“Then I saw him here a moment ago. When is he likely to return?”
“That no one can tell. Perhaps to-morrow, perhaps never. He has not been here before in three months. Did you wish to speak with him?”
Lucile shivered. “Well, perhaps not,” she half whispered.
“Huh!” grunted the proprietor suddenly, “what’s this? Must be the book he brought. He’s forgotten it. Now he is sure to be back.”
Lucile was rather of the opinion that he would not soon return. She believed that there had been some trickery about the affair of these valuable books which were being sold to the cheapest book dealer in the city for a very small part of their value. “Perhaps they were stolen,” she told herself. At once the strangeness of the situation came to her; here she was with a book in her possession which had been but recently stolen from Frank Morrow’s book shop by a girl and now circumstances seemed to indicate that this very book had been stolen by some person who had sold it to this bookmonger, who had passed it on to the doctor who had sold it to Dan Whitner, who had sold it to Roderick Vining, who had sold it to Frank Morrow.
“Sounds like the house that Jack built,” she whispered to herself. “But then I suppose some valuable books have been stolen many times. Frank Morrow said one of his had been stolen twice within a week by totally different persons.”
Turning to the shopkeeper, she asked if she might see the book that had been left behind.
As she turned back the cover a low exclamation escaped her lips. In the corner of that cover was the same secret mark as had been in all the mystery books, the gargoyle and the letter L.
Hiding her surprise as best she could, she handed the book to the man with the remark:
“Of course you cannot sell the book, since it is not your own?”