You may think we’d have trouble getting into the Lee J. Bennish Memorial Library on a Sunday during spring break, and normally you’d be right. But things weren’t normal. Guards were all over the place, inside and out. The Campus Security people knew me. And even if they hadn’t, my staff ID card would have been at a high enough level to get me past them.
Gene Pfannenstiel’s office, full of ancient books spilling out of bookcases, looked almost Dickensian except for the laptop computer open on his roll-top desk. The gnome looked up from it in surprise when we entered.
“Oh, hi,” he said. “What are you folks doing here? It’s Sunday, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said, “but we have a distinguished visitor all the way from Sweden and we wanted to take him on a quick tour of the Chalmers Collection.”
Jenson smiled. “Ja, ja.”
Gene regarded Jenson shrewdly. “Didn’t I see you yesterday during-”
“We’ll only be a few minutes,” Lynda interrupted. “He can’t stay long.”
“Right,” Gene said, reaching down to tie a lace on his right gym shoe. “I’m knee-deep in cataloguing right now, but go ahead and look. The guards won’t stop you. They’ll just watch you real closely if you touch any books.”
“Actually, that might happen,” I said. “Dr. Jenson is a serious scholar. Can you unlock the cases where the best stuff is on display?”
He agreed without complaint.
While we were walking from his office to the rare book room, where the Chalmers Collection was on display, I asked Gene whether he’d heard anything from Decker about the books that were stolen.
“Nothing, I’m afraid.”
“Did you know Hugh Matheson, the man who was murdered?” I didn’t expect an affirmative answer, and I didn’t get one.
Gene shook his head. “That was a terrible thing, wasn’t it? The murder. No, I didn’t know him, but I must have seen him if he was at the library yesterday, huh? I saw so many people.”
I tried to think of more questions Mac might ask, since Gene was on his infamous little list, but I drew a blank. So did Lynda.
When we reached the Chalmers Collection, I could practically hear Larsen’s pulse race faster as he shoved his glasses against his nose and bent down to read the titles in the foreign section. He talked to himself in Swedish as he pulled out a book called Sherlock Holmes aventyr.
I tugged on his sleeve and led him to where Gene was unlocking the cases holding the rarest remaining gems of the Chalmers Collection.
“Mr. Jenson,” I said, “I want you to look at as many of these books as you can with extreme care and tell me if each of them is exactly what it’s supposed to be. Are the first editions really first editions and are any inscriptions inside genuine? Understand?”
“Ja. Just like a mystery. I am sleuth.”
Gene’s eyes widened. “It’s just a wild idea,” I assured him. “There’s probably nothing to it. Relax. Go back to your cataloguing. The guards will keep an eye on us.” I wanted him gone. He was a suspect.
“Okay. Call me if you need me.”
When Gene was out of earshot, Lynda said, “That’s your brilliant idea?” Her tone lacked the admiration I would have hoped for. “You think the books in the Chalmers Collection might be fakes?”
“I didn’t say it was brilliant; I said it could explain why Matheson was murdered. I got the idea from a Sherlock Holmes story that was described to me. It’s about a collector who steals his own book to keep a rival from finding out that it’s a phony. Now maybe somebody killed Matheson for the same reason - because when he got his hands on those missing books they turned out to be frauds. And if that’s true, other books in the Chalmers Collection could be just as spurious.”
“But that would mean that Chalmers himself is the killer,” Lynda said.
Jenson murmured over a faded red volume.
I shook my head. “That’s where truth has to depart from fiction. Chalmers never would have donated fraudulent books to begin with. He’d know that at the college they’d be available to scholars who could expose them.”
“Then if the Chalmers Collection was the real stuff when it got here, parts of it must have been stolen and replaced later,” Lynda said. “That little librarian must have done it, or at least been involved.”
“Yeah,” I said miserably. “Gene wouldn’t be the first academic librarian who peddled rare books, as Queensbury reminded me yesterday. I don’t want to believe it, but that’s where my logic leads me.”
“Well, I’m not sure your logic is so logical. If your scenario is correct, then the two books we found in Matheson’s room must be phonies. Why would the killer leave those behind where somebody else could see the fakery?”
“Because the killer couldn’t find them - he wasn’t as clever at searching as you were. The other book, the one that’s still missing, was hidden somewhere else and he found that one.”
She took a wad of gum out of her mouth and wrapped it in foil. “Back up a minute, Jeff. How could Matheson spot these books for phonies? He was no expert on Sherlockiana. He was a guy with a collection and a lot of bucks to spend on it.”
“That’s what Chalmers said - talking about his bitter rival. We don’t know whether that’s true or he was just dissing the competition.”
I think I had her there, because she said, “All right, then, this gets me back to where I was before: The cops need to know that Matheson had those books.”
Before I had a chance to answer, Jenson poked his soulful gray eyes up over the book in his hands. Three Problems for Solar Pons, the title read. What in the world could that be?
“Excuse me please,” the Swede said. “Your theory is most intriguing, Jefferson,” - Yefferson - “but I do not believe it is so very likely.”
“Why not?” I demanded.
“You expect lots of fakes, ja? Not the missing books only.” He shook his head vigorously. “I have look at ten, fifteen books here. I find no fakes.”
Chapter Twenty-Six - I’ve Got Your Number
Outside the library, in the fresh air of a beautiful spring Sunday, I pulled out my notebook.
“Now what?” Lynda said.
“Just crossing names off Mac’s list.”
When the truth hits you in the face, there’s no point in trying to smack back. I didn’t kid myself that there were another ten or fifteen phony books that Jenson had missed.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Jeff. It wasn’t a bad idea, really.”
“I know. In fact, it was as swell idea. I’m going to write it down and use it in a Max Cutter story.”
I flipped through the notebook, looking for a blank page, until I saw something that brought me back from the fictional world of my Philadelphia private eye with a jerk.
“What are you staring at?” Lynda asked. It’s that journalistic DNA of hers; she’s always full of questions.
“Something I’d forgotten all about,” I told her.
I showed her a page containing nothing but three digits - 525. It was the number I’d copied off the notepad in Matheson’s room, presumably a hotel room number that the lawyer had called or intended to call the day he died.
Jenson looked on with a mixture of interest and puzzlement, clearly curious but too polite to ask what was going on. When we reached the Hearth Room we shook hands with him again, thanked him, and let him get back to the lunacy at hand.
I pulled out my phone, tapped on the number for the Winfield from my contacts list, and asked for room 525.
Five rings, six rings, seven...
What are there, ten rings to a minute? I’d given up counting by the time a generic hotel voicemail message kicked in. I disconnected in disgust.
“We should have expected that, you know,” Lynda said. “Whoever has that room isn’t going to be just sitting around waiting for us to call. He’s going to be in there.” She pointed at the Hearth Room across the way. “I mean, it’s got to be one of the Sherlockians. Unless Graham Bentley Post-”