Down, down, down. He unlocked the door at the bottom and turned on the light.
The building was as old as most of the books, which was fitting. The basement had served many purposes; framed photographs in a corner showed what the renovation had uncovered. The floor had been bare earth for the first half century or so, and then quarters for two slaves, and then for two servants after the Civil War. Then it had been storage and children’s rooms and disuse alternating over more years until it had finally become what it now was.
Now the walls were filled with shelves, and the shelves were filled with volumes, and the volumes were filled with… everything. They rested in their ordered ranks, contemplating the deepest and widest thoughts man had accumulated since contemplation had begun.
The floor, walls, and ceiling were thick and fireproof. The dry, cool air was thick with their philosophies, histories and literatures. It was a very safe place for books.
A few very valuable volumes were in the bank safe deposit, and the lesser items were in the display room upstairs, but this was always the foundation and the heart.
Charles set the box on the desk and turned on the computer.
Then he opened the cardboard box and lifted out the first package, wrapped in crisp brown paper. The paper fell open as he cut the tape.
He opened a drawer and took white gloves, thin clean cotton, to put on, and then he touched the book.
The boards and spine were the brown of soil walked on and worn hard and flat. The lettering was faint.
He lifted the volume and studied it. The spine was sturdy and the page edges were aligned, with none loose. He cradled it in one hand and opened the front board.
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.
A two-inch square of light green paper slid off the first page. Alexandria Rare Books was printed on it, with the numbers 7273 2002 handwritten below.
He closed the book, turned it over, and opened the back board. Then he closed it again, turned it vertical, and opened to the center and then to a few other pages, efficiently and carefully, inspecting it at every angle.
Finally he set it back on its wrapping paper and turned to the computer. He typed 7273, read through the book’s history on the screen, and then started typing: Purchased at auction 4/21/08, Derek Bastien Estate. Condition unchanged, very good. Price-
He paused and wrote the name of the book on a scrap of the brown paper. He wrote $3,100 beside it, and then typed that number onto the screen. He carried the book to a shelf and moved a ceramic block to make a space.
He typed 235 into the Location field on-screen.
Then he stared again at the brown paper, and paused.
“… eleven… twelve… thirteen…” And he frowned.
But then he shrugged and started on the next package.
“Mr. Beale?”
“Yes?” He had four books and four prices listed on the brown paper. Two glass jars and a few small brushes were beside the book he was just closing.
Morgan had marched down the steps. “I’m getting the Anthony Trollope for Angelo to deliver.”
“Do you need the computer?”
“For just a minute. And I think Alice was just answering a phone call for you.”
“Mr. Beale?” Alice’s voice marched down the steps. “There’s a call for you, Mr. Edmund Cane.”
Charles slid his book into its new space and picked up the phone.
“Charles Beale.”
“Good afternoon.” A slow, deliberate voice. “My name is Edmund Cane.”
“Yes, Mr. Cane? What can I do for you?”
“I understand you were at the Bastien auction this morning?” Every syllable was a distinct word.
“Yes, I was.”
“You were present during the sale of the Honaker pedestal desk?”
“Derek Bastien’s desk? I was.”
“Perhaps you saw the young woman who purchased the desk?”
“Mr. Cane,” Charles said. “I hope I’m not being impertinent. By any chance, do you happen to have white hair and a dark gray mustache?”
The phone was silent as Einstein contemplated an equation or two. “Yes, I do. I see you remember me.”
“I certainly do, Mr. Cane. It was very dramatic.”
“Do you have any idea who might have wanted the desk?”
“Well, you did,” Charles said.
Time passed slowly, at least at Charles’s end of the phone. Morgan slipped the green label in the front of the Trollope and started wrapping it in brown paper. “Anyone else?” Mr. Cane finally said.
“I am sorry. You might try Norman Highberg. He has a showroom in Georgetown, and he knows the general antiques market much better than I. I only do books.”
“Actually, your name was among those given me by Mr. Highberg.”
“Hey boss, do you have the box for me?”
They both turned toward the door. In dark pants, dark shirt and dark tie, Angelo was transformed.
“Yes,” Charles said. “You’re always quiet coming into a room.”
“Everything is so always quiet here.” There was no transformation of his voice, or his eyes.
“Mr. Cane?” Charles said into the telephone. “I’m sorry, I’ll be just a moment.”
Morgan sealed the cardboard package. “I’m done.” He handed it to Angelo.
“Be very nice to the customer when you see him,” Charles said.
“Oh, I am always nice.”
“Do they think that you’re being nice?”
“I don’t know what they think.”
“I should ask them. You have the receipt for them to sign?”
“I have that.”
“Then we’ll see you when you get back. Thank you, Angelo.”
“Yes, boss.” And then he was gone.
“I’m sorry,” Charles said again to the telephone. “Is there anything else I can do to help you?”
“I would like to identify the young woman who bid against me. Do you know anything about her?”
“No, I don’t. I’m sorry.”
“You have never seen her before?”
“Not that I remember.”
“How unfortunate.”
“Actually, Mr. Cane, I did just think of something. I don’t think it would be much use. But an employee of mine was waiting outside the building. He might have seen her leave.”
“Could you ask him?”
“He just left for the afternoon. I’ll ask him this evening. But I doubt it would be much help.”
“That could be a great help.”
“I guess it’s all relative,” Charles said.
“Good day, Mr. Beale.”
“Good day, Mr. Cane.”
Morgan was looking at the books on the desk. “Those are the Derek Bastien books?”
“Yes. It doesn’t look like they’ve been touched since we sold them. They all still have their green labels in them.”
Morgan picked up one of the glass jars. “Was something loose?”
“Not particularly. The Gibbon had a little spot on the spine. I remember gluing it back when Derek first bought it, but it must not have dried all the way.”
“There are fourteen of them?”
“No, thirteen.”
“Maybe the computer’s wrong. Should I put them on the website?”
“Not yet. I’ll tell you when. I think they need a little rest first.”
The room was silent again. The invaders had all been repulsed.
Charles took the next book, the fifth, out of the box.
They were all books of law, government and human rights, by John Locke, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, John Adams, David Hume; Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, de Tocqueville and more; man’s nature and man’s hopes of overcoming it, or at least containing it.
He held the wrapped book, staring at it. He slowly raised and lowered it, feeling its weight.
His eyes darkened and his brow lowered in anger.
He removed the paper, very slowly.
It was John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The first page was as it should have been, but there was no green paper square. The back cover was normal.
Even as he held it, though, his fingers tensed. He stopped until they had relaxed and he was ready.
Reluctantly, he put his finger against the pages. He took a deep breath and steeled himself. He opened the volume near the middle.
“No!”
He closed his eyes. When he opened them, it was still the same.
“Alice?” he called up the stairs, when he could, trying to sound normal. “Could you ask Mrs. Beale to come down here, please?”
“Look,” he demanded, even as she was still in the doorway.
It was still on the desk where he’d set it. Defiled.
“What is it, Charles?” Her voice was the stillness that smoothed the waves, and her presence was the water’s depths untouched by the storms above.
He touched it. “The pages are cut.”
She came close, and she saw it, and his shock and grief was mirrored in her eyes. He waited for her to pass through the sorrow, as he had.
“What is that?”
He touched it, nestled in the hollow space, just a plain box of playing cards. The book had been hollowed for it.
“A card box.”
“Which book is it?”
He sighed. “John Locke.”
“Why?”
He could only stare. “I don’t know.”
Together, they could only stare. Then Dorothy asked the first practical question.
“Would Derek have done it?”
“Who else?” He shuddered. “It must have been.” The book lay open, embarrassed, on its spine. The cut was exactly sized to fit the box; only a very sharp knife could have cut so cleanly. Charles shivered. “But I can’t believe he would have.”
“How are the other books?”
“I haven’t finished them.”
“You should.” Encouraging, empathic, and a little stern, all together.
“I’ll dread opening each one.”
“I know. That’s why you need to get through them.”
“Just stay down here a little while, won’t you?”
“I will,” Dorothy said. The book was lying on its brown paper, and she closed it and pulled the whole thing to the side of the desk.
Charles lifted the next package from the cardboard box, took a breath, and opened it.
“That was the only one,” Charles said, with the last of the other twelve books safely on their shelves.
“We’ll have to do something with it,” Dorothy said.
“We can’t leave it here.” He pulled the paper back to the center of the desk. “I don’t know what to do. Just throw it away? I couldn’t bear to.”
“It’s completely ruined.”
“Thoroughly, through and through. I’ve never had to deal with such a thing. I can salvage the boards, and maybe we’d use them.”
“I suppose we could just put it on the shelf.”
“That would be as bad as throwing it away,” Charles said, “and I’d see it every time I came down here.”
“Then throw it away. I’ll do it for you.”
“Let’s wait.”
Dorothy had finished with sentiment. “The longer you wait, the harder it will be.”
“But not today.” Charles put his hand on the closed book. “I suppose we should see if anything is in the little box.” He opened the book. The box of cards hadn’t moved.
“What if there is?”
He looked at it bitterly. “Then I’ll propose a couple rounds of poker.” He put his fingers on the edges of the box. “It isn’t even period.” He worked it free and weighed it in his hand. “Not cards, anyway.”
“I hope it wouldn’t be.” Her voice was always musical; now it had a note of curiosity.
“It’s too light,” he said, and opened the top flap. “No jewels, no money, no ancient treasures. Just some papers.”
Dorothy moved closer to see. “They must be important.”
“They’d better be.” Several white sheets were folded together, and he opened the first. “I don’t even know what this is. A list.” Fifty or more handwritten lines, each two letters, a date, and a number. He showed it to Dorothy.
She read one from the middle of the page. “GJ, nine-twelve-oh-five, twenty-two fifty.”
“His computer passwords,” Charles said. “Or his automobile mileage.”
“Why would he keep his mileage inside John Locke?”
“Why would he keep anything inside John Locke? I don’t know.” He opened another page. “A copy of four checks.” He looked at them closely. “Cashier’s checks. They are made out to… Karen Liu.”
“That’s a lot of money,” Dorothy said.
“Five hundred thousand in all.”
“I wonder who Karen Liu is.”
“I remember Derek mentioning her name.” He frowned. “She is a congressman. Congresswoman. Congressperson.”
Then they both were silent. It was a silence of confusion, where thoughts were almost audible.
“Why-?” they both said. Dorothy finished the question.
“Why would Derek have that paper?”
Charles answered, staring, but not at anything. “I don’t know.”
“And what would the checks be for?”
“I don’t know.”
Dorothy took the paper. “They’re dated eight years ago. When did you sell him that book?”
“Five years ago.”
“I wonder where he kept the papers before that.”
Charles broke from his reverie. “Oh, he must have had some other hiding place. Maybe he had a hole chiseled out of a Renaissance statue? Or a Ming vase? Or maybe thumbtacked to the back of a Van Gogh.”
“Did he have a Van Gogh?”
“I don’t think so. But I wonder why he had them hidden at all.” Then slowly, he opened a third paper. It was a newspaper article. Charles and Dorothy both read the headline.
Man Killed, Police Search County for Wife.
“We shouldn’t look at these,” Charles said.
“Maybe we should return them.”
“Yes,” Charles said. “That’s what we should do.” But he sounded doubtful.
“Will you call his wife?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know whose they should be. Legally, they’re mine.”
“I don’t think they were meant to be sold,” Dorothy said.
“I’m sure they weren’t. But sale at auction is absolute.”
“You don’t want to keep them, do you?”
“No. It just means that they are mine to figure out what to do with.”
Now Dorothy was doubtful. “What did he do at the Justice Department?”
Charles folded the papers and put them back in the box. Distastefully, he pushed the box back into its lair. “Derek was Chief of Staff to the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs.”
Dorothy frowned, and the solemnity that had watched over the room shifted its gaze elsewhere. “I had no idea such a position existed,” she said. Her tone was plain that she saw no need that it should.
“It did. It does still, I suppose.”
“Then those papers must have something to do with it. They don’t have anything to do with us.”
“It’s still a poor place to keep them,” Charles said.
Dorothy’s attention was pulled back to the object on the desk.
“What will you do with the book?”
He stared at the ruin of it. “That is the real difficulty. Oh my,” he sighed. “I’m so disappointed.”
“How much is it worth?”
“I was going to say four thousand,” Charles said. “It was the most valuable book he had.”
“How much did you sell it to him for?”
“Twenty-six hundred, five years ago. But it’s not the money anyway.”
“It’s what it says about Derek.”
Now they were back to the beginning. “Yes,” Charles said. “Exactly. If he needed to hide something, there must have been a hundred other places that didn’t require destroying something. I remember delivering that book myself, and we talked for an hour about just it. I even remember the chess game we had while we talked.”
“He must have had a reason for doing what he did.”
“I’d like to know the reason,” Charles said.