Comes a Stranger (4 page)

“It's rather dreadful, isn't it?” she said. “That was done about twenty-five years ago. She would be twenty-six or seven then. She can't be much over fifty now.”

Bobby continued staring at the portrait. What strange circumstances could have changed the bright and vivid girl of the picture into that sombre, swollen mass of flesh he had just left? Life can be strange, life can be hard and bitter, but between this picture and that reality there seemed to be an abyss altogether unaccountable.

“Oh well,” he said, telling himself it was no business of his. He said to Olive: “You aren't staying any longer, are you?”

“I am sorry for her,” Olive said.

Bobby scowled. He interpreted this remark quite rightly as an intimation that Olive meant to stay as long as Miss Kayne wished, or as long as Olive could spare the time. Then he went nearer to the picture. Something had caught his eye. He said:

“There's a tear in the canvas. Do you see? There.”

“No. Where?” Olive asked.

“Across the throat,” Bobby said. “The canvas has been slit right across there where the throat is.”

Olive looked. It was plain enough when pointed out. The painted throat had been cut across, and though the slit had been repaired it was still visible when looked for. Olive turned away with a slight shudder.

“Let's go into the library,” she said. “I told Miss Perkins we wouldn't be long.”

They went through the great fireproof door that admitted from the house to the library annexe. Beyond was a small, square lobby, containing a chair, a writing table on which lay a huge visitors' book, on one wall a portrait of an elderly gentleman in a frock coat, and opposite it an enormous ‘No Smoking' placard.

“Mr. Broast has a ‘no smoking' complex,” Olive said, seeing Bobby looking at this.

“Well, it's big enough all right,” observed Bobby. “Who is the old gentleman?”

“Miss Kayne's father,” Olive explained. “Afterwards Mr Albert always said it was the worst thing he ever did.”

“It's not so bad,” decided Bobby, examining it critically. “A bit photographic, perhaps.”

“That's just what Mr. Albert always said himself,” observed Olive with a touch of surprise in her voice. “He said a camera would have done as good a job. He told me once it was about the only time he hadn't been able to get hold of his subject at all, as if there were something Mr. Kayne was keeping back, something secret in him, something of himself he wasn't going to let anyone else know about if he could help it.”

The thought came into Bobby's mind that Miss Kayne, too, had given him the same impression, a feeling of something held back and hidden, something that only constant watchfulness and effort prevented from thrusting itself into the open. Olive said teasingly:

“You ought to have been an art critic.”

“No such luck,” sighed Bobby. “What do they keep it here for?” he added, thinking of the other portrait, that of Miss Kayne, to which this seemed the natural companion.

“It does seem funny, doesn't it?” agreed Olive, and then there opened the door, again heavy and fireproof, that admitted from this entrance lobby to the main library hall.

Through it there fluttered nervously, rather like a startled canary hopping from perch to perch in its cage, a small, slight, youngish, frightened looking woman, wearing a brown overall, with mouse-coloured hair, dull, slightly inflamed eyes behind heavy horn spectacles, small, indeterminate features, conveying altogether a general air of timid and apologetic insignificance. When she saw Olive and Bobby she giggled and said breathlessly:

“Oh, I'm so sorry.” It was how she began almost all her sentences. “Oh, I do hope I haven't kept you waiting.”

“Oh no, we've only been here a minute,” Olive answered reassuringly. “Miss Perkins is Mr. Broast's secretary, Bobby. I know you've heard about Mr. Owen, Miss Perkins.”

To her great annoyance Olive found she was blushing as she said this. Miss Perkins giggled again. She generally did. She clasped her hands and gasped:

“Oh, I'm so sorry; oh, it's so romantic, isn't it?” She giggled once again. Bobby and Olive exchanged glances, two minds with but a single thought, and that regrettably tending towards assault and battery. Miss Perkins, noticing nothing, managed yet another giggle, and panted out: “Oh, it must be so Wonderful to be a detective, and find out everything. You do, don't you, Mr. Owen, Everything?”

“I don't know about everything,” said Bobby.

Believe it or not, Miss Perkins produced another giggle. Bobby looked despairingly at Olive. Olive scowled at him to tell him he must be patient and then said:

“Must we sign the visitor's book, Miss Perkins?”

“Oh, yes, please; oh, I'm so sorry,” said Miss Perkins, fluttering over to the table. “Oh, I do think it ought to be ‘Distinguished Visitors', don't you, Miss Farrar? Because Mr. Owen's quite famous, isn't he? And you, too, I'm sure, so it oughtn't to be just ‘Visitors', ought it?

“I'm not famous,” Bobby declared, with a touch of temper in his voice so that Olive gave him another warning frown.

“Oh, a detective,” protested Miss Perkins as she might have said the Prime Minister, or the Director of the B.B.C., or a film star, or any other of the truly great and mighty. Once more she giggled, and then from a drawer produced a book smaller than the giant volume on the table and more elaborately bound. She pushed it across to Bobby, murmuring reverently as she did so: “A detective's so wonderful, finding out things all the time, isn't he?”

Bobby, rather than endure another giggle, duly signed, though with a strong mental reservation about the “distinguished”. Olive signed, too, and Miss Perkins thanked them and said she was so sorry, and presented them each with a small printed card containing once more the prohibition against smoking within the library precincts. It was, she explained, with her accustomed mixture of apology and giggle, a strict rule that every visitor's attention must be drawn to this regulation.

“Even if the King himself came—” said Miss Perkins, and then relapsed into awed silence, overcome entirely by the mere thought of such a happening, “Only I do think he would be Interested, don't you?” she added, recovering slightly.

They both agreed that His Majesty would certainly be Interested, and Miss Perkins said she was so sorry, though for what did not quite appear, and then ushered them through the second fire-proof door into the great hall of the library itself.

The first impression was that if an all-pervading gloom, a kind of sea of shadows, through which one dimly perceived row upon row of books, shelf upon shelf, stretching away into invisibility and the unknown, and again the thought of secrecy, of reserve, of something kept away and hidden stole into Bobby's mind, as though this vast place of shadows were a place of secrets, too, as though each one of these thousands of books held its own message it would reveal but with reluctance.

The library rose to a considerable height, its roof barely seen in the darkness that seemed to cluster beneath it. Till they were nearly lost in this gathered darkness, the shelves of books rose up in ever-ascending sequence. Along the walls there ran two iron galleries, by which access to the books could be obtained. The galleries themselves were reached by spiral iron stairways placed at intervals. At the west end of the hall these galleries were three in number, the topmost one dominating, as it were, the floor of the library. Olive whispered to Bobby that on open days, when the public were admitted Mr. Broast sometimes took his stand there, so as to watch from this place of vantage and make sure no one was misbehaving. On the floor, at intervals of two or three yards, bookcases were arranged at right angles to the walls, making, as it were, a succession of small bays. The book-cases, however, did not reach quite to the sides, so that on the walls the shelves were continuous and a clear passage by them allowed. From each side these bookcases extended about a third of the way across the width of the hall, so that in the centre was left a wide passage way in which, as well as in some of the heavily shadowed bays, stood a few show cases. Miss Perkins, who had followed Olive and Bobby, said with her inevitable giggle:

“Oh, please, I'm so sorry, but Mr. Broast said I was to show you some of our wonderful, wonderful treasures. I always say ‘ours',” she explained apologetically, “I'm so Proud of them. Mr. Broast said he was so sorry, but would you please excuse him till he's finished talking to Sir William and Mr. Nat.”

“Oh, yes,” said Bobby, supposing he must have been mistaken in thinking he had seen a figure detach itself from where the shadows lay thickest in one of the bays and slip silently away behind those book-cases, row upon row of them, that stretched out from the walls like so many clutching fingers.

He supposed it was because he wasn't much of a bookish person that this place made so odd, so unpleasant an impression on him, a place of secrecy and reserve, it seemed to him, of hidden activities, of ancient knowledge and of unknown powers concealed between the covers of all these books but ready to spring into activity again at the call of those who might have power to release them. He remembered how often libraries had been burnt in past ages, and he thought he understood something of the mind of those who had put them to the flame.

“I wouldn't mind so much,” he thought, “if only there were more light,” and he looked with disfavour at the south wall, where the rows of books were unbroken by any window. On the north wall there were windows certainly, but even they were provided with great steel shutters, and now that it was growing late on this day of cloud and drizzle, the northern light, dim at the best, had almost gone. The architect had intended the high west window to provide most light, but it had been given heavy curtains, and then, too, the book cases arranged at right angles to the walls threw heavy shadows across the floor. No wonder, thought Bobby, that little Miss Perkins's eyes were so red and inflamed if she had to work all day in a gloom like this.

She was mingling now giggles, ecstacies and apologies over one of the showcases, and behind her back Bobby flew signals of distress, even of incipient rebellion. He really felt he could not stand much more of Miss Perkins and Olive took pity on him and said:

“I think Mr. Owen would like to see the printing press in the cellar if I might take him down there.”

“Oh, I'm so sorry,” said Miss Perkins, fluttering nervously towards a door near by and then back again. “Oh, Mr. Broast might want me. He does sometimes,” she assured them nervously, “especially when it's Inspection—so unnecessary, I always think, don't you?”

“Don't bother to come with us,” Olive said. “I know the way. Then if Mr. Broast does happen to want you, he won't have to wait.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” Miss Perkins said earnestly. “You're always so thoughtful, Miss Farrar.”

Olive acknowledged this compliment by giving the fluttering little woman one of her warmest smiles, said thank you so much and not to trouble, manouevered Bobby and herself through the door leading to the cellar and got the door firmly closed before Miss Perkins could succeed in following them, as in her vague, undetermined way she seemed inclined to do. At the bottom of the stairs, once he was sure they were safe, Bobby said solemnly:

“Olive, if anything could make me love you more than I do, it's your rescuing us from that awful woman.”

“You must be nice to the poor little thing,” Olive told him severely, “I feel so awfully sorry for her.”

“Not me,” said Bobby, “I feel most awfully sorry for anyone obliged to have anything to do with her. Is she always like that?”

“Well, she was a bit worse than usual,” Olive conceded. “I think she was nervous. I think she imagines detectives are liable to put you in handcuffs and march you off to prison at any moment.”

“Little fool,” growled Bobby.

“Now, Bobby,” Olive rebuked him, “you are not to talk like that. She's had a dreadfully hard life. It would have made most people hard and revengeful, and it's better to giggle, isn't it?”

Bobby, not greatly interested in Miss Perkins, now Miss Perkins was no longer there, thought the occasion appropriate for an interlude. Olive reminded him that they were there to look at a very interesting fifteenth century printing press, still in working order, and in fact used by Mr. Broast at times when he happened to want any printing done. Indeed it was understood that he intended himself to print on this press the new catalogue now in course of preparation. It was a task he was quite capable of carrying out, for he was an expert printer, and always protested that everyone interested in bibliography, whether as an expert, as a collector, or commercially, ought to be fully equipped in practical knowledge of all the details of book production.

Until the introduction of the linotype machine and other recent developments of the same order, there was little difference between the early printing presses and those in current use. This one, standing in the cellar of the Kayne library, had been kept in good order, and visitors regarded it with awe when told that it might well have been used by Caxton himself, or more probably, from certain indications, by that Thomas Rood, of Oxford, for whom as a printer, at one time, priority even over Caxton had been claimed. All round the press against the cellar walls was piled high that miscellany of lumber that so soon accumulates. Behind it, hardly an inch of wall was visible. The only light here came from two windows, half sunken and heavily barred, and the whole place was heavy with the damp and sullen odour of mould and of decay.

“Why on earth don't they clear all this rubbish out?” Bobby asked. “The place only wants a little ventilation. Is this the only cellar? There ought to be another so you could get a current of air through,” he added, remembering that Miss Kayne had spoken of cellars in the plural.