“I believe,” she told herself with an excited intake of breath, “that I am coming close to the end of my search. All day I have been descending step by step; first the wonderful Burtnoe’s Book Store with all its magnificence and its genius of a bookman, then Dan Whitner and the doctor, now this place, and then perhaps, whoever the person is who sold the book to this pitiful specimen of a bookseller.”
Her heart skipped a beat as the bookman, having caught sight of her, began to amble in her direction.
She made her question short and to the point. “Where did you get this book?”
“That book?” he took it and turned it over in his hand. He scratched his head. “That, why that book must have been one I bought with a lot at an auction sale last week. Want’a buy it?”
“No. No!” exclaimed Lucile, seizing the book. “It’s not your book. It is mine but you had it once and sold it. What I wish to know is, where did you get it?”
Three customers were thumbing through the books. One seated at a table turned and looked up. His face impressed the girl at once as being particularly horrible. Dark featured, hook-nosed, with a blue birthmark covering half his chin, he inspired her with an almost uncontrollable fear.
“We—we—” she faltered “—may we not step back under the light where you can see the book better?”
The shopkeeper followed her in stolid silence.
It was necessary for her to tell him the whole story of the purchase and sale of the book before he recognized it as having once been on his shelves.
“Oh, yes,” he exclaimed at last. “Made five dollars on her. Thought I had made a mistake, but didn’t; not that time I didn’t. Where’d I get her? Let’s see?”