The Club Dumas

VIII. POSTUMA NECAT

Lucas Corso knew better than anyone that one of the main problems of his profession was that bibliographies were compiled by scholars who never actually saw the books cited; scholars relied instead on secondhand accounts and information recorded by others. An error or incomplete description could circulate for generations without being noticed. Then by chance it came to light. This was the case with The Nine Doors. Apart from its obligatory mention in the canonical bibliographies, even the most precise references had included only summary descriptions of the nine engravings without minor details. In the case of the book's second illustration all the known texts referred to an old man who looked like a sage or a hermit, standing before a door and holding two keys. But nobody had ever bothered to specify in which hand he held the keys. Now Corso had the answer: in the engraving in book number one, the left and in book number two, the right.

He still had to find out what number three was like. But this wasn't possible yet. Corso stayed at the Quinta da Soledade until dark. He worked solidly in the light of the candelabra, taking copious notes, checking both books over and over again. He examined each engraving until he had confirmed his theory. More proof emerged. At last he sat looking at his booty in the form of notes on a sheet of paper, tables and diagrams with strange links between them. Five of the engravings were not identical in both books. In addition to the old man holding the key in different hands in engraving II, the labyrinth in IIII had an exit in one of the books but not in the other. In illustration V of book one, Death brandished an hourglass with the sand in the lower half, while in book two the sand was in the half. As for the chessboard in number VII, in Varo Borja's copy the squares were all white while in Fargas's copy they were black. And in engraving VIII, the executioner poised to behead the young woman in one of the books became an avenging angel in the other through the addition of a halo.

There were more differences. Close examination through the magnifying glass yielded unexpected results. The printer's marks hidden in the woodcuts contained another subtle clue. A.T., Aristide Torchia, was named as the sculptor in the engraving of the old man, but as the inventor only in the same engraving in book number two, while, as the Ceniza brothers had pointed out, the signature in book number one was L.F. The same difference occurred in four more illustrations. This could mean that all the woodcuts were carved by the printer himself but that the original drawings for his engravings were created by somebody else. So it wasn't a matter of a forgery dating from the same era as the books or of apocryphal reprintings. It was the printer, Torchia himself, "by authority and permission of the superiors," who had altered his own work in accordance with a preestablished plan. He had signed the engravings he changed to make sure it was clear that L.F. had created the others. Only one copy remains, he told his executioners. Whereas in fact he had left three copies, and a key that might possibly turn them into a single one. The rest of his secret he took with him to the grave.

Corso resorted to an ancient collating system: the comparative tables used by Umberto Eco in his study of the Hanau. Having set out in order on paper the illustrations that contained differences, he obtained the following table:

As for the engraver's marks, the variations in the signatures A.T. (the printer, Torchia) and L.F. (unknown? Lucifer?) that corresponded to sculptor or inventor were set out as follows:

A strange code. But Corso at last had something definite. He now knew that there was a key of some sort. He stood up slowly, as if afraid that all the links would vanish before his eyes. But he was calm, like a hunter who is sure that he will catch his prey at the end, however confusing the trail.

Hand. Exit. Sand. Board. Halo.

He glanced out the window. Beyond the dirty panes, silhouetting a branch, a remnant of reddish light refused to disappear into the night.

Books one and two. Differences in illustrations 2, 4, 5, 7, and 8.

He had to go to Paris. Book number three was there, together with the possible solution to the mystery. But he was now preoccupied with another matter, something he had to deal with urgently. Varo Borja had been categorical. Now that Corso was sure he wouldn't be able to obtain book number two by conventional methods, he had to devise a plan to acquire it by means that were not conventional. With the minimum risk to Fargas, and to Corso himself, of course. Something gentle and discreet. He took out his diary from his coat pocket and searched for the phone number he needed. It was the perfect job for Amilcar Pinto.

One of the candles had burned down and went out with a small spiral of smoke. Corso could hear the violin being played somewhere in the house. He laughed dryly again, and the flames of the candelabra made shadows dance on his face as he leaned over to light a cigarette. He straightened and listened. The music was a lament that floated through the dark empty rooms with their remnants of dusty, worm-eaten furniture, painted ceilings, stained walls covered with spiderwebs and shadows; with their echoes of footsteps and voices extinguished long ago. And outside, above the rusty railings, the two statues, one with its eyes open in the darkness, the other covered by a mask of ivy, listened motionless, as time stood still, to the music that Victor Fargas played on his violin to summon the ghosts of his lost books.

CORSO RETURNED TO THE village on foot, his hands in his coat pockets and his collar turned up. It took him twenty minutes on the deserted road. There was no moon, and he walked into large patches of darkness beneath the black canopy of trees. The almost total silence was broken only by the sound of his shoes crunching on the gravel at the side of the road, and by the channels of water coursing down the hill between rockrose and ivy, invisible in the darkness.

A car came from behind and overtook him. Corso saw his own shadow, saw its enlarged, ghostly outline glide undulating across the nearby tree trunks and farther dense woods. Only when he was again enveloped in shadow did he breathe out and feel his tense muscles relax. He wasn't one who expected ghosts around every corner. Instead he viewed things, however extraordinary they were, with the southern fatalism of an old soldier, a fatalism no doubt inherited from his great-greatgrandfather Corso. However much you spurred your horse in the opposite direction, the inevitable was always lurking at the gate of the nearest Samarkand picking its nails with a Venetian dagger or Scottish bayonet. Even so, since the incident in the street in Toledo, Corso felt understandably apprehensive every time he heard a car behind him.

Maybe because of this, when the lights of another car pulled up beside him, Corso turned sharply and moved his canvas bag to his other shoulder. He found his bunch of keys inside his coat pocket. It was not much of a weapon, but with it he could poke out the eye of an attacker. But there seemed no reason to worry. He saw a large, dark shape, like that of an old berlin carriage, and inside, lit by the faint glow from the dashboard, the profile of a man. His voice was friendly, well educated.

"Good evening..." The accent was indefinable, neither Portuguese nor Spanish. "Do you have a match?"

The request might be genuine, or just a pretext, Corso couldn't be sure. But, asked for a light, he didn't need to run or brandish his sharpest key. He let go of the keys, took out his matches, and lit one, shielding the flame with his hand.

"Thanks."

There was the scar, of course. It was an old one, long and vertical, from the temple to halfway down the left cheek. Corso got a close look as the man leaned forward to light his Montecristo cigar. Corso held the light long enough to glimpse the thick, black mustache and dark eyes watching him intently from the gloom. Then the match went out, and it was as if a black mask covered the stranger's face. The man became a shadow again, his outline barely distinguishable in the faint light from the dashboard.

"Who in the hell are you?"

Not a particularly brilliant question. In any case, it came too late. The question was drowned out by the sound of the engine accelerating. The twin red points of the car's taillights were already receding into the distance, leaving a fleeting trail against the dark ribbon of road. The red shone more intensely for an instant as the car turned a corner, then disappeared as if it had never been.

The book hunter stood motionless by the side of the road, trying to piece the picture together. Madrid, outside Liana Taillefer's house. Toledo, his visit to Varo Borja. And Sintra, after an afternoon at Victor Fargas's house. There were also Dumas's serials, a publisher hanged in his study, a printer burned at the stake with his strange manual... And among all this, shadowing Corso: Rochefort, a fictional, seventeenth-century swordsman reincarnated as a uniformed chauffeur of luxury cars. Responsible for an attempted hit-and-run incident, and breaking and entering. A smoker of Montecristo cigars. A smoker without a lighter.

Corso swore gently under his breath. He'd have given a rare incunabulum, in good condition, to punch the face of whoever was writing this ridiculous script.

AS SOON AS HE got back to the hotel, he made several phone calls. First he dialed the Lisbon number in his notebook. He was lucky, Amilcar Pinto was at home. He ascertained as much in a conversation with Pinto's bad-tempered wife. Through the black Bakelite earpiece he could hear the sound of a television blaring in the background, the high-pitched crying of children, and adult voices arguing violently. Finally Pinto came to the phone. They agreed to meet in an hour and a half, the time it would take the Portuguese to travel the fifty kilometers to Sintra. Having arranged this, Corso looked at his watch and called Varo Borja. The book collector wasn't home. Corso left a message on the answering machine and dialed Flavio La Ponte's number in Madrid. La Ponte wasn't home either, so Corso hid his canvas bag on top of the wardrobe and went out for a drink.

The first thing he saw as he pushed open the door of the small hotel lounge was the girl. It couldn't be anyone else: her cropped hair giving her a boyish look, her skin as tanned as if it were August. She sat in an armchair, reading in the cone of light from a lamp, her legs stretched out and crossed on the chair opposite. She was barefoot, in jeans and a white cotton T-shirt, her sweater around her shoulders. Corso stopped, his hand on the doorknob, an absurd feeling hammering at his brain. This was too much of a coincidence.

Incredulous, he went up to the girl. He was almost by her side when she looked up from her book and fixed her green eyes on him with their deep, liquid clarity that he remembered so well from the train. He stopped, not knowing what to say. He had the strange sensation that he was going to fall into those eyes.

"You didn't tell me you were coming to Sintra," he said.

"Nor did you."

She smiled calmly as she said it, looking neither surprised nor embarrassed. She seemed sincerely pleased to see him.

"What are you doing here?" asked Corso.

She removed her feet from the chair and gestured for him to have a seat. But the book hunter remained standing.

"Traveling," said the girl, and she showed him her book. It wasn't the same one as on the train. Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin. "Reading. And bumping into people unexpectedly."

"Unexpectedly," repeated Corso like an echo.

He'd bumped into too many people for one evening, whether unexpectedly or not. He found himself trying to establish a link between her presence at the hotel and Rochefort's appearance on the road. From the right angle, all these things would fit together, but he could not find that angle. He didn't even know where to start.

"Won't you sit down?"

He did so, vaguely anxious. The girl shut her book and regarded him curiously. "You don't look like a tourist," she said.

"I'm not."

"Are you working?"

"Yes."

"Any job in Sintra must be interesting."

That's all I need, thought Corso, adjusting his glasses. Being interrogated after everything I've been through, even if it's by an extremely young, beautiful girl. Maybe that was the problem. She was too young to be dangerous. Or maybe that was where the danger lay. He picked up the girl's book from the table and flicked through it. It was a modern English edition, some of the paragraphs underlined in pencil. He read one:

His eyes remained fixed in the diminishing light and growing darkness. That preternatural blackness that seems to be saying to God's most luminous and sublime creation: "Give me space. Stop shining."

"You like Gothic novels?"

"I like to read." She bowed her head slightly, and the light made a foreshortened outline of her bare neck. "And to hold books. I always carry several in my rucksack when I travel."

"Do you travel a lot?"

"Yes. I've been traveling for ages."

Corso winced at her answer. She said it very seriously, frowning slightly, like a child talking about serious matters.

"I thought you were a student."

"I am sometimes."

Corso put the Melmoth back on the table.

"You're a strange young lady. How old are you? Eighteen? Nineteen? Sometimes your expression changes, as if you were older."

"Maybe I am. One's expressions are influenced by what one has experienced and read. Look at you."

"What's the matter with me?"

"Have you ever seen yourself smile? You look like an old soldier."

He shifted slightly in his seat, embarrassed. "I don't know how an old soldier smiles."

"Well, I do." The girl's eyes darkened. She was searching in her memory. "Once I knew ten thousand men who were looking for the sea."

Corso lifted an eyebrow in mock-interest. "Really. Is that something you read or experienced?"

"Guess." She stopped and looked at him intently before adding, "You seem like a clever man, Mr. Corso."

She stood up, taking the book from the table and her white sneakers off the floor. Her eyes brightened, and Corso recognized the reflections in them. He saw something familiar in her gaze.

"Maybe we'll see each other around," she said as she left.

Corso had no doubt that they would. He wasn't sure whether he wanted to or not. Either way, the thought lasted only a moment. As she left, the girl passed Amilcar Pinto at the door.

He was a short, greasy little man. His skin was dark and shiny, as if it had just been varnished, and his thick, wiry mustache was roughly trimmed. He would have been an honest policeman, even a good policeman, if he didn't have to feed five children, a wife, and a retired father who secretly stole his cigarettes. His wife was a mulatto and twenty years ago had been very beautiful. Pinto brought her back from Mozambique at the time of independence, when Maputo was called Lourenco Marques and he himself was a decorated sergeant in the paratroops, a slight, brave man. During the course of some of the deals Pinto and Corso did from time to time, Corso had seen Pinto's wife—eyes ringed with fatigue, large, flaccid breasts, in old slippers, and her hair tied with a red scarf—in the hallway to their house that smelled of dirty kids and boiled vegetables.

The policeman came straight into the lounge, looking at the girl out of the corner of his eye as he passed her, and sank into the armchair opposite Corso. He was out of breath, as if he'd just walked all the way from Lisbon.

"Who's the girl?"

"Nobody important," answered Corso. "She's Spanish. A tourist."

Pinto nodded. He wiped his sweaty palms on his trouser legs. It was something he often did. He sweated abundantly, and his shirt collars always had a dark ring where they touched his skin.

"I have a bit of a problem," said Corso.

Pinto's grin widened. No problem is insoluble, his expression said. Not as long as you and I still get along. "I'm sure we'll figure something out," he answered.

It was Corso's turn to smile. He'd met Amilcar Pinto four years ago. Some stolen books had appeared on stands at the Ladra Book Fair—a bad business. Corso came to Lisbon to identify them, Pinto made a couple of arrests, and en route back to their owner a few very valuable books disappeared forever. To celebrate the beginning of a fruitful friendship, Corso and Pinto got drunk together in the fados bars of the Barrio Alto. The former paratroop sergeant reminisced about his time in the colonies, told how he'd nearly had his balls blown off at the battle of Gorongosa. The two men ended up singing "Grandola Vila Morena" at the top of their voices on Santa Luzia. Illuminated by the moon, the district of Alfama lay at their feet with the Tagus beyond it, wide and gleaming like a sheet of silver. The dark shapes of boats, moving very slowly, headed out toward the Belem tower and the Atlantic.

A waiter brought Pinto the coffee he had ordered. Corso said nothing until the waiter left.

"It's about a book."

The policeman bent over the little low table and put sugar in his coffee.

"It's always about a book," he said gravely.

"This one's special."

"Which one isn't?"

Corso smiled a sharp, metallic smile. "The owner doesn't want to sell."

"That's bad." Pinto drank some coffee, savoring it. "Commerce is a good thing. Goods moving, coming and going. It generates wealth, makes money for the middlemen..." He put the cup down and wiped his hands on his trousers. "Products have to circulate. It's the law of the market, of life. Not selling should be banned: it's almost a crime."

"I agree," said Corso. "We should do something about it."

Pinto leaned back in his chair. Calm and confident, he looked at Corso expectantly. Once, after an ambush in the mato in Mozambique, he had fled, carrying a dying officer ten kilometers through the jungle. At dawn he felt the lieutenant die, but didn't want to leave him behind. So he went on, the corpse over his shoulders, until he reached the base. The lieutenant was very young, and Pinto thought that the man's mother would like to have him buried back in Portugal. They gave him a medal for it. Now Pinto's children played about the house with his old tarnished medals.

"Maybe you know the man: Victor Fargas."

The policeman nodded. "The Fargases are a very old, very respectable family," he said. "In the past they had a lot of influence, but no more."

Corso handed him a sealed envelope. "This is all the information you need: owner, book, and location."

"I know the house." Pinto licked his upper lip, wetting his mustache. "Very unwise, keeping valuable books there. Any unscrupulous individual might get in." He looked at Corso as if saddened by the irresponsibility of Victor Fargas. "I can think of one, a petty thief from Chiado who owes me a favor."

Corso shook some invisible dust from his clothes. It had nothing to do with him. Not in the operational stage, anyway.

"I don't want to be in the area when it happens."

"Don't worry. You'll get your book and Mr. Fargas will be disturbed as little as possible. A broken windowpane at the most. It'll be a clean job. About payment..."

Corso pointed at the unopened envelope that Pinto was holding. "That's an advance, a quarter of the total. The rest on delivery."

"Fine. When are you leaving?"

"First thing tomorrow morning. I'll get in touch with you from Paris." Pinto was about to get up, but Corso stopped him. "There's something else. I need an identification. Tall man, about six feet, with a mustache and a scar on his face. Black hair, dark eyes. Slim. He's not Spanish or Portuguese. He's been lurking around here tonight."

"Is he dangerous?"

"I don't know. He followed me from Madrid."

Pinto was taking notes on the back of the envelope. "Does this have anything to do with our business?"

"I'm assuming it does. But I don't have any more information."

"I'll do what I can. I have friends at the police station here in Sintra. And I'll take a look at the files at central headquarters in Lisbon."

He stood up and put the envelope in the inside pocket of his jacket. Corso caught a glimpse of a holstered revolver under his left arm.

"Why don't you stay for a drink?"

Pinto sighed and shook his head. "I'd like to, but three of the kids have the measles. They catch it off each other, the little swine." He said this with a tired smile. All the heroes in Corso's world were tired.

They went to the hotel entrance where Pinto had parked his old Citroen 2CV. As they shook hands, Corso mentioned Fargas again.

"Make sure that Fargas is disturbed as little as possible. This is just a burglary."

Pinto turned on the engine and the lights. He looked at Corso reproachfully through the open window. He seemed offended. "Please. You don't need to tell me again. I know what I'm doing."

AFTER PINTO LEFT, CORSO went up to his room to sort out his notes. He worked late into the night, his bed covered with papers and The Nine Doors open on his pillow. He felt extremely tired and thought a hot shower might help him relax. He was on his way to the bathroom when the phone rang. It was Varo Borja, wanting to know how he had got on with Fargas. Corso gave him a general idea of how things were going, including the discrepancies he had found in five of the nine engravings.

"By the way," he added, "our friend Fargas won't sell."

There was silence at the other end of the line. Borja seemed to be thinking, although there was no way of telling whether it was about the engravings or Fargas's refusal to sell. When he spoke again, his tone was extremely cautious.

"That seemed likely," he said, and Corso still wasn't sure which thing he was referring to. "Is there any way of getting around the problem?"

"There might be."

Borja was silent again. Corso counted five seconds by his watch.

"I'll leave it in your hands."

They didn't say much else after that. Corso didn't mention his conversation with Pinto, and Borja didn't inquire into how Corso was going to solve the "problem," as he had euphemistically put it. He only asked if Corso needed more money, and Corso said no. They agreed to talk again when Corso reached Paris.

Corso then dialed La Ponte's number, but there was no answer. The blue pages of the Dumas manuscript were still in their folder. He gathered his notes and the black leather-bound book with the pentacle on the cover. He put them back in his canvas bag and slipped it under the bed, tying the strap to one of the legs. That way, if anybody got into the room and tried to take it, he'd have to wake Corso however soundly he was sleeping. Rather an awkward piece of luggage to carry around, he thought as he went to the bathroom to turn on the shower. And, for some reason, dangerous too.

He brushed his teeth. Then he undressed and dropped his clothes on the floor. The mirror was almost completely steamed over, but he could see his reflection, thin and hard like an emaciated wolf. Once again he felt a burst of anxiety from the distant past, swamping his mind in a painful wave. Like a string vibrating in his flesh and his memory. Nikon. He remembered her every time he undid his belt. She'd always insisted on undoing it for him, as if it was a ritual. He shut his eyes and saw her sitting on the edge of the bed in front of him, slipping his trousers and then his underpants down very slowly, savoring the moment with a conspiratorial, tender smile. Relax, Lucas Corso. Once she'd taken a photo of him secretly, while he was sleeping. He was facedown with a vertical crease on his brow and his cheek darkened by stubble. It made his face look thinner and emphasized the tense, bitter lines at the corners of his half-open mouth. He looked like an exhausted wolf, suspicious and tormented in the deserted snow plain of the pillow. He didn't like the photograph. He'd found it by chance, in the fixing tray in the bathroom that Nikon used as a darkroom. He'd torn it and the negative into little pieces. She'd never mentioned it.

When he stepped into the shower, the hot water scalded him. He let it run over his face, burning his eyelids. He put up with the pain, his jaw clenched and his muscles taut, suppressing the urge to howl with loneliness in the suffocating steam. For four years, one month, and twelve days, Nikon always got into the shower with him after they made love and soaped his back slowly, interminably. And often she put her arms around him, like a little girl in the rain. One day I'll leave without ever really knowing you. You'll remember my big, dark eyes. The reproachful silences. The moans of anxiety as I slept. The nightmares you couldn't save me from. You'll remember all this when I'm gone.

He rested his head against the dripping white tiles, in a steaming desert that seemed a kind of hell. Nobody had ever soaped his back before or since Nikon. Nobody. Ever.

After his shower he got into bed with the Memoirs of Saint Helena but managed to read only a couple of lines:

Returning to the subject of war, the Emperor continued: "The Spaniards en masse acted as a man of honor."

He frowned at Napoleon's praise, two centuries old. He remembered words he'd heard as a child, perhaps from one of his grandparents, or his father. "There's one thing we Spaniards do better than anyone else: appear in Goya's pictures." Men of honor, Bonaparte had said. Corso thought of Borja and his checkbook. Of La Ponte and widows' libraries plundered for a pittance. Of Nikon's ghost wandering in a lonely, white desert. Of himself, a hunter who worked for the highest bidder. These were different times.

He was still smiling, desperate and bitter, when he fell asleep.

WHEN HE WOKE, THE first thing he saw was the gray light of dawn through the window. Too early. Confused, he tried to find his watch on the bedside table when he realized that the phone was ringing. He dropped the receiver twice before managing to lodge it between his ear and the pillow.

"Hello?"

"This is your friend from last night. Remember? Irene Adler. I'm in the lobby. We have to talk. Now."

"What the hell..."

But she'd hung up. Cursing, Corso searched for his glasses. He threw back the sheets and pulled on his trousers, groggy and disconcerted. With sudden panic, he looked under the bed. The bag was still there, intact. He made an effort to focus on the things around him. Everything in the room was in order. It was outside that things were happening. He just had time to go to the bathroom and splash water on his face before she knocked at the door.

"Do you know what time it is?"

The girl was standing there in her blue duffel coat and with her rucksack on her back. Her eyes were even greener than Corso remembered.

"It's half past six in the morning," she said quietly. "And you have to get dressed right now."

"Have you gone crazy?"

"No." She came into the room without being asked and looked around critically. "We don't have much time."

"We?"

"You and I. Things have got rather complicated."

Corso snorted, angry. "It's too early for jokes."

"Don't be stupid." She wrinkled her nose with a grave expression. Despite her youth and boyishness, she looked different, older, and more self-assured. "I'm serious."

She put her rucksack on the unmade bed. Corso gave it back to her and showed her the door.

"Go to hell," he said.

She didn't move, just looked at him intently. "Listen." Her light eyes were very near, like liquid ice, so luminous against her tanned skin. "Do you know who Victor Fargas is?"

Corso caught sight of his own face in the mirror above the chest of drawers, beyond the girl's shoulder. He was open-mouthed, like an idiot.

"Of course I do."

It had taken him several seconds to answer, and he was still blinking, confused. She waited, not entirely satisfied with his response to her words. It was obvious that her mind was on other things.

"He's dead," she said.

She said it neutrally, as if she'd just told him that Fargas had coffee for breakfast or went to the dentist. Corso took a deep breath, trying to take in what she'd just said. "That's not possible. I was with him last night. He was fine."

"Well, he's not now. He's not fine at all."

"How do you know?"

"I just do."

Corso shook his head, suspicious, and went to get a cigarette. En route he saw the flask of Bols, so he took a swig. The gin hitting his empty stomach made him shudder. He waited, forcing himself not to look at the girl until he'd inhaled his first puff of smoke. He wasn't at all happy with the part he was being forced to play this morning. He needed time to think.

"The café in Madrid, the train, last night, and now this morning here in Sintra..." He counted on the fingers of his left hand, his cigarette in his mouth, his eyes half closed because of the smoke. "That's a lot of coincidences, don't you think?"

She shook her head impatiently. "I thought you were smarter than that. Who said anything about coincidences?"

"Why are you following me?"

"I like you."

Corso didn't feel like laughing. He twisted his mouth. "That's ridiculous."

She looked at him for a time, thoughtfully.

"I suppose it is," she said at last. "You don't exactly look breathtaking, always in that old coat and those glasses."

"What is it, then?"

"Find another answer. Anything would do. But now get dressed, will you? We have to go to Fargas's house."

"We?"

"You and I. Before the police get there."

THE DEAD LEAVES CRACKLED beneath their feet as they pushed the iron gate and walked up the path lined with broken statues and empty pedestals. The gray morning light cast no shadows, and above the stone staircase the sundial still showed no time. POSTUMA NECAT. The last one kills, Corso read again. The girl had followed his gaze.

"Absolutely true," she said coldly and pushed the door. It was locked.

"Let's try the back," suggested Corso.

They went around the house, past the tiled fountain with the chubby stone angel, eyes empty and hands cut off, water still trickling from its mouth into the pond. Surprisingly composed, the girl—Irene Adler or whatever her name was—went ahead of Corso in her blue duffel coat, the rucksack on her back. She walked, her long supple legs in jeans, her stubborn head tilted forward with the determined air of someone who knows exactly where she is going. Unlike Corso. He had overcome his doubt and let the girl lead him. He was leaving the questions for later. Clearheaded after a quick shower, carrying in his canvas bag all that was important to him, he could think of nothing now but Victor Fargas's Nine Doors, book number two.

They got in without difficulty through the French window that led from the garden into the drawing room. On the ceiling, dagger aloft, Abraham was still watching over the books lined up on the floor. The house seemed deserted.

"Where's Fargas?" asked Corso.

The girl shrugged. "I have no idea."

"You said he was dead."

"He is." After glancing at her surroundings, at the bare walls and the books, she picked up the violin from the sideboard and looked at it curiously. "What I don't know is where he is."

"You're lying."

She placed the violin under her chin and plucked at the strings before putting it back in its case, unhappy with the sound. Then she looked at Corso.

"Oh ye of little faith."

She was smiling again, absently. To Corso her composure, incongruously mature, seemed both deep and frivolous. This young lady behaved according to a strange code of conduct, motivated by things that were more complex than her age and appearance let one suppose.

Suddenly, these thoughts—the girl, the strange events, even the supposed corpse of Victor Fargas—all left Corso's mind. On the threadbare rug that depicted the battle of Arbelas, between books on satamc arts and the occult, there was a gap. The Nine Doors was no longer there.

"Shit," he said.

He muttered it again as he knelt beside the row of books. His expert glance, accustomed to finding a book instantly, went back and forth without success. Black morocco, five raised bands, no title on the exterior, a pentacle on the cover. Umbrarum regni etc. He wasn't mistaken. A third of the mystery, exactly thirty-three point endless threes percent, had vanished.

"Shit."

It couldn't have been Pinto, he wouldn't have had time to organize anything. The girl was watching him as if waiting for him to do something interesting. Corso stood up.

"Who are you?"

It was the second time in less than twelve hours that he'd asked the question, but to two different people. Things were getting complicated far too quickly. For her part, the girl held his gaze, not reacting to the question. After a time she looked away into empty space. Or possibly at the books lined up on the floor.

"It doesn't matter," she answered. "You'd be better off wondering where the book has gone."

"What book?"

She looked at him again but said nothing. He felt incredibly stupid.

"You know too much," he told the girl. "Even more than I do."

Again she shrugged. She was looking at Corso's watch.

"You don't have much time."

"I don't give a damn how much time I have."

"That's up to you. But there's a flight from Lisbon to Paris in five hours, from Portela Airport. We can just make it."

God. Corso shivered under his coat, horrified. She sounded like an efficient secretary, schedule book in hand, listing her boss's appointments for the day. He opened his mouth to complain. And so young with those disturbing eyes. Damned little witch.

"Why should I leave now?"

"Because the police might arrive."

"I don't have anything to hide."

The girl smiled indefinably, as if she had just heard a funny but very old joke. Then she put her rucksack on her back and waved good-bye.

"I'll bring you cigarettes in prison. Though they don't sell your brand here in Portugal."

She went out into the garden without a backward glance at the room. Corso was about to go after her and stop her. Then he saw something in the fireplace.

After a moment of disbelief, he went over to it. Very slowly, so that things might return to normal. But when he reached the fireplace and leaned on the mantelpiece, he saw that the damage was irreversible. In the brief interval between last night and this morning, a minute period of time compared to their centuries-old contents, the antiquarian bibliographies had gone out of date. There now remained not three known copies of The Nine Doors, but only two. The third, or what was left of it, was still smoldering among the embers.

He knelt, taking care not to touch anything. The binding, no doubt because of the leather covering, was less damaged than the pages inside. Two of the five raised bands on the spine were intact, and the pentacle was only half burned. But the pages had been almost entirely consumed by the flames. There were only a few charred edges, with fragments of print. Corso held his hand over the still-warm remains.

He took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth, but didn't light it. He remembered how the logs had been piled up in the fireplace the night before. Judging by the ashes—the burned logs lay underneath the ashes of the book, nobody had raked over the embers—the fire had gone out with the book on top. He remembered seeing enough logs piled there to last about four or five hours. And the warm ashes indicated that the fire had gone out about the same number of hours ago. This made a total of eight to ten hours. Somebody must have lit the fire between ten o'clock and midnight, and then put the book in. And whoever had done so hadn't hung around afterward to rake over the embers.

Corso wrapped in old newspaper what remains he could save from the fireplace. The page fragments were stiff and brittle, so it took him some time. As he did this, he noticed that the pages and cover had burned separately. Whoever had thrown them into the fire had torn them apart so that they would burn more efficiently.

Once he retrieved all the pieces, he paused to glance around the room. The Virgil and the Agricola were where Fargas had put them. The De re metalica lined up with the others on the rug—and the Virgil on the table, just as Fargas had left it when, with the tone of a priest performing a ritual sacrifice, he had uttered the words "I think I'll sell this one...." There was a sheet of paper between its pages. Corso opened the book. It was a handwritten receipt, unfinished.

Victor Coutinho Fargas, Identity Card No. 3554712, address: Quinta da Soledade, Carretera de Colares, km 4, Sintra. Received with thanks the sum of 800,000 escudos for the work in my possession, "Virgil. Opera nunc recens accuratissime castigata ... Venezia, Giunta, 1544." (Essling 61. Sander 7671.) Folio, 10.587, lc, 113 woodcuts. Complete and in good condition.

The buyer...

There was no name or signature. The receipt had never been completed. Corso put the paper back and shut the book. Then he went to the room where he'd spent the previous afternoon, to make sure he'd left no trace, no papers with his handwriting, or anything like that. He also removed his cigarette butts from the ashtray and put them in his pocket, wrapped in another piece of newspaper. He looked around for a little while longer. His steps echoed through the empty house. No sign of the owner.

As he again passed the books on the floor, he stopped, tempted. It would have been so easy—a couple of conveniently small Elzevirs attracted his attention. But Corso was a sensible man. It would only complicate matters if things got nasty. So, with a sigh, he bade farewell to the Fargas collection.

He went out through the French window into the garden to look for the girl, dragging his feet through the leaves. He found her sitting on a short flight of steps that led to the pond. He could hear the water trickling from the chubby angel's mouth onto the greenish surface covered with floating plants. She was staring, engrossed, at the pond. Only the sound of his steps interrupted her contemplation and made her turn her head.

Corso put his canvas bag on the bottom step and sat down next to her. He lit the cigarette he'd had in his mouth for some time. He inhaled, his head to one side, and threw away the match. He turned to the girl.

"Now tell me everything."

Still staring at the pond, she gently shook her head. Not abruptly or unpleasantly. On the contrary, the movement of her head, her chin, and the corners of her mouth was sweet and thoughtful, as if Corso's presence, the sad, neglected garden, and the sound of the water were all peculiarly moving. She looked incredibly young. Almost defenseless. And very tired.

"We have to go," she said so low that Corso scarcely heard her. "To Paris."

"First tell me what your link is with Fargas. With all of this."

She shook her head again, in silence. Corso blew out some smoke. The air was so damp that the smoke floated in front of him for a moment before gradually disappearing. He looked at the girl.

"Do you know Rochefort?"

"Rochefort?"

"Whatever his name is. He's dark, with a scar. He was lurking around here last night." As he spoke, Corso was aware of how silly it all was. He ended with an incredulous grimace, doubting his own memories. "I even spoke to him."

The girl again shook her head, still staring at the pond.

"I don't know him."

"What are you doing here, then?"

"I'm looking after you."

Corso stared at the tips of his shoes, rubbing his numb hands. The tinkle of the water in the pond was beginning to get on his nerves. He took a last drag on his cigarette. It was about to burn his lips and tasted bitter.

"You're mad, girl."

He threw away the butt, stared at the smoke fading before his eyes.

"Completely mad," he added.

She still said nothing. After a moment, Corso brought out his flask of gin and took a long swig, without offering her any. He looked at her again.

"Where's Fargas?"

She took a moment to answer, still absorbed, lost. At last she indicated with her chin. "Over there."

Corso followed the direction of her gaze. In the pond, beneath the thread of water from the mouth of the mutilated angel with empty eyes, he saw the vague outline of a man floating facedown among the water lilies and dead leaves.