ELUSIVE SHAKESPEARE
The sun had been up for more than an hour when on the following morning
Lucile lifted her head sleepily and looked at the clock.
"Sunday morning. I'm glad!" she exclaimed as she leaped out of bed and
raced away for a cold shower.
As she dressed she experienced a sensation of something unfinished and at
the same time a desire to hide something, to defend someone. At first she
could not understand what it all meant. Then, like a flash, the
occurrence of the previous night flashed upon her.
"Oh, that," she breathed.
She was surprised to find that her desire to shield the child had gained
tremendously in strength while she slept. Perhaps there are forces we
know nothing of, which work on the inner, hidden chambers of our mind
while we sleep, and having worked there, leave impressions which
determine our very destinies.
Lucile was not enough of a philosopher to reason this all out. She merely
knew that she did not want to tell anyone of the strange incident, no not
even her roommate. And in the end that was just what happened. She told
no one.
When she went back to her work on Monday night a whole busy day had
passed in the library. Thousands of books had shot up the dummy elevator
to have their cards stamped and to be given out. Thousands had been
returned to their places on their shelves. Was a single book missing?
Were two or three missing? Lucile had no way of knowing. Every book that
had gone out had been recorded, but to look over these records, then to
check back and see if others were missing, would be the work of weeks.
She could only await developments.
She was surprised at the speed with which these developments came. Mr.
Downers, the superintendent, was noted for his exact knowledge regarding
the whereabouts of the books which were under his care. She had not been
working an hour when a quiet voice spoke to her and with a little start
she turned to face her superior.
"Miss Tucker," the librarian smiled, "do you chance to have any knowledge
of the whereabouts of the first volume of our early edition of
Shakespeare?"
"Why, no," the girl replied quickly. "Why--er"--there was a catch in her
throat--"is it gone?"
Mr. Downers nodded as he replied:
"Seems temporarily so to be. Misplaced, no doubt. Will show up later." He
was still smiling but there were wrinkles in his usually placid brow.
"I missed it just now," he went on. "Strange, too. I saw it there only
Saturday. The set was to be removed from the library to be placed in the
Noyes museum. Considered too valuable to be kept in the library. Very
early edition, you know.
"Strange!" he puzzled. "It could not have been taken out on the car, as
it was used only in the reference reading room. It's not there. I just
phoned. However, it will turn up. Don't worry about it."
He turned on his heel and was gone.
Lucile stared after him. She wanted to call him back, to tell him that it
was not all right, that it would not turn up, that the strangely quaint
little person she had seen in the library at midnight had carried it
away. Yet she said not a word; merely allowed him to pass away. It was as
if there was a hand over her mouth forbidding her to speak.
"There can't be a bit of doubt about it," she told herself. "That girl
was standing right by the shelf where the ancient Shakespeare was kept.
She took it. I wonder why? I wonder if she'll come back. Why, of course
she will! For the other volume, or to return the one she has. Perhaps
to-night. Two volumes were too heavy for those slim shoulders. She'll
come back and then she shan't escape me. I'll catch her in the act. Then
I'll find out the reason why."
So great was her faith in this bit of reasoning that she resolved that,
without telling a single person about the affair, she would set a watch
that very night for the mysterious child and the elusive Shakespeare. She
must solve the puzzle.
That night as she sat in the darkened library, listening, waiting, she
allowed her mind to recall in a dim and dreamy way the face and form of
the mysterious child. As she dreamed thus there suddenly flashed into the
foreground from the deepest depths of her memory the time and
circumstance on which she had first seen that child. She saw it all as in
a dream. The girl had been dressed just as she was Saturday at midnight.
She had entered the stacks. That had been a month before. She had
appeared leading an exceedingly old man. Bent with the weight of years,
leaning upon a cane, all but blind, the old man had moved with a
strangely youthful eagerness.
He had been allowed to enter the stacks only by special request. He was
an aged Frenchman, a lover of books. He wished to come near the books, to
sense them, to see them with his age-dimmed eyes, to touch them with his
faltering hands.
So the little girl had guided him forward. From time to time he had asked
that he be allowed to handle certain volumes. He had touched each with a
reverent hand. His touch had resembled a caress. Some few he had opened
and had felt along the covers.
"I wonder why he did that," Lucile had thought to herself.
She paused. A sudden thought had flashed into her mind. At the risk of
missing her quarry, she groped her way to the shelf where the companion
to the stolen volume lay and took it down. Slowly she ran her fingers
over the inner part of the cover.
"Yes," she whispered, "there is something."
She dared not flash on the light. To do so might betray her presence in
the building. To-morrow she would see. Replacing the volume in its
accustomed niche, she again tiptoed to her post of waiting.
As she thought of it now, she began to realize what a large part her
unconscious memory had played in her longing to shield the child. She had
seen the child render a service to a feeble and all but helpless old man.
Her memory had been trying to tell her of this but had only now broken
through into her wakeful mind. Lucile was aroused by the thought.
"I must save her," she told herself. "I must. I must!"
Even with this resolve came a perplexing problem. Why had the child taken
the book? Had she done so at the old man's direction? That seemed
incredible. Could an old man, tottering to his grave, revealing in spite
of his shabby clothing a one-time more than common intellect and a
breeding above the average, stoop to theft, the theft of a book? And
could he, above all, induce an innocent child to join him in the deed? It
was unthinkable.
"That man," she thought to herself, "why he had a noble bearing, like a
soldier, almost, certainly like a gentleman. He reminded me of that great
old general of his own nation who said to his men when the enemy were all
but upon Paris: 'They must not pass.' Could he stoop to stealing?"
These problems remained all unsolved, for on that night no slightest
footfall was heard in the silent labyrinth.
The next night was the same, and the next. Lucile was growing weary,
hollow-eyed with her vigil. She had told Florence nothing, yet she had
surprised her roommate often looking at her in a way which said, "Why are
you out so late every night? Why don't you share things with your pal?"
And she wanted to, but something held her back.
Thursday night came with a raging torrent of rain. It was not her night
at the library. She would gladly have remained in her cozy room, wrapped
in a kimono, studying, yet, as the chimes pealed out the notes of Auld
Lang Syne, telling that the hour of ten had arrived, she hurried into her
rubbers and ulster to face the tempest.
Wild streaks of lightning faced her at the threshold. A gust of wind
seized her and hurried her along for an instant, then in a wild, freakish
turn all but threw her upon the pavement. A deluge of rain, seeming to
extinguish the very street light, beat down upon her.
"How foolish I am!" she muttered. "She would not come on a night like
this."
And yet she did come. Lucile had not been in her hiding place more than a
half hour when she caught the familiar pit-pat of footsteps.
"This time she shall not escape me," she whispered, as with bated breath
and cushioned footstep she tiptoed toward the spot where the remaining
Shakespeare rested.
Now she was three stacks away. As she paused to listen she knew the child
was at the same distance in the opposite direction. She moved one stack
nearer, then listened again.
She heard nothing. What had happened?--the child had paused. Had she
heard? Lucile's first impulse was to snap on a light. She hesitated and
in hesitating lost.
There came a sudden glare of light. A child's face was framed in it, a
puzzled, frightened face. A slender hand went out and up. A book came
down. The light went out. And all this happened with such incredible
speed that Lucile stood glued to her tracks through it all.
She leaped toward the dummy elevator, only to hear the faint click which
told that it was descending. She could not stop it. The child was gone.
She dashed to a window which was on the elevated station side. A few
seconds of waiting and the lightning rewarded her. In the midst of a
blinding flash, she caught sight of a tiny figure crossing a broad
stretch of rain-soaked green.
The next instant, with rubbers in one hand and ulster in the other, she
dashed down the stairs.
"I'll get her yet," she breathed. "She belongs down town. She'll take the
elevated. There is a car in seven minutes. I'll make it, too. Then we
shall see."