Free Fanatics by William Bell Page A

vellum—finely polished animal skin. The manuscripts had been penned by different people, and none was in English. Conscious of their value, I replaced them carefully. As I slid them back into the cupboard, my fingernail caught on something. I moved the manuscripts to the table again.
    There was a large round knot in the board that formed the right-hand wall of the cupboard. In an otherwise top-quality bookshelf, why use a flawed piece of wood? Any cabinetmaker knows that knots—especially a big one like this—can come loose and even fall out over time as the wood dries. More important, the old vellum could be snagged just as my finger had been, and damaged. A lapse in cabinetmaking quality like this didn’t make sense.
    I ran my finger across the surface of the knot. It
was
loose. And it was coated with a waxy substance. I pressed it. As I withdrew my finger, the knot came with it. I probed the hole. I felt something. Metal. I pushed.
    And heard a barely audible click.
    Then nothing.
    Taking a step back, I scanned the shelves and uprights. Everything appeared as it should be—except for a barely noticeable gap that outlined three shelves and their uprightsto the right of the cupboard. The gap hadn’t been there moments before.
    I gripped the edge of a shelf between my finger and thumb and pulled. Silently, a section of the shelf unit, books and all, moved toward me like a hinged door, and I found myself looking at another cupboard set into the wall behind the bookshelves, this one secured by a locked metal roll-up door like you’d find on an old writing desk.
    And then I heard a shrill ring.
    Like a schoolboy caught with his hand in the teacher’s purse, I jumped back and snatched a glance toward the library doors, even though I couldn’t see them from the alcove. The ring trilled again.
    My cell.
    It was a text message:
conf din arr 6 k? rs
    I sent back
k
and closed the phone.
    I took a breath and reminded myself that I wasn’t snooping. Well, not technically. I wasn’t prying into the professor’s private life. I was doing what I had agreed to do—make an inventory of the library—wasn’t I? The alcove was part of the library, wasn’t it?
    The second key fit the lock and the door rolled up and behind the cupboard smoothly and silently, revealing two wide, deep shelves. The cupboard was like a strongbox—two layers of metal with insulation between. On the bottom shelf lay a messy pile of papers on top of a file case. The sheaf of paper was as thick as a brick, typed, I was willing to bet, on the old Underwood. The title page bore the word “Fanatics” over “by Professor Eduardo Corbizzi.” I set it aside.
    A wine-coloured book with
Compendium Revelationem
on the spine in cracked gilt lettering rested on the top shelfbeside a small container of inlaid wood. I took up the book, surprised by its heavy weight, and laid it on the table. It smelled of old leather and dust and ancient paper. I flipped through. The language wasn’t English. The last page was stained, but the words “Hieronymvs” and “Ferrara” were clear. Closer to the bottom I made out “Firenze” and “ MCDXCV ,” then “Ser Francesco Bonaccorsi.”
    I turned back to the cupboard and opened the small, finely made box, finding a crudely cast medal, green with age, resting in a silk bed. On one side a pigeon-like bird with rays emanating from its head hung suspended in the sky, at the edge of a cloud. A raised line bisected the medal, separating the strange bird from a hand emerging from a cloud, clutching a dagger, its tip pointing toward a collection of buildings. The flip side showed the profile of a man gripping a crucifix with both hands, staring the haloed Jesus in the face. The man, wearing a cape with a hood that covered his hair and ears, had a prominent hooked nose, and the look in his eyes as he glowered at Jesus was anything but reverent.
    Worn, almost illegible block letters in a foreign language followed the outside