Page 37 of The Missing Pages
I tried to conjure an image of such a thing. “My mother has the Quaritch edition of theRubaiyat. She bought it last year. The one with the emerald-colored cover. But it’s cloth.” I laughed. “She’ll be disappointed to learn she doesn’t have a bejeweled one.”
“Especially when she finds out what it’s made of, Harry.” He grew serious. “It’s not adorned with just a few stones; it has over a thousand gems encrusted into its cover. Specially cut emeralds, topazes, and rubies. Allegedly, over five thousand pieces of leather and nine square meters of gold leaf to create it.”
“That’s quite incredible,” I noted.
“Yes,” he agreed. “It is indeed incredible. And the story behind it reads rather like a novel itself.” He drew in another suck from his pipe, preparing to share the tale with me. “About five years ago, he and John Stonehouse, a manager at Sotheran’s bookshop a few blocks from where we’re now sitting, were talking together. Francis Sangorski confided that while he’d refitted a handful ofRubaiyats in the past, his real dream was to create a new leather fitting that would be like no other. He imagined a cover depicting three peacocks surrounded by jewels.”
The description, while extraordinary to envision, was not something that would ever be to my taste.
“But the cost of such an undertaking would have been too prohibitive to do it on speculation. So Sangorski used all of his powers of persuasion to get Stonehouse to commission it.”
“Well, bully for him,” I said.
“Except that Stonehouse didn’t tell his boss, Henry Cecil, back at the bookshop that he’d agreed to finance Sangorski’s folly. A regrettable decision in hindsight, I’m afraid.” He took a quick puff.
“But I’m getting ahead of myself,” Bernard Alfred continued. “Sangorski set out to create the most exquisite binding ever designed. He produced six different panels, each of them adorned with peacocks, flowers, skulls, and Persian symbols that evoked themes of life and death.”
“And did he achieve his goal?” It was hard to think such a display of overt wealth would be embraced by an English society that prided itself on elegant restraint.
Bernard Alfred groaned. “Sadly, whether or not the book is considered exquisite is hardly the point. A bookseller needs to be able to sell a book, and this one seems to be a tad cursed.”
I laughed. The mere thought of a book being cursed seemed ridiculous to me.
“Well, when it was done, the book went up for sale for 1,000 pounds. I know for a fact that the first person that John Stonington offered it to was the King’s librarian. But he passed. Stonington then thought he had an offer last summer from Gabriel Wells, the New York dealer, but in the end he, too, changed his mind. Then, when no one else here wanted it, they thought to ship it to New York to try to find a buyer there. But they encountered a problem with the US customs officials andStonington refused to pay the duty, insisting the book then be returned to him in London. When months went by and he again couldn’t find a buyer, he was finally forced to tell his boss, who was downright furious.”
“Understandably so,” I added.
“Yes. Once the book was back in the shop, Cecil demanded the book needed to be sold at once, so they had no other option but to put it up for auction. Immediately.”
I glanced at the clock in the corner. I had less than twenty minutes before I had to leave to meet Ada.
“So how does this saga end?” I tried to hurry him.
“With an auction that was held in New York today. It was placed with no reserve, and I was only just informed that it sold for less than half of what Cecil hoped to get for it, though it was still a small fortune.”
“I can imagine.” I glanced again at the clock.
“But Cecil, whom I know well, has asked me to do him a rather large favor. He wants the book escorted personally over the Atlantic and ushered through customs so he doesn’t run into any obstacles with customs like the last time. He wondered if I knew of anyone who’d be willing and able to do it.” He waved down the waiter for his chit, then looked at me with a twinkle in his eye.
“And I immediately thought of you.”
Being the chaperone for an expensive book was not something that would typically trouble me. After all, I was already bringing home the rare Bacon, and it was in my blood to be the caretaker of an exceptional and precious volume.
But I had to be honest with Bernard Alfred. Being associated with a book that was not a serious book collector’s cup of tea but rather an expensive bauble for the nouveau riche crowd, was particularly troubling for me. Given that my grandfathers had made their fortunes only fifty years before, the sting of being considered “new money” was still an embarrassment. I didn’t want to do anything that might stain their reputation—or mine.
“So what do you say, Harry?” Bernard Alfred pressed.
The minute hand of the clock had now passed six thirty and I knew I couldn’t be a second late for Ada, particularly after the fiasco that derailed our first dinner. But I had a plan.
“I’m afraid I can’t be the official carrier pigeon.”
Bernard Alfred’s face fell.
“But I do have a solution,” I said. “Why don’t you send Ada?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“YOU VOLUNTEERED ME?”ADA’S LAUGH SOUNDED LIKEsummer rain. “I only wish I had been there to see Bernard Alfred’s face.”
