The Book of Air and Shadows

paper wrapper. Bulstrode shrugged and said, “Well, suit yourself, although I doubt you’ll get a better price.” Turning then to Carolyn, he asked, “And how is dear Sidney these days? Quite recovered from the shock of the fire I hope.”
    “Yes, he’s fine,” said Carolyn Rolly in a voice so unlike her own that Crosetti stopped wrapping and looked at her. Her face was pained in a way he could not interpret. She said, “Crosetti, would you step outside for a minute with me? Excuse us, Professor.”
    Bulstrode smiled a plump formal smile and gestured to his door.
    Outside, a scant summer population of students and professors passed to and fro; it was clearly the interval between classes. Rolly grabbed Crosetti’s arm and pulled him into an alcove, the first time since the crying jag of the previous evening that she had touched him. She clung to his arm and spoke vehemently in a hoarse tense voice. “Listen! You have to let him have those goddamn papers.”
    “Why do I? He’s obviously trying to pull the wool over our eyes.”
    “Not our eyes, Crosetti. He’s right. There’s no mention of Shakespeare. It’s some petty clerk running a scam and dying and confessing his sins.”
    “I don’t believe it.”
    “Why not? What’s your evidence? Wishful thinking and three hours’ experience with secretary hand?”
    “Maybe, but I’m going to show it to someone else, someone I trust.”
    As he said this, he saw her eyes grow fat with tears and her face began to crumple. “Oh, God,” she cried, “oh, God, don’t let me come apart now! Crosetti, don’t you get it? He
knows
Sidney. Why do you think he mentioned him just now?”
    “Okay, he knows Sidney-so what?”
    “So what! Jesus, man, don’t you see? He knows the manuscript came out of the
Voyages
, so he knows I’m taking the book apart. And that means…”
    “You’re not just breaking it, like Sidney told you to. You’re trying to doctor it, which means you’re going to try to sell it. And he’s, what? Threatening to tell Sidney unless we give him the manuscript?”
    “Of course! He’ll tell him, and then Sidney…I don’t know, he’ll fire me for sure and he might call the cops. I’ve seen him do it with shoplifters. He’s nuts that way, people stealing books and I can’t…I can’t take the chance…oh, God, this is horrible!”
    She was frankly crying now, not hysterical yet as she was the night before, but building up to it, and that was something Crosetti had no wish to see again. He said, “Hey, calm down! You can’t take what chance?”
    “The cops. I can’t be involved with the
police
.”
    Lightbulb.
    “You’re a fugitive.” It wasn’t a question. Obvious, really; he should have picked it up right off the bat.
    She nodded.
    “What’s the charge?”
    “Oh, please! Don’t
interrogate
me!”
    “You didn’t whack Uncle Lloyd?”
    “What? No, of course not. It was some stupid dope thing. I was desperate for money and I moved packages for some people I knew. This was in Kansas, so of course the sky fell in and…oh, God, what am I going to do!”
    “Okay, get yourself together,” he said, resisting the urge to wrap his arms around her. “Go back in there, and tell him it’s a deal.”
    He started to move away and her face stiffened in what seemed like panic; he was happy to note that she clutched at his arm, as at a plank in a shipwreck.
    “Where’re you going?”
    “I just need to do something first,” he said. “Don’t worry, Carolyn, it’s going to be fine. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
    “What should I tell him?” she demanded.
    “Tell him I got the runs from the excitement of his generous offer and I’m in the bathroom. Ten minutes!”
    He turned and raced down the stairs, three at a time, holding the rolled manuscripts under his arm like a football. Out of Hamilton at a run, he threaded through a quad full of strolling young people who had higher SATs than he did and ran into the vast columned bulk of Butler Library. One advantage of having a well-known research librarian for a mother is that she knows nearly all the other research librarians in the city and is pals with a number of them. Crosetti had known Margaret Park, the head research librarian at Butler, since childhood, and it was an easy matter to call her up and get permission. All big libraries have large-format Xerox machines that can reproduce folio pages; Crosetti used the one in the Butler basement to copy all of