The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

perfectly normal, perfectly ordinary. There were four banknotes, six dollars and a hundred francs in all—not a large sum. In the next pocket she found a train ticket for the return journey from Paris to Marseilles.
    “Was he French?” said Pan.
    “Don’t know yet,” said Lyra. “Look, here’s a picture.”
    From the next pocket in the wallet she took out a grubby and much-handled card attesting to the identity of the owner, with a photogram showing the face of a man of forty, possibly, with black curly hair and a thin mustache.
    “That’s him,” Pan said.
    The card had been issued by His Majesty’s Foreign Office to Anthony John Roderick Hassall, who was a British citizen, and whose birth date showed him to be thirty-eight years old. The dæmon photogram displayed a small hawk-like bird of prey. Pan gazed at the pictures with intense interest and pity.
    The next thing she found was a small card she recognized, because she had one identical to it in her own purse: it was a Bodleian Library card. Pan made a small noise of surprise.
    “He must have belonged to the university,” he said. “Look, what’s that?”
    It was another card, this one issued by the university Department of Botany. It certified Dr. Roderick Hassall as a member of staff of the Department of Plant Sciences.
    “Why would they want to attack him?” Lyra said, not expecting an answer. “Did he look rich, or was he carrying something, or what?”
    “They did say…,” said Pan, trying to remember. “One of them—the killer—he was surprised that the man wasn’t carrying a bag. It sounded as if they’d been expecting him to. But the other man, the one who’d been wounded, wasn’t interested in thinking about that.”
    “ Was he carrying a bag? Or a briefcase, or a suitcase, or anything?”
    “No. Nothing.”
    The next paper she found was much folded and refolded, and reinforced with tape along the creases. It was headed LAISSEZ-PASSER.
    “What’s that?” said Pan.
    “A kind of passport, I think…”
    It had been issued by the Ministry of Internal Security of the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire, at Constantinople. It said in French, English, and Anatolian that Anthony John Roderick Hassall, botanist, of Oxford, Brytain, was to be allowed to travel through the realms of the Ottoman Empire, and that the authorities were to give him assistance and protection whenever needed.
    “How big is the Ottoman Empire?” said Pan.
    “Enormous. Turkey and Syria and Lebanon and Egypt and Libya and thousands of miles east as well. I think. Wait, here’s another….”
    “And one more behind that.”
    The other two documents had been issued by the Khanate of Turkestan, including the regions of Bactria and Sogdiana, and the prefecture of Sin Kiang in the Celestial Empire of Cathay. They said much the same thing, in much the same way, as the laissez-passer from the Ottoman Empire.
    “They’re out of date,” said Lyra.
    “But the Sin Kiang one is earlier than the Turkestan one….That means he was coming from there, and it took him…three months. It’s a long way.”
    “There’s something else in here.”
    Her fingers had found another paper hidden in an inside pocket. She tugged it out and unfolded it to find something quite different from the rest: a leaflet from a steamship company advertising a cruise to the Levant on a vessel called the SS Zenobia. It was issued by the Imperial Orient Line, and the English-language text promised A world of romance and sunshine.
    “A world of silks and perfumes,” Pan read, “of carpets and sweetmeats, of damascened swords, of the glint of beautiful eyes beneath the star-filled sky…”
    “Dance to the romantic music of Carlo Pomerini and his Salon Serenade Orchestra,” Lyra read. “ Thrill to the whisper of moonlight on the tranquil waters of the Mediterranean ….How can moonlight whisper? An Imperial Orient Levantine Cruise is the gateway to a world of loveliness ….Wait, Pan,