“I know he has,” Charles said. “And I suppose that, in your position, you often are, too.”
“This book you’ve loaned me has been a nice help with that.”
“I’m very glad to hear it. I wonder if I could ever be of more help?”
“With another book?” she asked.
“I don’t know. But I hope you aren’t under the same pressure that Patrick White was.”
There was a pause of several seconds, then Karen Liu’s bright, happy voice was back. “I do hope I have a chance to get back over there to look at your other books. Maybe again this Saturday?”
“I’ll be here,” Charles said.
“Good! I will look forward to it!”
“What did that mean?” Dorothy asked.
“I think it means she has been under the same threat as Patrick White, and they’ve discussed it together.”
“But she isn’t unbalanced, is she?”
“No,” Charles said. “She is still holding up. She will come Saturday, and I have to figure out what I will say.”
“Will you tell her about Derek’s papers?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve only met her twice. I don’t know her well enough to be able to tell.”
“Tell what?”
He tapped his eye. “If she is the real thing.”
“The real what?”
“I don’t know if I trust her. Anyway.” He smiled and used his own bright, happy voice. “The fall catalog!”
“Well… you should start thinking about European literature and travel books.”
“European travel-oh my!”
“What?”
“The UPS man will be here in an hour.”
AFTERNOON
“Mr. Beale?” Alice asked. “Are you expecting someone?”
“Is it obvious?” he said.
“You’ve been looking out that window for twenty minutes.”
“And I couldn’t even tell you what’s out there. I think I’ve been somewhere else entirely.”
“Anyplace nice?”
“I’ve been wandering the Mediterranean.”
“That would be nice!”
“Well…” He looked wistfully out the window. “It’s been twenty years of war and dangers, and I’d really rather be home. And I don’t know what to expect when I get there.”
“I see.” Alice nodded, very sympathetically. “Twenty years is a long time. They might think you’re never coming back.”
“I know my beloved will always be true.” Suddenly he was alert, focused on the window. “There! There it is!”
The delivery truck came to a stop and the quick young man bounded up the steps. Charles had the front door open.
“Afternoon, Mr. Beale! Sign here.”
“Thank you, Roger. I’ve been waiting for this one. Alice, could you ask Morgan to come downstairs?”
“What do you think?” Morgan asked.
“I’m not sure. It’s very nice,” Charles said. Both of them were just inches above the front cover. “Very, very nice. We’ll open it.”
He put his gloved finger against the page edges and lifted, opening it in the middle. “The typeset is at least 1800s. And the.. . oh my!”
“What?”
“Look close. At the paper.”
“Is it parchment?”
“Vellum, even. This was a very expensive book.”
“What about now?”
“I don’t know yet.” He turned back to the beginning. “Not much of a title page, is it?”
“No date, no publisher, no city,” Morgan said. “Just the title and author.”
“It could maybe be a half title if there were a regular title page after it.” He shook his head. “But the book is still very nice.”
“But you don’t recognize it all?”
“No. It’s not any printing I know of. Get that Barlow, will you? Thank you.”
Morgan laid a heavy, modern book on the desk, modern at least compared to the other books in the room. Charles opened it with as much respect.
“Alexander Pope.” He found the page. “Two dozen editions before 1850.” He turned the pages of the Odyssey back to the first printed page. “I’ll say 1830s.”
“What about the signature?”
“Right.” He turned back another page to the inside of the front cover. “That is supposed to be an A?”
“And that’s the P,” Morgan said.
“It isn’t even two words. It’s just one word. Even dead, I think Pope would have signed more clearly than that.” He turned back to the first printed page. “Look. At the very inside edge. See?”
“It looks like…”
“Yes.” Charles closed the book and looked at it from the top. “Yes. You can see here. There was another page, and it’s been removed. You can see just the sliver that was left.”
“That would have been the real title page?”
Charles had the book open. “It’s been cut out.”
“So it was the half title.”
Charles was staring very hard. “I’m not sure. There’s something about it.”
Morgan waited. Charles looked up at the shelves. All four walls of shelves looked back. The shades varied, but they were all brooding hues of brown. The shelves were divided every three feet by vertical braces, and every section was numbered. Some sections were filled; many had spaces. Ceramic blocks held the books upright where the shelf wasn’t filled.
“Get… um… there, over there, those three. Above the Grotes. The red ones. All three.”
Morgan carried them to the desk. Charles opened the first.
“A Jane Austen set from 1820-something, isn’t it? Yes, 1828. Now, see, the set title page. It has all the standard title page information, but it’s the same for each volume except for the one line of the volume title. Then, the next page is the volume title page. Just like in our Odyssey.”
“So this Odyssey is part of a set,” Morgan said. “Is that good?”
“Well… yes and no. If we knew anything about the set, and then if we could actually locate any other volumes, that would be very good. But we don’t, so we probably couldn’t, so it wouldn’t. And the missing main title page is very damaging.”
“Was it broken out?”
“Yes, to be framed. I’m sure it was. It’s probably on someone’s wall right now, or more likely in a box in someone else’s attic.”
“What will we do with this?”
“We could put it in the catalog and on the website, but just as it is-it’s probably not worth more than eight hundred, and that’s just because of its age and the quality of its materials. I wonder who was bidding it up to seventeen hundred.”
“It was another dealer.”
“Just taking a chance, like I was. And maybe I was the loser. Well
… let me look at it for a while before I decide what to do.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Maybe I’ll read it. I don’t know if the Pope translation is even in print anymore. And this is a very nice volume.” He turned away from the book. “What are you up to these days, Morgan?”
“Actually, sir, I’ve been looking through the inventory. I have a list to order.”
“Anything special?”
“It’s mostly replacements. I’ll find them wherever I can. Briary Roberts has a lot of them.”
“Anything expensive? We won’t replace the Melville, of course.”
“There is a nice Dante I found for about twelve thousand. Longfellow, eighteen sixty-seven. It’s on one of the private auction sites.”
“Eighteen sixty-seven? A first-edition Longfellow? That would be nice. I’ll look at it.”
“Mr. Beale?” Alice called down from above. “You have a telephone call. Mr. John Borchard.”
“Hello, John, this is Charles Beale.”
“Charles! I’m starting to feel like an old friend, calling you so often.”
“I’m feeling the same way.”
“Good. I think I’ve worked out a space in my schedule for tomorrow morning. I want to stop in and see you.”
“Tomorrow morning would be fine.”
“Wonderful! I’ll look forward to it. Tomorrow morning then?”
“Yes, John, tomorrow morning.”
“What time do you open?”
“Ten o’clock. But I’ll be here earlier.”
“Oh, no, I’m sure you’d be busy. Would ten-thirty be convenient?”
“That would be fine.”
“Then tomorrow morning, at ten-thirty.”