Undertow (Whyborne & Griffin #8.5)(8)

Mr. Quinn stood near the door, peering about the office with his strange, pale eyes. As I watched, he extended one long-fingered hand and caressed the books on Dr. Whyborne’s shelf.

“Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Quinn?” I asked. “Did Dr. Whyborne forget to return a volume to the library? I can help you find it.”

Dr. Whyborne was not, to put it plainly, organized, and his office reflected it. Since becoming his personal secretary, I’d tried to help straighten it, and succeeded only to the extent that he no longer kept things stacked haphazardly on the floor. Every other surface sported small mountains of books and papers, although at least he’d cleared off the visitor’s chair at some point. Or, more likely, Dr. Putnam-Barnett or Mr. Flaherty had.

“No.” Mr. Quinn crossed to the desk and stared at Dr. Whyborne’s chair. “Sometimes I like to come in here, when no one else is around, and…contemplate.”

I made a mental note to suggest Dr. Whyborne have the lock to his office changed. “I…see.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “I imagine you do. Not like that disagreeable fellow at the theater last night.” He sniffed delicately.

“Mr. Young?” I asked.

“Yes, quite. I don’t imagine he’ll stay long. He has neither the blood nor the temperament.” Mr. Quinn glanced at me, as though he hadn’t said anything particularly strange. “Is that what troubles you?”

“No.” I hesitated. Surely Mr. Quinn wasn’t really interested in my problems. But he’d asked, and I felt the need to unburden myself. “Irene Vale—the woman who was with us at the theater last night—is missing.” My shoulders drooped. “The police say she must have run away with a beau, but she wouldn’t have left her pocketbook and all her things behind if that were true. There’s no evidence anyone took her, though. It’s…strange.”

I glanced up to see Mr. Quinn watching me with unblinking eyes. “How fascinating,” he said. “I take it there was no sign of spontaneous combustion?”

“Dear heavens, no!”

“Pity. Do go on.”

“There’s nothing to go on with,” I confessed. “She had strange nightmares, and then she was gone.”

“Nightmares, you say.” Mr. Quinn tapped his chin with a spidery finger. “I do love a good nightmare, but I find most lack appreciation for them.”

“Er, yes.” I hadn’t any idea how else to respond, so I forged ahead. “I would ask Mr. Flaherty to look into Irene’s disappearance, but he’s left for Kansas with Dr. Whyborne.”

I wasn’t at all clear why Dr. Whyborne seemed to require a private detective to accompany him on all of his expeditions, but the two seemed to travel everywhere together. Ordinarily I would have expected a landlord and boarder to want some time apart, but they were utterly inseparable. Mr. Flaherty even attended the museum galas. And I couldn’t count how many times he’d turned up to share lunch, or else walk with Dr. Whyborne to dinner.

It must be nice to have such a close friend.

“Time is usually of the essence when it comes to disappearances,” Mr. Quinn said thoughtfully. “Do you think this might be a matter for Widdershins?”

I shifted my weight uneasily. “I’m…not sure what you mean.”

“Widdershins.” He made an impatient gesture. “The maelstrom; the vortex; whatever you wish to call it. Dr. Whyborne is the most easily accessible to those of the land, but there is another.”

I’d always heard that the unusual architecture of the library drove the librarians mad, but I’d never actually believed it until now. “Those of the land?”

“One for the land, and one for the sea.”

“Oh!” Finally, I thought I understood. “That was the line of poetry—”

“Prophecy.”

I gritted my teeth, but tamped down my annoyance. “Of course. When you say there is another, you mean Dr. Whyborne’s sister.”

“The one given to the sea, yes.” Mr. Quinn nodded gravely. “They are both Widdershins.”

I still didn’t know what he meant by the rest of it, but he seemed unlikely to give me a coherent answer. “You think I should go to Persephone and ask her for help?”

It would be an excuse to see her. I thrust the thought away sternly.

“It is much more difficult to contact her, for those of us of the land,” he mused. “But if I sacrifice one of the junior librarians on the night of the new moon, near the reef…”

“No, no, that won’t be necessary!” I exclaimed. “I have a summoning stone.”

Mr. Quinn’s pale eyes bulged from his head. “Widdershins entrusted you with a summoning stone?”

“Yes?” I said tentatively.

His hands clenched…then relaxed, as if a deliberate effort on his part. “Well. It is for us to serve, not to question. Widdershins knows its own.”

“I’ll…think about it,” I said, backing toward the door. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really need to get back to work. And I should probably lock up, so…”

“Of course.” Mr. Quinn took out his handkerchief, ran it over Dr. Whyborne’s chair, where his hair would rest, and tucked it back in his pocket. “We all have our duties to attend to.”