“Superintendent, does your censorship permit a letter to go out of the Vale once in a while?”
“Now you’re jokin’ me, sir. What is it this time?”
“No, seriously,” I showed him an envelope containing a note I had scratched off in my room. “I want to send this to Balzing to-night for my own copy of Sylvan Armitage. That’s an old book I’ve discovered in the library here.”
“Bless my soul! and you want another copy? One for each eye?”
“Quite so; for comparison.”
“Of course, Mr. Bannerlee. Carry on.”
No sooner had we joined the women in the Hall, where a fire was lighted against the chill of evening, than Lib darted toward me, took my hand, led me to a small shaky-legged walnut cabinet, one of the objects which decorate but most inadequately furnish the room. An ornamental ebony box rested on the cabinet, and lifting the box cover, Lib revealed the Book of Sylvan Armitage.
“Prepare for a great shock,” she said, slyly glancing about to ensure we were not observed. “You should have waited a minute before you skipped out of the library. Aren’t I clever? I’ll bet your copy at Balzing hasn’t one of these gadgets.”
While she spoke she had opened the cover of the quarto, a cover which looked to be unusually thick. The slim pink fingers of her left hand were prying, then disappeared beneath the edge of the book, and I saw that the apparent thickness of the cover was due to the fact that a pocket of paper had been pasted to the board with cunning, but with no special secrecy. From the receptacle she drew two folded pages, one age-stained, the other much younger, even rather new.
“See that!” she bade in a Gargantuan whisper, thrusting before my face the yellowed sheet, which was calf-skin. “Read that!”