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

Urn Burial, and The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, and Mistletoe’s Book of Deplorable Facts. I’m going to have a thorough housecleaning. I’m thinking seriously of putting in a vacuum cleaner and a cash register. Titania was quite right, the place was too dirty. That girl has given me a lot of ideas.”

Aubrey wanted to ask where she was, but didn’t like to say so point-blank.

“There’s no question about it,” said Roger, “an explosion now and then does one good. Since the reporters got here and dragged the whole yarn out of us, I’ve had half a dozen offers from publishers for my book, a lyceum bureau wants me to lecture on ‘Bookselling as a Form of Public Service,’ I’ve had five hundred letters from people asking when the shop will reopen for business, and the American Booksellers’ Association has invited me to give an address at its convention next spring. It’s the first recognition I’ve ever had. If it weren’t for poor dear old Bock⁠—Come, we’ve buried him in the back yard. I want to show you his grave.”

Over a pathetically small mound near the fence a bunch of big yellow chrysanthemums were standing in a vase.

“Titania put those there,” said Roger. “She says she’s going to plant a dogwood tree there in the spring. We intend to put up a little stone for him, and I’m trying to think of an inscription, I thought of De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum, but that’s a bit too flippant.”

The living quarters of the house had not been damaged by the explosion, and Roger took Aubrey back to the den. “You’ve come just at the right time,” he said. “Mr. Chapman’s coming to dinner this evening, and we’ll all have a good talk. There’s a lot about this business I don’t understand yet.”

Aubrey was still keeping his eye open for a sign of Titania’s presence, and Roger noticed his wandering gaze.

“This is Miss Chapman’s afternoon off,” he said. “She got her first salary today, and was so much exhilarated that she went to New York to blow it in. She’s out with her father. Excuse me, please, I’m going to help Helen get dinner ready.”

Aubrey sat down by the fire, and lit his pipe. The burden of his meditation was that it was just a week since he had first met Titania, and in all that week there had been no waking moment when he had not thought of her. He was wondering how long it might take for a girl to fall in love? A man⁠—he knew now⁠—could fall in love in five minutes, but how did it work with girls? He was also thinking what unique Daintybits advertising copy he could build (like all ad men he always spoke of building an ad, never of writing one) out of this affair if he could only use the inside stuff.

He heard a rustle behind him, and there she was. She had on a gray fur coat and a lively little hat. Her cheeks were delicately tinted by the winter air. Aubrey rose.

“Why, Mr. Gilbert!” she said. “Where have you been keeping yourself when I wanted to see you so badly? I haven’t seen you, not to talk to, since last Sunday.”

He found it impossible to say anything intelligible. She threw off her coat, and went on, with a wistful gravity that became her even more than smiles:

“Mr. Mifflin has told me some more about what you did last week⁠—I mean, how you took a room across the street and spied upon that hateful man and saw through the whole thing when we were too blind to know what was going on. And I want to apologize for the silly things I said that Sunday morning. Will you forgive me?”

Aubrey had never felt his self-salesmanship ability at such a low ebb. To his unspeakable horror, he felt his eyes betray him. They grew moist.

“Please don’t talk like that,” he said. “I had no right to do what I did, anyway. And I was wrong in what I said about Mr. Mifflin. I don’t wonder you were angry.”

“Now surely you’re not going to deprive me of the pleasure of thanking you,” she said. “You know as well as I do that you saved my life⁠—all our lives, that night. I guess you’d have saved poor Bock’s, too, if you could.” Her eyes filled with tears.

“If anybody deserves credit, it’s you,” he said. “Why, if it hadn’t been for you they’d have been away with that suitcase and probably Metzger would have got his bomb on board the ship and blown up the President⁠—”

“I’m not arguing with you,” she said. “I’m just thanking you.”

It was a happy little party that sat down in Roger’s dining room that evening. Helen had prepared Eggs Samuel Butler in Aubrey’s honour, and Mr. Chapman had brought two bottles of champagne to pledge the future success of the bookshop. Aubrey was called upon to announce the result of his conferences with the secret service men who had been looking up Weintraub’s record.

“It all seems so simple now,” he said, “that I wonder we didn’t see through it at once. You see, we all made the mistake of assuming that German plotting would stop automatically when the armistice was signed. It seems that this man Weintraub was one of the most dangerous spies Germany had in this country. Thirty or forty fires and explosions on our ships at sea are said to have been due to his work. As he had lived here so long and taken out citizen’s papers, no one suspected him. But after his death, his wife, whom he had treated very brutally, gave way and told a great deal about his activities. According to her, as soon as it was announced that the President would go to the Peace Conference, Weintraub made up his mind to get a bomb into the President’s cabin on board the George Washington. Mrs. Weintraub tried to dissuade him from it,