Blue Octavo by John Blackburn

Author:John Blackburn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2021-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

Eight

‘Yes, acid, the devil had used acid.’ Mott scowled at John and Julia, and his voice was full of injured dignity as he remembered his humiliation. The pleasure with which he had started to open the book turning to shock and horror as his eyes fell, not on firm pages of print, but grey, rotten pulp that had drifted to powder in his hands. The sequel was hideous, too. With an attendant on either side, and angry or pitying faces staring from each desk, he, Moldon Mott, had been marched into the Curator’s office and spoken to as though he were a delinquent schoolboy.

‘I see. Rather a neat idea.’ In spite of Mott’s scowl, John had to grin slightly at the thought, for it was neat. It would have been almost impossible to steal the B.M.’s copy, or even damage it by normal means, so a novel method had been worked out: a little flat capsule of vitriol had been slipped into the centre pages and held there with tape. In time the acid had eaten through the capsule and then started to run through the paper. Though he sympathized with him, there was something very comical in the thought of Mott surrounded by that crumbling confetti, and he was glad to see that Julia felt so too. She was staring intently at the floor and obviously fighting back a smile.

They sat in the office behind his shop, hedged in on every side with piles of unsorted books and unframed prints. Though officially the shop itself was closed, through the glass partition he could see one industrious browser still browsing. He was an old, though not very valued customer, and could be trusted to let himself out.

‘Yes, I suppose one could call it neat, in an unpleasant, crazy way.’ Mott had obviously noticed Julia’s smile and was put out by it.

‘We’ve got a very rum bird on our hands, it seems. When he can buy or steal he does so, when that’s impossible he destroys. An efficient blighter, too; he must have got hold of most of the edition by now. But the way, did you know that there were only seventy-six in existence – not a hundred as originally advertised?

‘No, well, don’t let me teach you your business, but it’s a fact. Twenty-four were destroyed in a fire just after binding. Allowing for a normal loss through time, what Roach bought, and what we know to have been destroyed, there can’t be many copies about now. My guess is that if we don’t get our hands on one of them, we’re sunk. Only that book can tell us the kind of man we’re up against, and we’ve got to get hold of a copy – we’ve got to. I suppose you’ve had no luck at all, old boy?’

‘No, not a smell of the damned book.’ John remembered his fruitless hours on the telephone, and the replies which had always been the same. There just didn’t seem to be a copy anywhere.

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