Up until the moment when he first looked into Hippolyte Adolphe Taine's History of English Literature, Herbert Quidley's penchant for old books had netted him nothing in the way of romance and intrigue. Not that he was a stranger to either. Far from it. But hitherto the background for both had been bedrooms and bars, not libraries. On page 21 of the Taine tome he happened upon a sheet of yellow copy paper folded in four. Unfolding it, he read:
asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj Cai: Sities towms copeis wotnid. Gind snoll doper nckli! Wilbe Fieu Dayol fot ig habe mot toseo knwo—te bijk weil en snoll doper—Klio, asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj
Since when, Quidley wondered, refolding the paper and putting it back in the book, had high-school typing students taken to reading Taine? Thoughtfully he replaced the book on the shelf and moved deeper into the literature section.
He had just taken down Xenophon's Anabasis when he saw the girl walk in the door.
Let it be said forthwith that old books were not the only item on Herbert Quidley's penchant-list. He liked old wood, too, and old paintings, not to mention old wine and old whiskey. But most of all he liked young girls. He especially liked them when they looked the way Helen of Troy must have looked when Paris took one gander at her and started building his ladder. This one was tall, with hyacinth hair and liquid blue eyes, and she had a Grecian symmetry of shape that would have made Paris' eyes pop had he been around to take notice. Paris wasn't, but Quidley's eyes, did the job.
After coming in the door, the girl deposited a book on the librarian's desk and headed for the literature section. Quickly Quidley lowered his eyes to the Anabasis and henceforth followed her progress out of their corners. When she came to the O's she paused, took down a book and glanced through it. Then she replaced it and moved on to the P's ... the Q's ... the R's. Barely three feet from him she paused again and took down Taine's History of English Literature.
He simply could not believe it. The odds against two persons taking an interest in so esoteric a volume on a single night in a single library were ten thousand to one. And yet there was no gainsaying that the volume was in the girl's hands, and that she was riffling through it with the air of a seasoned browser.
Presently she returned the book to the shelf, selected another—seemingly at random—and took it over to the librarian's desk. She waited statuesquely while the librarian processed it, then tucked it under her arm and whisked out the door into the misty April night. As soon as she disappeared, Quidley stepped over to the T's and took Taine down once more. Just as he had suspected. The makeshift bookmark was gone.
He remembered how the asdf-;lkj exercise had given way to several lines of gibberish and then reappeared again. A camouflaged message? Or was it merely what it appeared to be on the surface—the efforts of an impatient typing student to type before his time?
He returned Taine to the shelf. After learning from the librarian that the girl's name was Kay Smith, he went out and got in his hardtop. The name rang a bell. Halfway home he realized why. The typing exercise had contained the word "Cai", and if you pronounced it with hard c, you got "Kai"—or "Kay". Obviously, then, the exercise had been a message, and had been deliberately inserted in a book no average person would dream of borrowing.
By whom—her boy friend?
Quidley winced. He was allergic to the term. Not that he ever let the presence of a boy friend deter him when he set out to conquer, but because the term itself brought to mind the word "fiance," and the word "fiance" brought to mind still another word, one which repelled him violently. I.e., "marriage". Just the same, he decided to keep Taine's History under observation for a while.
Her boy friend turned out to be her girl friend, and her girl friend turned out to be a tall and lissome, lovely with a Helenesque air of her own. From the vantage point of a strategically located reading table, where he was keeping company with his favorite little magazine, The Zeitgeist, Quidley watched her take a seemingly haphazard route to the shelf where Taine's History reposed, take the volume down, surreptitiously slip a folded sheet of yellow paper between its pages and return it to the shelf.
After she left he wasted no time in acquainting himself with the second message. It was as unintelligible as the first:
asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj Cai: Habe wotnid ig ist ending ifedererer te. T'lide sid Fieu Dayol po jestig toseo knwo, bijk weil en snoll doper entling—Yoolna. asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj
Well, perhaps not quite as unintelligible. He knew, at least, who Cai was, and he knew—from the reappearance of the words wotnid, Fieu Dayol and snoll doper—that the two communications were in the same code. And certainly it was reasonable to assume that the last word—Yoolna—was the name of the girl he had just seen, and that she was a different person from the Klio whose name had appended the first message.
He refolded the paper, replaced it between the pages, returned the book to the shelf and went back to the reading table and The Zeitgeist.
Kay didn't show up till almost closing time, and he was beginning to think that perhaps she wouldn't come around for the pickup till tomorrow when she finally walked in the door. She employed the same tactics she had employed the previous night, arriving, as though by chance, at the T-section and transferring the message with the same undetectable legerdemain to her purse. This time, when she walked out the door, he was not far behind her.
She climbed into a sleek convertible and pulled into the street. It took him but a moment to gain his hardtop and start out after her. When, several blocks later, she pulled to the curb in front of an all-night coffee bar, he followed suit. After that, it was merely a matter of following her inside.
He decided on Operation Spill-the-sugar. It had stood him in good stead before, and he was rather fond of it. The procedure was quite simple. First you took note of the position of the sugar dispensers, then you situated yourself so that your intended victim was between you and the nearest one, then you ordered coffee without sugar in a low voice, and after the counterman or countergirl had served you, you waited till he/she was out of earshot and asked your i.v. to please pass the sugar. When she did so you let the dispenser slip from your fingers in such a way that some of its contents spilled on her lap—
"I'm terribly sorry," he said, righting it. "Here, let me brush it off."
"It's all right, it's only sugar," she said, laughing.
"I'm hopelessly clumsy," he continued smoothly, brushing the gleaming crystals from her pleated skirt, noting the clean sweep of her thighs. "I beseech you to forgive me."
"You're forgiven," she said, and he noticed then that she spoke with a slight accent.
"If you like, you can send it to the cleaners and have them send the bill to me. My address is 61 Park Place." He pulled out his wallet, chose an appropriate card, and handed it to her—
Herbert Quidley: Profiliste
 
Her forehead crinkled. "Profiliste?"
"I paint profiles with words," he said. "You may have run across some of my pieces in the Better Magazines. I employ a variety of pseudonyms, of course."
"How interesting." She pronounced it "anteresting."
"Not famous profiles, you understand. Just profiles that strike my fancy." He paused. She had raised her cup to her lips and was taking a dainty sip. "You have a rather striking profile yourself, Miss—"
"Smith. Kay Smith." She set the cup back on the counter and turned and faced him. For a second her eyes seemed to expand till they preoccupied his entire vision, till he could see nothing but their disturbingly clear—and suddenly cold—blueness. Panic touched him, then vanished when she said, "Would you really consider word-painting my profile, Mr. Quidley?"
Would he! "When can I call?"
She hesitated for a moment. Then: "I think it will be better if I call on you. There are quite a number of people living in our—our house. I'm afraid the quarters would be much too cramped for an artist like yourself to concentrate."
Quidley glowed. Usually it required two or three days, and sometimes a week, to reach the apartment phase. "Fine," he said. "When can I expect you?"
She stood up and he got to his feet beside her. She was even taller than he had thought. In fact, if he hadn't been wearing Cuban heels, she'd have been taller than he was. "I'll be in town night after next," she said. "Will nine o'clock be convenient for you?"
"Perfectly."
"Good-by for now then, Mr. Quidley."
He was so elated that when he arrived at his apartment he actually did try to write a profile. His own, of course. He sat down at his custom-built chrome-trimmed desk, inserted a blank sheet of paper in his custom-built typewriter and tried to arrange his thoughts. But as usual his mind raced ahead of the moment, and he saw the title, Self Profile, nestling noticeably on the contents page of one of the Better Magazines, and presently he saw the piece itself in all its splendid array of colorful rhetoric, sparkling imagery and scintillating wit, occupying a two-page spread.
It was some time before he returned to reality, and when he did the first thing that met his eyes was the uncompromisingly blank sheet of paper. Hurriedly he typed out a letter to his father, requesting an advance on his allowance, then, after a tall glass of vintage wine, he went to bed.
In telling him that she would be in town two nights hence, Kay had unwittingly apprised him that there would be no exchange of messages until that time, so the next evening he skipped his vigil at the library. The following evening, however, after readying his apartment for the forthcoming assignation, he hied himself to his reading-table post and took up The Zeitgeist once again.
He had not thought it possible that there could be a third such woman.
And yet there she was, walking in the door, tall and blue-eyed and graceful; dark of hair and noble of mien; browsing in the philosophy section now, now the fiction section, now moving leisurely into the literature aisle and toward the T's....
The camouflage had varied, but the message was typical enough:
fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; Cai: Gind en snoll doper nckli! Wotnid antwaterer Fieu Dayol hid jestig snoll doper ifedererer te. Dep gogensplo snoll dopers ensing!—Gorka. fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl;
Judging from the repeated use of the words, snoll dopers were the topic of the day. Annoyed, Quidley replaced the message and put the book back on the shelf. Then he returned to his apartment to await Kay.
He wondered what her reaction would be if he asked her point-blank what a snoll doper was; whether she would reveal the nature of the amateur secret society to which she and Klio and Yoolna and Gorka belonged. It virtually had to be an amateur secret society. Unless, of course, they were foreigners. But what on earth foreign organization would be quixoti............