The Gospel of Sheba Read Free Page B

before tea time.
    â€œThank you, sir,” I said, rubbing at my eyes. “I did my best.”
    â€œQuite right, quite right. Carry on, then! You do us credit, Mr. Lomax, and I don’t care who knows it.”
    Chuckling in resignation, my eyes drifted back to the volume I’d abandoned when Mr. Grange arrived. It was nearly lunch hour and time for a hastily procured sandwich or at least the apple in my greatcoat pocket. I didn’t know nearly enough about Celtic coinage to assist Mr. McGraw yet, and he was due at the Library at one o’clock sharp. Outside, a thin patter of rain had commenced, darkening the paving stones of St. James’s Square and quickening the steps of the shivering pedestrians below.
    â€œMr. Grange, I should love to hear more about The Gospel of Sheba , truly, but my mind is spoken for at the moment.” Rising, I gathered the magical volumes he’d returned, meaning to check them in. “When is the next meeting of the Brotherhood of Solomon? Might a stray bibliophile be welcome in your company?”
    â€œOh, undoubtedly, Mr. Lomax!” Mr. Theodore Grange cried, mirroring me. Grasping my hand in his palsied one, he shook it. “I was about to propose the very thing. Tuesday next is our regular gathering. We dine at the Savile Club in Picadilly. The works of scholarship you were kind enough to lend me introduced no doubts in my mind as to the authenticity of The Gospel of Sheba , but I would greatly value a fresh pair of eyes. We have been at each other’s throats over this discovery, and two chaps have quit the club entirely, claiming outright Satanic influence at work regarding our sudden poor health. I shall look forward to seeing you at eight o’clock sharp, Mr. Lomax, and in the meanwhile wish you a very good week.”
    Frowning as I watched Mr. Grange depart, I went to check in his returns, placing them upon a cart to be shelved. A book possessed of such occult power that it worked upon the reader like a disease? Impossible.
    And yet, I had witnessed the decline of Mr. Grange myself. The man appeared to be shriveling before my very eyes into a grey husk.
    Could poison be at work here? Something more pedestrian but no less sinister than demonic influence?
    The very question is unnerving. I am not callow enough to suppose that books are not powerful—on the contrary, a book is the most delicious of paradoxes, an inert collection of symbols which are capable of changing the universe when once the cover is opened. Imagine what the world would look like had the Book of John never been written, or On the Revolutions of Celestial Spheres , or Romeo and Juliet ? One day I attended the opera and was captivated by a beautiful blonde soprano with a mocking blue eye and a milk-white neck with the loveliest smooth hollows, but I fell in love with Colette when she admitted to me that she couldn’t read Petrarch’s poems to Laura without weeping and had never bothered over being ashamed of the fact.
    I look forward to Tuesday with the greatest interest. Meanwhile, Celtic currency calls to me and I’ve a new set of picture-books to bring home to Grace this evening.
    Excerpt from the private journal of Mr. A. Davenport Lomax, September 15th, 1902.
    What a ghastly day this was.
    My friend Dr. John Watson stopped by the London Library in need of my assistance late in the evening, looking battlefield-grim. All the newspapers have been screaming that his friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was attacked by men armed with sticks outside the Café Royal a week ago today and is languishing at the door of death. Whatever they were investigating, they still seem to be in the thick of it. I berated myself at once for not having wired asking after Watson’s well-being. He little considers the topic himself.
    â€œMy God, Watson, how are you?” I whipped my half-spectacles off when the doctor came into sight cresting a spiraling staircase. Lost in thought in a