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CHAPTER 4

It was impossible, of course. Stuart stared at the receiver, and then at the dangling cord. It swayed gently, the severed end nearly brushing the floor. And yet the phone was ringing.

Slowly, terribly slowly, he lifted the receiver.

“Hullo?” he said weakly.

“Is that a Mister Horten?”

“Yes,” answered Stuart, so feebly that he could hardly hear his own voice.

“This is Beeton Public Library. We have the book.”

“The what?”

“The book of photographs that you requested. It’s in very poor condition, I’m afraid, so we can’t allow you to take it off the premises. However, if you come to the information desk we’ll let you study it. We’re open between ten and five-thirty, Monday to Saturday.”

“Thank you,” said Stuart automatically, his voice a pathetic little croak.

The line went dead.

He rode home in a daze, and it wasn’t until he had finished lunch that he managed to speak a single word, apart from “Yes,” “No,” or “Can I have ketchup with this?”

“Dad?” he said.

“Hmmmm?” His father raised his eyes from the book he was poring over. The book was actually volume seven of the Oxford English Dictionary, which covered words from Hat to Intervacuum.

“Could an electrical short make a phone ring even when the wire’s cut?”

“Scientific phenomena would be more your mother’s area,” said his father. “However, I believe that given certain prevailing atmospheric conditions it would not be beyond the bounds of probability.”

“Okay,” said Stuart. “So that’s a maybe. And … Dad?”

“Hmmmm?”

“Do you know where the library is in Beeton?”

“The library? It’s ten minutes’ walk from here.”

“Can we go there this afternoon?”

His father, who had gone back to reading the dictionary, looked up again with a pleased expression. “Indubitably,” he said.

“I bet that means yes,” said Stuart.

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There were two parts to the library. The old part had little turrets on the outside and a tiled entrance hall with a marble statue of a man reading a book, and the modern part had a glass staircase going up the middle and an enormous sculpture of a banana made out of wire.

“I’ll just go and look at the children’s section,” said Stuart to his dad as they walked in together.

His father smiled and nodded. Actually Stuart could have said, “I’ll just hang upside down from the wire banana and throw bags of flour at the librarians,” and his father would still have smiled and nodded. Libraries sent him into a sort of trance, and he wandered off in the general direction of reference books. Stuart watched him go, and then went to find the information desk.

It was in the older part of the building, and the man behind the counter was quite old, too. He had long white hair, a rather severe expression, and glasses that hung on a chain around his neck. He was checking something in a card file, and he didn’t look up or show any sign that he’d seen Stuart.

A minute ticked away, and then another. Stuart could feel his heart thudding.

“Can I help you?” asked the man suddenly.

Stuart swallowed. “My name’s Horten,” he said. “You called me about a book.”

“Oh, so you’re Mr. Horten,” said the man, looking surprised. “Well, I must admit I expected someone older. Still, it’s very pleasing to find a youngster interested in local history. I have the book here. Fascinating little volume—it was published in nineteen twenty-three, you know.”

From behind the desk he took out a tiny paperback with a faded pink cover and a cracked spine. It had very few pages.

“I ask you to take the utmost care when you study it,” said the man. “It’s our only copy and the binding is very fragile. No tracing or photocopying.”

Stuart nodded.

“And you’ll need to wear these, so as not to mark the pages.” He held out a pair of white gloves, and Stuart took them, dubiously. “Oh, and could you sign this?” added the man. He slid a form across the desk. Paper-clipped to the top of it was a request slip. It was creased and yellowish. The name written on it in penciled capitals was HORTEN.

“My colleague found the card wedged right at the bottom of a drawer,” the man told him. “It was under a whole pile of stuff, and I rang the number just on the off chance. If you hadn’t answered, I’d have thrown it away. I was meaning to ask how long ago you requested it.”

“Ages ago,” said Stuart, the back of his neck feeling rather cold. “So long ago that I can’t even remember doing it.”

He took the book and sat down. It was called Modern Beeton: A Photographic Record, and on each of the eight double pages there was a snapshot of the town.

The first picture was of Main Street. There was one car (looking like a shoe box on wheels), two horse-and-buggies, three bicycles, and lots of men in hats and women wearing gloves and narrow skirts. At the front of the picture, partly cut off by the frame, was a telephone booth.

Stuart peered at it. Not a telephone booth, he thought; the telephone booth—the very one in which he’d received the call. And there was someone in it. A small boy, his nose squashed up against the glass so that he looked like a pig. The hustle-bustle of busy Main Street, read the caption.

The next picture was of the interior of a train station, where there were yet more men in hats and women with gloves, as well as a great puff of steam bursting from the funnel of a train. In the background, just beside a large weighing machine, stood the small boy again, wearing long shorts and a jacket that was too big for him. His face was a little blurred, but it looked to Stuart as if he were sticking out his tongue at the camera. The caption read: Beeton Railway Station. A thrilling hub of constant activity.

Stuart turned the page. The third picture showed an outdoor swimming pool. (Water frolics for the merry masses.) This time all the women were wearing identical one-piece black swimsuits with thick straps over the shoulders—and so were all the men. The little boy was there again, dressed in the same clothes as before. He was standing next to the turnstile at the entrance to the pool and was holding his nose as if about to jump into the water.

Stuart continued turning the pages. A movie theater came next, followed by a gas station, a fairground, and a bandstand. The boy was visible in every photograph, although he was often a little blurry, as if he’d had to run to get into the picture. Stuart had the feeling that the boy had been following the photographer around.

Between the fairground and the bandstand there was a blank double page—blank, that is, apart from a line of print: Ancient and modern together: a young man encounters the past.

Above it on the paper were a couple of brown, shiny marks. Stuart dabbed at them with a gloved finger and realized that they must be dried glue.

“Excuse me,” he said, returning the book to the counter. “I think there’s a photo missing.”

The man looked closely at the marks on the page. “You’re right.” He frowned. “It’s obviously fallen out somewhere. I’ll make a note and we can check the shelving area and call you if we find it.”

“My number’s changed,” said Stuart quickly, giving his new home phone number.

“And have you finished with the book?” asked the librarian.

“Yes, I suppose so.” Stuart took off the gloves and handed them back. After all the weirdness and excitement of the phone call, the book had been a puzzling disappointment.

“School project, was it?” asked the man.

“No, it was a bit of”—he searched around for an answer—“family history.”

“Horten,” said the man, nodding. “A real local name. There’ve been Hortens in the Beeton area since records began.”

“Oh, yes?” said Stuart politely.

“Blacksmiths, originally, and then locksmiths. Although in the mid-eighteenth century there was a politician in the family. You heard of Phineas Horten from East Nottinghamshire?”

Stuart shook his head.

“And then there was the Great Hortini, a Victorian entertainer whose real name was Horten. Heard of him? No? What about William Horten, the vicar who wrote the hymn ‘By Eden’s Bank I Walked a Mile’?”

Stuart shook his head yet again.

“Or, more recently, there was a magician who was beginning to get very famous when—”

“Tony Horten,” said Stuart quickly.

“That’s right,” said the man, with approval. “You’ve done some research then, I see. Though he was generally known by his stage name. You’re aware of it?”

Stuart shook his head.

The man smiled. “Teeny-Tiny,” he said. “Teeny-Tiny Tony Horten.”