Free The Wanderer in Unknown Realms by John Connolly Page B

long ago as a month, but not as short as a week.”
    â€œWas he coming to see Maggs?”
    â€œWell, he weren’t coming to see me.”
    She handed the picture back to me, hitched up her skirts to prevent them from dragging in the foul water of the lane, and went off to seek some business elsewhere. I watched her go. She was pretty in a hard way, but if she stayed in her current trade then the prettiness would fade and the hardness would take over, moving from the surface to the heart like ice on a lake. In another life I might have gone with her. I would have paid my money as much for her company as for any physical pleasure I might have derived from it.
    Before the war, perhaps: before High Wood.
    As I climbed the stairs to Maggs’s rooms, I began to form anarrative in my mind. Maulding approaches Dunwidge & Daughter as part of his search for the atlas. When they can’t help him, he looks elsewhere and finds his way at last to Maggs. He’s offering a lot of money for the book, more money than Maggs has ever seen before, but Maulding has led a sheltered life, and Maggs has not. Maggs sees the possibility of greater wealth than he has ever imagined. He lures Maulding with the promise of the book and then takes his life.
    Maggs, the book scout, with knife in hand.
    Maggs, the murderer.
    All very neat, all very tidy, which meant that it probably hadn’t happened that way. But if the girl was right, then Maulding had been here, which made Maggs a link in the chain of events that had led to Maulding’s disappearance.
    I reached the door of number nine and knocked upon it. There was no reply. I called Maggs’s name and knocked again. The door, when I tried it, was locked, but a locked door is more the promise of security than security itself. I removed my wallet of picks, and it was the work of a minute to open the door.
    Inside was darkness. The drapes were drawn, and I could hear no sounds of occupancy, no movements, no snores. I called Maggs’s name one more time before I entered, mindful of the reputation of the man I was seeking, wary of his knife.
    I stepped inside and was immediately in a large single room, furnished with a sagging couch, some mismatched chairs, and a bed in the corner. The rest was books, but after time spent in Maulding’s home, and the premises of both Stanford’s and Dunwidge & Daughter, I was growing inured to the sight of so many volumes crammed into every available space. A smell of unwashed clothes and unwashed skin prevailed, but beneath it was the stink of burning meat: pork, or something like it.
    Beyond the bed, an open door led into a small kitchen, where a man sat upright at a small table, his back to me. He wore awaistcoat over a gray shirt that might once have been white, and his feet were bare. He was balding, and wisps of hair clung to his pate like gossamer threads caught on stone.
    â€œMr. Maggs?” I said.
    Maggs, if Maggs it was, did not move. I slipped my hand into the pocket of my coat and removed my cosh, but as I drew nearer to the figure I could see that his hands were resting flat upon the table, and there was no weapon in sight.
    I stopped when I was a few feet from the door. The man remained still. He was either holding his breath, or he was dead. I moved into the kitchen, and the reason for his stillness was confirmed.
    The corpse at the table had no eyes, and his sockets now extended so far into his head that, had I a flashlight to hand, I felt sure I could have shone the light into the holes and glimpsed the inside of his skull. I leaned closer and thought that I smelled burning from the twin orifices, as though a pair of hot pokers had been pushed into his brain, searing as they went. I tested his flesh and found stiffness but no decay, not yet. This man was not long dead.
    On the table before him, resting between his hands, lay an envelope. I picked it up and looked inside. It contained five hundred pounds, an enormous