He whistled softly to himself, “You western girls will be the death of us.”
“When there’s some place that needs to be gone to we go to it,” she smiled half defiantly. “There’s nothing so terrible about that, is there?”
“No, I suppose not,” he admitted. “Well, you go see Dan. He’ll tell you anything he knows.” With that he turned to his work.
Lucile, however, was not ready to go. She had one more question to ask, even though it might be another faux pas.
“Would you—would you mind telling me how you knew what book I had when you did not see it?” she said.
“I did see it,” he smiled, as if amused. “I didn’t see it when you expected me to see it, that was all. I saw it long before—saw it when I was at the phone. It’s a habit we book folks have of doing one thing with our ears and another with our eyes. We have to or we’d never get through in a day if we didn’t. Your little book protruded from your pocket. I knew you were going to say something about it; perhaps offer to sell it, so I looked at it. Simple, wasn’t it? No great mystery about it. Hope your other mysteries will prove as simple. Got any friends in New York?”
“No.”
He shook his head in a puzzled manner, but allowed her to leave the room without further comment.
CHAPTER XX
“THAT WAS THE MAN”
Dan Whitner was a somewhat shabby likeness of Roderick Vining; that is, he was a gray-haired, stoop-shouldered, young-old man who knew a great deal about books. His shelves were dusty, so too was a mouse-colored jacket.