The Haunted Bookshop, Christopher Morley [best romance ebooks TXT] 📗

dogs, especially ancient Brooklyn cellars which have a cachet all their own. The cellar of the Haunted Bookshop was, to Bock, a fascinating place, illuminated by a warm glow from the furnace, and piled high with split packing-cases which Roger used as kindling. From below came the rasp of a shovel among coal, and the clear, musical slither as the lumps were thrown from the iron scoop onto the fire. Just then the bell rang in the shop.

“Let me go,” said Titania, jumping up.

“Can’t I?” said Aubrey.

“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Mifflin, laying down her knitting. “Neither of you knows anything about the stock. Sit down and be comfortable. I’ll be right back.”

Aubrey and Titania looked at each other with a touch of embarrassment.

“Your father sent you his⁠—his kind regards,” said Aubrey. That was not what he had intended to say, but somehow he could not utter the word. “He said not to read all the books at once.”

Titania laughed. “How funny that you should run into him just when you were coming here. He’s a duck, isn’t he?”

“Well, you see I only know him in a business way, but he certainly is a corker. He believes in advertising, too.”

“Are you crazy about books?”

“Why, I never really had very much to do with them. I’m afraid you’ll think I’m terribly ignorant⁠—”

“Not at all. I’m awfully glad to meet someone who doesn’t think it’s a crime not to have read all the books there are.”

“This is a queer kind of place, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s a funny idea to call it the Haunted Bookshop. I wonder what it means.”

“Mr. Mifflin told me it meant haunted by the ghosts of great literature. I hope they won’t annoy you. The ghost of Thomas Carlyle seems to be pretty active.”

“I’m not afraid of ghosts,” said Titania.

Aubrey gazed at the fire. He wanted to say that he intended from now on to do a little haunting on his own account but he did not know just how to break it gently. And then Roger returned from the cellar with the bottle of sherry. As he was uncorking it, they heard the shop door close, and Mrs. Mifflin came in.

“Well, Roger,” she said; “if you think so much of your old Cromwell, you’d better keep it in here. Here it is.” She laid the book on the table.

“For the love of Mike!” exclaimed Roger. “Who brought it back?”

“I guess it was your friend the assistant chef,” said Mrs. Mifflin. “Anyway, he had a beard like a Christmas tree. He was mighty polite. He said he was terribly absent minded, and that the other day he was in here looking at some books and just walked off with it without knowing what he was doing. He offered to pay for the trouble he had caused, but of course I wouldn’t let him. I asked if he wanted to see you, but he said he was in a hurry.”

“I’m almost disappointed,” said Roger. “I thought that I had turned up a real booklover. Here we are, all hands drink the health of Mr. Thomas Carlyle.”

The toast was drunk, and they settled themselves in their chairs.

“And here’s to the new employee,” said Helen. This also was dispatched, Aubrey draining his glass with a zeal which did not escape Miss Chapman’s discerning eye. Roger then put out his hand for the Dickens. But first he picked up his beloved Cromwell. He looked at it carefully, and then held the volume close to the light.

“The mystery’s not over yet,” he said. “It’s been rebound. This isn’t the original binding.”

“Are you sure?” said Helen in surprise. “It looks the same.”

“The binding has been cleverly imitated, but it can’t fool me. In the first place, there was a rubbed corner at the top; and there was an ink stain on one of the end papers.”

“There’s still a stain there,” said Aubrey, looking over his shoulder.

“Yes, but not the same stain. I’ve had that book long enough to know it by heart. Now what the deuce would that lunatic want to have it rebound for?”

“Goodness gracious,” said Helen, “put it away and forget about it. We’ll all be dreaming about Carlyle if you’re not careful.”

V Aubrey Walks Part Way Home⁠—and Rides the Rest of the Way

It was a cold, clear night as Mr. Aubrey Gilbert left the Haunted Bookshop that evening, and set out to walk homeward. Without making a very conscious choice, he felt instinctively that it would be agreeable to walk back to Manhattan rather than permit the roaring disillusion of the subway to break in upon his meditations.

It is to be feared that Aubrey would have badly flunked any quizzing on the chapters of Somebody’s Luggage which the bookseller had read aloud. His mind was swimming rapidly in the agreeable, unfettered fashion of a stream rippling downhill. As O. Henry puts it in one of his most delightful stories: “He was outwardly decent and managed to preserve his aquarium, but inside he was impromptu and full of unexpectedness.” To say that he was thinking of Miss Chapman would imply too much power of ratiocination and abstract scrutiny on his part. He was not thinking: he was being thought. Down the accustomed channels of his intellect he felt his mind ebbing with the irresistible movement of tides drawn by the blandishing moon. And across these shimmering estuaries of impulse his will, a lost and naked athlete, was painfully attempting to swim, but making much leeway and already almost resigned to being carried out to sea.

He stopped a moment at Weintraub’s drug store, on the corner of Gissing Street and Wordsworth Avenue, to buy some cigarettes, unfailing solace of an agitated bosom.

It was the usual old-fashioned pharmacy of those parts of Brooklyn: tall red, green, and blue vases of liquid in the windows threw blotches of coloured light onto the pavement; on the panes was affixed white china lettering:

H. We traub, Deut che Apotheker.

Inside, the customary shelves of labelled jars,