The Librarians and the Lost Lamp Read Free Page B

picked up at the other end of the line. “I’d like to report a public health issue. I have reason to believe that the MacFarlane Brewery has been contaminated with … toxic fungus. You might want to have the health inspectors check things out.” Another thought occurred to him. “And, oh, you might want to send an ambulance right away. I’m afraid there’s been something of an industrial accident.”
    He hung up quickly before anyone could press him for details, and headed for the exit. He needed to make tracks before anyone showed up to investigate, but first he scribbled a sign on the back of a shipping invoice and taped it to the front door.
    CLOSED—DUE TO HEALTH CONCERNS.
    â€œThat should do it,” he said, stifling a yawn. “All in a day’s work.”
    It was time to go home.

 
    2
    2006
    New York, New York
    One of the world’s great research institutes, housing more than six million books and twelve million documents, the New York Metropolitan Library was Flynn’s home away from home. The landmark building, with its elegant brick and marble façade, looked out over a spacious plaza in midtown Manhattan, which was guarded by a pair of dozing marble lions. Wide steps led up to the library’s grand entrance, which was supported by towering Corinthian columns. A banner stretched above the entrance advertised a new exhibition on King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
    Hah, Flynn thought, glancing up at the banner. If only we could reveal the full story there.…
    Jet-lagged and dog-tired, he passed through a bronze front door into the library’s magnificent marble entry hall, which was flanked by a sweeping double staircase leading upward. Flynn recalled standing in an endless line on the left staircase on that fateful day, only two years ago, when he had answered a mysterious invitation to apply for a “prestigious position” at the library. Little had he known at the time that his life was about to change forever and that the world was infinitely stranger and more fantastic than he ever could have imagined. Before then, he had been a professional college student, accumulating degree after degree—twenty-two in all—while studiously avoiding going out into real world. Sometimes he wondered what he’d be doing now if he’d blown off that interview.
    Something safer, probably, but a lot less interesting.
    Most visitors headed up to the Main Reading Room on the third floor, but Flynn veered off to drop into a spacious, sparsely furnished office that always struck him as being several times bigger than it needed to be. A woman was seated at a large, hand-carved mahogany desk at the far end of the office. She looked up from a ledger as Flynn entered.
    â€œOh, you’re back,” Charlene greeted him coolly. An unsmiling, thin-lipped woman of a certain age, she fit the stereotype of the stern, humorless librarian much better than Flynn did. She wore a pair of tortoiseshell glasses and a severe expression. Strawberry-blond hair was fading to gray. “I was wondering what was keeping you.”
    Flynn was used to her brusque manner by now. He’d stopped taking it personally … mostly.
    â€œGood morning to you, too,” he said, yawning. He had come straight from JFK International Airport after catching a red-eye flight from Heathrow. He couldn’t wait to crash at his modest bachelor apartment in Brooklyn, but first he wanted to get the long-lost Stevenson manuscript safely stowed away in the Library, which had much tighter security than his apartment building. Heck, the Library’s security made Fort Knox seem as safe as a convenience store at three a.m. It was one of the most impenetrable places on Earth.
    Removing the manuscript from his satchel, he plopped it onto Charlene’s desk. “Mission accomplished,” he bragged. “The first draft of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, safely