The Scroll Read Online Free PDF Page B

he might have pulled books out himself since anyone last dusted. They were on every shelf, all recent. What does your bookshop deal in, Mr. Danforth? What would your most expensive item be?”
    Now the cold ate through him and the taste of the coffee was bitter in his mouth. There was only one possible answer to that, unless he were to lie to her. That thought was born in his mind, and died.
    “Usually just a rare book, sometimes a manuscript or original folio, quite a lot of first editions, of course. They can fetch thousands, even tens of thousands. Just occasionally we get an old manuscript, possibly illuminated.”
    She looked at him steadily. “And at the moment?” she prompted.
    He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “At the moment we have an old manuscript which came in the bottom of a crate of pretty ordinary books, from an estate sale.”
    “Old?” she asked. “What do you call ‘old’?”
    What would she know about books? Probably nothing at all. World War II would be ancient history to her.
    “Mr. Danforth?” she prompted.
    “Possibly the time of Christ,” he answered, feeling a little melodramatic.
    Her interest was instant and intense. “Really? In what language? Latin? Hebrew? Aramaic?”
    “I think it’s Aramaic,” he replied. “It seems to be important, because I have had three people asking for it already, and I haven’t even had it authenticated yet.”
    “But you advertised it?” she said with a quick note of criticism in her voice.
    “No,” he answered. “No, I didn’t. I don’t know how anybody knew of it. And I don’t know whether it is Aramaic or not. I have a friend who knows a little, just words here and there, and that’s what he thinks it is. I still need an expert.”
    “Have you any idea at all what it is about?” she pressed. “What is it written on? Parchment, vellum? How long is it?”
    He withdrew a little bit. “Why do you want to know?”
    She smiled, and her expression was gentle and full of pride. “My father is Eli Tobias. He is an expert in ancient Aramaic scripts. We think Mr. Williams was killed for a rare book of some sort. That is why they put me onto the case.”
    He sighed. “You’re right. Three different men have come to me and offered anything I want if I will sell it to them. I can’t even photocopy the thing. It’s as if it were … possessed.”
    “Then you need an expert to look at it,” she replied. “Perhaps more than one. Did any of these men suggest what it is, or why they want it so much?”
    He repeated to her what each of the men had said and she listened to him without interrupting.
    “Keep it safe, Mr. Danforth,” she said after he had finished and stared at her over the cold coffee. “We shall send two experts tomorrow, or the day after. I think we have found the reason poor Mr. Williams was burned to death. Please … please be very careful.”
    Monty promised to do so, and went out into the street a little shakily. He drove back to Cambridge and worked in the shop until late afternoon. He finished cataloguing the last books of the Greville estate and decided to go home for supper, and then perhaps telephone Hank and tell him the latest news. It would be comforting to speak to him. His sanity was like a breath of clean air, blowing away the stale nonsense that had collected in his mind.
    He was surprised to find when he went outside that it had been raining quite heavily, and he had not noticed. The gutters were full and in places slurping over. Thank goodness it had stopped now or he would have been soaked. The sky was darkening in the east, and the red sky to the west promised a good day tomorrow, if you believe the old tales of forecasting.
    He turned the corner and the sunlight struck him in the face. He shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. The shock took him like a physical blow. The whole tarmac surface was covered with blood. It lay in pools, shining and scarlet. It ran gurgling in the