The Vanishing Man by R. Austin (Richard Austin) Freeman
page 78 of 369 (21%)
page 78 of 369 (21%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
they steal away at closing time into the depths of the Museum and hide
themselves until morning in sarcophagi or mummy cases? Or do they creep through spaces in the book-shelves and spend the night behind the volumes in a congenial atmosphere of leather and antique paper? Who can say? What I do know is that when Ruth Bellingham entered the reading-room she appeared in comparison with these like a creature of another order; even as the head of Antinous, which formerly stood (it has since been moved) amidst the portrait-busts of the Roman Emperors, seemed like the head of a god set in a portrait gallery of illustrious baboons. "What have we got to do?" I asked when we had found a vacant seat. "Do you want to look up the catalogue?" "No, I have the tickets in my bag. The books are waiting in the 'kept books' department." I placed my hat on the leather-covered shelf, dropped her gloves into it--how delightfully intimate and companionable it seemed!--altered the numbers on the tickets, and then we proceeded together to the "kept books" desk to collect the volumes that contained the material for our day's work. It was a blissful afternoon. Two and a half hours of happiness unalloyed did I spend at that shiny, leather-clad desk, guiding my nimble pen across the pages of the note-book. It introduced me to a new world--a world in which love and learning, sweet intimacy and crusted archaeology, were mingled into the oddest, most whimsical, and most delicious confection that the mind of man can conceive. Hitherto, these recondite histories had been far beyond my ken. Of the wonderful |
|