glance for Sam. He passed through a bright patch of morning sun as he went, and Sam saw a wonderful, terrible thing: the Library Policeman cast no shadow.
He reached the back door. He grasped the knob. Without turning around he said in a low, terrible voice: 'If you don't want to thee me again, Mr Peebles, fi
He opened the door and went out.
A single frantic thought filled Sam's mind the minute the door closed again and he heard the Library Policeman's feet on the back porch: he had to lock the door.
He got halfway to his feet and then grayness swam over him and he fell forward, unconscious.
CHAPTER 10
1
'May I ... help you?' the receptionist asked. The slight pause came as she took a second look at the man who had just approached the desk.
'Yes,' Sam said. 'I want to look at some back issues of the
'Of course it is,' she said. 'But - pardon me if I'm out of line - do you feel all right, sir? Your color is very bad.'
'I think I may be coming down with something, at that,' Sam said.
'Spring colds are the worst, aren't they?' she said, getting up. 'Come right through the gate at the end of the counter, Mr - ?'
'Peebles. Sam Peebles.'
She stopped, a chubby woman of perhaps sixty, and cocked her head. She put one red-tipped nail to the corner of her mouth. 'You sell insurance, don't you?'
'Yes, ma'am,' he said.
'I thought I recognized you. Your picture was in the paper last week. Was it some sort of award?'
'No, ma'am,' Sam said, 'I gave a speech. At the Rotary Club.'
'Well, that's wonderful,' she said ... but she spoke as if there might be some doubt about it. 'You looked different in the picture.'
Sam came in through the gate.
'I'm Doreen McGill,' the woman said, and put out a plump hand.
Sam shook it and said he was pleased to meet her. It took an effort. He thought that speaking to people - and touching people, especially that - was going to be an effort for quite awhile to come. All of his old ease seemed to be gone.
She led him toward a carpeted flight of stairs and flicked a light-switch. The stairway was narrow, the overhead bulb dim, and Sam felt the horrors begin to crowd in on him at once. They came eagerly, as fans might congregate
around a person offering free tickets to some fabulous sold-out show. The Library Policeman could be down there, waiting in the dark. The Library Policeman with his dead white skin and red-rimmed silver eyes and small but hauntingly familiar lisp.
'That's the morgue,' Doreen McGill said, pointing. This was clearly a lady who pointed every chance she got. 'You only have to - '
'Morgue?' Sam asked, turning toward her. His heart had begun to knock nastily against his ribs.
Doreen McGill laughed. 'Everyone says it just like that. It's awful, isn't it? But that's what they call it. Some silly newspaper tradition, I guess. Don't worry, Mr Peebles - there are no bodies down there; just reels and reels of microfilm.'
She flicked on a line of switches at the foot of the stairs. A number of fluorescent lights, embedded in what looked like oversized inverted ice-cube trays, went on. They lit up a large low room carpeted in the same dark blue as the stairs. The room was lined with shelves of small boxes. Along the left wall were four microfilm readers that looked like futuristic hair-driers. They were the same blue as the carpet.
'What I started to say was that you have to sign the book,' Doreen said. She pointed again, this time at a large book chained to a stand by the door. 'You also have to write the date, the time you came in, which is - ' she checked her wristwatch - 'twenty past ten, and the time you leave.'
Sam bent over and signed the book. The name above his was Arthur Meecham. Mr Meecham had been down here on December 27th, 1989. Over three months ago. This was a well-lighted, well-stocked, efficient room that apparently did very little business.
'It's nice down here, isn't it?' Doreen asked complacently. 'That's because the federal government helps subsidize newspaper morgues - or libraries, if you like that word better. I know I do.'
A shadow danced in one of the aisles and Sam's heart began to knock again. But it was only Doreen McGill's shadow; she had bent over to make sure he had entered the correct time of day, and
He tried to duck the rest and couldn't.
Doreen pointed to the right wall, where three large folio volumes stood on a single shelf. 'That's January, February, and March of 1990,' she said. 'Every July the paper sends the first six months of the year to Grand Island, Nebraska, to be microfilmed. The same thing when December is over.' She extended the plump hand and pointed a red-tipped nail at the shelves, counting over from the shelf at the right toward the microfilm readers at the left. She appeared to be admiring her fingernail as she did it. 'The microfilms go that way, chronologically,' she said. She pronounced the word carefully, producing something mildly exotic:
She smiled to show that this was a joke, and perhaps to convey a sense of how wonderful she thought all this was. Chron-o-lodge-ick-a-lee speaking, the smile said, it was all sort of a gas.
'Thank you,' Sam said.
'Don't mention it. It's what we're here for.
