The Stone Giant Read Online Free PDF Page A

labels on them and put them in a box and mutter now and again about opening a museum of natural history. His lending library was an excuse to sit in a stuffed chair and read and smoke all day.
    But when Escargot arrived at the library, the Professor wasn’t, in fact, reading and smoking. He was out with a net after salamanders, said his young assistant. Escargot wondered aloud if the assistant had, perhaps, seen the young lady who was so fond of Smithers books. Not for a week, said the youth, grinning at Escargot as if the two of them shared an unspoken joke. Rumor had it she’d left town. Old Stover, they said, had fired her, and she’d gone back to Seaside. She had been renting a room over the tavern and had left the same night as the altercation. The young man winked familiarly at Escargot, then seemed to take a long look at him, as if suddenly noticing something that he hadn’t seen a moment before. Escargot straightened his shoulders abruptly and gave the youth a sidewise glance.
    ‘Did she
say
she was going back to Seaside?’
    ‘Now how would I know?’ asked the youth, bending over the counter to have a look at Escargot’s shoes. ‘She didn’t say
nothing
to me, did she? Though that don’t mean she wouldn’t have. She said plenty to me before.’
    ‘Did she,’ said Escargot flatly, shaking his head and turning to leave. He was suddenly tired of trekking around town in worn-out clothes and with nothing to do but carry on maddening conversations with whomever he was unfortunate enough to bump into. That was one of the drawbacks of having no real business to attend to. If he were Beezle, pedaling groceries up the hill, he could shout incoherencies at people without offending them. He’d be respected because he was busy. Being busy was a virtue; being idle was a vice. That was one of life’s vast mysteries.
    On the way out the door he nearly bumped into Professor Wurzle, who everyone referred to as ‘the Professor’ even though he was only three years out of the university and had never been, as far as Escargot could tell, a teacher of any sort. Escargot himself had attended the university, for a time anyway. It gave one – what was it? – a certain respectability when one was pursuing a monied wife. Wurzle carried in either hand a fat salamander, speckled and wide-eyed.
    ‘Look at these specimens!’ he cried happily at Escargot.
    ‘Very nice indeed.’
    ‘First of the season, sir. First of the season. You don’t get many of this stature, not east of the mountains.’
    ‘I don’t suppose you do,’ said Escargot, stopping for a moment to admire the beasts. Then, almost under his breath, he asked, ‘Haven’t seen Leta around, have you? The dark-haired girl who reads Smithers?’
    ‘Who?’ asked Wurzle, wrinkling up his forehead. Then he looked hard into the face of one of the salamanders, as if it had been the salamander that had spoken to him, or as if he suspected that the creature knew the answer to Escargot’s question.
    ‘I already told him all there is to know!’ shouted the young man from within the store. ‘He don’t want nothing but trouble!’
    ‘Say,’ said Wurzle, brightening up. ‘I’ve built a cage for these two that I’m rather proud of – potted plants, little caverns, bit of a pond. Care to take a look at it?’
    ‘Thanks,’ said Escargot, backing off down the boardwalk, ‘but I’ve got to be off. Got to check the lines before dusk. Perhaps later?’
    ‘Certainly,’ said the Professor, already stepping into the library and looking again into the face of his salamander. ‘Anytime at all. I’m always here, or at least the boy is.’ His voice evaporated as the door swung shut behind him. Escargot trudged away down the street, heading for the harbor, watching the toes of his shoes kick up little sprays of pebbles, his mind revolving and yet thinking about nothing in particular, but lost in a salad of thoughts about his daughter and his wife and Beezle’s window