THE VANISHING PORTLAND CHART
Florence was not rattling on and on through the night as Lucile dreamed.
Some two miles from the heart of the city her journey on the elevated
came to a halt. The child left the car and went bounding down the steps.
Not many moments passed before Florence realized that her destination was
a famous library, the Newburg. Before she knew it the massive structure
of gray sandstone loomed up before her. And before she could realize what
was happening, the child had darted through the door and lost herself in
the labyrinth of halls, stairways and passageways which led to hundreds
of rooms where books were stacked or where huge oak tables invited one to
pause and read.
"She's gone!" Florence gasped. "Now how shall I find her?"
Walking with all the speed that proper conduct in such a spacious and
dignified hostelry of books would allow, she passed from room to room,
from floor to floor, until, footsore and weary, without the least notion
of the kind of room she was in or whether she was welcome or not, she at
last threw herself into a chair to rest.
"She's escaped me!" she sighed. "And I promised to keep in touch with
her. What a mess! But the child's a witch. Who could be expected to keep
up with her?"
"Are you interested in the exhibit?" It was the well-modulated tone of a
trained librarian that interrupted her train of thought. The question
startled her.
"The--er--" she stammered. "Why, yes, very much."
What the exhibit might be she had not the remotest notion.
"Ah, yes," the lady sighed. "Portland charts are indeed interesting.
Perhaps you should like to have me explain some of them to you?"
"Portland charts." That did sound interesting. It suggested travel. If
there was any one thing Florence was interested in, it was travel.
"Why, yes," she said eagerly, "I would."
"The most ancient ones," said the librarian, indicating a glass case,
"are here. Here you see one that was made in 1440, some time before
Columbus sailed for America. These maps were made for mariners. Certain
men took it up as a life work, the making of Portland charts. It is
really very wonderful, when you think of it. How old they are, four or
five hundred years, yet the coloring is as perfect as if they were done
but yesterday."
Florence listened eagerly. This was indeed interesting.
"You see," smiled the librarian, "in those days nothing much was known of
what is now the new world, but from time to time ships lost at sea
drifted about to land at last on strange shores. These they supposed were
shores of islands. When they returned they related their experiences and
a new island was stuck somewhere on the map. The exact location could not
be discovered, so they might make a mistake of a thousand or more miles
in locating them, but that didn't really matter, for no one ever went to
them again."
"What a time to dream of," sighed Florence. "What an age of mysteries!"
"Yes, wasn't it? But there are mysteries quite as wonderful to-day. Only
trouble is, we don't see them."
"And sometimes we do see them but can't solve them." Florence was
thinking of the mystery that thus far was her property and her chum's.
"The maps were sometimes bound in thin books very much like an atlas,"
the librarian explained. "Here is one that is very rare." She indicated a
book in a case.
The book was open at the first map with the inside of the front cover
showing. Florence was about to pass it with a glance when something in
the upper outside corner of the cover caught and held her attention. It
was the picture of a gargoyle with a letter L surrounding two sides of
it. It was a bookmark and, though she had not seen the mark in the
missing Shakespeare, she knew from Lucile's description of it that this
must be an exact duplicate.
"Probably from the same library originally," she thought. "I suppose
these charts are worth a great deal of money," she ventured.
"Oh! yes. A great deal. One doesn't really set a price on such things.
These were the gift of a rich man. It is the finest collection except one
in America."
As Florence turned to pass on, she was startled to see the mysterious
child who had escaped from her sight nearly an hour before, standing not
ten feet from her. She was apparently much interested in the cherubs done
in blue ink on one chart and used to indicate the prevailing direction of
the winds.
"Ah, now I have you!" she sighed. "There is but one door to this room. I
will watch the door, not you. When you leave the room, I will follow."
With the corner of an eye on that door, she sauntered from case to case
for another quarter of an hour. Then seized with a sudden desire to
examine the chart book with the gargoyle in the corner of its cover, she
drifted toward it.
Scarcely could she believe her eyes as she gave the case a glance. _The
chart book was gone._
Consternation seized her. She was about to cry out when the thought
suddenly came to her that the book had probably been removed by the
librarian.
The next moment a suggestion that the ancient map book and the presence
of the child in the room had some definite connection flashed through her
mind.
Hurriedly her eye swept the room. The child was gone!
There remained now not one particle of doubt in her mind. "She took it,"
she whispered. "I wonder why."
Instantly her mind was in a commotion. Should she tell what she knew? At
first she thought she ought, yet deliberation led to silence, for, after
all, what did she know? She had not seen the child take the book. She had
seen her in the room, that was all.
And now the librarian, sauntering past the case, noted the loss. The
color left her face, but that was all. If anything, her actions were more
deliberate than before. Gliding to a desk, she pressed a button. The next
moment a man appeared. She spoke a few words. Her tone was low, her lips
steady. The man sauntered by the case, glanced about the room, then
walked out of the door. Not a word, not an outcry. A book worth thousands
had vanished.
Yet as she left the library, Florence felt how impossible it would have
been for her to have carried that book with her. She passed four
eagle-eyed men before she reached the outside door and each one searched
her from head to foot quite as thoroughly as an X-ray might have done.
"All the same," she breathed, as she reached the cool, damp outer air of
night, "the bird has flown, your Portland chart book is gone, for the
time at least.
"Question is," she told herself, "what am I going to do about it?"