The Breathing Method by Stephen King

Author:Stephen King [King, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

3: The Club

Stevens saw us out as he always did, holding coats, wishing men the happiest of happy Christmases, thanking them for their generosity. I contrived to be the last, and Stevens looked at me with no surprise when I said:

‘I have a question I’d like to ask, if you don’t mind.’

He smiled a little. ‘I suppose you should,’ he said, ‘Christmas is a fine time for questions.’

Somewhere down the hallway to our left - a hall I had never been down - a grandfather clock ticked sonorously, the sound of the age passing away. I could smell old leather and oiled wood and, much more faintly than either of these, the smell of Stevens’s aftershave.

‘But I should warn you,’ Stevens added as the wind rose in a gust outside, ‘it’s better not to ask too much. Not if you want to keep coming here.’

‘People have been closed out for asking too much?’ Closed out was not really the phrase I wanted, but it was as close as I could come.

‘No,’ Stevens said, his voice as low and polite as ever. They simply choose to stay away.’

I returned his gaze, feeling a chill prickle its way up my back - it was as if a large, cold, invisible hand had been laid on my spine. I found myself remembering that strangely liquid thump I had heard upstairs one night and wondered (as I had more than once before) exactly how many rooms there really were here.

‘If you still have a question, Mr Adley, perhaps you’d better ask it. The evening’s almost over -‘

‘And you have a long train-ride ahead of you?’ I asked, but Stevens only looked at me impassively. ‘All right,’ I said. There are books in this library that I can’t find anywhere else - not in the New York Public Library, not in the catalogues of any of the antiquarian book-dealers I’ve checked with, and certainly not in Books in Print. The billiard table in the Small Room is a Nord. I’d never heard of such a brand, and so I called the International Trademark Commission. They have two Nords - one makes crosscountry skis and the other makes wooden kitchen accessories. There’s a Seafront jukebox in the Long Room. The ITC has a Seeburg listed, but no Seafront.’

‘What is your question, Mr Adley?’

His voice was as mild as ever, but there was something terrible in his eyes suddenly … no; if I am to be truthful, it was not just in his eyes; the terror I felt had infused the atmosphere all around me. The steady tock-tock from down the lefthand hall was no longer the pendulum of a grandfather clock; it was the tapping foot of the executioner as he watches the condemned led to the scaffold. The smells of oil and leather turned bitter and menacing, and when the wind rose in another wild whoop, I felt momentarily sure that the front door would blow open, revealing not 35th Street but an insane Clark

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