The Mist in the Mirror Read Online Free PDF Page B

so, and arranged to meet the Reverend Archibald Votable, High Master of Alton, at the Athenaeum Club in Pall Mall, but first, to visit Mr Theodore Beamish’s bookshop and offices in the district of Holborn.
    I found the shop with much difficulty. It stood in the middle of a row of tall, narrow brick houses that formed the east side of Crab Passage, a dark cobbled thoroughfare in the vicinity of Chancery Lane. It seemed to be unnamed on any map and unheard of by the passers-by from whom I sought directions, and I finally came upon it by accident, after cutting in and out, and had almost left it by the other side, for it was very short and bore no sign, when I caught sight of books, stacked from floor to ceiling, through the window of what I at first took to be a private dwelling, set between a dingy pipe and tobacco shop and a pair of high wooden gates leading to a drayman’s yard. It was only when I turned back and went to examine the place moreclosely that I saw the worn lettering Theo. Beamish, Bookseller, on a plate beside the door.
    Although it was another afternoon of winter sunlight out in the open streets, here in the passage, and especially within the shop, no brightness penetrated, and the blue sky was visible only in fragments, like chips of mosaic, above the buildings.
    Three stone steps led up to the door of the shop, which led directly into the ground floor room that ran some distance back. There was scarcely space to edge sideways between the shelves and stacks of books, mainly volumes of biography, history and travel, with many relating to the east. I hovered for some moments, getting my bearings and adjusting my eyes to the dimness – there was no light other than what filtered through the tall window, but no one emerged, so that at last I climbed a short steep staircase that led to an upper room, also full of books, but here the shutters were half-closed, so that I could not make any attempt to examine them. Next to this room was a cubby hole of an office containing a huge, overflowing desk, and stacks of boxes and piles of paper.
    A doorbell had jangled rather rustily as I entered the shop below, my footsteps had echoed on the bare wooden floorboards as well as on my mounting the stairs but still no one came out to greet me, or enquire my business, no one seemed aware of or interested in my presence in the place at all.
    I looked along the shelves at random, picking up a volume here and there, until I came upon a book about that part of China in which I had travelled only a few years previously, along the route set by Conrad Vane, and where I found most evidence of his presence. I opened it eagerly but as I began to turn the pages, I became aware of a strange, uncomfortable sensation. At first, it felt as if I were being watched and the impression was so strong that twice I looked sharply from the pages and over my shoulderaround the room, and finally towards the window. But there was no one, I was quite alone, and there was no sound save for the crisp turning of the pages under my hand. But the sensation did not leave me, and mingled with it was a prickle of unease, as though some sixth sense were warning me of danger. But what possible danger could there be? The sense of being observed became insistent, willing me to take notice of it, but again, on glancing round, even moving about the room and looking in every direction, I saw no one.
    The shop was very cold, and the air musty with the smell of old books, but now I smelled something else, a very faint, distinctive and strangely sweet odour. It was pungent and yet the trace was so slight that, when I inhaled more deeply in an effort to identify it, it was lost. But I knew it, and it was linked to some place, some situation I had been in. For a few seconds there was a swirl in my brain as I struggled to place it, snatches of confused images, sounds, colours, together with an odd sensation of instability or faintness, yet it was all so fleeting I could