Читать книгу Unsought Adventure - Howard Angus Kennedy - Страница 7

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The day before his store was burned, Sam Johnson was an honest man. “Samuel Johnson” was the name over the windows, and the incorruptible spirit of the great Samuel Johnson pervaded his namesake’s establishment.

The world of his acquaintance called him simply Sam, and he encouraged the familiarity: it flattered his secret belief that he was by nature friendly, a good mixer, though in fact it cost him constant effort to keep up that expansive character. Living up to his name for incorruptible honor, on the other hand, was easy. He might almost be said to revel in honesty, if revels of any sort can be imagined in his regulated life. He loved to hear men call him Honest Sam.

“I know I can trust you,” said the pale young man, taking out of a large black bag a brown paper parcel marked on one end with a red circle, and laying it on the bookseller’s desk in the private office. “Look this over, and say what’s the best you can give for it. Everyone tells me that you—” a fit of coughing seized him here—“that you can be trusted to do the right thing and not take advantage of a man’s ignorance. I know this is a valuable book,” he went, on as he untied the string,—“the best bargain father ever got, I reckon.”

“Your name is—?”

“John Galt.”

The bookseller’s eyes opened wide.

“I know what you’re thinking,” the young man said. “My father did talk of sending the gems of his collection to some public library, but luckily for me he never put it in his will. I’ve about run through everything, including myself”—with a pitiful smile he tapped his chest—“everything except a lot of shares that are too low to be worth selling. If they buck up and declare a dividend soon, I can get along, but if not I’ll have to sell the books. The doctors say I may live another six months, and I must have something to live on.”

He had folded back the covering paper, and revealed a large book in two volumes. The gorgeous inlaid binding was old, but unbroken, almost unscratched. Sam Johnson opened the book—and gasped.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked.

“I can see it’s an old Bible,” said Galt, “but it’s not in English, and that curious type is hard to read.”

“Did your father never talk about it?”

“No, I wasn’t much interested in books. It’s been lying wrapped up in that parcel on a high shelf in the library ever since I can remember. I knew it was worth a good deal, and once I asked him if he wasn’t afraid of burglars. He laughed and said ‘No,—but don’t you say anything about it, or I might be’.”

“Burglars!” the bookseller exclaimed. “If they had only known, all the bandits within a hundred miles would have swooped down on you. They’d have attacked your old house front and rear and carried off this treasure from under your very nose. It’s lucky your father knew how to keep a secret. Most collectors would have been so proud of such a possession, they’d have let the whole world know,—after they’d got it safely stowed away in a burglar-proof vault.”

“Then you think no one but Dad knew of its existence?”

“Yes,” said the bookseller, smiling, and looking the young man straight in the face. “One man has known about it all the time. That man is—myself! And if I hadn’t been an honest man—!”

“This book”—he laid his hand reverently on the title HOW THE LAST OWNER DIED

page—“is the most valuable book in the world. Even a first folio Shakespeare is nothing to it. It is absolutely unique,—it stands alone. Other books may be rare, but this outshines and dwarfs them all,—a Koh-i-noor of diamonds, a Mount Everest among ant-hills.”

The young man was pleased with the metaphors. They seemed to fore-shadow an Everest of a price. He was a little impatient, for the afternoon was getting on, but he would not break in on the poetical mood of a buyer who thought in terms of Koh-i-noors.

“I’ll tell you how I came to know about it,” Johnson went on. “The book belonged to your mother’s father. I’ve no idea how he got it. As of course you know, he was a retired professor in a little German town. At his death—. My word, yes, I hadn’t thought of that before, but your mention of burglars brings it back to me.

“He was killed defending his house from a gang—three of them. It must have been this very book they were after. He was a poor man otherwise, living on a small pension. They ransacked the place, throwing all the other books off the shelves, but evidently couldn’t find the one thing they wanted. They tied him up and started torturing him, no doubt to make him tell. Some one next door heard him groan, and called the police. The thieves were furious because he wouldn’t say where it was, and shot him.”

“Strange they never traced it to America, where such things have a habit of coming,” said young Galt.

“They were all hanged, that’s why. Probably no one else knew what they had been after. They were not professional burglars, or known to the police as criminals at all, but members of a good family,—three brothers, if I remember right. There was some mystery about the affair. Maybe they had some claim to the book, or thought they had.

“Your mother had been his only child, and his library came to your father. As soon as the books arrived, he asked me to come and make an offer for them. I was an old acquaintance of your father’s,—born on neighboring farms. We lived in northern Vermont, close to the Canada line; the Galt farm was just over the line, in the Province of Quebec. But we’d had nothing to do with each other since coming to New York, except in a business way. I started this store, and he bought a good many books from me, though he wasn’t what you’d call a great collector. He kept very much to himself, as of course you remember, and I had never been in his house before. I guess you were away at school, as I didn’t see you about.

“He had got the books all out of the cases and ranged neatly on the library floor. But it was a terrible lot of junk, from a trade point of view, and I told him so. ‘I’m afraid you’re right, Johnson!’ said he. ‘I’ve been over it carefully, piece by piece.’ He knew German well, and he was a good judge of books. ‘If I can get back the freight I’ll be satisfied,’ he said. I didn’t ask him how much freight he had paid. I really wanted to give him every cent they were worth.

“I was going over the lot a second time, when a bank messenger brought a parcel to the house.

“It was this very book,—and maybe this very parcel.

“Mr. Galt had just opened it when I came up to the library table with my figures. He shut the book quickly, but opened it again at once, saying—‘I didn’t mean to be rude, Johnson. I know you’re a man to be trusted. You can look at the thing. You’ll never have another chance, not as long as I live.’ He gave a little shiver. ‘I’m not superstitious, Johnson, but this book has just cost four lives, and God alone knows how many it may have cost in the four and a half centuries since it was printed.’

“Then he told me the story as I’ve told it to you. The THE TREASURE UNIQUE

old professor had left the parcel at his lawyer’s,—afraid to keep it in the house. The lawyer, I gathered, didn’t know exactly what was in the parcel, but he knew it was a valuable book, and when the old gentleman died leaving his books to your father, the man took the precaution of sending it out through the agency of some American bank in Berlin.

“I promised Mr. Galt I’d never say a word about it,—as I wouldn’t even now if you weren’t his son. Then we gloated over the book together. Gloated’s the only word. Do you wonder? Just look at this.”

He pointed, not to the beautiful initial letters that some unknown fifteenth century artist had illuminated at the beginning of every chapter, but to four lines of ancient handwriting on the fly-leaf. Lowering his voice, though no one but his client was within hearing, he said:

“This is not only one of the few surviving copies of the first book ever printed,—there, under your eyes, is John Gutenberg’s own written declaration that this is the very first copy completed and he therefore presents it to his partner John Faust, who supplied the inventor of printing with the money to carry out his great idea.

“Only four other copies of this marvelous work are known to exist in private hands, and two of those are promised to public institutions. That leaves only two that can ever come into the market. To say that this copy of yours beats all the rest is putting it far too mildly.

“The binding,—it’s superb. There may be others with gorgeous bindings, but probably not one so rich. From the coat of arms it must have belonged to some royal library. And you’ll notice that remarkably well-rounded back. Not many ancient books have that, even if they ever had it. Then look at the magnificent margins. Many copies have been so trimmed by the binder’s knife that parts of the colored scroll work have been cut away,—you see how the artist who put in the big initial letters by hand let his fancy carry them down the side margin and along the foot of the page. In this copy, all these are uncut and absolutely perfect.

“But its great feature, of course, is the autograph, the very handwriting of the inventor of printing. I doubt if there is another unquestionable autograph of Gutenberg in existence,—and to have it in the very first book he printed!” The bookseller threw up his hands. Words failed him.