THE OLD MAN OF THE BOOKCASE

Alice Bodington in the Open Court.

I will mention one more curiously purposeless appearance.  Mr. J. had succeeded Mr. Q. as librarian of the X library; he had never seen his predecessor, nor any photograph or likeness of him.

One evening he was hastily leaving the librarian's room in order to catch the last train.  The room communicated by a passage with the main room of the library.  As his lamp illuminated this passage he thought he saw a man's face at the further end of it.  He instantly thought a thief had got into the library; went back to his room to fetch a revolver from the safe, and proceeded to the main room.

"Here I saw no one," said Mr. J.; "I called out loudly to the intruder to show himself several times, more with the hope of attracting a policeman than of drawing the intruder.  Then I saw a face looking round one of the bookcases.

"I say looking round, but it had an appearance as if the body were in the bookcase, as the face came closely to the edge, and I could see nobody."

"The face was pallid and hairless, and the orbits of the eyes were very deep.  I advanced toward it, and as I did so I saw an old man with high shoulders seem to rotate out of the end of the bookcase, and with his back towards me and a shuffling gait walk rather quickly from the bookcase to the door of a small lavatory, which opened from the library, and had no other access."

"I followed the man at once into the lavatory, and to my extreme surprise, found no one there." (Mr. J. describes his minute examination of a place "where there was not even hiding for a child.")