“This was in your first life, of course.”
“Y-y-yes. Way, way back. I’ve looked in the screens, Ern, t-trying to find out what became of those children; what their lives had been like and how they died. I’d love to know. This can’t possibly interest you.”
It did, and I told her so.
“I remember their names, of course, and the names of their mothers and fathers; but I could never be certain.…”
“I understand.”
Millie’s sigh was almost a moan. “Let’s talk about something else. What does your patron want?”
“It’s complicated. One complication is that I feel I really have two. Legally, Mrs. Fevre checked me out. Her name’s on the record, and she put up the deposit. But her daughter—”
Millie laid a gentle hand on my arm. “In that case Mrs. Fevre’s your patron, Ern. You know that.”
“I agree. She was the one who asked the library to borrow me from Spice Grove as well, but she didn’t come to the library to pick me up and take me home. Her daughter Chandra did that. Because she did, I can’t help but feel that Chandra’s morally my patron. Or that she’s my patron too; take your choice.” I shut up for a minute, not wanting to add what I knew I had to say. “Chandra’s still a kid.”
Millie chuckled softly. “You’d never betray a patron, and you’re too soft-hearted to disappoint a child. No wonder I like you.”
“All right, if that’s the way you want it. Yes. The patrons have different problems. Those problems may or may not be interrelated; it’s much too soon to tell.” I stopped talking to sweep aside lovely pictures of dogs all bathed and brushed, and food so neat and perfect that I would have been ashamed to eat it.
“What’s the little girl’s?”
“A dark—she thinks black—creature that gets into her mother’s bedroom at night and crawls toward her mother crying. By crying she means whining and whimpering, or so I think. Sometimes it talks a little.”
“Interesting!”
“Yes, isn’t it. She and her mother yell at it and tell it to go away, at which it seems to disappear.”
“This is at night? Any lights in the room?”
“None were mentioned.”
“Then disappearing should be easy.”
“I’m afraid so. But when Chandra searches the room, there’s no sign of it.”
“But you think it’s a dog.”
I nodded. “I think it behaves like one, except for the disappearing.”
Millie considered. “What does this have to do with Long John Silver?”
“The mother’s problem is quite different. She has a map. It looks like a treasure map, and it may be one, but it never actually says that’s what it is. Apparently it belonged to her missing husband.”
“Well, well, well! And where is Treasure Island?”
I shook my head. “We don’t know, Millie. The map doesn’t say.”
“It doesn’t say, but Mrs. Fevre thinks you know how to find out. She must, or she wouldn’t have borrowed you.”
“There may be other reasons, or at least that’s how it seems to me. I hadn’t thought of enlisting your help, but now that I have—” I stood up. “Let’s go to the lobby.”
“Prentice and some other woman are on the desk, both of them busy.”
“Good. We’ll hope that it keeps up.”
When we had ducked and weaved through the crowd, we found that the bench on which the older copy of me had sat was empty. “Did you see him?” I asked Millie. “You knew about Prentice and the other librarian. Did you see the earlier copy of me sitting here?”
She shook her head.
“An old man with one arm. He was me in another forty years, a much earlier edition for sale and quite cheaply.”
“You’re saying this library has had another copy of you for years and years.”
“Not quite, but it’s very probable.”
“Then why would they borrow you from Spice Grove?”
“An old, damaged copy,” I said. Someone bumped me and apologized. I said, “I could speculate, but let’s find him and ask.”
Somebody else bumped me and just about knocked me down. My left foot slipped, and I grabbed Millie to keep from falling.
“Here now!” She steadied me. “Lucky for you I’m so solid.”
I thanked her. “Let’s get out—”
“What is it, Ern?”
There was blood on my left shoe.
Shaking my head, I sat down on the bench; a few seconds later, Millie sat beside me. Maybe she said something then. If she did, I have forgotten it.
Gradually, the crowd thinned out. A dozen people, then eight or ten, then three or four. It was quite a bit later than I had expected, but at last Prentice left.
I nudged Millie. “I already owe you a bunch of favors, I know that. Will you do something more for me?”
“Yes, if you’ll tell me what’s up.”
“This isn’t the time for it. Go over there across the room, and go up to that librarian. I want you on that patron’s left. Try to slip in a question, something that can’t be answered with a yes or no. If she tries to shoo you away stay right there. If she answers your question, ask her another—anything you like, but nothing about me. Will you do that?”
“All right, but you’ll owe me. A lot.”
I waited until the librarian had turned toward Millie before I pulled the lifeless body of the earlier copy of Ern A. Smithe from behind the bench. Several patrons stared, and a woman gasped. I ignored them.
When I picked up the bloodstained sign that had announced the price of the dead me and put it around what was left of his neck, one of the men laughed. Patting down this late Ern A. Smithe’s pockets yielded a key on a cheap violet key ring that might have been the prize in some sort of children’s game. Muttering a promise I knew the other copy of me could not hear, I dropped it into my pocket.
Across the lobby, I touched Millie’s elbow. “Come on, you can bother this librarian some other time.” She nodded, and followed me to a table where I held her chair as before.
When we were both seated, she whispered, “What was all that about, Ern? I enjoyed it, but what were you doing? Tell me the truth.”
“I took an old reclone from under that bench and set him up on it again. He was dead.” The horror of the thing filled my mind; I shook my head to clear it. “Somebody had cut his throat.”
Millie stared.
“A small blade, or anyway I think it was. Small and very sharp.” That had been easy, but the next part hurt. “I’m afraid he may have done it himself.”
“Did he belong to this library?” She was trying to change the subject.
“I believe so, although they may have gotten him the same way they got us. Mrs. Fevre had checked him out earlier. He seems to have investigated for her, and I was looking forward to talking with him. Somebody else got to him first. I don’t know what they said or did, but it made him take his own life.”
“What did he write? What was his name?”
“Mysteries. His byline was Ern A. Smithe. That’s ‘Smith,’ with a silent ‘E’ on the end.”