“In an ideal world, I would return the book and get my money back. Then the auction house would give it to you as the rightful owner.”
“Your tone tells me that’s not likely to happen.”
“It’s not theirs to give. Their position would be that all sales are final. In that ideal world, maybe you could discover who consigned it. But then you’d have to fight it out with him.”
“How do they think I’m supposed to do that?”
I shrugged. “Not their problem.”
“So much for the ideal world. Now what?”
I didn’t say anything. Hell, I was no lawyer: it wasn’t my place to tell her what to do. If I made a good-faith effort to find out about the book, nobody could ask more than that.
“This is some situation,” she said.
Yes, it was, but I wasn’t going to advise her.
“If you keep the book, I lose. If you give it back, I still lose.”
So far she had an excellent grasp of it.
“I guess my only recourse is to persuade you to give
There was a touch of self-ridicule in her voice, like,
“No one but a fool would do that,” she said.
She had that right. In our dog-eat-dog world, she was nothing to me. She was trouble and pain, the embodiment of bad news. But my heart went out to her.
“I shouldn’t joke about it,” she said. “That’s a lot of money to joke about.”
“Tell me about it.”
I hadn’t been aware she’d been joking—how could I tell?—but now in her self-deprecating laugh I caught a glimpse of the girl she’d been: a heartbreaker, I’d bet, in the springtime of the Roaring Twenties with her life just beginning and the world opening up. In that moment the money seemed crazily irrelevant. It was still only Indian money: If I had to give up the book, I’d miss it like a severed kidney, but how much would I really miss the stupid money? I shifted my weight on the stool and said, “I don’t know what I’d do,” and she took in her breath and held it for a moment.
“I just don’t know, that’s all I’m saying. If we could verify everything—if there were no doubts—then I guess that would be one of my options, wouldn’t it?”
She shook her head. “You’re out of your mind.”
“We’re not breaking any new ground there, Mrs. Gallant.”
She squinted and peered, said, “I wish I could see you better,” but her apprehension was gone. Her fear was gone, and what was left between us was a strange and growing harmony. Was that trust I saw in her face?
“I had no idea what I’d find when I came here. I certainly didn’t expect to meet a man of honor. I thought such creatures were extinct today.”
“Don’t get too carried away, ma’am. I haven’t done anything yet.”
But there was no getting around it: in those few minutes, something fundamental had changed between us. She gave a small shiver and clutched at the collar of her dress. I asked if she was cold—I had an afghan back in my office—but she shook her head.
“Mr. Ralston?”
“Yes, ma’am?” He came up to join us.
“Would you please get my bag from the car?”
I had my own chilling moment as Ralston brought in the bag and she directed him to take out what was obviously a book wrapped in cloth. What else would it be but a Burton? I fingered its violet cloth cover, opened it to the title page, and my last doubt about her vanished. A cherry copy, an exquisite
“That’s an exceedingly rare volume today,” she said. “I’ve had it hidden away, protected it for years. I understand it’s unheard of to find one with the forbidden appendix intact.”
The notorious so-called infibulation appendix. I turned to page 591 and found it tipped in, four pages in Latin. I remembered from Brodie’s biography that it had contained material then considered so salacious that the printers had refused to bind it into the book.
“The sexual practices of the Somalis,” she said. “All spelled out for the public horrification and secret titillation of proper old hypocritical England. Penis rings, female circumcision—things they couldn’t talk about then and we
