"No, he's too eclectic."
"Sweetheart, sometimes you talk just like a pamphlet."
"I know. Isn't it awful? My father used to make me study the dictionary. But I practice slang whenever I remember."
They turned right through a short corridor lined with illuminated display cases and went into the music room. It was nearly closing time for this department. The bookboys were slamming volumes back into the shelves. There were half a dozen readers at the tables. One librarian minded the desk.
"Put him under your thpell," Lennox whispered.
Gabby at once walked up to the librarian and gazed candidly into his eyes. "Please.... Do you have any music about John Brown's ever-lovin' Body?"
"I beg your—" The librarian was startled, then he recovered. "I'll look, Miss. Please sign the register."
Gabby signed the desk register, then followed the librarian to the file cabinets, moving with her lazy, square-shouldered carriage. Lennox turned the pages of the desk register back to December 24th. He went through the signatures and addresses one by one. He found his own, third from the end, written in his heavy Gothic hand. There was no Knott. There was no name vaguely resembling Knott. To the best of his knowledge there was no handwriting resembling the hysterical scrawl in the letters.
He motioned to Gabby who returned to the desk.
"Nothing here," Lennox murmured. "Leave us take a powder."