the competition for a rare, perhaps a unique, volume. Three nights
after that, the people of Barcelona were awakened by cries of
"Fire!" The house and shop of the man who had bought "Ordinacions
per los gloriosos reys de Arago" were blazing. When the fire was
extinguished, the body of the owner of the house was found, with a
pipe in his blackened hand, and some money beside him. Every one
said, "He must have set the house on fire with a spark from his
pipe." Time went on, and week by week the police found the bodies
of slain men, now in the street, now in a ditch, now in the river.
There were young men and old, all had been harmless and inoffensive
in their lives, and--all had been bibliophiles. A dagger in an
invisible hand had reached their hearts but the assassin had spared
their purses, money, and rings. An organised search was made in the
city, and the shop of Don Vincente was examined. There, in a hidden
recess, the police discovered the copy of "Ordinacions per los
gloriosis reys de Arago," which ought by rights to have been burned
with the house of its purchaser. Don Vincente was asked how he got
the book. He replied in a quiet voice, demanded that his collection
should be made over to the Barcelona Library, and then confessed a
long array of crimes. He had strangled his rival, stolen the
"Ordinacions," and burned the house. The slain men were people who
had bought from him books which he really could not bear to part
with. At his trial his counsel tried to prove that his confession
was false, and that he might have got his books by honest means. It
was objected that there was in the world only one book printed by
Lambert Palmart in 1482, and that the prisoner must have stolen
this, the only copy, from the library where it was treasured. The
defendant's counsel proved that there was another copy in the
Louvre; that, therefore, there might be more, and that the
defendant's might have been honestly procured. Here Don Vincente,