'That's a lot of money for books.'
'He was an excellent customer.'
'But a hundred and thirty thousand dollars?'
'Spread out over almost five years.'
'Nevertheless--'
'And most of them were extremely rare books, you understand.'
'Would you be willing to buy them back from the estate?' Joshua asked, trying to determine if the man was honest.
'Buy them back? Oh, yes, I'd be happy to do that. Most definitely.'
'How much?'
'Well, I can't say exactly until I see them.'
'Take a stab in the dark. How much?'
'You see, if the volumes have been abused--tattered and torn and marked and whatnot--then that's quite another story.'
'Let's say they're spotless. How much would you offer?'
'If they're in the condition they were when I sold them to Mr. Frye, I'm prepared to offer you quite a bit more than he originally paid for them. A great many of the titles in his collection have appreciated in value.'
'How much?' Joshua asked.
'You're a persistent man.'
'One of my many virtues. Come on, Mr. Hawthorne. I'm not asking you to commit yourself to a binding offer. Just an estimate.'
'Well, if the collection still contains every book that I sold him, and if they're all in prime condition ... I'd say allowing for my margin of profit, of course. .. around two hundred thousand dollars.'
'You'd buy back the same books for seventy thousand more than he paid you?'
'As a rough estimate, yes.'
'That's quite an increase in value.'
'That's because of the area of interest,' Hawthorne said. 'More and more people come into the field every day.'
'And what is the field?' Joshua asked. 'What kind of books was he collecting?'
'Haven't you seen them?'
'I believe they're on bookshelves in his study,' Joshua said. 'Many of them are very old books, and a lot of them have leather bindings. I didn't realize there was anything unusual about them. I haven't taken time to look closely.'
'They were occult titles,' Hawthorne said. 'I only sell books dealing with the occult in all its many manifestations. A high percentage of my wares are forbidden books, those that were banned by church or state in another age, those that have not been brought back into print by our modern and skeptical publishers. Limited edition items, too. I have more than two hundred steady customers. One of them is a San Jose gentleman who collects nothing but books on Hindu mysticism. A woman in Marin County has acquired an enormous library on Satanism, including a dozen obscure titles that have been published in no language but Latin. Another woman in Seattle has bought virtually every word ever printed about out-of-body experiences. I can satisfy any taste. I'm not merely polishing my ego when I say that I'm the most reputable and reliable dealer in occult literature in this country.'
'But surely not all of your customers spend as much as Mr. Frye did.'
'Oh, of course not. There are only two or three others like him, with his resources. But I've got a few dozen clients who budget approximately ten thousand dollars a year for their purchases.'
'That's incredible,' Joshua said.
'Not really,' Hawthorne said. 'These people feel that they are teetering on the edge of a great discovery, on the brink of learning some monumental secret, the riddle of life. Some of them are in pursuit of immortality. And some are searching for spells and rituals that will bring them tremendous wealth or unlimited power over others. Those are persuasive motivations. If they truly believe that just a little more forbidden knowledge will get them what they want, then they will pay virtually any price to obtain it.'
Joshua swung around in his swivel chair and looked out the window. Low gray clouds were scudding in from the west, over the tops of the autumn-somber Mayacamas Mountains, bearing down on the valley.
'Exactly what aspect of the occult interested Mr. Frye?' Joshua asked.
'He collected two kinds of books loosely linked to the same general subject,' Hawthorne said. 'He was fascinated by the possibility of communicating with the dead. Seances, table knockings, spirit voices, ectoplasmic apparitions, amplification of ether recordings, automatic writing, that sort of thing. But his greatest interest, by far, lay in literature about the living dead.'
'Vampires?' Joshua asked, thinking about the strange letter in the safe-deposit box.
'Yes,' Hawthorne said. 'Vampires, zombies, creatures of that sort. He couldn't get enough books on the subject. Of course, I don't mean that he was interested in horror novels and cheap sensationalism. He collected only serious nonfiction studies--and certain select esoterica.'
'Such as?'
