“Certainly not.”
“The Silver-Barnard binderies are only two blocks from your station. You’ll almost pass them. They bind books by hand; fine books, you know. I have two very valuable books which must be bound in leather. I’d hate to trust them to an ordinary messenger and I can’t take them myself. Would you mind taking them along?”
“N—no,” Lucile was all but overcome by this token of his confidence in her.
“Thanks.”
He wrapped the two books carefully and handed them to her, adding, as he did so:
“Ask for Mr. Silver himself and don’t let anyone else have them. Perhaps,” he suggested as an afterthought, “you’d like to be shown through the bindery. It’s rather an interesting place.”
“Indeed I should. Anything that has to do with books interests me.”
He scribbled a note on a bit of paper.
“That’ll let you through,” he smiled, “and no thanks due. ‘One good turn,’ you know.” He bowed her out of the room.
She found Mr. Silver to be a brisk person with a polite and obliging manner. It was with a deep sense of relief that she saw the books safely in his hands. She had seen so much of vanishing books these last few days that she feared some strange magic trick might spirit them from her before they reached their destination.