Читать книгу Unsought Adventure - Howard Angus Kennedy - Страница 8

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The young man had caught his enthusiasm. “That is good news for a sick man,” he said. Then, after another fit of coughing, he came to the point. “What do you think it is worth?”

Sam Johnson was in a quandary. If it had only been a first folio Shakespeare—! But this treasure was priceless.

“It would run to five figures certainly, probably six.”

“Well, think it over,” the young man said. “You sleep on it, and I’ll do the same. I’ll come in again to-morrow morning, and we can talk over it.” He wrapped the book up as he spoke, put it back in his bag, and rose to go. Then he hesitated.

“But I don’t see the sense of taking it away again, now it’s here. Even if you can’t buy it, I’ll leave it in your hands to find a purchaser. Between ourselves, Mr. Johnson, I’ve simply got to sell. I shouldn’t be as frank as that with any other dealer, but with you—well, I know you’ll do the square thing. And the fact of the matter is, I want a little advance, $500 or so,—with security like that, eh?”

Sam jumped at the idea. To let that book go out of the store was not to be thought of. It might never come back. As young Galt was so hard up, he would certainly try elsewhere, and there were a dozen booksellers in town who would give their eyes for such a chance.

Honest as he was, he must not seem too eager. “It’s not a thing I would do under any ordinary circumstances,” he said with a benevolent air, “but for you, and as you’re your father’s son,—I never saw a stronger family resemblance,—I’ll do it. The bank’s just closed, but I’ll ’phone the manager, and I daresay he’ll oblige me.”

He took down the receiver. Yes, to be sure, he had only to send a messenger. The messenger was sent.

“Of course,” the bookseller observed as they waited, “it’s understood that you leave the book at owner’s risk.”

“Of course,” the young man agreed. He sat down, and took the parcel out of the bag. “Shall we seal it up?” he suggested, with some diffidence. “In case anyone happened to open it by mistake?”

“No chance of that,” Sam Johnson smiled. “But we’ll seal it up by all means, and be sure you examine the seals carefully when you come back!” He found a stick of sealing wax in a drawer, and struck match after match while John Galt pressed his signet ring on two or three molten masses.

“That’s the Galt crest,” the young man said,—“I’m sure you must have seen it before.” To be sure he had, said Sam.

“Now I must be getting along,” said the young man, picking up his bag. Sam walked with him to the door, carrying the precious parcel. “I shouldn’t have come out, a day like this, but I guess it won’t hurt me. In fact I feel better,—influence of mind on matter, eh? It’s really been a great relief, to know the book’s as valuable as all that. And as for its bad luck, you don’t believe in that sort of thing, now, do you?” But, from his tone, he evidently half-believed in it himself.

“To be sure I don’t,” was Sam’s robust reply, though not uttered in a tone of robust assurance. “If we were back in old Europe, now,—there seem to have been more conjurers than common people over there, and a fairy town under every hill. But then,” he laughed, “you know witches and warlocks couldn’t cross a running stream,—you remember how Tam O’Shanter got away from them—and I guess they wouldn’t try flying over the Atlantic on their broomsticks! I guess the good old book must have A MEMORY OF MEPHIS-TOPHELES

easily shaken them off at Hamburg all right. If it went back there now,—but there’s little chance of that,—we couldn’t answer for the consequences, eh, Mr. Galt?” He laughed again as he spoke, but the idea seemed rather to startle than amuse the young man. “Goodbye,” he said, and hurried out into the rain.

“Goodbye,” said Johnson. He stood a while, his eyes on the rain but his mind wrapped up in the parcel under his arm. A tall, dark, thin and anxious man in a trance. Then recollecting himself, he walked slowly back through the store, but stopped at an encyclopaedia and pulled the “F” volume off the shelf. He thought he knew all there was to be known about Gutenberg; but that partner of his, that man Faust? He sold himself to the Devil, didn’t he? And after spending the price, a high old time for twenty years, he went up in flames, up or down, with his conjuring books and all. If he had the Bible among them, of course it wouldn’t burn. Maybe the Devil had a particular spite against it on that account. Maybe then—Sam Johnson smiled at the old legend, but he was rather glad to read that Mephistopheles’ friend was not the same Faust as Gutenberg’s partner. It was a pity Gutenberg had quarreled with his partner, all the same.

The honest bookseller, who had no partner, sat down to work at his desk alone till closing time, the parcel in full view before him. He would not let anyone else see him put it away for the night. He was correcting the proofs of a new catalogue. It was full of rarities, many of them already in his safe down below, but he seemed to have lost all interest in those. They were mere dust and ashes compared to this incomparable gem. The world’s desire, if the world only knew what lay hidden in that brown paper. The treasure of treasures. After what unimagined adventures in the ancient world, through what blessed chance had it taken refuge in that New World store? And his own store, of all the hundreds it might have sought, if the Devil had had his way!

The crowd hurrying past that window,—if they only knew! Under that bobbing umbrella, now, or in that glistening car,—a famous book collector like as not,—old Matthew Budge had his den but three doors up the street. The old book-miser would be sorely tempted to kill and steal, if he happened on Sam in a lonely office with that thing on his desk.

A car flew by with a vicious howl,—just such a howl as Satan would vomit, hunting such a prey.

Closing time. The last clerk had gone. Sam walked after him and made sure the door was locked. Halfway back to his desk he turned round,—the door could not be opened from outside, but some curious eye might be looking in, and every eye was that of a potential thief.

Now he stood by his desk, and touched the book with reverent hand. Not because it was a Bible, for all his inherited awe of the Scriptures. The hallowed Latin of that ancient book enshrined the inspiration of the civilized world,—the meaning of it mattered not one straw, at such a moment. Had this been a work of ribald blasphemy, and still the unique first copy of the earliest printed book, he would have worshipped it as heartily.

If the parcel had not been sealed—! Never mind, with vivid imagination he saw through the dowdy covering a glory of picturesque black-letter type, of florid illumination, an autograph destined to thrill the sensation-loving world. To-morrow he would examine these things with microscopic enthusiasm. But these after all were details. It was the marvellous Whole they made up, that filled and satisfied the man. He scarcely saw the trees for the wood. Even the profit could not enter his mind, at that ecstatic moment.

How long the moment was, he only realized when a NO ROOM IN THE SAFE

clock struck. That brought him down to earth. There was a wife awaiting him. She would not make annoyed and annoying remarks about time, in connection with dinner. She was not that sort. An admirable wife, and dearer to him than his books.... No, he made no exceptions,—this book was not his, anyway, and he did not consciously wish that it was.

With the gentle hand of a nurse to a new-born prince, he carried the parcel down to the basement and opened the safe. It was chock full of treasures, many of them left by clients for sale on commission. He would not disturb them if it could be helped. Besides, it would take so long to pick and choose. The wings of flying time beat loud about his ears, and dulled the uneasy voice that whispered “Risk!”

Ah! There, on top of the safe, was a tin box. It was full of books crowded out of the safe, but they were all his own. He took them out to make room for the parcel, locked the box and put it back on the safe.

With a light heart and absent mind Sam stepped up the stair, wriggled into his coat, and picked up a cigar, though instinctively he avoided striking a match till he reached the door. Pausing there for a final glance around, he was horrified by a mouse audaciously trotting across the floor.

Atrocity! A mouse in a book store! Worse than a bull in a china shop. Where was the good-for-nothing cat? Next morning Sam would have the store bristling with mouse-traps. A fort surrounded with barbed wire entanglement would be nothing to it. Thank heaven, a mouse could hardly gnaw its way into a tin box and have any teeth left for the contents. What a millionaire’s meal the beast would make, off a ripe old Gutenberg!