Chapter 55

“What!” exploded Edward?
He had until moments ago, when his companion abruptly lobbed a very serious question to the senior librarian of the New York Public Library, expected much less from his traveling contemporary. In the particular context, Edward’s inquisitive utterance functioned more as a mental release than any formal attempt at a method of questioning. The question that Witticker had posed to the old director had not taken Edward off-guard due to its breadth or relevance, but in greater part to its specificity.
In any case, Edward could sense that the question had set something off in the librarian and he knew that any further interjection might cost both he and Witticker the opportunity of a response.

*~~*

“Your question has a complicated answer,” muttered Dietrichs, ignoring Edward’s outburst as he stared deeply into his ashtray. “In fact, I’m not quite sure you deserve the answer at all. Under what circumstances did you come by the information you have now?”
“I knew a man who had an acute interest in the subject,” answered Witticker, ever-ambiguous.
“A name,” growled Dietrichs.
“Brisby Jacobs.”
“Son of a bitch,” cursed Dietrichs, suddenly standing and walking around his desk. He passed both of the sitting men and headed out the door.
“Should we…?” whispered Witticker to Edward, gesturing towards the door left open by the aging director.
“We should,” shot back Edward, springing up from his chair.
Both men ran after the surprisingly swift director who had already passed through the lobby into the adjacent hallway. As they ran after the old man Witticker glanced into the several rooms lining the corridor. Each one contained a large table with several chairs and two large windows with long red drapes drawn closed. Most of the rooms were empty leaving only a scant few occupied and even then by only small huddles of people whispering across wooden tables.
As they passed room after room Witticker began to notice an odd sensation rising in his subconscious, a feeling that seemed to be catching up with him. He knew it was a combination of triggers, a series of experiences boiling together, but it was something in the library that had set off this particular sensation.
He shrugged it off as they caught up with the old man. As Dietrichs hurried down the hallway he pulled a large cigar from his coat pocket and began to light it with a squeaky lighter produced from his pants pocket.
“Brisby Jacobs,” murmured Dietrichs, “came here thirty-one years ago to consult our records. He was granted admission under very special circumstances and was supposed to be researching something about the topography and weather conditions of the Midwest. However, it was reported that he was asking questions out of the scope of his primary investigation. Questions very similar to the one you asked me today.
Dietrichs flicked his cigar end sending a shower of ash and spark towards the floor in line with Witticker’s next step. He quickly navigated around the fiery residue as Dietrichs continued his lecture.
“He was a pain in my ass. Tall and slick and annoyingly persistent. Accessed archives for about three months, night and day, but didn’t seem to be getting the answers he was looking for. One day he stormed into my office yelling about this and that, accusing me of hiding the truth from him. He left the next day. I didn’t think much of it at the time.”
The three men rounded the corner at the turn in the building and began descending the staircase into the main lobby. Witticker looked across the room at the tables set up in front of the main entrance. Scads of people milled around the foyer, groups sharing coffee, others smoking, some sleepily hunched over the edge of tables. Once again he felt the question flame up inside his subconscious. He scanned the scene for an element he couldn’t quite put his finger on, a part that was missing.
“For a few years after he left I thought about that day he came in my office. It hadn’t really bothered me that he was so pissed off, that happens here a lot and he was coloring well outside the lines of his assignment. But I won’t say that I wasn’t surprised at his predicament, considering the breadth of our collection and the strength of his convictions. I realized years later that I may have accidentally done him a bit of a disservice. I wasn’t intentionally hiding anything from him, but at the time of his arrival a bit of our archive had gone missing and I realize now that it may have been right in line with what he was looking for.”
Dietrichs pushed through a door off the lobby into what appeared to be another endless hallway lined with doorframes and portraits, each room looking the same as the last, each framed personage as stiff as the next.
“Unfortunately that particular volume is still missing, but I can at least point you in the right direction.”
Dietrichs began to slow his hurried pace and came to a full stop in the middle of the hallway. The section of the corridor in which they stood was not particularly exciting or even much different than any section of any other hallway that Witticker had seen yet. They stood between two portraits that each hung between two doorways into two dark and empty rooms.
Witticker looked around himself curiously, hoping to notice something overly peculiar or significant, but was only confronted with the same feeling of curious tension that had been eating at him since the departure from the librarian’s office. He turned to Edward to confirm his confounded state only to find his traveling mate staring quizzically at one of the portraits hanging in the unremarkable corridor.

*~~*

Edward wasn’t quite sure how he knew, but he did all the same.
It wasn’t the beard, which was less ragged and bushy. It wasn’t the lanky stature or any curve of the face as the man was much healthier then. It wasn’t even the teeth, which appeared to be much whiter at the time.
It was the eyes. Open wide with that intense passion. Reflecting a certain kind of brilliance. Knowledge of something beyond comprehension.
It was the man outside his building
It was the man in the train yard.
It was Bernie.

*~~*

“This is him,” rumbled Dietrichs as he pointed to the man in the portrait, “this is the missing volume.”