The last makes him feel guilty, and ridiculous, and the feeling propels him to his feet. Clearly, if suicide bomber is unlikely, it has to be conceded that the others are more so.
“Hello,” Joe says. “What can I do for you?”
“Nothing for the moment, thank you.” The voice is deep and scratched, but muffled. It sounds like a recording played through one of the old wood-horn gramophones Joe has in the back. The metal-horns are powerful, they make everything sound like old-time radio. The wood-horns are rounder, but lack belt. Joe automatically leans in to hear, and then away again when the blank linen face follows him, ducks down as if to kiss his cheek, coming too close too quickly. “May I look around?”
“Oh, well, please. Browse away. Let me know if you want anything in particular. I have some very fine gramophones with quite special horns. And a really good fob watch. I’m quite proud of the clean-up. It’s a lovely thing.” Joe lets his tone suggest that anyone who is just browsing should almost certainly conclude their visit with a tour of the smaller items which might have failed to attract attention.
The shrouded head dips in assent, once, and then deeper a second time, like a swan’s.
“Forgive me for asking,” Joe says, when his visitor does not move away, “but I’ve never seen anyone dressed like that before.”
“I am on a journey of the soul,” the other replies, without rancour. “My clothing reminds me that the face of God is turned away from us. From the world. It is worn by members of the Order of John the Maker, who are called Ruskinites.” He waits, to see if this elicits a reaction. Since Joe doesn’t know what reaction would be considered appropriate, he allows himself none.
“Thank you,” he says instead, by way of concluding the conversation. The man moves away with a curious, boneless lurching.
Glancing warily after the eerie, absent face, Joe goes back to work.
The visitor wanders towards a row of music boxes. One of them plays something light and perky, and the man looks down at it like a bird wondering whether it is something to eat. A moment later, he speaks again.
“Mr. Spork?”
“Yes, what can I do for you?”
“I am looking for something. I hope you can help me.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I believe you have recently dealt with a book I have an interest in. A very unusual book.”
Oh, crap.
“Oh, dear. I can’t help you there, I’m afraid. Music, yes. Books, no.” Joe can feel a sort of prickling on his back. He turns, and sees the figure straighten and turn smoothly away.
“I believe you can. The Book of the Hakote, Mr. Spork.” Laden with significance.
Joe hesitates. On the one hand, he has never specifically heard of the Book of the Hakote (huh-KOH-tay). Like the shroud the visitor is wearing, the word has the flavour of religion, and he takes especial care not to deal in religious items, be they church timepieces or sneaky weeping icons with internal reservoirs and clockwork pumps. They have almost always been pillaged at some time, and in consequence come with aggravation attached. On the other hand, he has recently been in contact with an object of various unusual qualities which might conceivably answer to such an outré name, an object which was brought to him by a moderately nefarious individual by the name of William “Billy” Friend.
Chief among the unusual qualities aforementioned: a fat man and a thin man turned up in his shop and lied, quaintly and unpersuasively, about how they wanted to buy the Grandpa Spork collection entire, when what they really wanted (see Mr. Titwhistle’s betraying fingers) was anything associated with this same “very unusual book.”
“I’m terribly sorry, you’ve lost me,” Joe replies cheerfully. “I sell and maintain items of clockwork. Curiosities, mostly, things that go bong and so on. Pianolas and automata. But in general not books.”
“There are some texts whose importance is not immediately apparent to the uninitiated. Dangerous books.”
“I’m sure there are.”
“There is no need to condescend.” The Ruskinite’s head turns on his neck, the shroud bunching at the shoulders. Joe wonders if it will turn all the way around, like an owl’s. “I mean that the escape of knowledge into the realm of wider society irretrievably alters the nature of our lives. More mundanely, Mr. Spork, the Book and all its paraphernalia are of great value to me personally. I should very much like them back.”
Back. Not: I should very much like to locate a copy, nor even: I have been having some trouble finding the ISBN. This person is seeking an item which at some stage they owned. A singular item. Yes, this has all the hallmarks of a Billy Friend situation, right enough.
“It is not yours, Mr. Spork,” the Ruskinite says with soft finality. “It is mine.”
Joe puts on his most accommodating expression. “Might I take your name? I have, in fact, dealt with a very unusual book recently, but I’m afraid I don’t know the title. It passed through my hands as part of a repair job. I do hope there was no funny business involved.” Oh, I bloody do. But I’m quite sure there was if you say so.
The Ruskinite circles the room in silence as if considering. Joe Spork affects an air of polite, shopkeeper’s dismay, and does not watch. He fusses with his papers and listens, trying to track the other’s progress in the room. Scritch scritch. Is the other man rubbing his chin? Mopping his brow? Clawing at the desk with an iron hook in place of his right hand?
When the man speaks again, his muffled voice is almost a whisper, and alarmingly close. “Very well, Mr. Spork.”
Joe glances around and finds the shrouded face less than a metre away. He jumps slightly, and the head withdraws.
“I am sorry I startled you. If you do not have anything for me, I will leave.”
“Do take a card and give me a call if there’s anything else I can do. Or any other items I have which might be of interest.”
“I shall consider that, and return.”
Joe clamps down on his subconscious before it can make him say “From the grave?” which would be rude. The shrouded man snakes out of the door and disappears into the street.
Billy. You are in so much trouble right now.
Before going to find Billy Friend wherever he is and shout at him in person, Joe makes a phone call.
Harticle’s—more properly the Boyd Harticle Foundation for Artisanal and Scientific Practice—is an endless lumber room, one hundred and fifty years old and more; a winding mass of shelved corridors and display cases punctuated with reading rooms and collections, inadequately labelled and appallingly dusty, so that to go into the Archives is to risk coughing for days. It is stuffed to bursting with odds and ends, acquired and maintained and stored away, against the day when something may be required for a restoration or a recreation. There are pieces of Charles Babbage’s unfinished machines here, and of Brunel’s steam engines. Instruments designed by Robert Hooke rub shoulders with wooden models produced to drawings by da Vinci. Everything has a story, usually more than one. Boyd Harticle’s ugly red-brick house with its unlikely turreted roof and neo-Gothic arched windows is a refuge for the disregarded children of man’s study and conquest of the natural world.