He found amid the mouse dirt and cobwebs a fat vellum volume concerning the history of military fortifications. In the neighboring alcove he found the travels of Hakluyt and the Wildflowers of the Southern Alps, which had several blood-smeared mosquitoes smushed between its pages. At last, however, on top of a crooked chimney pile of texts, he came upon an edition of Nicolaus Steno’s famous anatomical work on the ovaries of sharks, which gave him hope that he might have hit on a heap of biological or medical texts. Perhaps somewhere near the bottom was hidden the documentation of some forensically vivid mating ritual or a diagram of the female organs. He became so engrossed in this possibility that he was not even aware of the hint of witch hazel insinuating itself through the haze of cracked book paste and Graeco-Latino-English terminology-until the man’s stealthy approach was announced with a phlegmy clearing of the throat. Lloyd tipped over a pillar of crumbling books and stared up in panic, choking on the dust.

The man who confronted him now was but a smidgen over five feet tall, with tufts of wild hair and bushy eyebrows giving way to a domed forehead. His hands were soft and effeminate-looking, yet there was about his frame a contrasting hint of martial energy and force of character, which was undermined by a noticeable hump on his back. The man’s attire consisted of a neat but worn dark twill suit with a faint powdering of dust, an expensive-looking white shirt and a silver pocket watch suspended from his waistcoat by an oily chain. On the thick hooked nose above a bristle of gray mustache propped a pair of round wire spectacles, and when he opened his mouth to speak Lloyd spotted a calcium stain on his front tooth.

“This is not a lending library, young man. These books are for sale. Get along.”