Page 33 of The Missing Pages
I COULD HARDLY DISGUISE MY DELIGHT WHEN, AFTER I finished purchasing the Bacon, Bernard Alfred indicated that he could only have drinks with me that evening and not also dinner as we had planned.
“I do apologize, Harry,” he said. “Something unexpected has come up. But let’s meet at five o’clock at my club, with a rain check for dinner the next time you come over.”
I took a leap of faith and asked Ada if she might join me for dinner two days earlier than we’d originally planned.
“It would be my pleasure,” she answered.
With my mother dining at the Ritz that evening, I suggested we meet at another establishment in Mayfair. “How about seven thirty at Verrey’s on Regent Street?”
“I will meet you there,” she answered as she walked me toward the door. “May there be no horse and carriage trapped on the rails to delay you this time.”
“I will avoid both the tramways and the Underground at all cost,” I promised. I placed my hand over my heart and felt the outline of the Little Bacon safely tucked beneath.
I left the store and headed toward the hotel to refresh myself before the evening began.
The skies had brightened from the early pewter of the morning to a bright cornflower blue. I walked toward the Ritz with an extra spring in my step.
The perfunctory drink with Quaritch would be over soon enough, and then I would have Ada alone sitting across from me.
The word “celestial” floated through my head as I imagined her eyes reflecting in the candlelight. The glow cast off by her skin.
When I initially planned my trip to London, my goal was to secure more priceless books for my library. But a new desire for something of even greater value was now stirring inside me. Love.
Bernard Alfred sat back in the thick upholstered chair of his club’s smoking room. Around us large portraits of men in dark Rembrandt-like colors lined the room. He withdrew his pipe, placed it between his lips, and lit a match to the bowl.
His tobacco smelled woodsy and dark, unlike the vanilla and bourbon notes in mine.
“I’m so delighted that your grandfather decided to purchase the Mazarin Bible.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m appreciative of you and Rosenbach working together to help him acquire it for him. I can’t wait to see it when I return home.”
“A pleasure.” He waved his hand.
“I had wanted to do something special for you to celebrate its acquisition and, of course, also your Little Bacon conquest. So I again must apologize for not taking you to dinner this evening. We’ll have to do it another day next week.”
I raised my hand to stop him. “It’s not a problem at all. I completely understand.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think you actually do, dear boy,” he said as his body softened from the smoke. “I did not want to speak too much of it at the store, but I’ve recently found myself in quite a unique situation.”
As my mother had taught me, I did not pry. Instead, I waited for Bernard Alfred to speak.
“Well,” he began. “Are you familiar with the bookbinder, Francis Sangorski?”
I had indeed heard Rosenbach mention his name on a few occasions, though somewhat pejoratively, as his jeweled bindings were not the sort of thing that appealed to my dear friend’s taste.
They were known to be fantastically expensive because of the level of craftsmanship and the cost of the stones involved.
“I know the name and that he’s a skilled artisan.”
Bernard Alfred nodded and blew another puff of smoke toward the carved plaster ceiling.
“He has been working on something that is quite incredible. A jewel-encrusted edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.”
I tried to conjure an image of such a thing. “My mother has the Quaritch edition of the Rubaiyat. She bought it last year. The one with the emerald-colored cover. But it’s cloth.” I laughed. “She’ll be disappointed to learn she doesn’t have a bejeweled one.”
“Especially when she finds out what it’s made of, Harry.
” He grew serious. “It’s not adorned with just a few stones; it has over a thousand gems encrusted into its cover.
Specially cut emeralds, topazes, and rubies.
Allegedly, over five thousand pieces of leather and nine square meters of gold leaf to create it. ”
“That’s quite incredible,” I noted.
“Yes,” he agreed. “It is indeed incredible. And the story behind it reads rather like a novel itself.” He drew in another suck from his pipe, preparing to share the tale with me.
“About five years ago, he and John Stonehouse, a manager at Sotheran’s bookshop a few blocks from where we’re now sitting, were talking together.
Francis Sangorski confided that while he’d refitted a handful of Rubaiyats in the past, his real dream was to create a new leather fitting that would be like no other.
He imagined a cover depicting three peacocks surrounded by jewels. ”
The description, while extraordinary to envision, was not something that would ever be to my taste.
“But the cost of such an undertaking would have been too prohibitive to do it on speculation. So Sangorski used all of his powers of persuasion to get Stonehouse to commission it.”
“Well, bully for him,” I said.
“Except that Stonehouse didn’t tell his boss, Henry Cecil, back at the bookshop that he’d agreed to finance Sangorski’s folly. A regrettable decision in hindsight, I’m afraid.” He took a quick puff.
“But I’m getting ahead of myself,” Bernard Alfred continued. “Sangorski set out to create the most exquisite binding ever designed. He produced six different panels, each of them adorned with peacocks, flowers, skulls, and Persian symbols that evoked themes of life and death.”
“And did he achieve his goal?” It was hard to think such a display of overt wealth would be embraced by an English society that prided itself on elegant restraint.
Bernard Alfred groaned. “Sadly, whether or not the book is considered exquisite is hardly the point. A bookseller needs to be able to sell a book, and this one seems to be a tad cursed.”
I laughed. The mere thought of a book being cursed seemed ridiculous to me.
“Well, when it was done, the book went up for sale for 1,000 pounds. I know for a fact that the first person that John Stonington offered it to was the King’s librarian.
But he passed. Stonington then thought he had an offer last summer from Gabriel Wells, the New York dealer, but in the end he, too, changed his mind.
Then, when no one else here wanted it, they thought to ship it to New York to try to find a buyer there.
But they encountered a problem with the US customs officials and Stonington refused to pay the duty, insisting the book then be returned to him in London.
When months went by and he again couldn’t find a buyer, he was finally forced to tell his boss, who was downright furious. ”
“Understandably so,” I added.
“Yes. Once the book was back in the shop, Cecil demanded the book needed to be sold at once, so they had no other option but to put it up for auction. Immediately.”
I glanced at the clock in the corner. I had less than twenty minutes before I had to leave to meet Ada.
“So how does this saga end?” I tried to hurry him.
“With an auction that was held in New York today. It was placed with no reserve, and I was only just informed that it sold for less than half of what Cecil hoped to get for it, though it was still a small fortune.”
“I can imagine.” I glanced again at the clock.
“But Cecil, whom I know well, has asked me to do him a rather large favor. He wants the book escorted personally over the Atlantic and ushered through customs so he doesn’t run into any obstacles with customs like the last time.
He wondered if I knew of anyone who’d be willing and able to do it.
” He waved down the waiter for his chit, then looked at me with a twinkle in his eye.
“And I immediately thought of you.”
Being the chaperone for an expensive book was not something that would typically trouble me. After all, I was already bringing home the rare Bacon, and it was in my blood to be the caretaker of an exceptional and precious volume.
But I had to be honest with Bernard Alfred.
Being associated with a book that was not a serious book collector’s cup of tea but rather an expensive bauble for the nouveau riche crowd, was particularly troubling for me.
Given that my grandfathers had made their fortunes only fifty years before, the sting of being considered “new money” was still an embarrassment.
I didn’t want to do anything that might stain their reputation—or mine.
“So what do you say, Harry?” Bernard Alfred pressed.
The minute hand of the clock had now passed six thirty and I knew I couldn’t be a second late for Ada, particularly after the fiasco that derailed our first dinner. But I had a plan.
“I’m afraid I can’t be the official carrier pigeon.”
Bernard Alfred’s face fell.
“But I do have a solution,” I said. “Why don’t you send Ada?”