My book was being handled at the Smithsonian by a bibliophilic little person named Howard Martin, a kind if rather taciturn man who had taken my cause to heart as thoroughly as if he’d known my whole story. (No-on second thought, if he had known my whole story, he would perhaps have shown me the door on my first visit.) But he apparently saw only my passion for history, sympathized, and did his best for me. His best was very good, very thorough, and he assimilated what the laboratories sent him with a care that would have graced Oxford better than it did those rather bureaucratic museum offices in Washington. I was impressed, and further impressed by his knowledge of European bookmaking in the centuries just before and after Gutenberg.
When he had apparently done everything he could for me, he wrote to me that I could have the results, such as they were, and that he would hand the book to me in person, as I had first handed it to him, if I didn’t wish it to be shipped north. I made the train trip down, doing a little sightseeing the next morning and then appearing at his office door ten minutes before the appointed time. My heart was thudding and my mouth had gone dry; I itched both to have my hands on my book again and to know what he had learned about its origins.
Mr. Martin opened the door and ushered me in with a little smile. “So glad you could come down,” he said in the flat American twang that had become for me the most welcoming speech in the world.
When we were seated in his manuscript-filled office, I found myself facing him and was immediately shocked by the change in his appearance. I had seen him briefly a few months before and remembered his face, and nothing in his neat and professional correspondence with me had implied illness. Now he was drawn and pale, haggard in a way that caused his skin to look grey-yellow, his lips unnaturally crimson. He had lost a great deal of weight, so that his outdated suit hung limply from his thin shoulders. He sat hunched slightly forwards, as if some pain or weakness made it impossible for him to stand up straight. He seemed drained of life.
I tried to tell myself that I had merely been in a hurry during my first visit and that my acquaintance with the man by post had made me more observant this time, or more compassionate in my observations, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of having seen him decay with the lapse of a short time. I assured myself that he might have some unfortunate and degenerative disease, a rapidly advancing cancer of some sort. Of course, politeness precluded any mention of his appearance.
“Now, Dr. Rossi,” he said, in the American way. “I don’t believe you realize what a valuable little item you’ve had here all along.”
“Valuable?” He could not possibly know its value to me, I thought, not with all the chemical analyses in the world. It was my key to revenge.
“Yes. It’s a rare example of Central European mediaeval printing, a very interesting and unusual thing, and I’m pretty well satisfied now that it was probably printed about 1512, perhaps in Buda or perhaps in Wallachia. That date would place it safely after the Corvinus Saint Luke but before the Hungarian New Testament of 1520, which would probably have had an influence on such a work if it had already existed.” He shifted in his creaking chair. “It’s even possible that the woodcut in your book actually influenced the New Testament of 1520, which has a similar illustration, a winged Satan. But there’s no way to prove that. Anyway, it would be a funny influence, wouldn’t it? I mean, to see part of the Bible decorated with illustrations anything like this diabolical one.”
“Diabolical?” I relished the sound of the condemnation on someone else’s lips.
“Sure. You filled me in on the Dracula legend, but do you think I stopped there?”
Mr. Martin’s tone was so flat and bright, so American, that it took me a moment to react. Never had I heard that sinister depth in a voice so perfectly ordinary. I stared at him, puzzled, but the tone was gone and his face smooth. He was looking through a pile of papers he had taken out of a folder.
“Here are the results of our tests,” he said. “I’ve made clean copies of them for you, along with my write-up, and I think you’ll find them interesting. They don’t say much more than I’ve just told you-oh, there are two interesting additional facts. It appears from the chemical analysis that this book was stored, probably for a long time, in an atmosphere heavily laden with stone dust, and that that occurred before 1700. Also, the back section of it was stained at some point with salt water-perhaps from exposure to an ocean voyage. I suppose it could have been the Black Sea, if our guesses about production location are correct, but there are a lot of other possibilities, of course. I’m afraid we haven’t set you farther on your quest than that-didn’t you say you’re writing a history of mediaeval Europe?”
He looked up and gave me his casual, good-natured smile, weird in that wasted face, and I perceived simultaneously two things that made my marrow go cold as I sat there.
The first was that I had never told him anything about writing a history of mediaeval Europe; I had said I wanted information on my volume to help me complete a bibliography of materials related to the life of Vlad the Impaler, known in legend as Dracula. Howard Martin was as precise a man, in his curatorial way, as I was in my scholarly one, and he would never unknowingly have committed such an error. His memory had previously struck me as nearly photographic in its capacity for detail, something I notice and appreciate heartily whenever I meet it in other people.
The second thing I perceived at this moment was that, perhaps due to whatever illness he was suffering-the poor man, I almost made myself say, internally-his lips had a decayed, flaccid look when he smiled and his upper canine teeth were bared and somehow prominent in a way that gave his whole face an unpleasant appearance. I remembered all too well the bureaucrat in Istanbul, although there was nothing wrong with Howard Martin’s neck, as far as I could see. I had just quelled my tremor and taken book and notes from his hand when he spoke up again.
“That map, by the way, is remarkable.”
“Map?” I froze. Only one map I knew of-three, actually, in graduated scale-had anything to do with my present intentions, and I was sure I had never so much as mentioned their existence to this stranger.
“Did you sketch it yourself? It’s not old, obviously, but I wouldn’t have put you down as an artist. And certainly not a morbid type, anyway, if you don’t mind my saying that.”
I stared at him, unable to decipher his words and afraid to give something away by asking what he meant. Had I left one of my sketches in the book? How utterly stupid, if I had. But I was sure I’d checked the book carefully for loose leaves before handing it over to him.
“Well, I tucked it back in the book, so it’s there,” he said comfortingly. “Now, Dr. Rossi, I can show you down to our accounting department if you’d like, or I can arrange for you to be billed at home.” He opened the door for me and smiled his professional grimace again. I had the presence of mind not to hunt through the volume in my hand then and there, and I saw in the light of the corridor that I must have imagined Martin’s peculiar smile, and perhaps even his illness; he was normal-skinned, just a little stooped from decades of work among the leaves of the past, nothing more. He stood by the door with one hand thrust out in a hearty Washingtonian good-bye, and I shook it, muttering that I should like the bill sent to my university address.
I made my way warily out of sight of his door, then out of that hall and finally away from the great red castle that housed all his labours and those of his colleagues. Out in the fresh air of the Mall, I strolled across the bright green grass to a bench and sat down, trying both to appear and to feel unconcerned.