“Except for Enoch Whitley.”
“Those were just rumors.”
“Did he tell you he was barred from the Paranormal Society’s library for stealing books?”
Both Mr. Nichols and Mr. Ehlers’ faces fell, but Ehlers spoke first. “No, he never told us.”
“Whitty was a good man,” Nichols said slowly, “even if he was a troubled one. While he may have been caught at thesociety, no one at the club could ever prove he stole anything else, and that’s all we had to go on.”
“That one young man came close.”
“Him, hmph. That young man was trouble. He made such a fuss over everything.”
“What young man?” Oliver asked.
“Do you remember his name, Charles?”
“I make a point never to learn anyone’s name unless they’ve been here a year.”
Ehlers shook his head. “I don’t remember it either, but it’s been a long time and he wasn’t a member for more than a few weeks. I believe he was a junior or auxiliary member at the time, though I don’t recall who sponsored him.”
“Some doctor, I think. He definitely wasn’t a full member. He was far too young.”
“You think anyone under forty-five is too young. I told you, Charles, one bad winter could wipe out the whole club. We need to convince more young blood to join.”
“But they’re so boisterous. And their taste in books is—”
“You said Mr. Whitley was accused of theft by this young man?” Felipe asked, trying to drag things back on track.
“Yes, it had to have been seven or eight years ago when Enoch brought in a journal from some sixteenth century alchemist. Pardon me if I don’t remember the author; it isn’t my area of interest,” Ehlers answered. “The young man had apparently been studying that text in his university’s library for some paper he was working on only to have it disappear in the middle of his research. He had assumed someone else had stashing it away to their own research or to sabotage his grade, and when he saw Enoch showing it off, he was furious.”
“He accused him of stealing it from the university in front of everyone.”
“It wasn’t everyone, Charles. It was in front of you, me, Benjamin Lambley, and Moses Pembrook.”
“How did Mr. Whitley react?”
“He denied that he stole it. He was mortified, as anyone would be.”
“We were all mortified for him,” Mr. Nichols added. “That wasnothow he should have handled it, and I told the young man as much. Whitty should have been pulled aside and told the book might have been stolen in private instead of embarrassing him in front of other people. It’s all very obvious in hindsight, but we all thought that Whitty had been bamboozled by an unscrupulous bookseller. There are plenty of booksellers who will remove the marks from library books or do things to obscure where books came from. None of us would knowingly buy a book like that, but it happens. Plenty of people will happily create fake books and attribute them to real authors or peddle forgeries and charge the same price as the real thing. The latter’s far more common and is easily overlooked, especially with these old eyes.”
“That’s why we have proper channels and procedures to deal with these sorts of things. Unless proven otherwise, we don’t assume malice when naivety or ignorance are more likely. We’re a club, not a governing body, and it isn’t our place to prosecute our members. When we told him that, he didn’t take kindly to the reprimand, especially when we informed him that the university library would have to report the book as stolen before an investigation could be conducted since it wasn’t his book. We couldn’t just take his word for it that it was stolen. He said we were enabling a thief and protecting our own,” Ehlers added with a roll of his eyes.
“The boy made such a stink that the board was forced to conduct an investigation. In the meantime, Whitty had returned the book back to wherever he got it and hopefully got his moneyback. No one was able to look at it again while the investigation was being conducted, and neither George nor I could swear to seeing any identifying marks.”
“In our defense, we only saw it one time.”
“Ultimately, no one could prove if it was the original journal, a forged copy, or a very old reproduction. Our chairman of the board and his vice chair at the time, god rest their souls, ultimately went to the university library to investigate. They searched the shelves and found the book the boy said he couldn’t find shelved in the wrong section. When presented with this information, he refused to acknowledge that maybe he had missed the book or that no malice was involved. Instead, he doubled down, saying Whitley had stolen it and returned it. And if he did, so what? No harm had been done. But he refused to let it go. He kept demanding Whitty be kicked out or presented to the police. We refused because there was no evidence.”
“Then, he threatened to go to the police for an entirely different reason,” Ehlers said, rubbing a ringed hand over his brow. “You gentlemen work for the society, so you understand how it is with our kind, that magic means we prefer our own sex more often than not. When almost everyone around you is the same way, you tend to let your guard down, and this club has been a safe harbor for many of us. He caught onto that as quickly as Whitley’s stealing, and he didn’t like it. He said we should be ashamed of ourselves for turning a respectable club into a molly house and a den of thieves. Then, he threatened to report us to the police.”
“A rotten apple, that one. We threw him out and never heard from him again after that, and good riddance to him. We don’t take kindly to some Johnny-come-lately thinking he can come in and ride roughshod over us. It certainly wasn’t the first time someone bowed out of a membership because they didn’t likeour proclivities, but it was the first time someone made such a stink about it. Getting the police involved. Hmph.”
Ehlers patted Nichols’ arm. “In hindsight, none of it was handled well. We should have scrutinized Whitley’s actions more closely, but once that young man started threatening all of us and the place where we feel safest, no one cared if Whitley stole a book. We were too busy protecting ourselves, and by the time that passed, we had all forgotten about the theft.”
***
Half an hour later, Oliver and Felipe emerged from the Guttenberg Club with a notepad stuffed with notes and ten years of member lists. Truthfully, they were the handwritten copies of the end of year dues lists from the last decade, but with Augustine refusing to relinquish the official member rolls without the board’s approval or a warrant, it was the closest thing to a comprehensive list Mr. Nichols could get his hands on.Thank the lord for the junk at the bottom of desk drawers, Felipe thought as he tucked the papers into his jacket pocket.
