here at the library or at one of our homes.' He stepped back, slipping his hand into his pocket. 'I live uptown, by the way, near the Hudson. It's an easy walk from the subway.'
He paused as if awaiting a reply. Carol resolved not to give him her address, at least not for the moment. She remained silent.
He licked his lips. 'None of this is important,' he said at last. 'It can all be arranged later. Each time we get together, you'll give me your notes and I'll give you the new material… along with your pay.'
So there was to be money after all. 'And this pay would be-'
He laughed. 'I thought I'd mentioned that! I was thinking of twelve dollars an hour, plus expenses. Does that sound all right?'
'Twelve dollars an hour?' Hastily she tried to calculate. He'd said ten to fifteen hours a week; that would be anywhere from $120 to
… She gave up; her heart was beating too fast. She only knew she wasn't worth that much.
He looked momentarily uncertain. 'If you don't-'
'That sounds absolutely fine,' she got out. She hoped she appeared composed, but in her imagination she was already buying the outfit she'd seen in a shop on Greenwich Avenue, and a subscription to next season's ballet. Maybe even an air conditioner, too. God loved her.
'I'm glad it's satisfactory,' said the little man, with the faintest of smiles. 'It'll be off the books, of course.'
'Off the books?' She wasn't sure exactly what that meant, except that it was something illegal. The ranks of dancers faded and the air conditioner stopped. The room grew warm again.
He nodded. Was there impatience in his face? T assumed you'd prefer it that way. You won't have to give anything to your Uncle Sam.'
'Yes, yes, of course.' This was too good to be true. 'You mean, then… I could keep everything.'
'That's right. You would, I take it, be interested?'
'Yes, absolutely. This is just the sort of thing I've always been fascinated by – fairy tales, and myths, and primitive religion… ' She finished lamely, unable to recall if this was his intended subject; he hadn't actually said anything about religion, had he?
'Excellent,' he was saying. 'You sound like just the person I've been looking for. I need someone with an inquiring mind, who's not afraid of a little hard work.' He unfastened the strap to the briefcase and began digging inside. 'It may sound old-fashioned, butOh, dear!' He drew forth a plump, pale yellow book and turned it over to examine it. There were catalogue numbers on the spine. 'Oh, for heaven's sake, look at this. I'm getting so absent-minded these days! I seem to have walked off with someone else's book.' He grinned sheepishly. 'I'm afraid this must belong to that nice young fellow downstairs – the one with the glasses. Do you know him? At the table by the bulletin board?'
Carol shook her head.
'Well, I'll just have to make sure to return it.' With a sigh he laid the book idly on the windowsill, then turned back to Carol with a dazzling smile. 'Now, young lady, where was I?'
Downstairs, where rows of scholars frowned over texts, scribbled silently, or dozed, Jeremy Freirs reached for the yellow book and cursed when he realized it was gone. It was a dog-eared old copy of The House of Souls by Arthur Machen, bound in saffron-colored cloth, and it had been lying on top of the pile on his desk. He searched the pile again, but didn't find it. Damn! That pesky old queer must have taken it.
They had met, in fact, over that very book less than an hour before. Searching for it through the labyrinth of Voorhis's open stacks, Freirs had rounded an aisle in a deserted section of the library where bookshelves high as hedgerows blocked the sound from the street, and had come upon the old man hunched over the volume as if tracing its words with a his finger. At Freirs' approach he had glanced up like a child caught reading pornography – he was hardly more than child-size himself, in fact – and then he'd snapped the book shut. Freirs had seen him slip something hurriedly into his pocket. A pencil! No wonder the old guy had looked guilty. He'd probably been writing in the margins.
There was something not quite right about the man. He didn't look as seedy and dispirited as the other old- timers who frequented the library, yet he seemed far too elderly to be an academic. He looked like the sort of man who'd play the kindly uncle in some saccharine 1940s movie – not Freirs' style at all. Freirs had ignored him at first, but he'd been unable to find the book he sought on the shelves. Behind him the old man said softly, 'Could this be the one you're looking for?'
He held the book out for inspection. Freirs glanced at the spine. 'That's it, all right. Are you using it?'
'No, no, I'm all done.' Smiling, he handed over the book. 'Here, take it.'
Freirs hefted the book in his hand. It was fat and heavy, damn it, and he didn't have much time left to look through it all. He turned to go, but a hand caught his arm. The old man was looking up at him. His voice was practically a whisper. 'You're familiar with Machen? With his beliefs?'
'No,' said Freirs, a little louder than necessary. 'I've never read him. I just want to see if I should. ' Once more he made as if to leave. If he stayed away from his seat too long, someone might steal his book bag.
'Oh, you should, you really should.' The little man seemed not to care that he was detaining Freirs. 'He knew a thing or two, our Arthur. You'll be well repaid for reading him, I promise.'
Freirs nodded. 'Good, I'm glad.' Turning his back, he made his way up the aisles to his table.
He had a small square table to himself, in the rear, just beneath a bulletin board laden with clippings and notices like a brick wall overgrown with ivy. Throughout the spring it had been his usual place of work; the better tables, farther down the row, looked out upon the little patch of garden in back of the library, but he seldom arrived at Voorhis early enough to secure one. And just as well, too; if he'd had a window seat, he'd probably have spent all day staring out at godforsaken weeds instead of finishing his work.
Even without the distraction of a window view, he hadn't gotten quite as far as he'd expected over the past two months; he was still compiling a reading list for his projected dissertation, whose working title was currently 'Hell's Abhorr'd Dominions: The Dynamics of Place in the Gothic Universe,' though this now struck him as a Utile pretentious, even for Columbia. He added the Machen to the pile already on his desk, first transcribing the publication data -London, 1906 – and a list of the book's contents, some half dozen stories. He was searching the literature at the moment, still uncertain of his dissertation's scope. Even the most unlikely books might be worth a footnote or two, if only as a way of dropping the name; the longer he could pad out his bibliography, the more unlikely it would be that the board of examiners would be able to check all his references.
He was leafing through the second-to-last chapter in a Gothic bibliography, alternately amused and aghast at the titles – The Benevolent Monk, or, The Castle of Olalla, 1807; Deeds of Darkness, or, The Unnatural Uncle, 1805; The Midnight Groan, or, The Spectre of the Chapel, Involving an Exposure of the Horrible Secrets of the Nocturnal Assembly, 1808 – when someone cleared his throat. He looked up to see the old man standing beside his table, smiling down familiarly at him.
'I wonder if I can borrow Mr Machen back from you for just one moment,' the old man asked. 'Would you mind terribly? There's a passage I really ought to check.'
With a shrug Freirs tapped the yellow book at the top of the pile. 'Be my guest. Just bring it back when you're done, okay?'
But after opening the book the old man showed no signs of moving; he stood riffling through page after page and peering at each with an almost comical fervor, head darting back and forth with the movement of his eyes.
'Ah, here we are!' he said at last. He nodded to himself. 'Ah, yes
… yes.'
Freirs sighed and returned to his own reading – Gondez the Monk. .. Phantoms of the Cloister… Horrors of the Secluded Castle – but moments later the old man began to speak. ' 'We underrate evil,' ' he said, his voice a portentous whisper.
Freirs looked up. 'What's that?'
' 'We underrate evil,' ' the man repeated, reading a passage from the book.' 'We have quite forgotten the awfulness of real sin. What would your feelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you, and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmed with horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that you noticed at night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning? Well, these
