It took them the better part of two hours, during which Crowe Macgowan fell asleep in the leather chair.
When at last Keats stopped, Ellery said: “Hold it,” and he began to to thumb back along the pages of the catalogue.
“Well?” said Keats.
“You failed to read just one title.” Ellery set the catalogue down and picked up the charred corpse of the book. “This used to be an octavo volume bound in laminated oak, with handblocked silk endpapers, of The Birds, by Aristophanes.”
“The what, by whom?”
“The Birds. A play by Aristophanes, the great satirical dramatist of the fifth century before Christ.”
“I don’t see the joke.”
Ellery was silent.
“You mean to tell me,” demanded the detective, “that the burning of this book by a playwright dead a couple of dozen centuries is another of these warnings?”
“It must be.”