Who's sorry now?

Robert asked Lily, ”Do we pay a business tax from what we earn from our boarders?” ”Of course we do. It’s not much of a tax.”
    ”I know. I learned that today. I have to go to Poughkeepsie to buy the lottery tickets. Want to ride along tomorrow?”
    ”That sounds nice. I’ve been cooped up inside too much with my reading lately. I’ve been alternating the mystery books you bought me for my birthday with the textbooks Dr. Toller lent me. I’ll have to find a scarf though.”
     

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
    Friday, May 12, through Monday, May 15
     
    JACK SUMMER’S whole front page of the Voorburg Times was headed:
     
    BOOKS!
    Underneath this headline was a horrible picture he’d received via the press service he paid for. A night scene that showed a great blazing fire and armed men in brown SA uniforms either tossing books onto the file, or holding their guns trained on the crowds. Women were weeping, and children ran around as if it were a happy bonfire.
    The text inside the front page explained that on the tenth of May German students who were enthralled by Hitler had burned thousands of books, mostly by Jewish intellectuals. Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, H. G. Wells, Ernest Hemingway, Bertolt Brecht, even Helen Keller and Jack London. They especially went after Heinrich Heine, who had written more than a hundred years earlier, ”When one burns books, one will soon burn people.”
    They also burned family Bibles, Talmuds, and anything not written in German. In the fIrst fire in Berlin, overseen by Joseph Goebbels, propaganda minister for Hitler, more than thirty thousand books went up in flames.
    Jack’s editorial opinion was made clear in the next paragraph. ”Should every good German have a copy of Mein Kampf on the bedside table and be required to memorize it?”
    Mr. Kurtz picked up the paper and wept. He hadn’t cried since he’d been eleven years old until that morning.
    ”The criminals! How dare they? Books are precious.”
    ”Grandpa, I’m so sorry you saw this,” his granddaughter said.
    ”Would you have hidden this horror from me? I hope you would not. Americans must know what they’re up against. Hitler and his cronies are pure evil.”
    By Saturday, the thirteenth of May, the book-burning plague had also occurred in several large American cities.
    Even Jack Summer couldn’t figure out what was being burned and why. He called some of his reporter friends in other cities and asked who was doing the book burning, why, and what kinds of books.
    The answers varied. Most of the other reporters had no idea, except to say, ”They’re young and stupid, and think it’s all in good fun,” almost all of them said in variations on the same theme.
    ”Most of the students I’ve talked to don’t have any idea what or who started it, and they just went along with the idea,” another reporter Jack spoke to said sadly. ”It broke my spirit to see young people burning books.”
    And little Voorburg had its own book burning on Sunday in front of Mr. Kurtz’s shop. This time on the sidewalk in front of his main window. Fortunately, a brief, heavy, and unexpected rain put the fire out a few moments later—before Chief Walker even reached town.
    They were library books, all in German. Chief Walker handled them carefully, wearing gloves, and took them back to his office at the jail. On Monday he called several of the libraries they’d come from, asking if anyone remembered who had checked them out.
    He collected three different names for the borrowers. But the descriptions, depending on the age of the librarian, were that it was a man in his sixties—this from seemingly young women from the sound of their voices. The older librarians who recalled him guessed late forties to mid-fifties. All agreed that he was lean, somewhat shorter than average, and had thinning brownish hair. One of them said he had brownish-red hair.
    It was clear to Howard that the three names were all certain to be false. But the description, except for age, was likely to be the same person.
    Chief Walker explained to all of them that books had been set afire and then doused by a short rain. He also told them the books might have been checked out by a suspect for former crimes and the books couldn’t be returned until they were fingerprinted. This would take at least a week.
    Walker thought that since Miss Exley hadn’t been approached, but libraries both north and south of Voorburg, all close to Route 9, were chosen,