The Haunted Bookshop Christopher Morley (sci fi books to read TXT) 📖

I went in by the front door, Bock wouldn’t say anything. It’s just because he sees me coming in this way that he’s annoyed. Well, I’ll have to take a chance.”

He thrust his legs in through the window, carefully holding up the sash with its jagged triangles of glass. It will never be known how severely Bock was tempted by the extremities thus exposed to him, but he was an old dog and his martial instincts had been undermined by years of kindness. Moreover, he remembered Aubrey perfectly well, and the smell of his trousers did not seem at all hostile. So he contented himself with a small grumbling of protest. He was an Irish terrier, but there was nothing Sinn Fein about him.

Aubrey dropped to the floor, and patted the dog, thanking his good fortune. He glanced about the cellar as though expecting to find some lurking horror. Nothing more appalling than several cases of beer bottles met his eyes. He started quietly to go up the cellar stairs, and Bock, evidently consumed with legitimate curiosity, kept at his heels.

“Look here,” thought Aubrey. “I don’t want the dog following me all through the house. If I touch anything he’ll probably take a hunk out of my shin.”

He unlocked the door into the yard, and Bock obeying the Irish terrier’s natural impulse to get into the open air, ran outside. Aubrey quickly closed the door again. Bock’s face appeared at the broken window, looking in with so quaint an expression of indignant surprise that Aubrey almost laughed. “There, old man,” he said, “it’s all right. I’m just going to look around a bit.”

He ascended the stairs on tiptoe and found himself in the kitchen. All was quiet. An alarm clock ticked with a stumbling, headlong hurry. Pots of geraniums stood on the window sill. The range, with its lids off and the fire carefully nourished, radiated a mild warmth. Through a dark little pantry he entered the dining room. Still no sign of anything amiss. A pot of white heather stood on the table, and a corncob pipe lay on the sideboard. “This is the most innocent-looking kidnapper’s den I ever heard of,” he thought. “Any moving-picture director would be ashamed not to provide a better stage-set.”

At that instant he heard footsteps overhead. Curiously soft, muffled footsteps. Instantly he was on the alert. Now he would know the worst.

A window upstairs was thrown open. “Bock, what are you doing in the yard?” floated a voice⁠—a very clear, imperious voice that somehow made him think of the thin ringing of a fine glass tumbler. It was Titania.

He stood aghast. Then he heard a door open, and steps on the stair. Merciful heaven, the girl must not find him here. What would she think? He skipped back into the pantry, and shrank into a corner. He heard the footfalls reach the bottom of the stairs. There was a door into the kitchen from the central hall: it was not necessary for her to pass through the pantry, he thought. He heard her enter the kitchen.

In his anxiety he crouched down beneath the sink, and his foot, bent beneath him, touched a large tin tray leaning against the wall. It fell over with a terrible clang.

“Bock!” said Titania sharply, “what are you doing?”

Aubrey was wondering miserably whether he ought to counterfeit a bark, but it was too late to do anything. The pantry door opened, and Titania looked in.

They gazed at each other for several seconds in mutual horror. Even in his abasement, crouching under a shelf in the corner, Aubrey’s stricken senses told him that he had never seen so fair a spectacle. Titania wore a blue kimono and a curious fragile lacy bonnet which he did not understand. Her dark, gold-spangled hair came down in two thick braids across her shoulders. Her blue eyes were very much alive with amazement and alarm which rapidly changed into anger.

“Mr. Gilbert!” she cried. For an instant he thought she was going to laugh. Then a new expression came into her face. Without another word she turned and fled. He heard her run upstairs. A door banged, and was locked. A window was hastily closed. Again all was silent.

Stupefied with chagrin, he rose from his cramped position. What on earth was he to do? How could he explain? He stood by the pantry sink in painful indecision. Should he slink out of the house? No, he couldn’t do that without attempting to explain. And he was still convinced that some strange peril hung about this place. He must put Titania on her guard, no matter how embarrassing it proved. If only she hadn’t been wearing a kimono⁠—how much easier it would have been.

He stepped out into the hall, and stood at the bottom of the stairs in the throes of doubt. After waiting some time in silence he cleared the huskiness from his throat and called out:

“Miss Chapman!”

There was no answer, but he heard light, rapid movements above.

“Miss Chapman!” he called again.

He heard the door opened, and clear words edged with frost came downward. This time he thought of a thin tumbler with ice in it.

“Mr. Gilbert!”

“Yes?” he said miserably.

“Will you please call me a taxi?”

Something in the calm, mandatory tone nettled him. After all, he had acted in pure good faith.

“With pleasure,” he said, “but not until I have told you something. It’s very important. I beg your pardon most awfully for frightening you, but it’s really very urgent.”

There was a brief silence. Then she said:

“Brooklyn’s a queer place. Wait a few minutes, please.”

Aubrey stood absently fingering the pattern on the wallpaper. He suddenly experienced a great craving for a pipe, but felt that the etiquette of the situation hardly permitted him to smoke.

In a few moments Titania appeared at the head of the stairs in her customary garb. She sat down on the landing. Aubrey felt that everything was as bad as it could possibly be. If he could have seen her face