75 лучших рассказов / 75 Best Short Stories

II

Eustace Borlsover was in Naples at the time. He read the obituary notice in the Morning Post on the day announced for the funeral.

‘Poor old fellow!’ he said. ‘I wonder where I shall find room for all his books.’

The question occurred to him again with greater force when three days later he found himself standing in the library at Borlsover Conyers, a huge room built for use, and not for beauty, in the year of Waterloo by a Borlsover who was an ardent admirer of the great Napoleon. It was arranged on the plan of many college libraries, with tall, projecting bookcases forming deep recesses of dusty silence, fit graves for the old hates of forgotten controversy, the dead passions of forgotten lives. At the end of the room, behind the bust of some unknown eighteenth-century divine, an ugly iron corkscrew stair led to a shelf-lined gallery. Nearly every shelf was full.

‘I must talk to Saunders about it,’ said Eustace. ‘I suppose that it will be necessary to have the billiard-room fitted up with book cases.’

The two men met for the first time after many weeks in the dining-room that evening.

‘Hullo!’ said Eustace, standing before the fire with his hands in his pockets. ‘How goes the world, Saunders? Why these dress togs?’ He himself was wearing an old shooting-jacket. He did not believe in mourning, as he had told his uncle on his last visit; and though he usually went in for quiet-colored ties, he wore this evening one of an ugly red, in order to shock Morton the butler, and to make them thrash out the whole question of mourning for themselves in the servants’ hall. Eustace was a true Borlsover. ‘The world,’ said Saunders ‘goes the same as usual, confoundedly slow. The dress togs are accounted for by an invitation from Captain Lockwood to bridge.’

‘How are you getting there?’

‘I’ve told your coachman to drive me in your carriage. Any objection?’

‘Oh, dear me, no! We’ve had all things in common for far too many years for me to raise objections at this hour of the day.’

‘You’ll find your correspondence in the library,’ went on Saunders. ‘Most of it I’ve seen to. There are a few private letters I haven’t opened. There’s also a box with a rat, or something, inside it that came by the evening post. Very likely it’s the six-toed albino. I didn’t look, because I didn’t want to mess up my things but I should gather from the way it’s jumping about that it’s pretty hungry.’

‘Oh, I’ll see to it,’ said Eustace, ‘while you and the Captain earn an honest penny.’

Dinner over and Saunders gone, Eustace went into the library. Though the fire had been lit the room was by no means cheerful.

‘We’ll have all the lights on at any rate,’ he said, as he turned the switches. ‘And, Morton,’ he added, when the butler brought the coffee, ‘get me a screwdriver or something to undo this box. Whatever the animal is, he’s kicking up the deuce of a row. What is it? Why are you dawdling?’

‘If you please, sir, when the postman brought it he told me that they’d bored the holes in the lid at the post-office. There were no breathin’ holes in the lid, sir, and they didn’t want the animal to die. That is all, sir.’

‘It’s culpably careless of the man, whoever he was,’ said Eustace, as he removed the screws, ‘packing an animal like this in a wooden box with no means of getting air. Confound it all! I meant to ask Morton to bring me a cage to put it in. Now I suppose I shall have to get one myself.’

He placed a heavy book on the lid from which the screws had been removed, and went into the billiard-room. As he came back into the library with an empty cage in his hand he heard the sound of something falling, and then of something scuttling along the floor.

‘Bother it! The beast’s got out. How in the world am I to find it again in this library!’

To search for it did indeed seem hopeless. He tried to follow the sound of the scuttling in one of the recesses where the animal seemed to be running behind the books in the shelves, but it was impossible to locate it. Eustace resolved to go on quietly reading. Very likely the animal might gain confidence and show itself. Saunders seemed to have dealt in his usual methodical manner with most of the correspondence. There were still the private letters.

What was that? Two sharp clicks and the lights in the hideous candelabra that hung from the ceiling suddenly went out.

‘I wonder if something has gone wrong with the fuse,’ said Eustace, as he went to the switches by the door. Then he stopped. There was a noise at the other end of the room, as if something was crawling up the iron corkscrew stair. ‘If it’s gone into the gallery,’ he said, ‘well and good.’ He hastily turned on the lights, crossed the room, and climbed up the stair. But he could see nothing. His grandfather had placed a little gate at the top of the stair, so that children could run and romp in the gallery without fear of accident. This Eustace closed, and having considerably narrowed the circle of his search, returned to his desk by the fire.