The Thief of Venice Read Online Free PDF Page B

distinguished boyfriend didn't know yet about the realtor's change of mind. "I'm sorry, signora, it's the agency's mistake. Signorina Pastora is a little"—Henchard twirled a finger at his forehead—"muddled. She rented the place twice. I'm sorry to tell you this, but my lease is earlier than yours." He pulled it out of the inner pocket of his jacket, passed it swiftly under the woman's eyes, and put it back. "Tell your—ah—friend to call her. She will confirm what I say."
    "My friend?" The woman looked puzzled.
    "May I have your key?"
    She looked bewildered for a moment, and then agreed. "Well, all right, never mind." Fumbling in her bag, she produced a key and turned away.
    He gazed at her back. For a whore she was in a class by herself, not at all like simpleminded Giovanna. Henchard was enormously relieved that she wasn't making a fuss, that she had handed him her key so willingly. It meant she didn't know what she was giving up. But of course her boyfriend might know, the fool who thought he had rented the apartment.
    Gasping, Henchard ran up the stairs, unlocked the apartment door, and burst into the room.
    To his dismay he saw that the closet door was open a few inches, and when he flung it wide he saw to his horror that another board had fallen to the floor. The narrow slit between the remaining boards was now twelve inches wide. The fucking bastard had put his eye to the hole and seen Henchard's priceless treasure. Shit!
    But now, Christ, he had to get back to the office. There were patients to see, a grim phone call to make.
    After that it was perfectly plain what had to be done, and done without delay.
 
    *9*
    The great conference had not yet begun, although a few scholars from here and there were already nosing around the Biblioteca Marciana, getting in the way, having to be rescued from the fierce clutches of the official dragon at the door with her insistence on some reason why they should be admitted, people of the exalted stature of the Herr-Direktor of the Kunst Historisches Museum in Vienna, two scholars from the Uffizi, two more from the Morgan Library in New York, and the curator of early printed books in Chicago's Newberry Library.
    These august visitors kept turning up, much too soon, while preparations were still frantically in progress. There they would be, eminently important people cooling their heels in the entry of the Marciana under the dark suspicious gaze of the dragon until Sam could be summoned. And then he would have to come downstairs to apologize in person, and spend the rest of the day taking them to lunch and showing them around, and explaining about the water slipping over the stone banks of the canals at certain times of day.
    "Oh, no matter," exclaimed the man from the Houghton Library at Harvard. "After all, I spend half my time in swamps, studying the flora and fauna."
    "And surely this is nothing!" said the woman from the British Museum. "I was expecting Noah's Flood!"
    "Should we start pairing off?" joked the director of the Fitzwilliam. "Two camels, two giraffes, two students of early printed books?" He winked at the woman from the British Museum, but she pursed her mouth.
    And therefore Sam was harried and worried, but Homer Kelly basked in happiness. He adored libraries, any library, from a closet full of books in a rural town hall to the vast collections of Widener Library in Harvard Yard. To Homer, libraries were holy places like churches, and the priestly librarians a blessed race, a saving remnant in a world of sin. Whenever God grew impatient and decided to destroy the world he remembered the librarians and stayed his hand. At least that was Homer's opinion. This library too was holy ground.

    And he was helping! Sam had drafted Homer to fetch and carry. He was permitted to enter the sacred storage vault and extract one priceless volume after another and carry it up through a private passage into the magnificent reading room, the Sala della Libreria.
    This reading room