The Club Dumas

Corso turned more pages. All the text was in Latin, printed in handsome type on thick, quality paper that had withstood the passage of time. There were nine splendid full-page en­gravings, showing scenes of a medieval appearance. He paused over one of them, at random. It was numbered with a Latin V, together with one Hebrew and one Greek letter or numeral. At the foot, one word which was incomplete or in code: “fr.st.a.” A man who looked like a merchant was counting out a sack of gold in front of a closed door, unaware of the skeleton behind him holding an hourglass in one hand and a pitchfork in the other.

“What do you think?” asked Borja.

“You told me it was a forgery, but this doesn’t look like one. Have you examined it thoroughly?”

“I’ve gone over the whole thing, down to the last comma, with a magnifying glass. I’ve had plenty of time. I bought it six months ago, when the heirs of Gualterio Terral decided to sell his collection.”

The book hunter turned more pages. The engravings were beautiful, of a simple, mysterious elegance. In another one, a young girl was about to be beheaded by an executioner in ar­mor, his sword raised.

“I doubt that the heirs would have sold a forgery,” said Corso when he’d finished examining it. “They have too much money, and they don’t give a damn about books. The catalogue for the collection even had to be drawn up by Claymore’s auction­eers... And I knew old Terral. He would never have accepted a book that had been tampered with or forged.”

“I agree,” said Borja. “And he inherited The Nine Doors from his father-in-law, Don Lisardo Coy, a book collector with impeccable credentials.”

“And he,” said Corso as he placed the book on the desk and pulled out his notebook from his coat pocket, “bought it from an Italian, Domenico Chiara, whose family, according to the Weiss catalogue, had owned it since 1817....”

Borja nodded, pleased. “I see you’ve gone into the matter in some depth.”

“Of course I have.” Corso looked at him as if he’d just said something very stupid. “It’s my job.”

Borja made a placating gesture. “I don’t doubt Terral and his heirs’ good faith,” he clarified. “Nor did I say that the book wasn’t old.”

“You said it was a forgery.”

“Maybe forgery isn’t the word.”

“Well, what is it then? The book belongs to the right era.” Corso picked it up again and flicked his thumb against the edge of the pages, listening. “Even the paper sounds right.”

“There’s something in it that doesn’t sound right. And I don’t mean the paper.”

“Maybe the prints.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“I would have expected copperplates. By 1666 nobody was using woodcuts.”

“Don’t forget that this was an unusual edition. The engrav­ings are reproductions of other, older prints, supposedly discov­ered or seen by the printer.”

“The Delomelanicon... Do you really believe that?”

“You don’t care what I believe. But the book’s nine original engravings aren’t attributed to just anybody. Legend has it that Lucifer, after being defeated and thrown out of heaven, devised the magic formula to be used by his followers: the authoritative handbook of the shadows. A terrible book kept in secret, burned many times, sold for huge sums by the few privileged to own it... These illustrations are really satanic hieroglyphs. Inter­preted with the aid of the text and the appropriate knowledge, they can be used to summon the prince of darkness.”

Corso nodded with exaggerated gravity. “I can think of bet­ter ways to sell one’s soul.”

“Please don’t joke, this is more serious than it seems.... Do you know what Delomelanicon means?”

“I think so. It comes from the Greek: delo, meaning to sum­mon. And melas: black, dark.”

Borja’s laugh was high-pitched. He said in a tone of ap­proval: “I forgot that you’re an educated mercenary. You’re right: to summon the shadows, or illuminate them... The prophet Daniel, Hippocrates, Flavius Josephus, Albertus Magnus, and Leon III all mention this wonderful book. People have been writing only for the last six thousand years, but the Delomelanicon is reputed to be three times that old. The first direct mention of it is in the Turis papyrus, written thirty-three centuries ago. Then, between 1 B.C. and the second year of our era, it is quoted several times in the Corpus Hermeticum. Ac­cording to the Asclemandres, the book enables one to ‘face the Light.’ And in an incomplete inventory of the library at Alexandria, before it was destroyed for the third and last time in the year 646, there is a specific reference to the nine magic enigmas it contains.... We don’t know if there was one copy or several, or if any copies survived the burning of the library.... Since then, its trail has disappeared and reappeared throughout history, through fires, wars, and disasters.”