but not until I have told you something. It's very important. I beg your pardon most awfully for frightening you, but it's really very urgent."

There was a brief silence. Then she said:

"Brooklyn's a queer place. Wait a few minutes, please."

Aubrey stood absently fingering the pattern on the wallpaper. He suddenly experienced a great craving for a pipe, but felt that the etiquette of the situation hardly permitted him to smoke.

In a few moments Titania appeared at the head of the stairs in her customary garb. She sat down on the landing. Aubrey felt that everything was as bad as it could possibly be. If he could have seen her face his embarrassment would at least have had some compensation. But the light from a stair window shone behind her, and her features were in shadow. She sat clasping her hands round her knees. The light fell crosswise down the stairway, and he could see only a gleam of brightness upon her ankle. His mind unconsciously followed its beaten paths. "What a corking pose for a silk stocking ad!" he thought. "Wouldn't it make a stunning full-page layout. I must suggest it to the Ankleshimmer people."

"Well?" she said. Then she could not refrain from laughter, he looked so hapless. She burst into an engaging trill. "Why don't you light your pipe?" she said. "You look as doleful as the Kaiser."

"Miss Chapman," he said, "I'm afraid you think—I don't know what you must think. But I broke in here this morning because I—well, I don't think this is a safe place for you to be."

"So it seems. That's why I asked you to get me a taxi."

"There's something queer going on round this shop. It's not right for you to be here alone this way. I was afraid something had happened to you. Of course, I didn't know you were—were——"

Faint almond blossoms grew in her cheeks. "I was reading," she said. "Mr. Mifflin talks so much about reading in bed, I thought I'd try it. They wanted me to go with them to-day but I wouldn't. You see, if I'm going to be a bookseller I've got to catch up with some of this literature that's been accumulating. After they left I—I—well, I wanted to see if this reading in bed is what it's cracked up to be."

"Where has Mifflin gone?" asked Aubrey. "What business has he got to leave you here all alone?"

"I had Bock," said Titania. "Gracious, Brooklyn on Sunday morning doesn't seem very perilous to me. If you must know, he and Mrs. Mifflin have gone over to spend the day with father. I was to have gone, too, but I wouldn't. What business is it of yours? You're as bad as Morris Finsbury in The Wrong Box. That's what I was reading when I heard the dog barking."

Aubrey began to grow nettled. "You seem to think this was a mere impertinence on my part," he said. "Let me tell you a thing or two." And he briefly described to her the course of his experiences since leaving the shop on Friday evening, but omitting the fact that he was lodging just across the street.

"There's something mighty unpalatable going on," he said. "At first I thought Mifflin was the goat. I thought it might be some frame-up for swiping valuable books from his shop. But when I saw Weintraub come in here with his own latch-key, I got wise. He and Mifflin are in cahoots, that's what. I don't know what they're pulling off, but I don't like the looks of it. You say Mifflin has gone out to see your father? I bet that's just camouflage, to stall you. I've got a great mind to ring Mr. Chapman up and tell him he ought to get you out of here."

"I won't hear a word said against Mr. Mifflin," said Titania angrily. "He's one of my father's oldest friends. What would Mr. Mifflin say if he knew you had been breaking into his house and frightening me half to death? I'm sorry you got that knock on the head, because it seems that's your weak spot. I'm quite able to take care of myself, thank you. This isn't a movie."

"Well, how do you explain the actions of this man Weintraub?" said Aubrey. "Do you like to have a man popping in and out of the shop at all hours of the night, stealing books?"

"I don't have to explain it at all," said Titania. "I think it's up to you to do the explaining. Weintraub is a harmless old thing and he keeps delicious chocolates that cost only half as much as what you get on Fifth Avenue. Mr. Mifflin told me that he's a very good customer. Perhaps his business won't let him read in the daytime, and he comes in here late at night to borrow books. He probably reads in bed."

"I don't think anybody who talks German round back alleys at night is a harmless old thing," said Aubrey. "I tell you, your Haunted Bookshop is haunted by something worse than the ghost of Thomas Carlyle. Let me show you something." He pulled the book cover out of his pocket, and pointed to the annotations in it.

"That's Mifflin's handwriting," said Titania, pointing to the upper row of figures. "He puts notes like that in all his favourite books. They refer to pages where he has found interesting things."

"Yes, and that's Weintraub's," said Aubrey, indicating the numbers in violet ink. "If that isn't a proof of their complicity, I'd like to know what is. If that Cromwell book is here, I'd like to have a look at it."

They went into the shop. Titania preceded him down the musty aisle, and it made Aubrey angry to see the obstinate assurance of her small shoulders. He was horribly tempted to seize her and shake her. It annoyed him to see her bright, unconscious girlhood in that dingy vault of books. "She's as out of place here as—as a Packard ad in the Liberator" he said to himself.

They stood in the History alcove. "Here it is," she said. "No, it isn't—that's the History of Frederick the Great."

There was a two-inch gap in the shelf. Cromwell was gone.

"Probably Mr. Mifflin has it somewhere around," said Titania. "It was there last night."

"Probably nothing," said Aubrey. "I tell you, Weintraub came in and took it. I saw him. Look here, if you really want to know what I think, I'll tell you. The War's not over by a long sight. Weintraub's a German. Carlyle was pro-German—I remember that much from college. I believe your friend Mifflin is pro-German, too. I've heard some of his talk!"

Titania faced him with cheeks aflame.

"That'll do for you!" she cried. "Next thing I suppose you'll say Daddy's pro-German, and me, too! I'd like to see you say that to Mr. Mifflin himself."

"I will, don't worry," said Aubrey grimly. He knew now that he had put himself hopelessly in the wrong in Titania's mind, but he refused to abate his own convictions. With sinking heart he saw her face relieved against the shelves of faded bindings. Her eyes shone with a deep and sultry blue, her chin quivered with anger.

"Look here," she said furiously. "Either you or I must leave this place. If you intend to stay, please call me a taxi."

Aubrey was as angry as she was.

"I'm going," he said. "But you've got to play fair with me. I tell you on my oath, these two men, Mifflin and Weintraub, are framing something up. I'm going to get the goods on them and show you. But you mustn't put them wise that I'm on their track. If you do, of course, they'll call it off. I don't care what you think of me. You've got to promise me that."

"I won't promise you ANYTHING," she said, "except never to speak to you again. I never saw a man like you before—and I've seen a good many."

"I won't leave here until you promise me not to warn them," he retorted. "What I told you, I said in confidence. They've already found out where I'm lodging. Do you think this is a joke? They've tried to put me out of the way twice. If you breathe a word of this to Mifflin he'll warn the other two."

"You're afraid to have Mr. Mifflin know you broke into his shop," she taunted.

"You can think what you like."

"I won't promise you anything!" she burst out. Then her face altered. The defiant little line of her mouth bent and her strength seemed to run out at each end of that pathetic curve. "Yes, I will," she said. "I suppose that's fair. I couldn't tell Mr. Mifflin, anyway. I'd be ashamed to tell him how you frightened me. I think you're hateful. I came over here thinking I was going to have such a good time, and you've spoilt it all!"

For one terrible moment he thought she was going to cry. But he remembered having seen heroines cry in the movies, and knew it was only done when there was a table and chair handy.

"Miss Chapman," he said, "I'm as sorry as a man can be. But I swear I did what I did in all honesty. If I'm wrong in this, you need never speak to me again. If I'm wrong, you—you can tell your father to take his advertising away from the Grey-Matter Company. I can't say more than that."

And, to do him justice, he couldn't. It was the supreme sacrifice.

She let him out of the front door without another word.

Chapter XII

Aubrey Determines to give Service that's Different

Seldom has a young man spent a more desolate afternoon than Aubrey on that Sunday. His only consolation was that twenty minutes after he had left the bookshop he saw a taxi drive up (he was then sitting gloomily at his bedroom window) and Titania enter it and drive away. He supposed that she had gone to join the party in Larchmont, and was glad to know that she was out of what he now called the war zone. For the first time on record, O. Henry failed to solace him. His pipe tasted bitter and brackish. He was eager to know what Weintraub was doing, but did not dare make any investigations in broad daylight. His idea was to wait until dark. Observing the Sabbath calm of the streets, and the pageant of baby carriages wheeling toward Thackeray Boulevard, he wondered again whether he had thrown away this girl's friendship for a merely imaginary suspicion.

At last he could endure his cramped bedroom no longer. Downstairs someone was dolefully playing a flute, most horrible of all tortures to tightened nerves. While her lodgers were at church the tireless Mrs. Schiller was doing a little housecleaning: he could hear the monotonous rasp of a carpet-sweeper passing back and forth in an adjoining room. He creaked irritably downstairs, and heard the usual splashing behind the bathroom door. In the frame of the hall mirror he saw a pencilled note: Will Mrs. Smith please call Tarkington 1565, it said. Unreasonably annoyed, he tore a piece of paper out of his notebook and wrote on it Will Mrs. Smith please call Bath 4200. Mounting to the second floor he tapped on the bathroom door. "Don't come in!" cried an agitated female voice. He thrust the memorandum under the door, and left the house.

Walking the windy paths of Prospect Park he condemned himself to relentless self-scrutiny. "I've damned myself forever with her," he groaned, "unless I can prove something." The vision of Titania's face silhouetted against the shelves of books came maddeningly to his mind. "I was going to have such a good time, and you've spoilt it all!" With what angry conviction she had said: "I never saw a man like you before—and I've seen a good many!"

Even in his disturbance of soul the familiar jargon of his profession came naturally to utterance. "At least she admits I'm DIFFERENT," he said dolefully. He remembered the first item in the Grey-Matter Code, a neat little booklet issued by his employers for the information of their representatives:

Business is built upon CONFIDENCE. Before you can sell Grey-Matter Service to a Client, you must sell YOURSELF.

"How am I going to sell myself to her?" he wondered. "I've simply got to deliver, that's all. I've got to give her service that's DIFFERENT. If I fall down on this, she'll never speak to me again. Not only that, the firm will lose the old man's account. It's simply unthinkable."

Nevertheless, he thought about it a good deal, stimulated from time to time as in the course of his walk (which led him out toward the faubourgs of Flatbush) he passed long vistas of signboards, which he imagined placarded with vivid lithographs in behalf of the Chapman prunes. "Adam and Eve Ate Prunes On Their Honeymoon" was a slogan that flashed into his head, and he imagined a magnificent painting illustrating this text. Thus, in hours of stress, do all men turn for comfort to their chosen art. The poet, battered by fate, heals himself in the niceties of rhyme. The prohibitionist can weather the blackest melancholia by meditating the contortions of other people's abstinence. The most embittered citizen of Detroit will never perish by his own hand while he has an automobile to tinker.

Aubrey walked many miles, gradually throwing his despair to the winds. The bright spirits of Orison Swett Marden and Ralph Waldo Trine, Dioscuri of Good Cheer, seemed to be with him reminding him that nothing is impossible. In a small restaurant he found sausages, griddle cakes and syrup. When he got back to Gissing Street it was dark, and he girded his soul for further endeavour.

About nine o'clock he walked up the alley. He had left his overcoat in his room at Mrs. Schiller's and also the Cromwell bookcover—having taken the precaution, however, to copy the inscriptions into his pocket memorandum-book. He noticed lights in the rear of the bookshop, and concluded that the Mifflins and their employee had got home safely. Arrived at the back of Weintraub's pharmacy, he studied the contours of the building carefully.

The drug store lay, as we have explained before, at the corner of Gissing Street and Wordsworth Avenue, just where the Elevated railway swings in a long curve. The course of this curve brought the scaffolding of the viaduct out over the back roof of the building, and this fact had impressed itself on Aubrey's observant eye the day before. The front of the drug store stood three storeys, but in the rear it dropped to two, with a flat roof over the hinder portion. Two windows looked out upon this roof. Weintraub's back yard opened onto the alley, but the gate, he found, was locked. The fence would not be hard to scale, but he hesitated to make so direct an approach.

He ascended the stairs of the "L" station, on the near side, and paying a nickel passed through a turnstile onto the platform. Waiting until just after a train had left, and the long, windy sweep of planking was solitary, he dropped onto the narrow footway that runs beside the track. This required watchful walking, for the charged third rail was very near, but hugging the outer side of the path he proceeded without trouble. Every fifteen feet or so a girder ran sideways from the track, resting upon an upright from the street below. The fourth of these overhung the back corner of Weintraub's house, and he crawled cautiously along it. People were passing on the pavement underneath, and he greatly feared being discovered. But he reached the end of the beam without mishap. From here a drop of about twelve feet would bring him onto Weintraub's back roof. For a moment he reflected that, once down there, it would be impossible to return the same way. However, he decided to risk it. Where he was, with his legs swinging astride the girder, he was in serious danger of attracting attention.

He would have given a great deal, just then, to have his overcoat with him, for by lowering it first he could have jumped onto it and muffled the noise of his fall. He took off his coat and carefully dropped it on the corner of the roof. Then cannily waiting until a train passed overhead, drowning all other sounds with its roar, he lowered himself as far as he could hang by his hands, and let go.

For some minutes he lay prone on the tin roof, and during that time a number of distressing ideas occurred to him. If he really expected to get into Weintraub's house, why had he not laid his plans more carefully? Why (for instance) had he not made some attempt to find out how many there were in the household? Why had he not arranged with one of his friends to call Weintraub to the telephone at a given moment, so that he could be more sure of making an entry unnoticed? And what did he expect to see or do if he got inside the house? He found no answer to any of these questions.

It was unpleasantly cold, and he was glad to slip his coat on again. The small revolver was still in his hip pocket. Another thought occurred to him—that he should have provided himself with tennis shoes. However, it was some comfort to know that rubber heels of a nationally advertised brand were under him. He crawled quietly up to the sill of one of the windows. It was closed, and the room inside was dark. A blind was pulled most of the way down, leaving a gap of about four inches. Peeping cautiously over the sill, he could see farther inside the house a brightly lit door and a passageway.

"One thing I've got to look out for," he thought, "is children. There are bound to be some—who ever heard of a German without offspring? If I wake them, they'll bawl. This room is very likely a nursery, as it's on the southeastern side. Also, the window is shut tight, which is probably the German idea of bedroom ventilation."

His guess may not have been a bad one, for after his eyes became accustomed to the dimness of the room he thought he could perceive two cot beds. He then crawled over to the other window. Here the blind was pulled down flush with the bottom of the sash. Trying the window very cautiously, he found it locked. Not knowing just what to do, he returned to the first window, and lay there peering in. The sill was just high enough above the roof level to make it necessary to raise himself a little on his hands to see inside, and the position was very trying. Moreover, the tin roof had a tendency to crumple noisily when he moved. He lay for some time, shivering in the chill, and wondering whether it would be safe to light a pipe.

"There's another thing I'd better look out for," he thought, "and that's a dog. Who ever heard of a German without a dachshund?"

He had watched the lighted doorway for a long while without seeing anything, and was beginning to think he was losing time to no profit when a stout and not ill-natured looking woman appeared in the hallway. She came into the room he was studying, and closed the door. She switched on the light, and to his horror began to disrobe. This was not what he had counted on at all, and he retreated rapidly. It was plain that nothing was to be gained where he was. He sat timidly at one edge of the roof and wondered what to do next.

As he sat there, the back door opened almost directly below him, and he heard the clang of a garbage can set out by the stoop. The door stood open for perhaps half a minute, and he heard a male voice—Weintraub's, he thought—speaking in German. For the first time in his life he yearned for the society of his German instructor at college, and also wondered—in the rapid irrelevance of thought—what that worthy man was now doing to earn a living. In a rather long and poorly lubricated sentence, heavily verbed at the end, he distinguished one phrase that seemed important. "Nach Philadelphia gehen"—"Go to Philadelphia."

Did that refer to Mifflin? he wondered.

The door closed again. Leaning over the rain-gutter, he saw the light go out in the kitchen. He tried to look through the upper portion of the window just below him, but leaning out too far, the tin spout gave beneath his hands. Without knowing just how he did it, he slithered down the side of the wall, and found his feet on a window-sill. His hands still clung to the tin gutter above. He made haste to climb down from his position, and found himself outside the back door. He had managed the descent rather more quietly than if it had been carefully planned. But he was badly startled, and retreated to the bottom of the yard to see if he had aroused notice.

A wait of several minutes brought no alarm, and he plucked up courage. On the inner side of the house—away from Wordsworth Avenue—a narrow paved passage led to an outside cellar-way with old-fashioned slanting doors. He reconnoitred this warily. A bright light was shining from a window in this alley. He crept below it on hands and knees fearing to look in until he had investigated a little. He found that one flap of the cellar door was open, and poked his nose into the aperture. All was dark below, but a strong, damp stench of paints and chemicals arose. He sniffed gingerly. "I suppose he stores drugs down there," he thought.

Very carefully he crawled back, on hands and knees, toward the lighted window. Lifting his head a few inches at a time, finally he got his eyes above the level of the sill. To his disappointment he found the lower half of the window frosted. As he knelt there, a pipe set in the wall suddenly vomited liquid which gushed out upon his knees. He sniffed it, and again smelled a strong aroma of acids. With great care, leaning against the brick wall of the house, he rose to his feet and peeped through the upper half of the pane.

It seemed to be the room where prescriptions were compounded. As it was empty, he allowed himself a hasty survey. All manner of bottles were ranged along the walls; there was a high counter with scales, a desk, and a sink. At the back he could see the bamboo curtain which he remembered having noticed from the shop. The whole place was in the utmost disorder: mortars, glass beakers, a typewriter, cabinets of labels, dusty piles of old prescriptions strung on filing hooks, papers of pills and capsules, all strewn in an indescribable litter. Some infusion was heating in a glass bowl propped on a tripod over a blue gas flame. Aubrey noticed particularly a heap of old books several feet high piled carelessly at one end of the counter.

Looking more carefully, he saw that what he had taken for a mirror over the prescription counter was an aperture looking into the shop. Through this he could see Weintraub, behind the cigar case, waiting upon some belated customer with his shop-worn air of affability. The visitor departed, and Weintraub locked the door after him and pulled down the blinds. Then he returned toward the prescription room, and Aubrey ducked out of view.

Presently he risked looking again, and was just in time to see a curious sight. The druggist was bending over the counter, pouring some liquid into a glass vessel. His face was directly under a hanging bulb, and Aubrey was amazed at the transformation. The apparently genial apothecary of cigar stand and soda fountain was gone. He saw instead a heavy, cruel, jowlish face, with eyelids hooded down over the eyes, and a square thrusting chin buttressed on a mass of jaw and suetty cheek that glistened with an oily shimmer. The jaw quivered a little as though with some intense suppressed emotion. The man was completely absorbed in his task. The thick lower lip lapped upward over the mouth. On the cheekbone was a deep red scar. Aubrey felt a pang of fascinated amazement at the gross energy and power of that abominable relentless mask.

"So this is the harmless old thing!" he thought.

Just then the bamboo curtain parted, and the woman whom he had seen upstairs appeared. Forgetting his own situation, Aubrey still stared. She wore a faded dressing gown and her hair was braided as though for the night. She looked frightened, and must have spoken, for Aubrey saw her lips move. The man remained bent over his counter until the last drops of liquid had run out. His jaw tightened, he straightened suddenly and took one step toward her, with outstretched hand imperiously pointed. Aubrey could see his face plainly: it had a savagery more than bestial. The woman's face, which had borne a timid, pleading expression, appealed in vain against that fierce gesture. She turned and vanished. Aubrey saw the druggist's pointing finger tremble. Again he ducked out of sight. "That man's face would be lonely in a crowd," he said to himself. "And I used to think the movies exaggerated things. Say, he ought to play opposite Theda Bara."

He lay at full length in the paved alley and thought that a little acquaintance with Weintraub would go a long way. Then the light in the window above him went out, and he gathered himself together for quick motion if necessary. Perhaps the man would come out to close the cellar door——

The thought was in his mind when a light flashed on farther down the passage, between him and the kitchen. It came from a small barred window on the ground level. Evidently the druggist had gone down into the cellar. Aubrey crawled silently along toward the yard. Reaching the lit pane he lay against the wall and looked in.

The window was too grimed for him to see clearly, but what he could make out had the appearance of a chemical laboratory and machine shop combined. A long work bench was lit by several electrics. On it he saw glass vials of odd shapes, and a medley of tools. Sheets of tin, lengths of lead pipe, gas burners, a vise, boilers and cylinders, tall jars of coloured fluids. He could hear a dull humming sound, which he surmised came from some sort of revolving tool which he could see was run by a belt from a motor. On trying to spy more clearly he found that what he had taken for dirt was a coat of whitewash which had been applied to the window on the inside, but the coating had worn away in one spot which gave him a loophole. What surprised him most was to spy the covers of a number of books strewn about the work table. One, he was ready to swear, was the Cromwell. He knew that bright blue cloth by this time.

For the second time that evening Aubrey wished for the presence of one of his former instructors. "I wish I had my old chemistry professor here," he thought. "I'd like to know what this bird is up to. I'd hate to swallow one of his prescriptions."

His teeth were chattering after the long exposure and he was wet through from lying in the little gutter that apparently drained off from the sink in Weintraub's prescription laboratory. He could not see what the druggist was doing in the cellar, for the man's broad back was turned toward him. He felt as though he had had quite enough thrills for one evening. Creeping along he found his way back to the yard, and stepped cautiously among the empty boxes with which it was strewn. An elevated train rumbled overhead, and he watched the brightly lighted cars swing by. While the train roared above him, he scrambled up the fence and dropped down into the alley.

"Well," he thought, "I'd give full-page space, preferred position, in the magazine Ben Franklin founded to the guy that'd tell me what's going on at this grand bolshevik headquarters. It looks to me as though they're getting ready to blow the Octagon Hotel off the map."

He found a little confectionery shop on Wordsworth Avenue that was still open, and went in for a cup of hot chocolate to warm himself. "The expense account on this business is going to be rather heavy," he said to himself. "I think I'll have to charge it up to the Daintybits account. Say, old Grey Matter gives service that's DIFFERENT, don't she! We not only keep Chapman's goods in the public eye, but we face all the horrors of Brooklyn to preserve his family from unlawful occasions. No, I don't like the company that bookseller runs with. If 'nach Philadelphia' is the word, I think I'll tag along. I guess it's off for Philadelphia in the morning!"

Chapter XIII

The Battle of Ludlow Street

Rarely was a more genuine tribute paid to entrancing girlhood than when Aubrey compelled himself, by sheer force of will and the ticking of his subconscious time-sense, to wake at six o'clock the next morning. For this young man took sleep seriously and with a primitive zest. It was to him almost a religious function. As a minor poet has said, he "made sleep a career."

But he did not know what train Roger might be taking, and he was determined not to miss him. By a quarter after six he was seated in the Milwaukee Lunch (which is never closed—Open from Now Till the Judgment Day. Tables for Ladies, as its sign says) with a cup of coffee and corned beef hash. In the mood of tender melancholy common to unaccustomed early rising he dwelt fondly on the thought of Titania, so near and yet so far away. He had leisure to give free rein to these musings, for it was ten past seven before Roger appeared, hurrying toward the subway. Aubrey followed at a discreet distance, taking care not to be observed.

The bookseller and his pursuer both boarded the eight o'clock train at the Pennsylvania Station, but in very different moods. To Roger, this expedition was a frolic, pure and simple. He had been tied down to the bookshop so long that a day's excursion seemed too good to be true. He bought two cigars—an unusual luxury—and let the morning paper lie unheeded in his lap as the train drummed over the Hackensack marshes. He felt a good deal of pride in having been summoned to appraise the Oldham library. Mr. Oldham was a very distinguished collector, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant whose choice Johnson, Lamb, Keats, and Blake items were the envy of connoisseurs all over the world. Roger knew very well that there were many better-known dealers who would have jumped at the chance to examine the collection and pocket the appraiser's fee. The word that Roger had had by long distance telephone was that Mr. Oldham had decided to sell his collection, and before putting it to auction desired the advices of an expert as to the prices his items should command in the present state of the market. And as Roger was not particularly conversant with current events in the world of rare books and manuscripts, he spent most of the trip in turning over some annotated catalogues of recent sales which Mr. Chapman had lent him. "This invitation," he said to himself, "confirms what I have always said, that the artist, in any line of work, will eventually be recognized above the mere tradesman. Somehow or other Mr. Oldham has heard that I am not only a seller of old books but a lover of them. He prefers to have me go over his treasures with him, rather than one of those who peddle these things like so much tallow."

Aubrey's humour was far removed from that of the happy bookseller. In the first place, Roger was sitting in the smoker, and as Aubrey feared to enter the same car for fear of being observed, he had to do without his pipe. He took the foremost seat in the second coach, and peering occasionally through the glass doors he could see the bald poll of his quarry wreathed with exhalements of cheap havana. Secondly, he had hoped to see Weintraub on the same train, but though he had tarried at the train-gate until the last moment, the German had not appeared. He had concluded from Weintraub's words the night before that druggist and bookseller were bound on a joint errand. Apparently he was mistaken. He bit his nails, glowered at the flying landscape, and revolved many grievous fancies in his prickling bosom. Among other discontents was the knowledge that he did not have enough money with him to pay his fare back to New York, and he would either have to borrow from someone in Philadelphia or wire to his office for funds. He had not anticipated, when setting out upon this series of adventures, that it would prove so costly.

The train drew into Broad Street station at ten o'clock, and Aubrey followed the bookseller through the bustling terminus and round the City Hall plaza. Mifflin seemed to know his way, but Philadelphia was comparatively strange to the Grey-Matter solicitor. He was quite surprised at the impressive vista of South Broad Street, and chagrined to find people jostling him on the crowded pavement as though they did not know he had just come from New York.

Roger turned in at a huge office building on Broad Street and took an express elevator. Aubrey did not dare follow him into the car, so he waited in the lobby. He learned from the starter that there was a second tier of elevators on the other side of the building, so he tipped a boy a quarter to watch them for him, describing Mifflin so accurately that he could not be missed. By this time Aubrey was in a thoroughly ill temper, and enjoyed quarrelling with the starter on the subject of indicators for showing the position of the elevators. Observing that in this building the indicators were glass tubes in which the movement of the car was traced by a rising or falling column of coloured fluid, Aubrey remarked testily that that old-fashioned stunt had long been abandoned in New York. The starter retorted that New York was only two hours away if he liked it better. This argument helped to fleet the time rapidly.

Meanwhile Roger, with the pleasurable sensation of one who expects to be received as a distinguished visitor from out of town, had entered the luxurious suite of Mr. Oldham. A young lady, rather too transparently shirtwaisted but fair to look upon, asked what she could do for him.

"I want to see Mr. Oldham."

"What name shall I say?"

"Mr. Mifflin—Mr. Mifflin of Brooklyn."

"Have you an appointment?"

"Yes."

Roger sat down with agreeable anticipation. He noticed the shining mahogany of the office furniture, the sparkling green jar of drinking water, the hushed and efficient activity of the young ladies. "Philadelphia girls are amazingly comely," he said to himself, "but none of these can hold a candle to Miss Titania."

The young lady returned from the private office looking a little perplexed.

"Did you have an appointment with Mr. Oldham?" she said. "He doesn't seem to recall it."

"Why, certainly," said Roger. "It was arranged by telephone on Saturday afternoon. Mr. Oldham's secretary called me up."

"Have I got your name right?" she asked, showing a slip on which she had written Mr. Miflin.

"Two f's," said Roger. "Mr. Roger Mifflin, the bookseller."

The girl retired, and came back a moment later.

"Mr. Oldham's very busy," she said, "but he can see you for a moment."

Roger was ushered into the private office, a large, airy room lined with bookshelves. Mr. Oldham, a tall, thin man with short gray hair and lively black eyes, rose courteously from his desk.

"How do you do, sir," he said. "I'm sorry, I had forgotten our appointment."

"He must be very absent minded," thought Roger. "Arranges to sell a collection worth half a million, and forgets all about it."

"I came over in response to your message," he said. "About selling your collection."

Mr. Oldham looked at him, rather intently, Roger thought.

"Do you want to buy it?" he said.

"To buy it?" said Roger, a little peevishly. "Why, no. I came over to appraise it for you. Your secretary telephoned me on Saturday."

"My dear sir," replied the other, "there must be some mistake. I have no intention of selling my collection. I never sent you a message."

Roger was aghast.

"Why," he exclaimed, "your secretary called me up on Saturday and said you particularly wanted me to come over this morning, to examine your books with you. I've made the trip from Brooklyn for that purpose."

Mr. Oldham touched a buzzer, and a middle-aged woman came into the office. "Miss Patterson," he said, "did you telephone to Mr. Mifflin of Brooklyn on Saturday, asking him——"

"It was a man that telephoned," said Roger.

"I'm exceedingly sorry, Mr. Mifflin," said Mr. Oldham. "More sorry than I can tell you—I'm afraid someone has played a trick on you. As I told you, and Miss Patterson will bear me out, I have no idea of selling my books, and have never authorized any one even to suggest such a thing."

Roger was filled with confusion and anger. A hoax on the part of some of the Corn Cob Club, he thought to himself. He flushed painfully to recall the simplicity of his glee.

"Please don't be embarrassed," said Mr. Oldham, seeing the little man's vexation. "Don't let's consider the trip wasted. Won't you come out and dine with me in the country this evening, and see my things?"

But Roger was too proud to accept this balm, courteous as it was.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but I'm afraid I can't do it. I'm rather busy at home, and only came over because I believed this to be urgent."

"Some other time, perhaps," said Mr. Oldham. "Look here, you're a bookseller? I don't believe I know your shop. Give me your card. The next time I'm in New York I'd like to stop in."

Roger got away as quickly as the other's politeness would let him. He chafed savagely at the awkwardness of his position. Not until he reached the street again did he breathe freely.

"Some of Jerry Gladfist's tomfoolery, I'll bet a hat," he muttered. "By the bones of Fanny Kelly, I'll make him smart for it."

Even Aubrey, picking up the trail again, could see that Roger was angry.

"Something's got his goat," he reflected. "I wonder what he's peeved about?"

They crossed Broad Street and Roger started off down Chestnut. Aubrey saw the bookseller halt in a doorway to light his pipe, and stopped some yards behind him to look up at the statue of William Penn on the City Hall. It was a blustery day, and at that moment a gust of wind whipped off his hat and sent it spinning down Broad Street. He ran half a block before he recaptured it. When he got back to Chestnut, Roger had disappeared. He hurried down Chestnut Street, bumping pedestrians in his eagerness, but at Thirteenth he halted in dismay. Nowhere could he see a sign of the little bookseller. He appealed to the policeman at that corner, but learned nothing. Vainly he scoured the block and up and down Juniper Street. It was eleven o'clock, and the streets were thronged.

He cursed the book business in both hemispheres, cursed himself, and cursed Philadelphia. Then he went into a tobacconist's and bought a packet of cigarettes.

For an hour he patrolled up and down Chestnut Street, on both sides of the way, thinking he might possibly encounter Roger. At the end of this time he found himself in front of a newspaper office, and remembered that an old friend of his was an editorial writer on the staff. He entered, and went up in the elevator.

He found his friend in a small grimy den, surrounded by a sea of papers, smoking a pipe with his feet on the table. They greeted each other joyfully.

"Well, look who's here!" cried the facetious journalist. "Tamburlaine the Great, and none other! What brings you to this distant outpost?"

Aubrey grinned at the use of his old college nickname.

"I've come to lunch with you, and borrow enough money to get home with."

"On Monday?" cried the other. "Tuesday being the day of stipend in these quarters? Nay, say not so!"

They lunched together at a quiet Italian restaurant, and Aubrey narrated tersely the adventures of the past few days. The newspaper man smoked pensively when the story was concluded.

"I'd like to see the girl," he said. "Tambo, your tale hath the ring of sincerity. It is full of sound and fury, but it signifieth something. You say your man is a second-hand bookseller?"

"Yes."

"Then I know where you'll find him."

"Nonsense!"

"It's worth trying. Go up to Leary's, 9 South Ninth. It's right on this street. I'll show you."

"Let's go," said Aubrey promptly.

"Not only that," said the other, "but I'll lend you my last V. Not for your sake, but on behalf of the girl. Just mention my name to her, will you?

"Right up the block," he pointed as they reached Chestnut Street. "No, I won't come with you, Wilson's speaking to Congress to-day, and there's big stuff coming over the wire. So long, old man. Invite me to the wedding!"

Aubrey had no idea what Leary's was, and rather expected it to be a tavern of some sort. When he reached the place, however, he saw why his friend had suggested it as a likely lurking ground for Roger. It would be as impossible for any bibliophile to pass this famous second-hand bookstore as for a woman to go by a wedding party without trying to see the bride. Although it was a bleak day, and a snell wind blew down the street, the pavement counters were lined with people turning over disordered piles of volumes. Within, he could see a vista of white shelves, and the many-coloured tapestry of bindings stretching far away to the rear of the building.

He entered eagerly, and looked about. The shop was comfortably busy, with a number of people browsing. They seemed normal enough from behind, but in their eyes he detected the wild, peering glitter of the bibliomaniac. Here and there stood members of the staff. Upon their features Aubrey discerned the placid and philosophic tranquillity which he associated with second-hand booksellers—all save Mifflin.

He paced through the narrow aisles, scanning the blissful throng of seekers. He went down to the educational department in the basement, up to the medical books in the gallery, even back to the sections of Drama and Pennsylvania History in the raised quarterdeck at the rear. There was no trace of Roger.

At a desk under the stairway he saw a lean, studious, and kindly-looking bibliosoph, who was poring over an immense catalogue. An idea struck him.

"Have you a copy of Carlyle's Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell?" he asked.

The other looked up.

"I'm afraid we haven't," he said. "Another gentleman was in here asking for it just a few minutes ago."

"Good God!" cried Aubrey. "Did he get it?"

This emphasis brought no surprise to the bookseller, who was accustomed to the oddities of edition hunters.

"No," he said. "We didn't have a copy. We haven't seen one for a long time."

"Was he a little bald man with a red beard and bright blue eyes?" asked Aubrey hoarsely.

"Yes—Mr. Mifflin of Brooklyn. Do you know him?"

"I should say I do!" cried Aubrey. "Where has he gone? I've been hunting him all over town, the scoundrel!"

The bookseller, douce man, had seen too many eccentric customers to be shocked by the vehemence of his questioner.

"He was here a moment ago," he said gently, and gazed with a mild interest upon the excited young advertising man. "I daresay you'll find him just outside, in Ludlow Street."

"Where's that?"

The tall man—and I don't see why I should scruple to name him, for it was Philip Warner—explained that Ludlow Street was the narrow alley that runs along one side of Leary's and elbows at right angles behind the shop. Down the flank of the store, along this narrow little street, run shelves of books under a penthouse. It is here that Leary's displays its stock of ragamuffin ten-centers—queer dingy volumes that call to the hearts of gentle questers. Along these historic shelves many troubled spirits have come as near happiness as they are like to get… for after all, happiness (as the mathematicians might say) lies on a curve, and we approach it only by asymptote.… The frequenters of this alley call themselves whimsically The Ludlow Street Business Men's Association, and Charles Lamb or Eugene Field would have been proud to preside at their annual dinners, at which the members recount their happiest book-finds of the year.

Aubrey rushed out of the shop and looked down the alley. Half a dozen Ludlow Street Business Men were groping among the shelves. Then, down at the far end, his small face poked into an open volume, he saw Roger. He approached with a rapid stride.

"Well," he said angrily, "here you are!"

Roger looked up from his book good-humouredly. Apparently, in the zeal of his favourite pastime, he had forgotten where he was.

"Hullo!" he said. "What are you doing in Brooklyn? Look here, here's a copy of Tooke's Pantheon——"

"What's the idea?" cried Aubrey harshly. "Are you trying to kid me? What are you and Weintraub framing up here in Philadelphia?"

Roger's mind came back to Ludlow Street. He looked with some surprise at the flushed face of the young man, and put the book back in its place on the shelf, making a mental note of its location. His disappointment of the morning came back to him with some irritation.

"What are you talking about?" he said. "What the deuce business is it of yours?"

"I'll make it my business," said Aubrey, and shook his fist in the bookseller's face. "I've been trailing you, you scoundrel, and I want to know what kind of a game you're playing."

A spot of red spread on Roger's cheekbones. In spite of his apparent demureness he had a pugnacious spirit and a quick fist.

"By the bones of Charles Lamb!" he said. "Young man, your manners need mending. If you're looking for display advertising, I'll give you one on each eye."

Aubrey had expected to find a cringing culprit, and this back talk infuriated him beyond control.

"You damned little bolshevik," he said, "if you were my size I'd give you a hiding. You tell me what you and your pro-German pals are up to or I'll put the police on you!"

Roger stiffened. His beard bristled, and his blue eyes glittered.

"You impudent dog," he said quietly, "you come round the corner where these people can't see us and I'll give you some private tutoring."

He led the way round the corner of the alley. In this narrow channel, between blank walls, they confronted each other.

"In the name of Gutenberg," said Roger, calling upon his patron saint, "explain yourself or I'll hit you."

"Who's he?" sneered Aubrey. "Another one of your Huns?"

That instant he received a smart blow on the chin, which would have been much harder but that Roger misgauged his footing on the uneven cobbles, and hardly reached the face of his opponent, who topped him by many inches.

Aubrey forgot his resolution not to hit a smaller man, and also calling upon his patron saints—the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World—he delivered a smashing slog which hit the bookseller in the chest and jolted him half across the alley.

Both men were furiously angry—Aubrey with the accumulated bitterness of several days' anxiety and suspicion, and Roger with the quick-flaming indignation of a hot-tempered man unwarrantably outraged. Aubrey had the better of the encounter in height, weight, and more than twenty years juniority, but fortune played for the bookseller. Aubrey's terrific punch sent the latter staggering across the alley onto the opposite curb. Aubrey followed him up with a rush, intending to crush the other with one fearful smite. But Roger, keeping cool, now had the advantage of position. Standing on the curb, he had a little the better in height. As Aubrey leaped at him, his face grim with hatred, Roger met him with a savage buffet on the jaw. Aubrey's foot struck against the curb, and he fell backward onto the stones. His head crashed violently on the cobbles, and the old cut on his scalp broke out afresh. Dazed and shaken, there was, for the moment, no more fight in him.

"You insolent pup," panted Roger, "do you want any more?" Then he saw that Aubrey was really hurt. With horror he observed a trickle of blood run down the side of the young man's face.

"Good Lord," he said. "Maybe I've killed him!"

In a panic he ran round the corner to get Leary's outside man, who stands in a little sentry box at the front angle of the store and sells the outdoor books.

"Quick," he said. "There's a fellow back here badly hurt."

They ran back around the corner, and found Aubrey walking rather shakily toward them. Immense relief swam through Roger's brain.

"Look here," he said, "I'm awfully sorry—are you hurt?"

Aubrey glared whitely at him, but was too stunned to speak. He grunted, and the others took him one on each side and supported him. Leary's man ran inside the store and opened the little door of the freight elevator at the back of the shop. In this way, avoiding notice save by a few book-prowlers, Aubrey was carted into the shop as though he had been a parcel of second-hand books.

Mr. Warner greeted them at the back of the shop, a little surprised, but gentle as ever.

"What's wrong?" he said.

"Oh, we've been fighting over a copy of Tooke's Pantheon," said Roger.

They led Aubrey into the little private office at the rear. Here they made him sit down in a chair and bathed his bleeding head with cold water. Philip Warner, always resourceful, produced some surgical plaster. Roger wanted to telephone for a doctor.

"Not on your life," said Aubrey, pulling himself together. "See here, Mr. Mifflin, don't flatter yourself you gave me this cut on the skull. I got that the other evening on Brooklyn Bridge, going home from your damned bookshop. Now if you and I can be alone for a few minutes, we've got to have a talk."

Chapter XIV

The "Cromwell" Makes its Last Appearance

"You utter idiot," said Roger, half an hour later. "Why didn't you tell me all this sooner? Good Lord, man, there's some devil's work going on!"

"How the deuce was I to know you knew nothing about it?" said Aubrey impatiently. "You'll grant everything pointed against you? When I saw that guy go into the shop with his own key, what could I think but that you were in league with him? Gracious, man, are you so befuddled in your old books that you don't see what's going on round you?"

"What time did you say that was?" said Roger shortly.

"One o'clock Sunday morning."

Roger thought a minute. "Yes, I was in the cellar with Bock," he said. "Bock barked, and I thought it was rats. That fellow must have taken an impression of the lock and made himself a key. He's been in the shop hundreds of times, and could easily do it. That explains the disappearing Cromwell. But WHY? What's the idea?"

"For the love of heaven," said Aubrey. "Let's get back to Brooklyn as soon as we can. God only knows what may have happened. Fool that I was, to go away and leave those women all alone. Triple-distilled lunacy!"

"My dear fellow," said Roger, "I was the fool to be lured off by a fake telephone call. Judging by what you say, Weintraub must have worked that also."

Aubrey looked at his watch. "Just after three," he said.

"We can't get a train till four," said Roger. "That means we can't get back to Gissing Street until nearly seven."

"Call them up," said Aubrey.

They were still in the private office at the rear of Leary's. Roger was well-known in the shop, and had no hesitation in using the telephone. He lifted the receiver.

"Long Distance, please," he said. "Hullo? I want to get Brooklyn, Wordsworth 1617-W."

They spent a sour twenty-five minutes waiting for the connection. Roger went out to talk with Warner, while Aubrey fumed in the back office. He could not sit still, and paced the little room in a fidget of impatience, tearing his watch out of his pocket every few minutes. He felt dull and sick with vague fear. To his mind recurred the spiteful buzz of that voice over the wire—"Gissing Street is not healthy for you." He remembered the scuffle on the Bridge, the whispering in the alley, and the sinister face of the druggist at his prescription counter. The whole series of events seemed a grossly fantastic nightmare, yet it frightened him. "If only I were in Brooklyn," he groaned, "it wouldn't be so bad. But to be over here, a hundred miles away, in another cursed bookshop, while that girl may be in trouble—Gosh!" he muttered. "If I get through this business all right I'll lay off bookshops for the rest of my life!"

The telephone rang, and Aubrey frantically beckoned to Roger, who was outside, talking.

"Answer it, you chump!" said Roger. "We'll lose the connection!"

"Nix," said Aubrey. "If Titania hears my voice she'll ring off. She's sore at me."

Roger ran to the instrument. "Hullo, hullo?" he said, irritably. "Hullo, is that Wordsworth——? Yes, I'm calling Brooklyn—Hullo!"

Aubrey, leaning over Roger's shoulder, could hear a clucking in the receiver, and then, incredibly clear, a thin, silver, distant voice. How well he knew it! It seemed to vibrate in the air all about him. He could hear every syllable distinctly. A hot perspiration burst out on his forehead and in the palms of his hands.

"Hullo," said Roger. "Is that Mifflin's Bookshop?"

"Yes," said Titania. "Is that you, Mr. Mifflin? Where are you?"

"In Philadelphia," said Roger. "Tell me, is everything all right?"

"Everything's dandy," said Titania. "I'm selling loads of books. Mrs. Mifflin's gone out to do some shopping."

Aubrey shook to hear the tiny, airy voice, like a trill of birdsong, like a tinkling from some distant star. He could imagine her standing at the phone in the back of the shadowy bookshop, and seemed to see her as though through an inverted telescope, very minute and very perfect. How brave and exquisite she was!

"When are you coming home?" she was saying.

"About seven o'clock," said Roger. "Listen, is everything absolutely O. K.?"

"Why, yes," said Titania. "I've been having lots of fun. I went down just now and put some coal on the furnace. Oh, yes. Mr. Weintraub came in a little while ago and left a suitcase of books. He said you wouldn't mind. A friend of his is going to call for them this afternoon."

"Hold the wire a moment," said Roger, and clapped his hand over the mouthpiece. "She says Weintraub left a suitcase of books there to be called for. What do you make of that?"

"For the love of God, tell her not to touch those books."

"Hullo?" said Roger. Aubrey, leaning over him, noticed that the little bookseller's naked pate was ringed with crystal beads.

"Hullo?" replied Titania's elfin voice promptly.

"Did you open the suitcase?"

"No. It's locked. Mr. Weintraub said there were a lot of old books in it for a friend of his. It's very heavy."

"Look here," said Roger, and his voice rang sharply. "This is important. I don't want you to touch that suitcase. Leave it wherever it is, and DON'T TOUCH IT. Promise me."

"Yes, Mr. Mifflin. Had I better put it in a safe place?"

"DON'T TOUCH IT!"

"Bock's sniffing at it now."

"Don't touch it, and don't let Bock touch it. It—it's got valuable papers in it."

"I'll be careful of it," said Titania.

"Promise me not to touch it. And another thing—if any one calls for it, don't let them take it until I get home."

Aubrey held out his watch in front of Roger. The latter nodded.

"Do you understand?" he said. "Do you hear me all right?"

"Yes, splendidly. I think it's wonderful! You know I never talked on long distance before——"

"Don't touch the bag," repeated Roger doggedly, "and don't let any one take it until we—until I get back."

"I promise," said Titania blithely.

"Good-bye," said Roger, and set down the receiver. His face looked curiously pinched, and there was perspiration in the hollows under his eyes. Aubrey held out his watch impatiently.

"We've just time to make it," cried Roger, and they rushed from the shop.

It was not a sprightly journey. The train made its accustomed detour through West Philadelphia and North Philadelphia before getting down to business, and the two voyagers felt a personal hatred of the brakemen who permitted passengers from these suburbs to straggle leisurely aboard instead of flogging them in with knotted whips. When the express stopped at Trenton, Aubrey could easily have turned a howitzer upon that innocent city and blasted it into rubble. An unexpected stop at Princeton Junction was the last straw. Aubrey addressed the conductor in terms that were highly treasonable, considering that this official was a government servant.

The winter twilight drew in, gray and dreary, with a threat of snow. For some time they sat in silence, Roger buried in a Philadelphia afternoon paper containing the text of the President's speech announcing his trip to Europe, and Aubrey gloomily recapitulating the schedule of his past week. His head throbbed, his hands were wet with nervousness so that crumbs of tobacco adhered to them annoyingly.

"It's a funny thing," he said at last. "You know I never heard of your shop until a week ago to-day, and now it seems like the most important place on earth. It was only last Tuesday that we had supper together, and since then I've had my scalp laid open twice, had a desperado lie in wait for me in my own bedroom, spent two night vigils on Gissing Street, and endangered the biggest advertising account our agency handles. I don't wonder you call the place haunted!"

"I suppose it would all make good advertising copy?" said Roger peevishly.

"Well, I don't know" said Aubrey. "It's a bit too rough, I'm afraid. How do you dope it out?"

"I don't know what to think. Weintraub has run that drug store for twenty years or more. Years ago, before I ever got into the book business, I used to know his shop. He was always rather interested in books, especially scientific books, and we got quite friendly when I opened up on Gissing Street. I never fell for his face very hard, but he always seemed quiet and well-disposed. It sounds to me like some kind of trade in illicit drugs, or German incendiary bombs. You know what a lot of fires there were during the war—those big grain elevators in Brooklyn, and so on."

"I thought at first it was a kidnapping stunt," said Aubrey. "I thought you had got Miss Chapman planted in your shop so that these other guys could smuggle her away."

"You seem to have done me the honour of thinking me a very complete rascal," said Roger.

Aubrey's lips trembled with irritable retort, but he checked himself heroically.

"What was your particular interest in the Cromwell book?" he asked after a pause.

"Oh, I read somewhere—two or three years ago—that it was one of Woodrow Wilson's favourite books. That interested me, and I looked it up."

"By the way," cried Aubrey excitedly, "I forgot to show you those numbers that were written in the cover." He pulled out his memorandum book, and showed the transcript he had made.

"Well, one of these is perfectly understandable," said Roger. "Here, where it says 329 ff. cf. W. W. That simply means 'pages 329 and following, compare Woodrow Wilson.' I remember jotting that down not long ago, because that passage in the book reminded me of some of Wilson's ideas. I generally note down in the back of a book the numbers of any pages that interest me specially. These other page numbers convey nothing unless I had the book before me."

"The first bunch of numbers was in your handwriting, then; but underneath were these others, in Weintraub's—or at any rate in his ink. When I saw that he was jotting down what I took to be code stuff in the backs of your books I naturally assumed you and he were working together——"

"And you found the cover in his drug store?"

"Yes."

Roger scowled. "I don't make it out," he said. "Well, there's nothing we can do till we get there. Do you want to look at the paper? There's the text of Wilson's speech to Congress this morning."

Aubrey shook his head dismally, and leaned his hot forehead against the pane. Neither of them spoke again until they reached Manhattan Transfer, where they changed for the Hudson Terminal.

It was seven o'clock when they hurried out of the subway terminus at Atlantic Avenue. It was a raw, damp evening, but the streets had already begun to bustle with their nightly exuberance of light and colour. The yellow glitter of a pawnshop window reminded Aubrey of the small revolver in his pocket. As they passed a dark alley, he stepped aside to load the weapon.

"Have you anything of this sort with you?" he said, showing it to Roger.

"Good Lord, no," said the bookseller. "What do you think I am, a moving-picture hero?"

Down Gissing Street the younger man set so rapid a pace that his companion had to trot to keep abreast. The placid vista of the little street was reassuring. Under the glowing effusion of the shop windows the pavement was a path of checkered brightness. In Weintraub's pharmacy they could see the pasty-faced assistant in his stained white coat serving a beaker of hot chocolate. In the stationer's shop people were looking over trays of Christmas cards. In the Milwaukee Lunch Aubrey saw (and envied) a sturdy citizen peacefully dipping a doughnut into a cup of coffee.

"This all seems very unreal," said Roger.

As they neared the bookshop, Aubrey's heart gave a jerk of apprehension. The blinds in the front windows had been drawn down. A dull shining came through them, showing that the lights were turned on inside. But why should the shades be lowered with closing time three hours away?

They reached the front door, and Aubrey was about to seize the handle when Roger halted him.

"Wait a moment," he said. "Let's go in quietly. There may be something queer going on."

Aubrey turned the knob gently. The door was locked.

Roger pulled out his latchkey and cautiously released the bolt. Then he opened the door slightly—about an inch.

"You're taller than I am," he whispered. "Reach up and muffle the bell above the door while I open it."

Aubrey thrust three fingers through the aperture and blocked the trigger of the gong. Then Roger pushed the door wide, and they tiptoed in.

The shop was empty, and apparently normal. They stood for an instant with pounding pulses.

From the back of the house came a clear voice, a little tremulous:

"You can do what you like, I shan't tell you where it is. Mr. Mifflin said——"

There followed the bang of a falling chair, and a sound of rapid movement.

Aubrey was down the aisle in a flash, followed by Roger, who had delayed just long enough to close the door. He tiptoed up the steps at the back of the shop and looked into the dining room. At the instant his eyes took in the scene it seemed as though the whole room was in motion.

The cloth was spread for supper and shone white under the drop lamp. In the far corner of the room Titania was struggling in the grasp of a bearded man whom Aubrey instantly recognized as the chef. On the near side of the table, holding a revolver levelled at the girl, stood Weintraub. His back was toward the door. Aubrey could see the druggist's sullen jaw crease and shake with anger.

Two strides took him into the room. He jammed the muzzle of his pistol against the oily cheek. "Drop it!" he said hoarsely. "You Hun!" With his left hand he seized the man's shirt collar and drew it tight against the throat. In his tremor of rage and excitement his arms felt curiously weak, and his first thought was how impossible it would be to strangle that swinish neck.

For an instant there was a breathless tableau. The bearded man still had his hands on Titania's shoulders. She, very pale but with brilliant eyes, gazed at Aubrey in unbelieving amazement. Weintraub stood quite motionless with both hands on the dining table, as though thinking. He felt the cold bruise of metal against the hollow of his cheek. Slowly he opened his right hand and his revolver fell on the linen cloth. Then Roger burst into the room.

Titania wrenched herself away from the chef.

"I wouldn't give them the suitcase!" she cried.

Aubrey kept his pistol pinned against Weintraub's face. With his left hand he picked up the druggist's revolver. Roger was about to seize the chef, who was standing uncertainly on the other side of the table.

"Here," said Aubrey, "take this gun. Cover this fellow and leave that one to me. I've got a score to settle with him."

The chef made a movement as though to jump through the window behind him, but Aubrey flung himself upon him. He hit the man square on the nose and felt a delicious throb of satisfaction as the rubbery flesh flattened beneath his knuckles. He seized the man's hairy throat and sank his fingers into it. The other tried to snatch the bread knife on the table, but was too late. He fell to the floor, and Aubrey throttled him savagely.

"You blasted Hun," he grunted. "Go wrestling with girls, will you?"

Titania ran from the room, through the pantry.

Roger was holding Weintraub's revolver in front of the German's face.

"Look here," he said, "what does this mean?"

"It's all a mistake," said the druggist suavely, though his eyes slid uneasily to and fro. "I just came in to get some books I left here earlier in the afternoon."

"With a revolver, eh?" said Roger. "Speak up, Hindenburg, what's the big idea?"

"It's not my revolver," said Weintraub. "It's Metzger's."

"Where's this suitcase of yours?" said Roger. "We're going to have a look at it."

"It's all a stupid mistake," said Weintraub. "I left a suitcase of old books here for Metzger, because I expected to go out of town this afternoon. He called for it, and your young woman wouldn't give it to him. He came to me, and I came down here to tell her it was all right."

"Is that Metzger?" said Roger, pointing to the bearded man who was trying to break Aubrey's grip. "Gilbert, don't choke that man, we want him to do some explaining."

Aubrey got up, picked his revolver from the floor where he had dropped it, and prodded the chef to his feet.

"Well, you swine," he said, "how did you enjoy falling downstairs the other evening? As for you, Herr Weintraub, I'd like to know what kind of prescriptions you make up in that cellar of yours."

Weintraub's face shone damply in the lamplight. Perspiration was thick on his forehead.

"My dear Mifflin," he said, "this is awfully stupid. In my eagerness, I'm afraid——"

Titania ran back into the room, followed by Helen, whose face was crimson.

"Thank God you're back, Roger," she said. "These brutes tied me up in the kitchen and gagged me with a roller-towel. They threatened to shoot Titania if she wouldn't give them the suitcase."

Weintraub began to say something, but Roger thrust the revolver between his eyes.

"Hold your tongue!" he said. "We're going to have a look at those books of yours."

"I'll get the suitcase," said Titania. "I hid it. When Mr. Weintraub came in and asked for it, at first I was going to give it to him, but he looked so queer I thought something must be wrong."

"Don't you get it," said Aubrey, and their eyes met for the first time. "Show me where it is, and we'll let friend Hun bring it."

Titania flushed a little. "It's in my bedroom cupboard," she said.

She led the way upstairs, Metzger following, and Aubrey behind Metzger with his pistol ready. Outside the bedroom door Aubrey halted. "Show him the suitcase and let him pick it up," he said. "If he makes a wrong movement, call me, and I'll shoot him."

Titania pointed out the suitcase, which she had stowed at the back of her cupboard behind some clothes. The chef showed no insubordination, and the three returned downstairs.

"Very well," said Roger. "We'll go down in the shop where we can see better. Perhaps he's got a first folio Shakespeare in here. Helen, you go to the phone and ring up the McFee Street police station. Ask them to send a couple of men round here at once."

"My dear Mifflin," said Weintraub, "this is very absurd. Only a few old books that I had collected from time to time."

"I don't call it absurd when a man comes into my house and ties my wife up with clothesline and threatens to shoot a young girl," said Roger. "We'll see what the police have to say about this, Weintraub. Don't make any mistake: if you try to bolt I'll blow your brains out."

Aubrey led the way down into the shop while Metzger carried the suitcase. Roger and Weintraub followed, and Titania brought up the rear. Under a bright light in the Essay alcove Aubrey made the chef lay the bag on the table.

"Open her up," he said curtly.

"It's nothing but some old books," said Metzger.

"If they're old enough they may be valuable," said Roger. "I'm interested in old books. Look sharp!"

Metzger drew a key from his pocket and unlocked the bag. Aubrey held the pistol at his head as he threw back the lid.

The suitcase was full of second-hand books closely packed together. Roger, with great presence of mind, was keeping his eyes on Weintraub.

"Tell me what's in it," he said.

"Why, it's only a lot of books, after all," cried Titania.

"You see," said Weintraub surlily, "there's no mystery about it. I'm sorry I was so——"

"Oh, look!" said Titania; "There's the Cromwell book!"

For an instant Roger forgot himself. He looked instinctively at the suitcase, and in that moment the druggist broke away, ran down the aisle, and flew out of the door. Roger dashed after him, but was too late. Aubrey was holding Metzger by the collar with the pistol at his head.

"Good God," he said, "why didn't you shoot?"

"I don't know" said Roger in confusion. "I was afraid of hitting him. Never mind, we can fix him later."

"The police will be here in a minute," said Helen, calling from the telephone. "I'm going to let Bock in. He's in the back yard."

"I think they're both crazy," said Titania. "Let's put the Cromwell back on the shelf and let this creature go." She put out her hand for the book.

"Stop!" cried Aubrey, and seized her arm. "Don't touch that book!"

Titania shrank back, frightened by his voice. Had everyone gone insane?

"Here, Mr. Metzger," said Aubrey, "you put that book back on the shelf where it belongs. Don't try to get away. I've got this revolver pointed at you."

He and Roger were both startled by the chef's face. Above the unkempt beard his eyes shone with a half-crazed lustre, and his hands shook.

"Very well," he said. "Show me where it goes."

"I'll show you," said Titania.

Aubrey put out his arm in front of the girl. "Stay where you are," he said angrily.

"Down in the History alcove," said Roger. "The front alcove on the other side of the shop. We've both got you covered."

Instead of taking the volume from the suitcase, Metzger picked up the whole bag, holding it flat. He carried it to the alcove they indicated. He placed the case carefully on the floor, and picked the Cromwell volume out of it.

"Where would you want it to go?" he said in an odd voice. "This is a valuable book."

"On the fifth shelf," said Roger. "Over there——"

"For God's sake stand back," said Aubrey. "Don't go near him. There's something damnable about this."

"You poor fools!" cried Metzger harshly. "To hell with you and your old books." He drew his hand back as though to throw the volume at them.

There was a quick patter of feet, and Bock, growling, ran down the aisle. In the same instant, Aubrey, obeying some unexplained impulse, gave Roger a violent push back into the Fiction alcove, seized Titania roughly in his arms, and ran with her toward the back of the shop.

Metzger's arm was raised, about to throw the book, when Bock darted at him and buried his teeth in the man's leg. The Cromwell fell from his hand.

There was a shattering explosion, a dull roar, and for an instant Aubrey thought the whole bookshop had turned into a vast spinning top. The floor rocked and sagged, shelves of books were hurled in every direction. Carrying Titania, he had just reached the steps leading to the domestic quarters when they were flung sideways into the corner behind Roger's desk. The air was full of flying books. A row of encyclopedias crashed down upon his shoulders, narrowly missing Titania's head. The front windows were shivered into flying streamers of broken glass. The table near the door was hurled into the opposite gallery. With a splintering crash the corner of the gallery above the History alcove collapsed, and hundreds of volumes cascaded heavily on to the floor. The lights went out, and for an instant all was silence.

"Are you all right?" said Aubrey hastily. He and Titania had fallen sprawling against the bookseller's desk.

"I think so," she said faintly. "Where's Mr. Mifflin?"

Aubrey put out his hand to help her, and touched something wet on the floor. "Good heavens," he thought. "She's dying!" He struggled to his feet in the darkness. "Hullo, Mr. Mifflin," he called, "where are you?"

There was no answer.

A beam of light gushed out from the passageway behind the shop, and picking his way over fallen litter he found Mrs. Mifflin standing dazed by the dining-room door. In the back of the house the lights were still burning.

"For heaven's sake, have you a candle?" he said.

"Where's Roger?" she cried piteously, and stumbled into the kitchen.

With a candle Aubrey found Titania sitting on the floor, very faint, but unhurt. What he had thought was blood proved to be a pool of ink from a quart bottle that had stood over Roger's desk. He picked her up like a child and carried her into the kitchen. "Stay here and don't stir," he said.

By this time a crowd was already gathering on the pavement. Someone came in with a lantern. Three policemen appeared at the door.

"For God's sake," cried Aubrey, "get a light in here so we can see what's happened. Mifflin's buried in this mess somewhere. Someone ring for an ambulance."

The whole front of the Haunted Bookshop was a wreck. In the pale glimmer of the lantern it was a disastrous sight. Helen groped her way down the shattered aisle.

"Where was he?" she cried wildly.

"Thanks to that set of Trollope," said a voice in the remains of the Fiction alcove, "I think I'm all right. Books make good shock-absorbers. Is any one hurt?"

It was Roger, half stunned, but undamaged. He crawled out from under a case of shelves that had crumpled down upon him.

"Bring that lantern over here," said Aubrey, pointing to a dark heap lying on the floor under the broken fragments of Roger's bulletin board.

It was the chef. He was dead. And clinging to his leg was all that was left of Bock.

Chapter XV

Mr. Chapman Waves His Wand

Gissing Street will not soon forget the explosion at the Haunted Bookshop. When it was learned that the cellar of Weintraub's pharmacy contained just the information for which the Department of Justice had been looking for four years, and that the inoffensive German-American druggist had been the artisan of hundreds of incendiary bombs that had been placed on American and Allied shipping and in ammunition plants—and that this same Weintraub had committed suicide when arrested on Bromfield Street in Boston the next day—Gissing Street hummed with excitement. The Milwaukee Lunch did a roaring business among the sensation seekers who came to view the ruins of the bookshop. When it became known that fragments of a cabin plan of the George Washington had been found in Metzger's pocket, and the confession of an accomplice on the kitchen staff of the Octagon Hotel showed that the bomb, disguised as a copy of one of Woodrow Wilson's favourite books, was to have been placed in the Presidential suite of the steamship, indignation knew no bounds. Mrs. J. F. Smith left Mrs. Schiller's lodgings, declaring that she would stay no longer in a pro-German colony; and Aubrey was able at last to get a much-needed bath.

For the next three days he was too busy with agents of the Department of Justice to be able to carry on an investigation of his own that greatly occupied his mind. But late on Friday afternoon he called at the bookshop to talk things over.

The debris had all been neatly cleared away, and the shattered front of the building boarded up. Inside, Aubrey found Roger seated on the floor, looking over piles of volumes that were heaped pell-mell around him. Through Mr. Chapman's influence with a well-known firm of builders, the bookseller had been able to get men to work at once in making repairs, but even so it would be at least ten days, he said, before he could reopen for business. "I hate to lose the value of all this advertising," he lamented. "It isn't often that a second-hand bookstore gets onto the front pages of the newspapers."

"I thought you didn't believe in advertising," said Aubrey.

"The kind of advertising I believe in," said Roger, "is the kind that doesn't cost you anything."

Aubrey smiled as he looked round at the dismantled shop. "It seems to me that this'll cost you a tidy bit when the bill comes in."

"My dear fellow," said Roger, "This is just what I needed. I was getting into a rut. The explosion has blown out a whole lot of books I had forgotten about and didn't even know I had. Look, here's an old copy of How to Be Happy Though Married, which I see the publisher lists as 'Fiction.' Here's Urn Burial, and The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, and Mistletoe's Book of Deplorable Facts. I'm going to have a thorough house-cleaning. I'm thinking seriously of putting in a vacuum cleaner and a cash register. Titania was quite right, the place was too dirty. That girl has given me a lot of ideas."

Aubrey wanted to ask where she was, but didn't like to say so point-blank.

"There's no question about it," said Roger, "an explosion now and then does one good. Since the reporters got here and dragged the whole yarn out of us, I've had half a dozen offers from publishers for my book, a lyceum bureau wants me to lecture on Bookselling as a Form of Public Service, I've had five hundred letters from people asking when the shop will reopen for business, and the American Booksellers' Association has invited me to give an address at its convention next spring. It's the first recognition I've ever had. If it weren't for poor dear old Bock—— Come, we've buried him in the back yard. I want to show you his grave."

Over a pathetically small mound near the fence a bunch of big yellow chrysanthemums were standing in a vase.

"Titania put those there," said Roger. "She says she's going to plant a dogwood tree there in the spring. We intend to put up a little stone for him, and I'm trying to think of an inscription, I thought of De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum, but that's a bit too flippant."

The living quarters of the house had not been damaged by the explosion, and Roger took Aubrey back to the den. "You've come just at the right time," he said. "Mr. Chapman's coming to dinner this evening, and we'll all have a good talk. There's a lot about this business I don't understand yet."

Aubrey was still keeping his eye open for a sign of Titania's presence, and Roger noticed his wandering gaze.

"This is Miss Chapman's afternoon off," he said. "She got her first salary to-day, and was so much exhilarated that she went to New York to blow it in. She's out with her father. Excuse me, please, I'm going to help Helen get dinner ready."

Aubrey sat down by the fire, and lit his pipe. The burden of his meditation was that it was just a week since he had first met Titania, and in all that week there had been no waking moment when he had not thought of her. He was wondering how long it might take for a girl to fall in love? A man—he knew now—could fall in love in five minutes, but how did it work with girls? He was also thinking what unique Daintybits advertising copy he could build (like all ad men he always spoke of building an ad, never of writing one) out of this affair if he could only use the inside stuff.

He heard a rustle behind him, and there she was. She had on a gray fur coat and a lively little hat. Her cheeks were delicately tinted by the winter air. Aubrey rose.

"Why, Mr. Gilbert!" she said. "Where have you been keeping yourself when I wanted to see you so badly? I haven't seen you, not to talk to, since last Sunday."

He found it impossible to say anything intelligible. She threw off her coat, and went on, with a wistful gravity that became her even more than smiles:

"Mr. Mifflin has told me some more about what you did last week—I mean, how you took a room across the street and spied upon that hateful man and saw through the whole thing when we were too blind to know what was going on. And I want to apologize for the silly things I said that Sunday morning. Will you forgive me?"

Aubrey had never felt his self-salesmanship ability at such a low ebb. To his unspeakable horror, he felt his eyes betray him. They grew moist.

"Please don't talk like that," he said. "I had no right to do what I did, anyway. And I was wrong in what I said about Mr. Mifflin. I don't wonder you were angry."

"Now surely you're not going to deprive me of the pleasure of thanking you," she said. "You know as well as I do that you saved my life—all our lives, that night. I guess you'd have saved poor Bock's, too, if you could." Her eyes filled with tears.

"If anybody deserves credit, it's you," he said. "Why, if it hadn't been for you they'd have been away with that suitcase and probably Metzger would have got his bomb on board the ship and blown up the President——"

"I'm not arguing with you," she said. "I'm just thanking you."

It was a happy little party that sat down in Roger's dining room that evening. Helen had prepared Eggs Samuel Butler in Aubrey's honour, and Mr. Chapman had brought two bottles of champagne to pledge the future success of the bookshop. Aubrey was called upon to announce the result of his conferences with the secret service men who had been looking up Weintraub's record.

"It all seems so simple now," he said, "that I wonder we didn't see through it at once. You see, we all made the mistake of assuming that German plotting would stop automatically when the armistice was signed. It seems that this man Weintraub was one of the most dangerous spies Germany had in this country. Thirty or forty fires and explosions on our ships at sea are said to have been due to his work. As he had lived here so long and taken out citizen's papers, no one suspected him. But after his death, his wife, whom he had treated very brutally, gave way and told a great deal about his activities. According to her, as soon as it was announced that the President would go to the Peace Conference, Weintraub made up his mind to get a bomb into the President's cabin on board the George Washington. Mrs. Weintraub tried to dissuade him from it, as she was in secret opposed to these murderous plots of his, but he threatened to kill her if she thwarted him. She lived in terror of her life. I can believe it, for I remember her face when her husband looked at her.

"Of course to make the bomb was simple enough for Weintraub. He had an infernally complete laboratory in the cellar of his house, where he had made hundreds. The problem was, how to make a bomb that would not look suspicious, and how to get it into the President's private cabin. He hit on the idea of binding it into the cover of a book. How he came to choose that particular volume, I don't know."

"I think probably I gave him the idea quite innocently," said Roger. "He used to come in here a good deal and one day he asked me whether Mr. Wilson was a great reader. I said that I believed he was, and then mentioned the Cromwell, which I had heard was one of Wilson's favourite books. Weintraub was much interested and said he must read the book some day. I remember now that he stood in that alcove for some time, looking over it."

"Well," said Aubrey, "it must have seemed to him that luck was playing into his hands. This man Metzger, who had been an assistant chef at the Octagon for years, was slated to go on board the George Washington with the party of cooks from that hotel who were to prepare the President's meals. Weintraub was informed of all this from someone higher up in the German spy organization. Metzger, who was known as Messier at the hotel, was a very clever chef, and had fake passports as a Swiss citizen. He was another tool of the organization. By the original scheme there would have been no direct communication between Weintraub and Metzger, but the go-between was spotted by the Department of Justice on another count, and is now behind bars at Atlanta.

"It seems that Weintraub had conceived the idea that the least suspicious way of passing his messages to Metzger would be to slip them into a copy of some book—a book little likely to be purchased—in a second-hand bookshop. Metzger had been informed what the book was, but—perhaps owing to the unexpected removal of the go-between—did not know in which shop he was to find it. That explains why so many booksellers had inquiries from him recently for a copy of the Cromwell volume.

"Weintraub, of course, was not at all anxious to have any direct dealings with Metzger, as the druggist had a high regard for his own skin. When the chef was finally informed where the bookshop was in which he was to see the book, he hurried over here. Weintraub had picked out this shop not only because it was as unlikely as any place on earth to be suspected as a channel of spy codes, but also because he had your confidence and could drop in frequently without arousing surprise. The first time Metzger came here happened to be the night I dined with you, as you remember."

Roger nodded. "He asked for the book, and to my surprise, it wasn't there."

"No: for the excellent reason that Weintraub had taken it some days before, to measure it so he could build his infernal machine to fit, and also to have it rebound. He needed the original binding as a case for his bomb. The following night, as you told me, it came back. He brought it himself, having provided himself with a key to your front door."

"It was gone again on Thursday night, when the Corn Cob Club met here," said Mr. Chapman.

"Yes, that time Metzger had taken it," said Aubrey. "He misunderstood his instructions, and thought he was to steal the book. You see, owing to the absence of their third man, they were working at cross purposes. Metzger, I think, was only intended to get his information out of the book, and leave it where it was. At any rate, he was puzzled, and inserted that ad in the Times the next morning—that LOST ad, you remember. By that, I imagine, he intended to convey the idea that he had located the bookshop, but didn't know what to do next. And the date he mentioned in the ad, midnight on Tuesday, December third, was to inform Weintraub (of whose identity he was still ignorant) when Metzger was to go on board the ship. Weintraub had been instructed by their spy organization to watch the LOST and FOUND ads."

"Think of it!" cried Titania.

"Well," continued Aubrey, "all this may not be 100 per cent. accurate, but after putting things together this is how it dopes out. Weintraub, who was as canny as they make them, saw he'd have to get into direct touch with Metzger. He sent him word, on the Friday, to come over to see him and bring the book. Metzger, meanwhile, had had a bad fright when I spoke to him in the hotel elevator. He returned the book to the shop that night, as Mrs. Mifflin remembers. Then, when I stopped in at the drug store on my way home, he must have been with Weintraub. I found the Cromwell cover in the drug-store bookcase—why Weintraub was careless enough to leave it there I can't guess—and they spotted me right away as having some kind of hunch. So they followed me over the Bridge and tried to get rid of me. It was because I got that cover on Friday night that Weintraub broke into the shop again early Sunday morning. He had to have the cover of the book to bind his bomb in."

Aubrey was agreeably conscious of the close attention of his audience. He caught Titania's gaze, and flushed a little.

"That's pretty nearly all there is to it," he said. "I knew that if those guys were so keen to put me out of the way there must be something rather rotten on foot. I came over to Brooklyn the next afternoon, Saturday, and took a room across the street."

"And we went to the movies," chirped Titania.

"The rest of it I think you all know—except Metzger's visit to my lodgings that night." He described the incident. "You see they were trailing me pretty close. If I hadn't happened to notice the cigar at my window I guess he'd have had me on toast. Of course you know how wrongly I doped it out. I thought Mr. Mifflin was running with them, and I owe him my apology for that. He's laid me out once on that score, over in Philadelphia."

Humourously, Aubrey narrated how he had sleuthed the bookseller to Ludlow Street, and had been worsted in battle.

"I think they counted on disposing of me sooner or later," said Aubrey. "They framed up that telephone call to get Mr. Mifflin out of town. The point in having Metzger come to the bookshop to get the suitcase was to clear Weintraub's skirts if possible. Apparently it was just a bag of old books. The bombed book, I guess, was perfectly harmless until any one tried to open it."

"You both got back just in the nick of time," said Titania admiringly. "You see I was all alone most of the afternoon. Weintraub left the suitcase about two o'clock. Metzger came for it about six. I refused to let him have it. He was very persistent, and I had to threaten to set Bock at him. It was all I could do to hold the dear old dog in, he was so keen to go for Metzger. The chef went away, and I suppose he went up to see Weintraub about it. I hid the suitcase in my room. Mr. Mifflin had forbidden me to touch it, but I thought that the safest thing to do. Then Mrs. Mifflin came in. We let Bock into the yard for a run, and were getting supper. I heard the bell ring, and went into the shop. There were the two Germans, pulling down the shades. I asked what they meant by it, and they grabbed me and told me to shut up. Then Metzger pointed a pistol at me while the other one tied up Mrs. Mifflin."

"The damned scoundrels!" cried Aubrey. "They got what was coming to them."

"Well, my friends," said Mr. Chapman, "Let's thank heaven that it ended no worse. Mr. Gilbert, I haven't told you yet how I feel about the whole affair. That'll come later. I'd like to propose the health of Mr. Aubrey Gilbert, who is certainly the hero of this film!"

They drank the toast with cheers, and Aubrey blushed becomingly.

"Oh, I forgot something!" cried Titania. "When I went shopping this afternoon I stopped in at Brentano's, and was lucky enough to find just what I wanted. It's for Mr. Gilbert, as a souvenir of the Haunted Bookshop."

She ran to the sideboard and brought back a parcel.

Aubrey opened it with delighted agitation. It was a copy of Carlyle's Cromwell. He tried to stammer his thanks, but what he saw—or thought he saw—in Titania's sparkling face—unmanned him.

"The same edition!" said Roger. "Now let's see what those mystic page numbers are! Gilbert, have you got your memorandum?"

Aubrey took out his notebook. "Here we are," he said. "This is what Weintraub wrote in the back of the cover."

153 (3) 1, 2.

Roger glanced at the notation.

"That ought to be easy," he said. "You see in this edition three volumes are bound in one. Let's look at page 153 in the third volume, the first and second lines."

Aubrey turned to the place. He read, and smiled.

"Right you are," he said.

"Read it!" they all cried.

"To seduce the Protector's guard, to blow up the Protector in his bedroom, and do other little fiddling things."

"I shouldn't wonder if that's where he got his idea," said Roger. "What have I been saying right along—that books aren't merely dead things!"

"Good gracious," said Titania. "You told me that books are explosives. You were right, weren't you! But it's lucky Mr. Gilbert didn't hear you say it or he'd certainly have suspected you!"

"The joke is on me," said Roger.

"Well, I'VE got a toast to propose," said Titania. "Here's to the memory of Bock, the dearest, bravest dog I ever met!"

They drank it with due gravity.

"Well, good people," said Mr. Chapman, "there's nothing we can do for Bock now. But we can do something for the rest of us. I've been talking with Titania, Mr. Mifflin. I'm bound to say that after this disaster my first thought was to get her out of the book business as fast as I could. I thought it was a little too exciting for her. You know I sent her over here to have a quiet time and calm down a bit. But she wouldn't hear of leaving. And if I'm going to have a family interest in the book business I want to do something to justify it. I know your idea about travelling book-wagons, and taking literature into the countryside. Now if you and Mrs. Mifflin can find the proper people to run them, I'll finance a fleet of ten of those Parnassuses you're always talking about, and have them built in time to go on the road next spring. How about it?"

Roger and Helen looked at each other, and at Mr. Chapman. In a flash Roger saw one of his dearest dreams coming true. Titania, to whom this was a surprise, leaped from her chair and ran to kiss her father, crying, "Oh, Daddy, you ARE a darling!"

Roger rose solemnly and gave Mr. Chapman his hand.

"My dear sir," he said, "Miss Titania has found the right word. You are an honour to human nature, sir, and I hope you'll never live to regret it. This is the happiest moment of my life."

"Then that's settled," said Mr. Chapman. "We'll go over the details later. Now there's another thing on my mind. Perhaps I shouldn't bring up business matters here, but this is a kind of family party—Mr. Gilbert, it's my duty to inform you that I intend to take my advertising out of the hands of the Grey-Matter Agency." Aubrey's heart sank. He had feared a catastrophe of this kind from the first. Naturally a hard-headed business man would not care to entrust such vast interests to a firm whose young men went careering about like secret service agents, hunting for spies, eavesdropping in alleys, and accusing people of pro-germanism. Business, Aubrey said to himself, is built upon Confidence, and what confidence could Mr. Chapman have in such vagabond and romantic doings? Still, he felt that he had done nothing to be ashamed of.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said. "We have tried to give you service. I assure you that I've spent by far the larger part of my time at the office in working up plans for your campaigns."

He could not bear to look at Titania, ashamed that she should be the witness of his humiliation.

"That's exactly it," said Mr. Chapman. "I don't want just the larger part of your time. I want all of it. I want you to accept the position of assistant advertising manager of the Daintybits Corporation."

They all cheered, and for the third time that evening Aubrey felt more overwhelmed than any good advertising man is accustomed to feel. He tried to express his delight, and then added:

"I think it's my turn to propose a toast. I give you the health of Mr. and Mrs. Mifflin, and their Haunted Bookshop, the place where I first—I first——"

His courage failed him, and he concluded, "First learned the meaning of literature."

"Suppose we adjourn to the den," said Helen. "We have so many delightful things to talk over, and I know Roger wants to tell you all about the improvements he is planning for the shop."

Aubrey lingered to be the last, and it is to be conjectured that Titania did not drop her handkerchief merely by accident. The others had already crossed the hall into the sitting room.

Their eyes met, and Aubrey could feel himself drowned in her steady, honest gaze. He was tortured by the bliss of being so near her, and alone. The rest of the world seemed to shred away and leave them standing in that little island of light where the tablecloth gleamed under the lamp.

In his hand he clutched the precious book. Out of all the thousand things he thought, there was only one he dared to say.

"Will you write my name in it?"

"I'd love to," she said, a little shakily, for she, too, was strangely alarmed at certain throbbings.

He gave her his pen, and she sat down at the table. She wrote quickly

For Aubrey Gilbert
From Titania Chapman
With much gr

She paused.

"Oh," she said quickly. "Do I have to finish it now?"

She looked up at him, with the lamplight shining on her vivid face. Aubrey felt oddly stupefied, and was thinking only of the little golden sparkle of her eyelashes. This time her eyes were the first to turn away.

"You see," she said with a funny little quaver, "I might want to change the wording." And she ran from the room.

As she entered the den, her father was speaking. "You know," he said, "I'm rather glad she wants to stay in the book business." Roger looked up at her.

"Well," he said, "I believe it agrees with her! You know, the beauty of living in a place like this is that you get so absorbed in the books you don't have any temptation to worry about anything else. The people in books become more real to you than any one in actual life."

Titania, sitting on the arm of Mrs. Mifflin's chair, took Helen's hand, unobserved by the others. They smiled at each other slyly.