The Secret Mark Part 7

Not many moments pa.s.sed before Florence realized that her destination was a famous library, the Newburg. Before she knew it the ma.s.sive 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 pa.s.sageways 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 s.p.a.cious and dignified hostelry of books would allow, she pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ps lost at sea drifted about to land at last on strange sh.o.r.es. These they supposed were sh.o.r.es 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 b.u.t.ton. 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 pa.s.sed 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?"

CHAPTER VIII WHAT WAS IN THE PAPIER-MACHE LUNCH BOX

"We can tell whether she really took it," said Lucile after listening to Florence's story of her strange experiences in the Portland chart room of the famous old library. "We'll go back to Tyler street and look in at the window with the torn shade. If she took it, it's sure to be in the empty s.p.a.ce in the book-shelf. Looks like he was trying to fill that s.p.a.ce."

"He's awfully particular about how it's filled," laughed Florence. "He might pick up enough old books in a secondhand store to fill the whole s.p.a.ce and not spend more than a dollar."

"Isn't it strange!" mused Lucile. "He might pack a hundred thousand dollars' worth of old books in a s.p.a.ce two feet long, and will at the rate he's going."

"The greatest mystery after all is the gargoyle in the corner of each book they take," said Florence, wrinkling her brow. "He seems to be sort of specializing in those books. They are taken probably from a private library that has been sold and scattered."

"That is strange!" said Lucile. "The whole affair is most mysterious!

And, by the way," she smiled, "I have never taken the trouble to look into that papier-mache lunch box the child lost on the street, the night we rescued her from that strange and terrible woman. There might possibly be some clue in it."

"Might," agreed Florence.

Now that the thought had occurred to them, they were eager to inspect the box. Lucile's fingers trembled as they unloosed the clasps which held it shut. And well they might have trembled, for, as it was thrown open, it revealed a small book done in a temporary binding of vellum.

Lucile gave it one glance, then with a little cry of surprise, dropped it as if it were on fire.

"Why! Why! What?" exclaimed Florence in astonishment.

"It's Frank Morrow's book, Walton's 'Compleat Angler.' The first edition.

The one worth sixteen hundred dollars. And it's been right here in this room all the time!" Lucile sank into a chair and there sat staring at the strangely found book.

"Isn't that queer!" said Florence at last.