The Haunted Bookshop Part 27

"Here, Mr. Metzger," said Aubrey, "you put that book back on the shelf where it belongs. Don't try to get away. I've got this revolver pointed at you."

He and Roger were both startled by the chef's face. Above the unkempt beard his eyes shone with a half-crazed l.u.s.tre, and his hands shook.

"Very well," he said. "Show me where it goes."

"I'll show you," said t.i.tania.

Aubrey put out his arm in front of the girl. "Stay where you are," he said angrily.

"Down in the History alcove," said Roger. "The front alcove on the other side of the shop. We've both got you covered."

Instead of taking the volume from the suitcase, Metzger picked up the whole bag, holding it flat. He carried it to the alcove they indicated. He placed the case carefully on the floor, and picked the Cromwell volume out of it.

"Where would you want it to go?" he said in an odd voice. "This is a valuable book."

"On the fifth shelf," said Roger. "Over there----"

"For G.o.d's sake stand back," said Aubrey. "Don't go near him. There's something d.a.m.nable about this."

"You poor fools!" cried Metzger harshly. "To h.e.l.l with you and your old books." He drew his hand back as though to throw the volume at them.

There was a quick patter of feet, and Bock, growling, ran down the aisle. In the same instant, Aubrey, obeying some unexplained impulse, gave Roger a violent push back into the Fiction alcove, seized t.i.tania roughly in his arms, and ran with her toward the back of the shop.

Metzger's arm was raised, about to throw the book, when Bock darted at him and buried his teeth in the man's leg. The Cromwell fell from his hand.

There was a shattering explosion, a dull roar, and for an instant Aubrey thought the whole bookshop had turned into a vast spinning top.

The floor rocked and sagged, shelves of books were hurled in every direction. Carrying t.i.tania, he had just reached the steps leading to the domestic quarters when they were flung sideways into the corner behind Roger's desk. The air was full of flying books. A row of encyclopedias crashed down upon his shoulders, narrowly missing t.i.tania's head. The front windows were shivered into flying streamers of broken gla.s.s. The table near the door was hurled into the opposite gallery. With a splintering crash the corner of the gallery above the History alcove collapsed, and hundreds of volumes cascaded heavily on to the floor. The lights went out, and for an instant all was silence.

"Are you all right?" said Aubrey hastily. He and t.i.tania had fallen sprawling against the bookseller's desk.

"I think so," she said faintly. "Where's Mr. Mifflin?"

Aubrey put out his hand to help her, and touched something wet on the floor. "Good heavens," he thought. "She's dying!" He struggled to his feet in the darkness. "Hullo, Mr. Mifflin," he called, "where are you?"

There was no answer.

A beam of light gushed out from the pa.s.sageway behind the shop, and picking his way over fallen litter he found Mrs. Mifflin standing dazed by the dining-room door. In the back of the house the lights were still burning.

"For heaven's sake, have you a candle?" he said.

"Where's Roger?" she cried piteously, and stumbled into the kitchen.

With a candle Aubrey found t.i.tania sitting on the floor, very faint, but unhurt. What he had thought was blood proved to be a pool of ink from a quart bottle that had stood over Roger's desk. He picked her up like a child and carried her into the kitchen. "Stay here and don't stir," he said.

By this time a crowd was already gathering on the pavement. Someone came in with a lantern. Three policemen appeared at the door.

"For G.o.d's sake," cried Aubrey, "get a light in here so we can see what's happened. Mifflin's buried in this mess somewhere. Someone ring for an ambulance."

The whole front of the Haunted Bookshop was a wreck. In the pale glimmer of the lantern it was a disastrous sight. Helen groped her way down the shattered aisle.

"Where was he?" she cried wildly.

"Thanks to that set of Trollope," said a voice in the remains of the Fiction alcove, "I think I'm all right. Books make good shock-absorbers. Is any one hurt?"

It was Roger, half stunned, but undamaged. He crawled out from under a case of shelves that had crumpled down upon him.

"Bring that lantern over here," said Aubrey, pointing to a dark heap lying on the floor under the broken fragments of Roger's bulletin board.

It was the chef. He was dead. And clinging to his leg was all that was left of Bock.

Chapter XV

Mr. Chapman Waves His Wand

Gissing Street will not soon forget the explosion at the Haunted Bookshop. When it was learned that the cellar of Weintraub's pharmacy contained just the information for which the Department of Justice had been looking for four years, and that the inoffensive German-American druggist had been the artisan of hundreds of incendiary bombs that had been placed on American and Allied shipping and in ammunition plants--and that this same Weintraub had committed suicide when arrested on Bromfield Street in Boston the next day--Gissing Street hummed with excitement. The Milwaukee Lunch did a roaring business among the sensation seekers who came to view the ruins of the bookshop.

When it became known that fragments of a cabin plan of the George Washington had been found in Metzger's pocket, and the confession of an accomplice on the kitchen staff of the Octagon Hotel showed that the bomb, disguised as a copy of one of Woodrow Wilson's favourite books, was to have been placed in the Presidential suite of the steamship, indignation knew no bounds. Mrs. J. F. Smith left Mrs. Schiller's lodgings, declaring that she would stay no longer in a pro-German colony; and Aubrey was able at last to get a much-needed bath.

For the next three days he was too busy with agents of the Department of Justice to be able to carry on an investigation of his own that greatly occupied his mind. But late on Friday afternoon he called at the bookshop to talk things over.

The debris had all been neatly cleared away, and the shattered front of the building boarded up. Inside, Aubrey found Roger seated on the floor, looking over piles of volumes that were heaped pell-mell around him. Through Mr. Chapman's influence with a well-known firm of builders, the bookseller had been able to get men to work at once in making repairs, but even so it would be at least ten days, he said, before he could reopen for business. "I hate to lose the value of all this advertising," he lamented. "It isn't often that a second-hand bookstore gets onto the front pages of the newspapers."

"I thought you didn't believe in advertising," said Aubrey.

"The kind of advertising I believe in," said Roger, "is the kind that doesn't cost you anything."

Aubrey smiled as he looked round at the dismantled shop. "It seems to me that this'll cost you a tidy bit when the bill comes in."

"My dear fellow," said Roger, "This is just what I needed. I was getting into a rut. The explosion has blown out a whole lot of books I had forgotten about and didn't even know I had. Look, here's an old copy of How to Be Happy Though Married, which I see the publisher lists as 'Fiction.' Here's Urn Burial, and The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, and Mistletoe's Book of Deplorable Facts. I'm going to have a thorough house-cleaning. I'm thinking seriously of putting in a vacuum cleaner and a cash register. t.i.tania was quite right, the place was too dirty. That girl has given me a lot of ideas."

Aubrey wanted to ask where she was, but didn't like to say so point-blank.

"There's no question about it," said Roger, "an explosion now and then does one good. Since the reporters got here and dragged the whole yarn out of us, I've had half a dozen offers from publishers for my book, a lyceum bureau wants me to lecture on Bookselling as a Form of Public Service, I've had five hundred letters from people asking when the shop will reopen for business, and the American Booksellers' a.s.sociation has invited me to give an address at its convention next spring. It's the first recognition I've ever had. If it weren't for poor dear old Bock---- Come, we've buried him in the back yard. I want to show you his grave."

Over a pathetically small mound near the fence a bunch of big yellow chrysanthemums were standing in a vase.

"t.i.tania put those there," said Roger. "She says she's going to plant a dogwood tree there in the spring. We intend to put up a little stone for him, and I'm trying to think of an inscription, I thought of De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum, but that's a bit too flippant."

The living quarters of the house had not been damaged by the explosion, and Roger took Aubrey back to the den. "You've come just at the right time," he said. "Mr. Chapman's coming to dinner this evening, and we'll all have a good talk. There's a lot about this business I don't understand yet."

Aubrey was still keeping his eye open for a sign of t.i.tania's presence, and Roger noticed his wandering gaze.

"This is Miss Chapman's afternoon off," he said. "She got her first salary to-day, and was so much exhilarated that she went to New York to blow it in. She's out with her father. Excuse me, please, I'm going to help Helen get dinner ready."

Aubrey sat down by the fire, and lit his pipe. The burden of his meditation was that it was just a week since he had first met t.i.tania, and in all that week there had been no waking moment when he had not thought of her. He was wondering how long it might take for a girl to fall in love? A man--he knew now--could fall in love in five minutes, but how did it work with girls? He was also thinking what unique Daintybits advertising copy he could build (like all ad men he always spoke of building an ad, never of writing one) out of this affair if he could only use the inside stuff.