“Too deep for me,” he said, referring to the book she had given him. “That may be a beginner’s treatise, but I’m in the kindergarten class in electricity. What’s a micro-volt?”
“I’ll look it up, sir,” she said.
“Never mind. I wouldn’t know, after you did. Suppose you get me a book on magpies.”
The librarian fingered her files. “Try Birds of England,” she suggested, coming from behind her desk and gliding like a pale shadow over to a book-case. “Try this. It’s complete. You’ll find magpies and starlings and piemags and any number of plates of six colors in this splendid volume.”
“The one that interested me was black as a crow,” he said, as he turned toward his alcove. “Perhaps there are white magpies as well as white crows. I never saw one, though. My bird’s a deep one.”
The little librarian stared after Drew’s vanishing form with a slight pucker between her eyes. For a man of his solid respectability, the series of actions were strange indeed. She sat down and wondered if he was a moving picture editor trying to connect black magpies and telephones.
Drew appeared in two minutes. He leaned over the desk and startled the lady with a request for anything pertaining to guns and projectiles. These she had in plenty. A great many war books had been purchased during the period which followed America’s declaration.
The detective erected a breastwork with the books she brought. He conned them with understanding until he came to ballistics and trajectory. He stopped there. He rose. His brain was crammed with fact upon fact. He had the formulæ of smokeless powder and the analysis of cupronickle bullets. He had absorbed muzzle velocity and angle of fire. He fairly bubbled over with good humor as he thrust his hands into his overcoat, caught up his hat and started out the door after glancing back and bowing to the librarian who smiled a good-by.
The street was dark save for the glow of the overhead arcs. He thrust out his arm and tested the snow fall. It was not as heavy as when he had entered the library. He went down the steps, turned toward the north and plowed along the sidewalk.
Suddenly the thought came to him to glance at his watch. He had forgotten time and place over the hours in the pursuit of knowledge which might and might not be applied to the case at hand. It was almost six o’clock.