“Interesting,” I said. “No yoga?”

“No yoga. When I asked her that same thing she said that it was power she was after, not samadhi. Anyhow, she just kept fording stranger and stranger acquaintances. The atmosphere got too rarefied for me, so I said good-bye.”

“I wonder why?” I mused.

“Here,” he said, “take a look at this one.”

He tossed me a black book and stepped back. I caught it. It was a copy of the Bible. I opened it to the publishing credits page.

“Something special about this edition?” I asked.

He sighed.

“No. I’m sorry.”

He took it back and replaced it on the shelf.

“Just a minute,” he said.

He returned to the counter and took a cardboard sign from a shelf beneath it. It read JUST STEPPED OUT: WE’LL REOPEN AT and there was a clock face beneath it with movable hands. He set them to indicate a time a half hour hence and went and hung the sign in the door’s window. Then he shot the bolt and gestured for me to follow him to a room in the rear.

The back office contained a desk, a couple of chairs, cartons of books. He seated himself behind the desk and nodded toward the nearest chair. I took it. He switched on a telephone answering machine then, removed a stack of forms and correspondence from the blotter, opened a drawer and took out a bottle of Chianti.

“Care for a glass?” he asked.

“Sure, thanks.”

He rose and stepped through the opened door of a small lavatory. He took a pair of glasses from a shelf and rinsed them. He brought them back, set them down, filled both, and pushed one in my direction. They were from the Sheraton.

“Sorry I tossed the Bible at you,” he said, raising his glass and taking a sip.

“You looked as if you expected one to go up in a puff of smoke.”

He nodded.

“I am really convinced that the reason she wants power has something to do with you. Are you into some form of occultism?”