Читать книгу Innocence - Dean Koontz, Dean Koontz - Страница 20

AS I WENT WHERE GWYNETH LED ME BY FLASHLIGHT, along the hallways of the less public areas of the library, I said, “Where are you from? I mean, before the city.”

“I was born here.”

She named a year and a day in early October, and I halted in surprise. “You’re eighteen.”

“As I told you before.”

“Yes, but you look so much younger that I just didn’t think …”

She cupped one hand over the lens of the flashlight, letting just enough shine between her fingers to hold back the dark while ensuring that she could face me without a risk of revelation. “You just didn’t think … what?”

“I’m twenty-six, you’re eighteen—and we’ve both been in the city eighteen years.”

“What’s so remarkable about that?”

I said, “The day you were born—it’s the day I came here as a stowaway on an eighteen-wheeler, in the first hour of that morning.”

“You say that as if it must be more than a coincidence.”

“I think it must be,” I confirmed.

“What is it, then?”

“I don’t know. It’s something, though.”

“Don’t tell me it’s kismet. There’s not going to be anything like that between us.”

“Kismet doesn’t imply romance,” I said a bit defensively.

“Just don’t infer it.”

“I’ve no illusions about romance. Beauty and the Beast is a nice fairy tale, but fairy tales are for books.”

“You’re no beast, and I’m no beauty.”

“As for me,” I said, “my own mother seemed to feel that beast was an inadequate word for me. As for you … eye of the beholder.”

After a thoughtful silence, she said, “If a man is a beast, he’s a beast in his heart, and that’s not the kind of heart that beats in you.”

Her words touched me and left me speechless.

“Come on, Addison Goodheart. We’ve got some snooping to do.”

J. Ryan Telford, curator of the great library’s rare-book and art collections, had his name on a wall plaque beside his office door.

By the narrow beam of Gwyneth’s flashlight, we passed through the reception lounge where Telford’s secretary had a desk. The inner office, with a full bath adjoining for the curator’s private use, was immense and elegantly furnished in Art Deco antiques. The girl proved to be knowledgeable about the furnishings and showed me the Makassar-ebony desk by Pierre-Paul Montagnac, the Brazilian-rosewood sideboard with Portoro-marble top by Maurice Rinck, the fine sofa and matching armchairs of ebonized lemon wood by Patout and Pacon, the lamps by Tiffany and Galle, the ivory and cold-patinated bronze sculptures by Chiparus, who was arguably the greatest sculptor of the period, and throughout the tour, she scrupulously kept the light away from me, so that even the back glow did not reveal the slightest hint of my face.

And in respect of Gwyneth, I endeavored to maintain just enough distance between us to be sure that I did not accidentally touch or bump against her.

Until she told me, I had not realized that the art museum across the broad avenue from the library was a subsidiary of it, constructed decades later. Both institutions were among the most richly endowed of their kind in the country.

She said, “Their vast and priceless collections are both in the care of J. Ryan Telford, thief that he is.”

“You said rapist.”

“Would-be child rapist and successful thief,” she said. “I was thirteen when he first cornered me.”

I didn’t want to dwell on what he had almost done to her, and so I said, “Who does he steal from?”

“The library and the museum, I imagine.”

“You imagine.”

“Their collections are broad and deep. He might muddy the records of what’s in storage, collude with the auditor, sell off a very valuable piece now and then through an unscrupulous dealer.”

“‘Imagine’ … ‘might.’ You don’t seem like a girl who would want to bear false witness.”

She sat in the chair at the Makassar-ebony desk, swiveled 180 degrees to the computer that stood on a separate table, and said, “I know he’s a thief. He stole from my father. Given his position here, he couldn’t resist the temptation.”

“What did he steal from your father?”

“Millions,” she said, as she switched on the computer, and the word echoed off the Deco surfaces as had no other word before it.