Page 63 of Miss Moriarty, I Presume?
She gripped the edge of the table, needing to hold on to something solid and heavy.
Under the Reading Room’s 140-foot-diameter dome—the information was printed directly on the back of her reader’s ticket, a proud boast on the part of the institution—the large, circular space was anchored by the superintendent’s table at the very center. Catalogue tables formed a close ring around the superintendent’s table. From there, reading tables, measuring around thirty feet in length, radiated like spokes on a wheel.
Livia, being herself, had chosen an empty table and a seat far away from the center of the room. Each reading table had a high partition running down its center, to give those on one side privacy from those on the opposite side. Normally, Livia was grateful for such man-made hedges to hide behind. But the partitions on her own very long table and the adjacent one, while shielding her from the attention of Moriarty’s men, also blocked her view of Mr. Marbleton.
She could crane her head all she wanted but see only a narrow alley. And if she stood up, which she dared not do, she still wouldn’t be able to peer over the partition, not without stepping on the crossbar of a chair, at the very least.
She loosened a button at her collar—she was breathing fast and perspiring. Not knowing what to do next, she flipped her notebook to an empty page, scribbled down the date and her location, and stared at the words until they swam.
How much time had passed? How long would he be allowed to stay? And could he relay anything to her when she couldn’t see him?
Tears of frustration stung the backs of her eyes. She hoped—she prayed hard—that he had given this some thought before he arrived. That even though the likelihood of him running into her was small, he’d prepared for this lucky encounter.
Another ten minutes elapsed, the passage of time as swift as a floodandas slow as a retreating glacier. She was still shaking, still waiting, still not sure what she could do, when Mr. Marbleton appeared at one end of her alley, toward the center of the Reading Room.
Some reading tables had a bookshelf appended—hers was one such. He stood before the bookshelf. Or rather, he and his two minders stood shoulder to shoulder, and she almost couldn’t see him at all.
“It’s time to go,” one of them said to him.
In German.
“So soon?” he replied in the same language. “I haven’t been here since summer. How about a little more time?”
No, please, not so soon.She hadn’t even had a good look at him.
“We are sorry. It’s time to leave,” repeated the other escort.
The escort suddenly turned in her direction. She averted gaze to her still-open notebook, not daring to look up even with her peripheral vision.
The floor of the Reading Room had been covered with a special material to reduce the sound of footsteps. Livia barely heard their departure.
She dropped her head into her hands. She wanted to whimper. She wanted to scream. Had he tried to tell her something? And had she already failed him?
15
Only after a quarter of an hour had passed did Livia get up, tiptoed to the very rim of the Reading Room, and slowly walked its circumference, pretending to be interested in the books that encircled the room while casting furtive glances into the alleys created by the high partitions. And when she had completed the circle, she walked the smaller round between the catalogue tables and the reading tables, surreptitiously checking the alleys again from their inner ends.
“Miss, are you searching for something?”
She nearly jumped.
An attendant stationed at a catalogue table, a man with what seemed to be a perennially suspicious expression on his face, had asked the question. Faced with disapproval, Livia usually found it difficult to retain her composure. But today her nerves were too frayed for her to care.
“My friend was going to join me here today. She is about this tall”—she gestured with her hand held up to her ear—“and has dark hair and green eyes. Have you seen her, by any chance?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t.”
She turned her back to him and went to the bookshelf at the end of her reading table, where Mr. Marbleton had stopped briefly. It held volumes ofEncyclopaedia Britannica. Could he have done anything here? Left her something, the way he’d left a ticket stub at 18 Upper Baker Street?
She crouched low. But the bottom shelf rested directly on the floor, with no space underneath.
Had he picked up a volume while he’d stood here, and slipped a note inside?
She took the encyclopedias one by one to her desk. At first she flipped each page religiously. When that proved too slow, she examined a volume sideways at eye level and searched for any tiny gap in the pages. And then, when her patience wore too thin for even that, with her back to the catalogue tables and with many apologies to the encyclopedias themselves, she held the volumes by their spines and shook.
A card fell out of the third volume she shook. Her heart thudded violently. But it was only a card the publisher had put in.
As she returned once again to the bookshelf, the attendant who had earlier asked whether she was looking for something looked at her oddly. Her disappointment cut so much she barely heard his sniff of disfavor. With a wooden resolve, she checked until she ran out volumes.
