“But,” he called after her, as she left the shop, “be sure to keep your fingers tight closed around the little book.”
This, Lucile was destined to discover, was not so easily done.
CHAPTER XIX
LUCILE SOLVES NO MYSTERY
Buried deep beneath the blankets of lower 9, car 20, bound for New York, Lucile for a time that night allowed her thoughts to swing along with the roll of the Century Limited. She found herself puzzled at the unexpected turn of events. She had never visited New York and she welcomed the opportunity. There was more to be learned by such a visit, brief though it was bound to be, than in a whole month of poring over books. But why was she going? What did Frank Morrow hope to prove by any discoveries she might make regarding the former ownership of the book she carried in her pocket?
She had never doubted but that the aged Frenchman when badly in need of funds had sold the book to some American. That he should have repented of the transaction and had wished the book back in his library, seemed natural enough. Lacking funds to purchase it back, he had found another way. That the ends justified the means Lucile very much doubted, yet there was something to be said for this old man because of his extreme age. It might be that he had reached the period of his second childhood and all things appeared to belong to him.
“But here,” she told herself, rising to a sitting posture and trying to stare out into the fleeing darkness, “here we suddenly discover that the book came from New York. What is one to make of that? Very simple, in a way, I suppose. This aged Frenchman enters America by way of New York. He needs funds to pay his passage and the freight on his books to Chicago, so he sells one or two books to procure the money. Yet I doubt if that would be Frank Morrow’s solution of the problem. Surely he would not sacrifice a hundred dollars to send me to New York merely to find out who the man was to whom the old Frenchman had sold the book. He must think there is more to it than that—and perhaps there is. Ho, well,” she sighed, as she settled back on her pillow, “let that come when it comes. I am going to see New York—N-e-w Y-o-r-k—” she spelled it out; “and that is a grand and glorious privilege.”
The next moment the swing of the Century Limited as it click-clicked over the rails and the onward rush of scenery meant nothing to her. She was fast asleep.
Morning found her much refreshed. After a half hour in the washroom and another in the diner, over coffee and toast, she felt equal to the facing of any events which might chance to cross her path that day. There are days in all our lives that are but blanks. They pass and we forget them forever. There are other days that are so pressed full and running over with vivid experience that every hour, as we look back upon it, seems a “crowded hour.” Such days we never forget, and this was destined to be such a day in the life of Lucile.
Precisely at nine o’clock she was at the door of Burtnoe’s Book Store. To save time she had taken a taxi. The clerk who unfastened the door looked at her curiously. When she asked for Roderick Vining, she was directed by a nod to the back corner of the room.
She made her way into a square alcove where an electric light shining brightly from the ceiling brought out a gleam of real gold from the backs of thousands of books done in fine bindings.