“And our Livius is clean-shaven,” murmured Average Jones. “How long apart did they call?”
“About two weeks. The second applicant came on the day of the last snowfall. I looked that up. It was March 27.”
“Do you know, Warren,” observed Average Jones, “I sometimes think that part of your talents, at least, are wasted in a chair of Latin.”
“Certainly, there is more excitement in this hide-and-seek game, as you play it, than in the pursuits of a musty pedant,” admitted the other, crackling his large knuckles. “But when are we going to spring upon friend Livius and strip him of his fake toga?”
“That’s the easiest part of it. I’ve already caught him filling a fountain-pen as if he’d been brought up on them, and humming the spinning chorus from The Flying Dutchman; not to mention the lifting of my newspaper.”
“Nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit,” murmured Warren.
“No. As you say, no fellow can be on the job all the time. But our problem is not to catch Livius, but to find out what it is he’s been after for the last three months.”
“Three months? You’re assuming that it was he who applied for work in the library.”
“Certainly. And when he failed at that he set about a very carefully developed scheme to get at Colonel Graeme’s books anyway. By inquiries he found out the old gentleman’s fad and proceeded to get in training for it. You don’t know, perhaps, that I have a corps of assistants who clip, catalogue and file all unusual advertisements. Here is one which they turned up for me on my order to send me any queer educational advertisements: ‘Wanted—Daily lessons in Latin speech from competent Spanish scholar. Write, Box 347, Banner office.’ That is from the New York Banner of April third, shortly after the strange caller’s second abortive attempt to get into the Graeme library.”
“I suppose our Livius figured out that Colonel Graeme’s theory of accent was about what a Spaniard would have. But he couldn’t have learned all his Latin in four months.”