Lucille Lewis THE MAN WHO TALKED WITH BOOKS

Lucille Lewis THE MAN WHO TALKED WITH BOOKS

Old Mr. Spry tiptoed down the hall, listened carefully, then eased open the door to Miss Pringle's room.

He wasn't concerned about Katie, the maid, who was noisily running the sweeper over the spacious floor; he just didn't enjoy Mrs. Terboven, the landlady, ordering him about when not too long ago he'd owned his own home. But that was when his wife Mary was alive, the three boys were little, and everything was different.

Through a bay window which looked out on a garden, morning light revealed crowded bookshelves lining the walls. Mr. Spry felt betrayed. A month ago when he'd come to look at the room, Mrs. Terboven had assured him that his own books would soon adorn the shelves as Miss Pringle would be leaving. But Miss Pringle had stayed on, and Mr. Spry wanted the room more than he'd ever wanted anything in his whole seventy years.

He couldn't expect Mrs. Terboven to understand the importance of this room. He was a collector, psychologist, student of crime — and even more important, a retired librarian; and his catalogued library was enormous. With Mary gone, and the boys all married, he had done all he could to make room for the huge collection, but books had overflowed everywhere.

Mr. Spry hesitated, then stepped gingerly into the room and ran a practiced finger over the book titles, muttering endearments. The haphazard arrangement offended his professional eye-everything from Black Beauty to Euclidean geometry.

The books certainly didn't fit Miss Pringle's personality. Or anyone's. After a lifetime of observation as a public librarian, he knew with certainty what type of book would be owned by what kind of person. Miss Pringle remained the rare exception, and for a month he'd pondered the mystery of the motley collection.

"Come out of that room, Mr. Spry. I have to tell you that every day." Mrs. Terboven loomed in the doorway.

"Miss Pringle gave strict orders—nobody's to touch those books. She even dusts them herself."

"My family would be so happy if they could see me living in this lovely room," Mr. Spry murmured.

"Well, all you have to do," Mrs. Terboven said airily, "is to think up some way to get Miss Pringle out."

Mr. Spry squeezed into his tiny room, sat on the bed, and patted a book carton lovingly. Getting Miss Pringle out was a tempting idea. But how? He weighed the problem. Miss Pringle must get married and move away. But married to whom? He considered those eligible — the other boarders in the house. Mr. Uhl was even older then he was; Mr. Denton was attached to a wispy little wife who lived with him in his stark room. Mr. Abbott?

Getting Miss Pringle and Mr. Abbott together would be just about as difficult as wrapping two watermelons, as a matter of fact. Drab and morose, they didn't merit a second look from anybody, not even from each other.

And yet, he had the strange feeling that somehow they did belong together. The idea disturbed him because usually everything in Mr. Spry's life was neatly catalogued, ready at an instant's notice, and now he couldn't name the source of the absurd idea.

As a collector and student of crime, he began to scissor police stories from a stack of old newspapers while one corner of the psychologist's mind dealt with the problem of Miss Pringle and Mr. Abbott. He remembered a movie he'd seen recently where two mousy people found each other and lived happily ever after. He paused in his clipping. Miss Pringle and Mr. Abbott must find each other. He'd see to that.

Across the dinner table that night he studied Miss Pringle with keen interest. She was hopeless. Dull hair pinned severely away from a face devoid of makeup, her eyes obscured by heavy, bone-rimmed glasses. But in the movies he'd seen greater transformations take place. The hero usually looked at the girl with a more perceptive eye than others and said, "Why, you're lovely!" And she immediately became so.

But Mr. Abbott was no hero. Above a blank, pasty face a bald head gleamed, and he seemed too puny to contemplate making any such remark.

Later that evening Mr. Spry, the psychologist, rummaged through a carton and emerged with a text on the behavior of the abnormally shy.

The next morning at breakfast he launched his campaign. "Why, Miss Pringle, your hair is red. I'd never have noticed if Mr. Abbott hadn't mentioned it."

The effect on Miss Pringle was more than Mr. Spry had hoped for. A dull red, matching the roots of her hair, Hooded her face. Wordless, she snatched her purse and gloves and streaked from the dining room.

Mr. Spry knew he was on the right track. Miss Pringle was merely afraid of her true self, as the book said.

With jaunty self-confidence Mr. Spry fell into step beside Mr. Abbott, who ate breakfast later downtown.

"If I had your looks, young fellow, I'd dress up to them,' Mr. Spry said. "Miss Pringle told me she thought you were a most unusual looking man. Wear a gray flannel suit — a pink shirt, grow a moustache..."

"Any particular color?" Mr. Abbott snarled, his face ashen.

"No—er—that is, no." Mr Spry gaped as Mr. Abbott hurled himself into the subway entrance.

At dinner that evening, Miss Pringle and Mr. Abbott, who had formerly ignored each other, threw such looks of hatred at one another and at Mr. Spry that they forced Mr. Spry to go to his room earlier than usual. He felt hurt and a little ridiculous at such fury; he was only trving to help them to a rich, full life.

The vision of the back room, so bright that morning, faded. Instead, his gaze met the stack of newspapers. Disheartened, he began clipping crime stories.

He settled back comfortably to review a three-month-old story of the upper-Manhattan bank robbery, but he couldn't keep his attention on the printed page. Besides, he knew the story by heart; how the holdup had been so perfectly timed that no one suspected the tall, well-dressed woman who had engaged the bank guard in conversation while her male companion had forced the teller to surrender the cash. Mr. Spry forced his attention back to the newspaper. The bank teller remembered the dapper little man: well-tailored, well-barbered, with a neat mustache; the bank guard recalled the tall woman's red hair and regal figure.

In the silence of his tiny room Mr. Spry could hear the sound of his heart beating, and it was a terrifying sound. Mr. Abbott and the mustache, Miss Pringle and the red hair—the details he had selected because he'd read this story before and his memory had been trying to tell him that they belonged together.

And the money? The books with their ill-assorted titles suddenly made sense.

The next morning Mr. Spry, librarian, was calmly measuring empty bookshelves in Miss Pringle's room, despite the crowd of detectives, policemen, and photographers. Two detectives were still examining the remaining books, rifling the pages and extracting twenty-dollar bills which they added to the stacks on the floor.

"What a hiding place!" One detective, with a puzzled frown, turned to Mr. Spry. "What made you think of the books?"

Mr. Spry studied his tape measure. "1 didn't think of them-fhey told me," he murmured absently.