Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/74



ordered Eddie to drive to the University Club and settled back on the cushions to discuss with himself this further aspect of the affair.

This man with no hands! Val was free to admit to himself that he did not like him, nor any part of him. There was something sinister about him that repelled, yet he held him with an air of hazy mystery. So it had been no dream, this vision he had had of an intruder whose arms ended in stumpy, sawed-off wrists. He had actually been in Val’s bedroom—in fact, he had stolen the books from him.

Ah, yes, the books. Val permitted himself to consider them for an instant. Evidently they held the explanation of all this mystery. Everything seemed to revolve about them. A man is killed in order that they might be recovered. Another man is drugged to sleep and the books removed from his room. There must be a powerful motive concealed behind such developments. What was it that these commonplace enough books held that made it so important that they be recovered?

And if they were really so valuable, in fact, why had Jessica Pomeroy been so willing—even anxious, it seemed—to get rid of them? Was there a message from the dead in them? Some secret that had Rh