Then these things
came--combined in the person of an old man, Antony Bartle, who opened
the door, pushed in a queer, wrinkled face, and asked in a quavering
voice if anybody was in.
"I'm in, Mr. Bartle," answered Pratt, turning up a gas jet which he had
just lowered. "Come in, sir. What can I do for you?"
Antony Bartle came in, wheezing and coughing. He was a very, very old
man, feeble and bent, with little that looked alive about him but his
light, alert eyes. Everybody knew him--he was one of the institutions of
Barford--as well known as the Town Hall or the Parish Church. For fifty
years he had kept a second-hand bookshop in Quagg Alley, the narrow
passage-way which connected Market Street with Beck Street. It was not
by any means a common or ordinary second-hand bookshop: its proprietor
styled himself an "antiquarian bookseller"; and he had a reputation in
two Continents, and dealt with millionaire buyers and virtuosos in both.
Barford people sometimes marvelled at the news that Mr. Antony Bartle
had given two thousand guineas for a Book of Hours, and had sold a
Missal for twice that amount to some American collector; and they got a
hazy notion that the old man must be well-to-do--despite his snuffiness
and shabbiness, and that his queer old shop, in the window of which
there was rarely anything to be seen but a few ancient tomes, and two or
three rare engravings, contained much that he could turn at an hour's
notice into gold.
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