“Ha ha,” I agreed.
“The humidity is sixty percent,” he went on. “It never varies. Too dry and the glue dries out. Too damp and the pages rot. Neither can happen here.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“I would say so. The air is filtered regularly, with not only air-conditioning but special filters to remove pollutants that are truly microscopic. No book could ask for a safer or more comfortable environment.”
I sniffed the air. It was cool, and neither too moist nor too dry, and as immaculate as modern science could make it. My nose wrinkled, and I picked up a whiff of something.
“What about fire?” I wondered.
“Steel walls, steel doors, triple-glazed windows with heat-resistant bulletproof glass. Special insulation in the walls and ceiling and floor. The whole house could burn to the ground, Bernie, and this room and its contents would remain unaffected. It is one enormous fire-safe.”
“But if the fire broke out in here...”
“How? I don’t smoke, or play with matches. There are no cupboards holding piles of oily rags, no bales of moldering hay to burst into spontaneous combustion.”
“No, but—”
“And even if there were a fire,” he said, “it would be extinguished almost before it had begun.” He gestured and I looked up and saw round metal gadgets spotted here and there in the walls and ceiling.
I said, “A sprinkler system? Somebody tried to sell me one at the store once and I threw him out on his ear. Fire’s rough on books, but water’s sheer disaster. And those things are like smoke alarms, they can go off for no good reason, and then where are you? Karl, I can’t believe—”
“Please,” he said, holding up a hand. “Do you take me for an idiot?”
“No, but—”
“Do you honestly think I would use water to forestall fire? Credit me with a little sense, my friend.”
“I do, but—”
“There will be no fire here, and no flood, either. A book in my library will be, ah, what is the expression? Snug as a slug in a rug.”
“A bug,” I said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“A bug in a rug,” I said. “I think that’s the expression.”
His response was a shrug, the sort you’d get, I suppose, from a slug in a rug. “But we have no time for language lessons,” he said. “From two to six I must be in the library with my books, and it is already one-fifty.”
“You’re already in the library.”
“Alone,” he said. “With only my books for company. So. What have you brought me?”
I opened my briefcase, withdrew the padded mailer, reached into that like Little Jack Horner, and brought forth a plum indeed. I looked up in time to catch an unguarded glimpse of Bellermann’s face, and it was a study. How often do you get to see a man salivate less than an hour after a big lunch?
He extended his hands and I placed the book in them. “Fer-de-Lance,” he said reverently. “Nero Wolfe’s debut, the rarest and most desirable book in the entire canon. Hardly the best of the novels, I wouldn’t say. It took Stout several books fully to refine the character of Wolfe and to hone the narrative edge of Archie Goodwin. But the brilliance was present from the beginning, and the book is a prize.”
He turned the volume over in his hands, inspected the dust jacket fore and aft. “Of course I own a copy,” he said. “A first edition in dust wrapper. This dust wrapper is nicer than the one I have.”
“It’s pretty cherry,” I said.
“Pristine,” he allowed, “or very nearly so. Mine has a couple of chips and an unfortunate tear mended quite expertly with tape. This does look virtually perfect.”
“Yes.”
“But the jacket’s the least of it, is it not? This is a special copy.”
“It is.”
He opened it, and his large hands could not have been gentler had he been repotting orchids. He found the title page and read, “ ‘For Franklin Roosevelt, with the earnest hope of a brighter tomorrow. Best regards from Rex Todhunter Stout.’ ” He ran his forefinger over the inscription. “It’s Stout’s writing,” he announced. “He didn’t inscribe many books, but I have enough signed copies to know his hand. And this is the ultimate association copy, isn’t it?”
“You could say that.”
“I just did. Stout was a liberal Democrat, ultimately a World Federalist. FDR, like the present incumbent, was a great fan of detective stories. It always seems to be the Democratic presidents who relish a good mystery. Eisenhower preferred Westerns, Nixon liked history and biography, and I don’t know that Reagan read at all.”
He sighed and closed the book. “Mr. Gulbenkian must regret the loss of this copy,” he said.
“I suppose he must.”
“A year ago,” he said, “when I learned he’d been burglarized and some of his best volumes stolen, I wondered what sort of burglar could possibly know what books to take. And of course I thought of you.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Tell me your price again, Bernie. Refresh my memory.”
I named a figure.
“It’s high,” he said.
“The book’s unique,” I pointed out.
“I know that. I know, too, that I can never show it off. I cannot tell anyone I have it. You and I alone will know that it is in my possession.”
“It’ll be our little secret, Karl.”
“Our little secret. I can’t even insure it. At least Gulbenkian was insured, eh? But he can never replace the book. Why didn’t you sell it back to him?”
“I might,” I said, “if you decide you don’t want it.”
“But of course I want it!” He might have said more but a glance at his watch reminded him of the time. “Two o’clock,” he said, motioning me toward the door. “Eva will have my afternoon coffee ready. And you will excuse me, I am sure, while I spend the afternoon with my books, including this latest specimen.”
“Be careful with it,” I said.
“Bernie! I’m not going to read it. I have plenty of reading copies, should I care to renew my acquaintance with Fer-de-Lance. I want to hold it, to be with it. And then at six o’clock we will conclude our business, and I will give you a dinner every bit as good as the lunch you just had. And then you can return to the city.”
He ushered me out, and moments later he disappeared into the library again, carrying a tray with coffee in one of those silver pots they used to give you on trains. There was a cup on the tray as well, and a sugar bowl and creamer, along with a plate of shortbread cookies. I stood in the hall and watched the library door swing shut, heard the lock turn and the bolt slide home. Then I turned, and there was Karl’s wife, Eva.
“I guess he’s really going to spend the next four hours in there,” I said.
“He always does.”
“I’d go for a drive,” I said, “but I don’t have a car. I suppose I could go for a walk. It’s a beautiful day, bright and sunny. Of course your husband doesn’t allow sunlight into the library, but I suppose he lets it go where it wants in the rest of the neighborhood.”
That drew a smile from her.
“If I’d thought ahead,” I said, “I’d have brought something to read. Not that there aren’t a few thousand books in the house, but they’re all locked away with Karl.”
“Not all of them,” she said. “My husband’s collection is limited to books published before 1975, along with the more recent work of a few of his very favorite authors. But he buys other contemporary crime novels as well, and keeps them here and there around the house. The bookcase in the guest room is well stocked.”
“That’s good news. As far as that goes, I was in the middle of a magazine story.”