CHRISTOPHER MORLEY.
Philadelphia,
April 28, 1919

CONTENTS

Chapter
I [The Haunted Bookshop]
II [The Corn Cob Club[1]
III [Titania Arrives]
IV [The Disappearing Volume]
V [Aubrey Walks Part Way Home—and Rides The Rest of the Way]
VI [Titania Learns the Business]
VII [Aubrey Takes Lodgings]
VIII [Aubrey Goes to the Movies, and Wishes he Knew More German]
IX [Again the Narrative is Retarded]
X [Roger Raids the Ice-Box]
XI [Titania Tries Reading in Bed]
XII [Aubrey Determines to give Service that's Different]
XIII [The Battle of Ludlow Street]
XIV [The "Cromwell" Makes its Last Appearance]
XV [Mr. Chapman Waves His Wand]

The Haunted Bookshop

Chapter I

The Haunted Bookshop

If you are ever in Brooklyn, that borough of superb sunsets and magnificent vistas of husband-propelled baby-carriages, it is to be hoped you may chance upon a quiet by-street where there is a very remarkable bookshop.

This bookshop, which does business under the unusual name "Parnassus at Home," is housed in one of the comfortable old brown-stone dwellings which have been the joy of several generations of plumbers and cockroaches. The owner of the business has been at pains to remodel the house to make it a more suitable shrine for his trade, which deals entirely in second-hand volumes. There is no second-hand bookshop in the world more worthy of respect.

It was about six o'clock of a cold November evening, with gusts of rain splattering upon the pavement, when a young man proceeded uncertainly along Gissing Street, stopping now and then to look at shop windows as though doubtful of his way. At the warm and shining face of a French rotisserie he halted to compare the number enamelled on the transom with a memorandum in his hand. Then he pushed on for a few minutes, at last reaching the address he sought. Over the entrance his eye was caught by the sign: