A Study in Revenge (12 page)

“The man whom Deputy Lean and I have pursued from Portland, the one with Professor’s Horsford’s address and a coded note. It’s not a code at all. It’s a call number in the Cutter Expansive Classification system. It’s a book somewhere here in the Athenaeum!”

L
EAN STOOD ON
B
EACON
S
TREET ACROSS FROM THE SIDE
entrance to the Tremont House. Though the hotel had been thoroughly modernized, it maintained an air of stolid old-time respectability with its plain face of granite blocks and the simple Greek columns. He’d been waiting for Chester Sears for over an hour and was beyond the point where he could honestly say he still felt inconspicuous. He made frequent trips to the corner to inspect the foot traffic there as well as the passengers on the horse-drawn trolley cars that stopped just in front of the hotel’s entrance. Lean didn’t spend more than a few seconds at the corner, since Walt McCutcheon was in the lobby and responsible for the main entrance. A rumble passed through Lean’s empty stomach, causing him to imagine that McCutcheon had by now somehow figured a way to fulfill his monitoring duties while also sampling the hotel’s famously delightful cuisine.

Lean headed back closer to the side entrance. A fair number of patrons had entered and exited over the past hour, but there was yet to be any sign of Chester Sears. In the fading daylight, Lean contemplated crossing over the street to more closely inspect the faces of the comers and goers. The move would make Lean himself easier to spot. On the bright side, it had been years since he’d had dealings with Sears back in Portland. He trusted that time and the lack of any expectation of seeing a Portland deputy in Boston would dull the man’s ability to recognize him.

Another minute passed before a man in a dark sack suit carrying a leather case came out of the side door. The man glanced about, and Lean averted his gaze. He thought the man was not so much looking for anyone but instead trying to see if anyone was looking for him. Peering sideways, Lean watched the man move toward the intersection with Tremont Street and decided that it just might be Chester Sears. Staying
on the opposite side of the street for a block and a half, he made a vain effort to confirm the man’s identity. Rows of multistoried buildings dropped a veil of shadows over the man, and even when they passed into open spaces, the low glare of the setting sun hit Lean in the face. He crossed over, wanting to stay close enough that if his man hailed a cab, he could quickly land another one passing in the same direction.

Maintaining a distance of twenty paces, Lean kept up through several turns before emerging on another major avenue that he didn’t recognize. Without warning, the man halted by the curb and waited for an approaching railcar. Lean hesitated, then hurried on, reaching the man just as the horses pulling the trolley eased to a stop in front of them.

Lean reached out for the man’s shoulder and announced, “Chester Sears.”

The man flinched in surprise, and his head jerked around. Lean suddenly realized he’d been pursuing a man who was clearly a decade older than Chester Sears.

“I beg your pardon,” the man said with a look of mild contempt.

“Terribly sorry, sir. Mistook you for someone else.” Lean tipped his hat to the startled man and turned on his heel. Frustration yielded instantly to the desperate need to get back to his post at the Tremont. He glanced about, trying to get his bearings in the somewhat unfamiliar city. The failing light didn’t aid his efforts. He’d mostly head straight on from the Tremont, though they had moved two or three blocks to the right during the walk.

After hurrying through a few turns, Lean came to an intersection and saw the green space of the Boston Common. Grateful to have his bearings back, he walked in that direction until he reached Tremont Street again. The tall spire of the Park Street Church shot up directly opposite. He crossed over, knowing that just down the block, past the old Granary Burying Ground, he’d be back at Tremont House. There was still hope. Even if he’d missed Sears in the past ten minutes, McCutcheon still might have spotted him.

Once past the towering church, he came even with the start of the cemetery’s tall wrought-iron fence that ran the length of its Tremont Street side. Along with a several other solitary pedestrians and strolling couples, Lean made his way beneath the canopies of a series of massive-trunked
elms that lined the sidewalk. He approached the cemetery’s tall stone entrance, shaped almost like the Greek letter pi but styled in a manner reminiscent of ancient Egyptian carvings. He noticed that an approaching couple had slowed under the lintel of the entranceway, beneath a pair of hawklike stone wings surmounted by an orb carved in stark relief.

“Look, darling, across the way,” the woman said to her husband. “I think I see a man atop the roof there. What is that?”

“The Athenaeum, I believe. Queer time for roof maintenance,” the man said in a dismissive voice. Unfazed by the strange sight, he picked up the pace again, his wife in tow.

Lean’s thoughts instantly fixed on Grey’s presence in that building. He stepped into the entrance to the burial ground, his gaze fixed on the distant rooftop. Then came a shout from up high. The words, unmistakably urgent in their origin, acquired a distant, ghostly tenor as they drifted down to Lean across two hundred feet of headstones.

“Chester Sears! Stop!”

T
HE PLUMP WOMAN WHO
’
D NEARLY BEEN BOWLED OVER BY
Grey at the doorway had been listening and now stepped closer.

“I’m Mrs. Holden, assistant librarian. Can I be of assistance, Justice Holmes?”

Holmes paused to consider the question as he watched Grey rush to the front desk nearby to retrieve a pencil and a scrap of paper.

Grey returned, holding the scrap in his left palm and writing on it as he muttered, “Boy, two, two, horse, seven, eight, dog, ink, sun.”

“I certainly hope so.” Justice Holmes offered a bemused smile as he answered the woman.

She reached out to take the paper that Grey handed over. On it was printed “
B22H78DIS
.”

“This would be up in our second-floor reading room—on the left, about a quarter of the way along,” she said. “If you care to follow me?”

Without waiting for her to take the lead, Grey turned and strode ahead to the alabaster-hued statue of Washington that stood guard at the base of the stairs. He pulled aside a velvet rope meant to deny access to the upper floors. The second floor was dominated by the large reading room, built like the rest of the interior in the alcove style. Grey swiped at a series of switches, and several overhead electric lights flickered to life. He moved past the alcoves on the left-hand side of the room, his eyes sweeping along the nearest books until he reached the vicinity of his target. He began a closer inspection of the spines, passing over a variety of volumes, interspersed with occasional thin blocks of wood that were used as placeholders for borrowed books. His fingers slid along the titles until he came to call number
B22 H78 D
,
The Defences of Norumbega
. Where
B22 H78 DIS
should have stood was a gaping space that skipped
AHEAD TO B22 H78 L
,
The Landfall of Leif Erikson,
A.D
. 1000
. Both of those volumes had been written by Eben Norton Horsford.

Grey turned at the sound of Justice Holmes and Mrs. Holden catching up to him.

“Shouldn’t there be a wooden space holder here as well?” Grey asked the assistant librarian.

“Indeed.” She looked around, confused. Grey did the same, and his gaze landed on the long, thin reading table toward the center of the room. A book rested there.

“How’d that get there?” Mrs. Holden mused. “We go through and reshelve all the books each evening. It couldn’t have been overlooked in plain sight on the table.”

Grey rushed over and read the title:
The Discovery of the Ancient City of Norumbega
, by Eben Norton Horsford.

“He’s been here sometime in the past hour or two.” Grey said before he glanced at the spine. “ ‘
B22 H78 DI
.’ The call number is wrong. Ends with only ‘
DI
’ not ‘
DIS
.’ ”

Grey brought the book back into the alcove and slid it into place on the shelf. It took up only half the empty space.

“There’s still a volume missing. He mistook this book for his target and left it on the table after realizing his error. He collected the next and has stolen it. That’s why today’s date was important. All the commotion of the reading produced an opportunity to gain access to the building unnoticed and then slip upstairs.”

“Impossible,” said Mrs. Holden. “No one came through the front doors after closing time. The entire staff was milling about, setting up chairs and all. And we’ve been greeting the members as they came in tonight. No perfect stranger could have just waltzed on by.”

“During the reading, then?” Grey offered.

“I’ve been standing at the doorway. Listening in, I’ll grant you, but I’d have noticed anyone coming in late and creeping by on the way upstairs. That I assure you. And then again on his way back down.”

“What if whoever took the book is not the same fellow you’ve been trailing, Grey?” Justice Holmes asked. “Perhaps it was taken by one of the proprietors.”

Grey shook his head. “A member could have taken the book at any
time. He wouldn’t have needed to do it on this day, during this distraction. No, he’s here surreptitiously. And if he didn’t come through the front door, then where? Other means of access? There’s a door above, in the picture gallery.”

Hearing it phrased like an accusation, Mrs. Holden began to justify the existence of the door on the third floor. “Yes, there is the exit out to the small roof area overlooking the cemetery.”

Grey started back toward the stairs with Justice Holmes right on his heels. Mrs. Holden was obliged to follow after them as she completed her explanation. “But there are two bolts on the door. I locked them myself this evening at closing time.”

The stairs led to a small picture gallery on the third floor. Inside that chamber, wooden handrails kept visitors away from the portraits and landscapes that hung thick upon the walls inside wide, elaborately embossed and gilded frames. Grey stopped and scanned the nearby wall for light switches but saw none. When Justice Holmes and Mrs. Holden arrived, he motioned them to stand still. The sound of paper being torn came to them from one of the other galleries on this level. With his eyes still not fully accustomed to the dark, Grey hurried forward through a ten-foot-tall entranceway leading into the next picture gallery.

This room was much larger. Dim light filtered down from a large rectangular opening cut into the tall ceiling that led up to a skylight. A series of unlit electrical bulbs hung below on a frame that matched the ample size of the skylight. The only artificial light in the room came from a small oil lamp sitting on a viewing bench positioned in the middle of the room. Crouching by the side of that bench was a dark figure. The man’s head shot up at Grey’s arrival.

“Stop where you are!” Grey shouted.

The dark figure made a violent motion, tearing another page from a book that lay upon the bench. The others followed Grey into the room, and Mrs. Holden let out a piercing shriek at the sight of the dimly visible man lurking thirty feet ahead of them.

The man frantically shoved the ripped page into his breast pocket, jumped atop the bench, and vaulted into the air. Impossibly, he stopped in midflight and hung there, arms raised over his head. It took Grey another second to catch sight of a thin rope rising from just
above the bench and disappearing up into the wide shaft leading to the skylight.

“Summon the police,” urged Justice Holmes, who’d grasped Mrs. Holden’s shoulders in an effort to calm the shocked woman.

Grey sprinted ahead and leaped onto the bench. Pausing only long enough to ensure that his feet were under him, he launched himself again, trying to capitalize on his momentum. He clutched the rope as it wavered in the air. Seeing a series of knots tied every two feet, Grey wrapped his feet around the cord and pressed down onto the closest knot for support.

One hand shot out for the next knot, and he hauled himself upward, pushing with his legs as the other hand reached past the first. His eyes were locked onto the thief, who was scurrying up the rope with what seemed like inhuman speed. The man was already approaching the skylight.

“This is madness! Come down!” Justice Holmes called out below, but Grey focused solely on climbing faster.

Above him Grey saw the man pause briefly to grab hold of one of the skylight’s edges. A wide, slanted pane had been removed, and the thief twisted his thin body and pulled himself through the narrow opening. Grey’s left hand slipped several inches, and he felt the rope burn in his palm. Ignoring it, he forced himself farther up the rope, hand over hand. His feet twisted and locked together around the rope, coiling against the next knot in the line, then springing, pushing him along.

The thief’s face appeared in the frame of the skylight looking down at Grey, who was still one body length shy of the goal. Grey pulled even more desperately, spurred on by the thought that the man might cut the cord. Instead the thief vanished from view. A few seconds more and Grey reached out for the ledge of the skylight. With his other hand braced against the wooden frame of the missing pane, he hauled up and got his torso through the gap. He spun his head around, making sure the thief wasn’t close by, ready to ambush him. The man was fleeing along with one foot just to each side of the peak of the building’s pitched roof. Grey stood up near the middle of the Athenaeum’s 114-foot length, by the third of four raised skylights. Ahead of him the thief reached the last skylight and began inching his way around it.

Grey steadied himself before continuing the pursuit. To his left the roof sloped away toward Beacon Street and the building’s front entrance,
sixty feet below him now. On his right the roof sloped down toward a lower addition, then the wide, dark expanse of the Granary Burying Ground. He followed the thief’s example: one foot on either side of the peak, sliding each forward more than actually lifting his feet to take steps. By the time Grey reached the next skylight, his quarry had disappeared from view. Grey turned sideways with his weight leaning in above the slanted glass panes for balance as he shimmied along the edge of the raised skylight.