The Forgers Read Online Free PDF Page A

having spent a good deal of time studying the inscription, its date and place, its recipient, and above all the calligraphy and signature, when Diehl materialized like an apparition at my side, softly coughed, and asked the dealer if he might have a look at it too before it went back into the glass display case between Freud’s Die Traumdeutung and a signed copy of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus , each in astonishingly fine condition.
    â€œI’m sure you two must know each other?” said the genial dealer.
    Diehl and I turned and looked at one another.
    â€œI don’t, I’m afraid,” he said, although I sensed his eyes betrayed a subtle recognition of me. The unmodulated tone of his voice, flat as a folio’s flyleaf, was unreadable. I had always been far better at interpreting inanimate manuscripts than living voices and the looks on people’s faces.
    â€œDon’t think so,” I said, not quite lying but not exactly telling the truth—a tit-for-tat.
    We shook hands and I offered a platitude about the Darwin, something about how it amazed me that such a rare book could at the same time be so common. There were at least several available at the fair.
    â€œMoney is always a nice incentive,” the dealer said, joining in with his own platitude.
    â€œToo rich for my blood,” offered Diehl, as he handed the volume back and, after saying it was nice to meet me, left.
    â€œCollector?” I enquired, feigning naivete, having noticed that this Diehl fellow was rarely if ever to be seen carrying purchases, mummified in clear plastic bags, under his arm.
    â€œMore a scout. He’s sold me some good things over the years, though he surprises me now and again by buying the occasional gem. Not unlike yourself.”
    â€œOh,” I said, and turned my head to glance at him as he disappeared down the aisle crowded with fairgoers.
    Of course, neither Diehl nor I were ever, strictly speaking, scouts, other than to scout out nice copies of unsigned firsts that could after a “cooling period” re-enter the market duly autographed or fulsomely inscribed by their respective authors—or else pick up inexpensive, relatively unimportant period books and manuscripts with blank leaves that, extracted, could become canvases for newly created period manuscripts or letters. After that initial encounter, I began to suspect who and what he really was and, as discreetly as I could manage, asked those in my closest coterie of dealers where they happened to acquire this inscribed volume or that autograph letter. It seemed to me that more Conan Doyle documents were surfacing than usual, and because Sherlock Holmes had always been my favorite, my meat and potatoes, my black clay pipe and deerstalker hat if you will, I was keenly attuned to such minutiae. Fair or not, logical or not, I became convinced that Diehl was the primary source for this rising tide of inscribed and holograph Holmes materials. As I started looking into the matter I recalled the sleuth’s housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson, in the Sherlock Holmes movie The Spider Woman , who at one point proclaims, “What can’t be cured must be endured.” For better or worse, I have seen all the celluloid Sherlocks, from Basil Rathbone to Jeremy Brett, and while I far prefer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales to anything caught on film, that line stuck to me like a newly noticed birthmark. And much as I might hate a birthmark, I hated this sentiment. Not only are there myriad ways to avoid enduring the incurable but, other than a malignant tumor or some other terminal illness, I believe there is nothing that cannot be cured. You see, I am fundamentally an optimist.
    I began by questioning the authenticity of what were, to my honed eye, possible fakes. In my own work, any time I made even the most insignificant mistake when forging an inscription, I bit the bullet and either discarded the volume in disgust or