Operation Pax (44 page)

‘Dons?’

‘My dear girl, we can’t ignore the fact that we know two of them to be mixed up in this affair in a rather unaccountable way.’

‘But we’re in and they’re out.’ Jane felt very clear-headed. ‘They can’t get in until Bodley opens up. If we could find the telephone you spoke of and put up a sufficiently convincing show, we could make sure that those likely books were searched before anybody else was allowed to lay hands on them. And surely that’s our best plan.’

‘Good girl –
fairly
good girl.’ Remnant had begun to move cautiously forward, shining his torch before them. ‘But about others getting in – getting in any time now – well, I just don’t know. Think of that Gregory’s business. I got in there just as we have got in here. And there was old Ourglass already, almost scooping the pool. And – mind you – I expect the sort of people who run places like this are pretty guileless. Other-worldly, and all that. Suppose a plausible and unscrupulous colleague hurried in on this Bodley’s Librarian as he was flooring his fourth glass of port–’

‘I think you have distorted ideas of life among senior members of this University.’ Jane paused. ‘Still, I see what you mean.’

‘It comes back to this: that the best thing will be for us to win out now. And first, we want lights.’

‘Isn’t that risky?’

‘I don’t see how it can be. We might be at the bottom of a mine, for all anybody in Oxford can know about it… And – by jove – here we are.’ Remnant’s hand had gone out to a cluster of switches; he flicked at them rapidly one by one. Clear light sprang up everywhere. What they had hitherto only glimpsed piecemeal they now saw in its entirety. Thus displayed, the vast storehouse was not less impressive than when Remnant’s torch had been exploring it. It was this, partly, as being another world from the Bodley that Jane knew. There, the buildings and its furnishings were heavy with immemorial associations and rich in intrinsic charm, so that the books were no more than an element in the total effect. But here, everything was modern and bleak and functional; the single use of the place was to range in an accessible manner as many books as could be crowded in. There were three main levels; they stood now on the second; and this and the level above them were no more than a system of girders supporting the stacks and the narrow lanes that ran between them and at intervals intersected them. Thus visibly on every side of them, and above them and below them too, were hundreds of thousands of books. It was a striking spectacle, but it was an uncommonly oppressive one as well. The narrow lanes were mere slits or canyons between the interminable and towering cliffs of leather and cloth and vellum. These went so monotonously on and on that one was constrained to fancy some illusion – one, perhaps, whereby a spectacle of less credible proportions was merely magnified by a cunning arrangement of mirrors. Nor, whether one looked up or down, did the eye and mind gain any relief. For the first time in her life Jane felt that she had some inkling of what it must feel like to be a neurotic suffering from acute claustrophobia. Living in a submarine must be something like this – a Jules Verne submarine as cramped as a real one but as big as a grand hotel. She would have given anything for space to swing a cat.

Remnant was busy with a pencil and paper against the side of the nearest stack. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘One copy for you and one for me, since we may find it quicker to split up. Title and casemark of the four likely books. They’re as complicated as you said. But I’ve noticed something about them. They’re in pairs. These two differ only in the last couple of figures on the line. And it’s the same with those. So we have just two rows of books to find, all told. There’s a start in that.’

Jane doubted its being much of a start, but she said nothing. Certainly Remnant’s observation was accurate as far as it went; in two several places in the Library they had to find a couple of books that would be shelved almost side by side. But in the
Library
, she reminded herself grimly; not necessarily in this single vast chamber hollowed out under Radcliffe Square. She looked at the stack nearest to her – one of a thousand identical units in the place – and frowned. ‘Why is it so broad?’ she asked. ‘Books don’t require all that depth.’

‘I’ve always been told that some are very deep indeed.’ Remnant seemed to take considerable satisfaction in this little joke. He was peering at the stack. ‘Actually, it’s pretty cunning – a space saving arrangement. I wonder if the old boy thought it up himself.’

‘You have a very primitive notion of the functions of Bodley’s Librarian. But how does it work?’

‘Can’t you see? They all move on rails. That allows you to mass four tiers of books without any space between. It’s simply two double-fronted bookcases that move parallel to each other and almost touching. And in every long row of them there’s one gap. You just find your place, and, if what you want is behind, you give a shove and get the gap where you want it… Like this.’ Remnant, as delighted as a boy with a new mechanical toy, gave a thrust at the case beside him. It rolled away, traversed the gap to which he had pointed, and came to rest with a dull thud against the case beyond. ‘Isn’t that enchanting? You could have your gap in the same place on both sides and be able to dodge through.’ He grew enthusiastic. ‘You could have a sort of perpetually changing course, and think up a sort of dodging game with rules. I wonder if the old boy –’

‘For pity’s sake get to work.’ Jane was exasperated. ‘If we have to shove a lot of these things about it easily doubles the job… I wish I had a notion where to begin.’

‘Haven’t you? Look down at your feet.’

Jane looked and was abashed. She had noticed that the ends of each stack bore case-marks. She now saw that at every main intersection the floor was painted with a system of arrows and symbols designed to show what further case-marks must be sought in one direction or another. She studied first this and then the paper in her hand. ‘I don’t think we’re burning hot,’ she said, ‘but it does seem to me that we may have had the enormous luck to begin not altogether cold… I believe all four really will be in this place, after all. Look – you hunt the two “
perlegi
” ones and I’ll hunt the two others.’

It was perhaps twenty minutes later that Jane knew she had progressed from warm to hot. Not only the case-marks but the titles glinting on the old leather spines told her as much. She had come to that wide field of learning upon which the late Dr Undertone had turned himself out to grass in his ripest years.

Sure Sanctuary of a Troubled Soul… Preces Privatae… An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness… Bowels Opened…
The ancient hortatory voices seemed to murmur endlessly on the shelves, as they must have come to murmur ceaselessly in the ear of the dead scholar.

She was on the ground floor of the vast chamber. Remnant’s quest had taken him higher, and into a remote corner. They were like Adam and Eve in the Garden, when they had separated the more efficiently to cultivate its fruits. Jane’s mind, drawn to this analogy by the Biblical cast of the acres of old print around her, for a moment elaborated the fancy. It was by taking advantage of that rash isolation of our first parents that the serpent –

Suddenly she knew that she was uneasy. But that was foolish. There could be no serpent in Bodley. She brought her mind back to her task.
An Apologetical Narration… The Sinner’s Mourning Habit… A Buckler against Death
. She halted, and gave a low cry. The first of the books she sought was there in front of her.
God’s Terrible Voice in the City
. She stretched out her hand to take it from the shelf. The hand trembled, so that she could hardly hold the volume securely. It was the excitement of the discovery, she told herself, that made her tremble. The book was quite small. She opened it, shook it, ran through the pages. There was no lurking paper.

And now for the second book, which she knew could not be far away. Peering at the shelves, she moved along the stack in front of her.
A Large Theatre of Divine Judgments… Enthusiasmus Triumphatus… The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation
… Her excitement must be mounting, for now she was trembling all over.
A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality
… It was not excitement that had taken command of her. It was fear.

It was the same fear that had reached out and seized her in the dark when she had been left alone outside St Gregory’s. And it was fear of something very evil and very close to her. Her senses, she knew, had brought her no report of this presence. But her certainty was entire. She fought against it. She forced her eye to travel over two more books.
Joy in Tribulation… An Examination and Censure of False Devotion…
She could hardly breathe. She looked at the next book, and put out her hand to it with a gasp. Then her senses did speak. One of the iron platforms above her had creaked, vibrated. She turned her head, and something moved on the very fringe of her vision. She looked up. Danger threatened her – not, as she had irresistibly felt, close at hand, but from high on a remote gallery. There, framed at the end of a vista of stacks, a man had appeared. He was looking at her directly and fixedly, and she saw that it was not Remnant. The platform creaked again beneath the weight of the man standing on it. He was Mark Bultitude.

At least she must have the book. She grasped it and pulled it from the shelf. Bultitude was raising an arm as if to point at her. She remembered that she could shout.

‘
Roger!
’

As if she had spoken a magic word, the books immediately in front of her moved. Thrust at by an unseen hand on its farther side, the stack glided away on its rails. And in the gap stood a man – a man with a pale, freckled face.

‘
Geoffrey!
’

As once before that day, she stretched out a hand to her lover. And Geoffrey Ourglass too stretched out a hand. But it was not to her. It was to the book.

The movement was a blinding revelation – instantaneous and final. The foundations of Jane’s world had crumbled as in some fantastic spectacle on a stage. She gave one protesting cry, and then acknowledged the truth. Geoffrey took a step forward and with horrible dexterity, like a low thief on a racecourse, drew the book from under her arm. He stepped back and the stack moved again. In a fraction of time she was once more confronting only a wall of books. She heard a woman’s voice calling for help in a strong, clear voice. It was her own.

The place was suddenly full of voices: her brother’s, Remnant’s, Bultitude’s – and another, elderly and authoritative, that she knew to be that of the Bodley Librarian. At the end of the long lane of books in which she was standing she glimpsed one and then another hurrying figure in uniform. The police had come. Over the dark surface of the great horror that Jane confronted, a tiny and momentary horror rippled. It was very shocking that the Bodleian should be turned over to this sort of thing.

There were now other sounds as well as the shouting: a low rumbling, at first intermittent and then rapidly becoming – almost continuous; a succession of dull thuds, with now and then a clash of metal, as one massive and buffered rampart of books came up hard against another. It was Roger Remnant’s grotesque game come true. The place had become a vast maze, through which Geoffrey fled and the mustered forces of society pursued. But it was a moving, a protean maze, a kaleidoscopic or mutable labyrinth, changing its form from moment to moment as, now here and now there, one or another gap opened or closed between the stacks. It was like a chase through a surrealist nightmare – a chase down endless corridors in which every yard of wall could become at any moment an opening valve, a sliding door.

They were closing in. They were driving him towards the centre of the great, dimly vaulted chamber. Jane moved towards the centre too. She had no awareness of what she was doing. Her lover had been a criminal. And now he was become a hunted man.

In the middle there was a small clear space – a sort of well up one side of which a spiral staircase climbed through tier upon tier of books. Geoffrey had leapt out of hiding and was at the foot of it. He started to climb. The book was still in his hand. He went up with incredible speed, so that as her eye followed him the surrounding books seemed to take on a spiral motion of their own. There were two figures pounding after him. He was high – very high. Not far above his head must be the cobbles of Radcliffe Square, where the other hunted man had lain… From somewhere on a lower level she heard a shouted summons, and in an instant two further figures had appeared at the head of the stair. Geoffrey saw them, ducked under the rail, and leapt perilously to the top of a stack. He swayed, steadied himself, prepared for another leap. In the split second before his taking-off the book dropped from his hand. His foot caught on it and he fell.

He fell sheer – and into a great darkness that now flooded up over Jane. But for a second yet her inward eye could see him – plunging down through a million books, rank upon rank of books, armies of unalterable law.

‘Thank you.’ Bodley’s Librarian took the book from Appleby, laid it on his desk, and examined it carefully. ‘The joints are cracked, I fear. But, on the whole, we must congratulate ourselves on getting off fairly lightly.’ He turned to Remnant. ‘I suppose,’ he asked mildly, ‘that you came in by the Mendip cleft?’

For the first and only time during the events here chronicled, Roger Remnant was staggered. ‘Yes, sir – we did. But surely you don’t–’

‘My dear boy, I first entered Bodley that way myself. It was what first drew my interest to the Library. So it is very possible, you see, that one day this room will be your own. I had supposed, I confess, that the Mendip cleft had long since passed out of mind. Otherwise, no doubt, I should have felt constrained to have something done about it. As one grows old, you know, one becomes very cautious and curmudgeonly.’ Bodley’s Librarian picked up the book again, adjusted his system of spectacles, and again examined it. ‘This is now something of a bibliographical curiosity, Sir John. It cannot be often that a book has proved lethal – in a direct physical sense, that is to say. Curious, too, that it should be
this
book. You have looked at the title?’