Corso drummed his fingers on d'Artagnan's Memoirs and shook his head, smiling. "Any minute now you'll tell me there was a Milady."
"Correct. But her name wasn't Anne de Breuil, and she wasn't the Duchess de Winter. Nor did she have a fleur-de-lis tattooed on her shoulder. But she was one of Richelieu's secret agents. Her name was the Countess of Carlisle and she stole two diamond tags from the Duke of Buckingham ... Don't look at me like that. It's all in La Rochefoucauld's memoirs. And La Rochefoucauld was a very reliable man."
Corso was staring at me intently. He wasn't the type to be easily surprised, particularly when it came to books, but he seemed impressed. Later, when I came to know him better, I wondered whether his admiration was sincere or just another of his professional wiles. Now that it's all over, I think I know: I was one more source of information, and Corso was trying to get as much out of me as possible.
"This is all very interesting," he said.
"If you go to Paris, Replinger can tell you much more than I can." I looked at the manuscript on the table. "Though I'm not sure it's worth the price of a trip ... What would this chapter fetch on the market?"
He started chewing his pencil again and looked doubtful. "Not much. I'm really after something else."
I gave a sad conspiratorial smile. Among my few possessions I have an Ibarra edition of Don Quixote and a Volkswagen. Of course the car cost more than the book.
"I know what you mean," I said warmly.
Corso made a resigned gesture. He bared his rodent teeth in a bitter smile. "Unless the Japanese get fed up with Van Gogh and Picasso," he suggested, "and start investing in rare books."
I shuddered. "God help us if that ever happens."
"Speak for yourself." He looked at me sardonically through his crooked glasses. "I plan to make a fortune."
He put his notebook away and stood up, the strap of his canvas bag over his shoulder. I couldn't help wondering about his falsely placid appearance, with his steel-rimmed glasses sitting unsteadily on his nose. I found out later that he lived alone, surrounded by books, both his own and other people's, and that as well as being a hired hunter of books he was an expert on Napoleon's battles. He could set out on a board, from memory, the exact positions of troops on the eve of Waterloo. A detail from his family, slightly strange, and I found out about it only much later. I have to admit that from this description Corso doesn't sound very appealing. And yet, if I keep to the strict accuracy with which I am narrating this story, I must add that his awkward appearance, the very clumsiness that seemed—and I don't know how he managed it—vulnerable and caustic, ingenuous and aggressive at the same time, made him both attractive to women and sympathetic to men. But the positive feeling was quickly dispelled, as when you touch your pocket and realize that your wallet has just been stolen.
Corso picked up his manuscript, and I saw him to the door. He shook my hand in the hallway, where portraits of Stendhal, Conrad, and Valle-Inclan looked out severely at an atrocious print that the building's residents' association had decided to hang on the landing a few months earlier, much against my wishes.
Only then did I dare ask him: "I confess I'm intrigued as to where you found it."
He hesitated before answering, weighing the pros and cons. I had received him in a friendly manner, so he was in my debt. Also he might need my help again.
"Maybe you know him," he answered at last. "My client bought the manuscript from a certain Taillefer."
I allowed myself a look of moderate surprise. "Enrique Taillefer? The publisher?"
He was gazing absently around the hallway. At last he nodded. "The same."
We both fell silent. Corso shrugged, and I knew why. The reason could be found in the pages of any newspaper: Enrique Taillefer had been dead a week. He had been found hanged in his house, the cord of his silk robe around his neck, his feet dangling in empty space over an open book and a porcelain vase smashed to pieces.
Some time later, when it was all over, Corso agreed to tell me the rest of the story. So I can now give a fairly accurate picture of a chain of events that I didn't witness, events that led to the fatal denouement and the solution to the mystery surrounding the Club Dumas. Thanks to what Corso told me I can now tell you, like Doctor Watson, that the following scene took place in Makarova's bar an hour after our meeting:
Flavio La Ponte came in shaking off the rain, leaned on the bar next to Corso, and ordered a beer while he caught his breath. Then he looked back at the street, aggressive but triumphant, as if he had just come through sniper fire. It was raining with biblical force.
"The firm of Armengol & Sons, Antiquarian Books and Bibliographical Curiosities, intends to sue you," he said. He had a ring of froth on his curly blond beard, around his mouth. "Their solicitor just telephoned."
"What are they accusing me of?" asked Corso.
"Cheating a little old lady and plundering her library. They swear the deal was theirs."
"Well, they should have got up early, as I did."
"That's what I said, but they're still furious. When they went to pick up the books, the Persiles and the Royal Charter of Castille had disappeared. And you gave a valuation for the rest that was more than expected. So now the owner won't sell. She wants double what they're prepared to pay." He drank some beer and winked conspiratorially. "That neat maneuver is known as nailing a library."
"I know what it's called." Corso smiled malevolently. "And Armengol & Sons know it too."
"You're being unnecessarily cruel," said La Ponte impartially. "But what they're most sore about is the Royal Charter. They say that your taking it was a low blow."
"How could I leave it there? Latin glossary by Diaz de Montalvo, no typographical details but printed in Seville by Alonso Del Puerto, possibly 1482..." He adjusted his glasses and looked at his friend. "What do you think?"
"Sounds good to me. But they're a bit jumpy."
"They should take a Valium."
It was early evening. There was very little room at the bar, and they were pressed shoulder to shoulder, surrounded by cigarette smoke and the murmur of conversation, trying not to get their elbows in the puddles of beer on the counter.
"Apparently," continued La Ponte, "the Persiles is a first edition. The binding's signed by Trautz-Bauzonnet."
Corso shook his head. "By Hardy. Morocco leather."
"Even better. Anyway I swore I had nothing to do with it. You know I have an aversion to lawsuits."
"But not to your thirty percent."
La Ponte raised his hand with dignity. "Stop right there. Don't confuse business with pleasure, Corso. Our beautiful friendship is one thing, food for my children is quite another."
"You don't have any children."
La Ponte looked at him mischievously. "Give me time. I'm still young."
He was short, good-looking, neat, and something of a dandy. His hair was thinning on top. He smoothed it down with his hand, checking to see how it looked in the bar's mirror. Then he cast a practiced eye around the room, checking out the ladies. He was always on the lookout, and always liked to use short sentences in conversation. His father, a very cultured bookseller, had taught him to write by dictating to him texts by Azorin. Hardly anyone reads Azorin anymore, but La Ponte still constructed his sentences like Azorin. With lots of full stops. It gave him a certain aplomb when it came to seducing female customers in the back room of his bookshop in the Calle Mayor, where he kept his erotic classics.
"Anyway," he added, "I have some unfinished business with Armengol & Sons. Rather delicate, but I could make a quick profit."
"You have business with me too," said Corso over his beer. "You're the only poor bookseller I work with. And you're going to be the one who sells those books."