46

Jackson R.W. Bishop found himself staring at a gum-chewing person with bangs, the third such to whom he had spoken regarding Duvivier’s pseudonym. He stood at the circular desk in the rotunda that served as the main reading room of the Library of Congress and gazed up toward the skylight. He wished that the statue of Justice, some one hundred feet above, would come alive, tear the blindfold from her eyes, and heave her scales down upon the mindless girl. “Thank you,” he said, “for your trouble.”

He walked back toward the tables that circled the room, found an empty one, and sat to consider what his next move might be, if, indeed, he bothered to make any at all.

One of the clerks wobbled up the row, dispensing books to the patrons who had ordered them. He placed a volume on Duvivier’s desk and moved on.

Duvivier let his hand fall on the spine of the book. Perhaps it was a quirk of fate. Perhaps the person who had filled out the call slip listing this desk number had, inadvertently, given him the answer he sought. He looked at the title page: the 1948 volume of The Livestock and Sanitation Journal.

“Excuse me,” someone said, “but this is my desk.”

“And your book,” Duvivier said, giving her a quick appraisal, “obviously.”

They smiled at each other and he relinquished the chair.

What had Lida said? What, exactly, had Lida said?

That she’d compiled the bibliography required of all English graduate students here. “Measured out my life in index cards” was how she’d put it. And that she’d vowed, once her degree had been awarded, never to pass through the library portals again. “Like shopping at Klein’s. It’s something you want to put behind you.” Yes, she’d said that. She must have written, then. Or called.

He went to a pay phone in the basement and thumbed through the heavy directory, balancing it, in part, on his upraised knee and, in part, on the narrow shelf that the telephone company provided. He dialed the number that the directory had listed and gave his request to the operator.

She smacked her lips and then told him to dial another number. That of Telephone Inquiry.

“Can’t you transfer my call?”

Yes, she could. And did. Another female voice came on the line. He repeated his question and was made to wait in the vacuum called Hold. “Duvivier,” the woman said when she returned. “That’s the only reference I have.”

“Just a moment,” he stalled. “I wonder if you could tell me where you get your information.”

“Where I get it?”

“Yes. How do you go about looking it up?”

“Oh.” She laughed. “I ask Mr. Morganthaler. He looks it up.”

“Could I speak to Mr. Morganthaler?” he asked.

“No, I’m sorry, he’s on another line.”

“I’d be glad to wait.”

“Well …” She considered. “What is this in reference to?”

He sighed. “It’s in reference to the way in which one goes about looking up the actual name of someone using a pseudonym.” He wished the words were bullets, each wounding her grossly. He rather doubted that Lida would have had the patience for any of this. But obviously she had. He should be immensely flattered. He was, as a matter of fact. He picked up a section of newspaper that lay on the floor of the phone booth and looked at it. “You see,” he told the woman, “I’m from The Washington Post and I’m doing a story on the library.” He gave her the name of the first by-line that struck his eye.

“Oh, wow!” she said. “I’ll get Mr. Morganthaler right away!” The phone at her end clattered onto the desk or the floor, Hold forgotten in her excitement.

“I’ve always felt there was a story here. A damned good story. It’s about time you people got around to it.” Morganthaler himself.

“Yes, well, could I come around,” Duvivier said, “in half an hour, let’s say? To interview you, of course.”

“That’s cutting it kind of close,” Morganthaler said. “This place here isn’t exactly … you see, we never see anyone here. We deal with people over the phone. You might say we never see the light of day.” He chuckled. “You can put that in your article. Never see the light of day.”

“When shall I come?”

“Oh, why don’t you come at three or thereabouts. The girls will be on their break. It’ll give me a chance to kind of clear things up a bit.” He told Duvivier, in elaborate detail, how he would find his way to the Telephone Inquiry section.

“Is your story on the library as a whole,” Morganthaler asked, “or just on pseudonyms? Jennie said it was pseudonyms.”

“Actually,” he replied, “it’s on the Telephone Inquiry section.”

“No kidding!” The man’s cheeks swelled and his left eyebrow twitched. “Does that mean they’ll be taking pictures?” He looked over Duvivier’s shoulder, as though he’d somehow overlooked the presence of the photographer and would now rectify that rude act.

“The photographer will be along in a day or two. We do it that way so that you can plan to wear something becoming.”

Morganthaler clasped his hands together, saying, “Well, anything I can do to help you. Anything at all.”

The books came to the Cataloging Section from the Copyright Division. The information on pseudonyms—those too recent to be recorded in the 1972 Scarecrow something-or-other—was transferred from Copyright to Cataloging to Telephone Inquiry. It was simple. And was he going too fast?

“How do you know”—Duvivier looked up from his pad—“when an author is using a pseudonym?”

“Oh, you don’t, not always. A few slip by, like that fellow who was mixed up in the Watergate business, the one who wrote all those spy novels? Now, you should know his name.”

Duvivier didn’t know, but was spared.

“Howard Hunt! That fellow. He wrote under a whole bunch of names, and we never had it in our files. You see, if the author doesn’t want anyone to know, the publisher won’t release that information.”

“Is that right!”

“Oh, yes. You take those books The Sensuous Woman and The Sensuous Man?” He missed Duvivier’s lack of comprehension. “Well, right after those two came out, they came up with another one, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man by Mr. X? Well, I tell you, we ran around like crazy trying to find out who Mr. X was, and we couldn’t. No, sir, we couldn’t. But”—he winked at Duvivier—“I met the man, on business, you might say.”

“You met Mr. X!” Duvivier pretended to take notes.

“Right. He’s one of America’s most prolific authors. You wouldn’t believe it if I told you who Mr. X was.”

“Who is he?” He held his pencil at the ready.

“Oh, no you don’t. I know all about you reporters. No, sir. I’ll take that secret to the grave.”

“It must have been a terrible moral struggle,” Duvivier said, “knowing and yet not being able to catalog the information.”

“You bet it was. I didn’t even tell my wife. But you bet it was. The library always honors the wishes of the author. Always. You might want to write that down.”

Duvivier did so.

“You take that fellow you were asking about. What was his name?”

“Duvivier.”

“Okay, come over here.” He led him to a row of file drawers, exactly like those which housed the card catalog. “Here,” he said, “you do it.”

Duvivier found the name Duvivier. “There are several cards here,” he said. He attempted to pull them free, but something held them. He began to examine them, one by one.

“That just means he has a lot of books. A lot of books under the name of Duvivier. Like Ellery Queen. Say, did you know that Ellery Queen is really the pseudonym of two people?”

“No!”

“You want to write that down? I’ll keep your place.” Morganthaler inserted his fingers between the cards and gestured at the table where Duvivier had left his notepad. “Hmmph,” Duvivier heard him say, “that’s weird.”

“What is it?”

“Somebody’s written on one of these cards. So it looks like this Duvivier character might be …” He trailed off, oblivious of his interviewer now. Flip, flip, flip.

“What do you mean?” Duvivier thought his heart would stop. How might this have happened? He remembered the papers he’d signed, papers proffered by Carol Bradley, who at that time was, like the clerks downstairs, merely another gum-chewing person with bangs. He remembered Carol Bradley taking the wad of gum from her mouth, rolling it in her fingers, dropping it into the metal wastebasket with a thunk. And then she’d wiped the traces from her lips with one round sweeping motion of her tongue. Was that when his concentration flagged? Was that when he’d written, there on one of the forms, the name of Ronald Wendolyn?

Duvivier was imagining his hero’s fingers tightening on Carol Bradley’s throat, when Morganthaler interrupted.

“Pain in the you-know-what,” he said, “but at least you’ll get to see the kind of detective work we do around this place. We check it all out. No stone unturned, you might say.” He lifted the receiver and thumbed through a worn directory.

“What is that book?” Duvivier asked.

“Just the in-house telephones,” he said. “I’m trying to track Jennie down.” He dialed. “Jen?” he said at last. “I’ve got the file card here on Duvivier. D-u-v-i-v-i-e-r.” He covered the receiver and spoke to Duvivier now. “She won’t remember, but it’s a start.”

Duvivier waited. Jennie’s throat loomed, though headless, bodiless. He recalled her voice and imagined it squelched in mid-sentence. “What is this in ref—” and then a thud as she hit the floor.

“It’s your handwriting,” Morganthaler was saying. “That’s right. G-r-i-s-o-n-e. And the other name is Bishop, right below it.”

Duvivier smiled.

Morganthaler winked. “Oh, you did. Well, Jennie, I don’t care if she was bedridden, the fact is, you wrote on the card, one, and you didn’t erase it, two, and I might have spent a whole day on this.” He continued to chide her, pulling a gum eraser from his desk drawer as he spoke. He tried to reach the drawer where the cards were kept, but the cord wasn’t long enough. He gestured at Duvivier to bring him the drawer. “Never, Jen,” he was saying. “These cards are sacred. The Library of Congress, and don’t you forget it, is the most authoritative library in the country. Yes, sir, in the country.”

Duvivier laid the long thin drawer on Morganthaler’s desk. He watched as Morganthaler unscrewed the button on the front of the drawer and extracted a long metal rod. He pulled the card free. “I should make you do this,” he said to Jennie, “but I won’t, this time. But I’ll talk to you later.” He hung up, wiped the eraser fragments away with his hand, and replaced the card, the rod, the drawer. “Bedridden,” he muttered.

He gave Duvivier a glum look. “I’ll tell you,” he said, “I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t put this in the story. Things like this don’t happen. You see how really careful we are. Check and double-check.”

“Impressive,” Duvivier said.

“Still, you better not use this.”

When he shook Duvivier’s hand in parting, Morganthaler was hesitant. “I’d, uh, like a little insurance,” he said.

“Insurance?”

“That you don’t use that Duvivier thing, you know, make us look bad? I know you guys like stuff like that.”

“Well, what do you have in mind?”

“After your article comes out in the paper, without any mention of the mistake, of course, you give me a call. Okay?”

“And then?”

Morganthaler winked. His elbow jutted out like the wing of a chicken and tapped against Duvivier’s side. “Mr. X,” Morganthaler said. “I’ll tell you who he is.”