The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley (top non fiction books of all time txt) 📖

week-end in Brooklyn would give him an opportunity to jot down some tentative ideas for Daintybits advertising copy which he planned to submit to his chief on Monday. But now that he was here he felt the impossibility of attacking any such humdrum task. How could he sit down in cold blood to devise any “attention-compelling” layouts for Daintybits Tapioca and Chapman’s Cherished Saratoga Chips, when the daintiest bit of all was only a few yards away? For the first time was made plain to him the amazing power of young women to interfere with the legitimate commerce of the world. He did get so far as to take out his pad of writing paper and jot down

 

CHAPMAN’S CHERISHED CHIPS

 

These delicate wafers, crisped by a secret process, cherish in their unique tang and flavour all the life-giving nutriment that has made the potato the King of Vegetables–-

 

But the face of Miss Titania kept coming between his hand and brain. Of what avail to flood the world with Chapman Chips if the girl herself should come to any harm? “Was this the face that launched a thousand chips?” he murmured, and for an instant wished he had brought The Oxford Book of English Verse instead of O. Henry.

A tap sounded at his door, and Mrs. Schiller appeared. “Telephone for you, Mr. Gilbert,” she said.

“For ME?” said Aubrey in amazement. How could it be for him, he thought, for no one knew he was there.

“The party on the wire asked to speak to the gentleman who arrived about half an hour ago, and I guess you must be the one he means.”

“Did he say who he is?” asked Aubrey.

“No, sir.”

For a moment Aubrey thought of refusing to answer the call. Then it occurred to him that this would arouse Mrs. Schiller’s suspicions. He ran down to the telephone, which stood under the stairs in the front hall.

“Hello,” he said.

“Is this the new guest?” said a voice—a deep, gargling kind of voice.

“Yes,” said Aubrey.

“Is this the gentleman that arrived half an hour ago with a handbag?”

“Yes; who are you?”

“I’m a friend,” said the voice; “I wish you well.”

“How do you do, friend and well-wisher,” said Aubrey genially.

“I schust want to warn you that Gissing Street is not healthy for you,” said the voice.

“Is that so?” said Aubrey sharply. “Who are you?”

“I am a friend,” buzzed the receiver. There was a harsh, bass note in the voice that made the diaphragm at Aubrey’s ear vibrate tinnily. Aubrey grew angry.

“Well, Herr Freund,” he said, “if you’re the well-wisher I met on the Bridge last night, watch your step. I’ve got your number.”

There was a pause. Then the other repeated, ponderously, “I am a friend. Gissing Street is not healthy for you.” There was a click, and he had rung off.

Aubrey was a good deal perplexed. He returned to his room, and sat in the dark by the window, smoking a pipe and thinking, with his eyes on the bookshop.

There was no longer any doubt in his mind that something sinister was afoot. He reviewed in memory the events of the past few days.

It was on Monday that a bookloving friend had first told him of the existence of the shop on Gissing Street. On Tuesday evening he had gone round to visit the place, and had stayed to supper with Mr. Mifflin. On Wednesday and Thursday he had been busy at the office, and the idea of an intensive Daintybit campaign in Brooklyn had occurred to him. On Friday he had dined with Mr. Chapman, and had run into a curious string of coincidences. He tabulated them:—

(1) The Lost ad in the Times on Friday morning.

(2) The chef in the elevator carrying the book that was supposed to be lost—he being the same man Aubrey had seen in the bookshop on Tuesday evening.

(3) Seeing the chef again on Gissing Street.

(4) The return of the book to the bookshop.

(5) Mifflin had said that the book had been stolen from him. Then why should it be either advertised or returned?

(6) The rebinding of the book.

(7) Finding the original cover of the book in Weintraub’s drug store.

(8) The affair on the Bridge.

(9) The telephone message from “a friend”—a friend with an obviously Teutonic voice.

 

He remembered the face of anger and fear displayed by the Octagon chef when he had spoken to him in the elevator. Until this oddly menacing telephone message, he could have explained the attack on the Bridge as merely a haphazard foot-pad enterprise; but now he was forced to conclude that it was in some way connected with his visits to the bookshop. He felt, too, that in some unknown way Weintraub’s drug store had something to do with it. Would he have been attacked if he had not taken the book cover from the drug store? He got the cover out of his bag and looked at it again. It was of plain blue cloth, with the title stamped in gold on the back, and at the bottom the lettering London: Chapman and Hall. From the width of the backstrap it was evident that the book had been a fat one. Inside the front cover the figure 60 was written in red pencil— this he took to be Roger Mifflin’s price mark. Inside the back cover he found the following notations—

 

vol. 3—166, 174, 210, 329, 349 329 ff. cf. W. W.

 

These references were written in black ink, in a small, neat hand. Below them, in quite a different script and in pale violet ink, was written

 

153 (3) 1, 2

 

“I suppose these are page numbers,” Aubrey thought. “I think I’d better have a look at that book.”

He put the cover in his pocket and went out for a bite of supper. “It’s a puzzle with three sides to it,” he thought, as he descended the crepitant stairs, “The Bookshop, the Octagon, and Weintraub’s; but that book seems to be the clue to the whole business.”

 

Chapter VIII Aubrey Goes to the Movies, and Wishes he Knew More German

 

A few doors from the bookshop was a small lunchroom named after the great city of Milwaukee, one of those pleasant refectories where the diner buys his food at the counter and eats it sitting in a flat-armed chair. Aubrey got a bowl of soup, a cup of coffee, beef stew, and bran muffins, and took them to an empty seat by the window. He ate with one eye on the street. From his place in the corner he could command the strip of pavement in front of Mifflin’s shop. Halfway through the stew he saw Roger come out onto the pavement and begin to remove the books from the boxes.

After finishing his supper he lit one of his “mild but they satisfy” cigarettes and sat in the comfortable warmth of a near-by radiator. A large black cat lay sprawled on the next chair. Up at the service counter there was a pleasant clank of stout crockery as occasional customers came in and ordered their victuals. Aubrey began to feel a relaxation swim through his veins. Gissing Street was very bright and orderly in its Saturday evening bustle. Certainly it was grotesque to imagine melodrama hanging about a second-hand bookshop in Brooklyn. The revolver felt absurdly lumpy and uncomfortable in his hip pocket. What a different aspect a little hot supper gives to affairs! The most resolute idealist or assassin had better write his poems or plan his atrocities before the evening meal. After the narcosis of that repast the spirit falls into a softer mood, eager only to be amused. Even Milton would hardly have had the inhuman fortitude to sit down to the manuscript of Paradise Lost right after supper. Aubrey began to wonder if his unpleasant suspicions had not been overdrawn. He thought how delightful it would be to stop in at the bookshop and ask Titania to go to the movies with him.

Curious magic of thought! The idea was still sparkling in his mind when he saw Titania and Mrs. Mifflin emerge from the bookshop and pass briskly in front of the lunchroom. They were talking and laughing merrily. Titania’s face, shining with young vitality, seemed to him more “attention-compelling” than any ten-point Caslon type-arrangement he had ever seen. He admired the layout of her face from the standpoint of his cherished technique. “Just enough ‘white space,’” he thought, “to set off her eyes as the ‘centre of interest.’ Her features aren’t this modern bold-face stuff, set solid,” he said to himself, thinking typographically. “They’re rather French old-style italic, slightly leaded. Set on 22-point body, I guess. Old man Chapman’s a pretty good typefounder, you have to hand it to him.”

He smiled at this conceit, seized hat and coat, and dashed out of the lunchroom.

Mrs. Mifflin and Titania had halted a few yards up the street, and were looking at some pert little bonnets in a window. Aubrey hurried across the street, ran up to the next corner, recrossed, and walked down the eastern pavement. In this way he would meet them as though he were coming from the subway. He felt rather more excited than King Albert re-entering Brussels. He saw them coming, chattering together in the delightful fashion of women out on a spree. Helen seemed much younger in the company of her companion. “A lining of pussy-willow taffeta and an embroidered slip-on,” she was saying.

Aubrey steered onto them with an admirable gesture of surprise.

“Well, I never!” said Mrs. Mifflin. “Here’s Mr. Gilbert. Were you coming to see Roger?” she added, rather enjoying the young man’s predicament.

Titania shook hands cordially. Aubrey, searching the old-style italics with the desperate intensity of a proofreader, saw no evidence of chagrin at seeing him again so soon.

“Why,” he said rather lamely, “I was coming to see you all. I—I wondered how you were getting along.”

Mrs. Mifflin had pity on him. “We’ve left Mr. Mifflin to look after the shop,” she said. “He’s busy with some of his old crony customers. Why don’t you come with us to the movies?”

“Yes, do,” said Titania. “It’s Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew, you know how adorable they are!”

No one needs to be told how quickly Aubrey assented. Pleasure coincided with duty in that the outer wing of the party placed him next to Titania.

“Well, how do you like bookselling?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s the greatest fun!” she cried. “But it’ll take me ever and ever so long to learn about all the books. People ask such questions! A woman came in this afternoon looking for a copy of Blase Tales. How was I to know she wanted The Blazed Trail?”

“You’ll get used to that,” said Mrs. Mifflin. “Just a minute, people, I want to stop in at the drug store.”

They went into Weintraub’s pharmacy. Entranced as he was by the proximity of Miss Chapman, Aubrey noticed that the druggist eyed him rather queerly. And being of a noticing habit, he also observed that when Weintraub had occasion to write out a label for a box of powdered alum Mrs. Mifflin was buying, he did so with a pale violet ink.

At the glass sentry-box in front of the theatre Aubrey insisted on buying the tickets.

“We came out right after supper,” said Titania as they entered, “so as to get in before the crowd.”

It is not so easy, however, to get ahead of Brooklyn movie fans. They had to stand for several minutes in a packed lobby while a stern young man held the waiting crowd in check with a velvet rope. Aubrey sustained delightful spasms of the protective instinct in trying to shelter Titania