Free The Forgers by Bradford Morrow

enough of the wine and ocean air to feel a mellow serenity settle over me even in the midst of such a curious and in many ways awful task.
    Then I came upon a document that snatched my breath away. A typewritten invoice for a clutch of seventeen unpublished letters by Arthur Conan Doyle pertaining to The Hound of the Baskervilles together with a manuscript fragment from the same work. What? The seller’s name on the rather amateurish invoice, torn out of one of those generic pads that anyone could purchase from a stationer’s shop, was not one I recognized. Or, no, I did. Henry Slader. This had to be the same person the police had mentioned. The address was Dobbs Ferry, a leafy hamlet a short distance up the Hudson from New York. No date or any indication whether Diehl had paid, though I assumed he had since there appeared to be no follow-up notices. On the back of the invoice was a column of numbers, handwritten in pencil, that I couldn’t interpret other than to guess that they might represent further debts. I was stunned, stupefied. This suggested—no, it meant that Adam Diehl had not forged the cache of documents that I had so admired, envied, and, I must admit, even hated him at times for having conceived and brought into being. I glanced at Meghan, who was poring over bills at another table at the far end of the studio, and, seeing that she was focused on her task, silently folded the bill and slipped it into my pants pocket. Whoever this Slader was, I intended to find out. As we drove back to the city that evening, Meghan asked me why I was so quiet.
    â€œJust thinking about how lives can get so complicated in ways we don’t have much control over. Adam’s, I mean.”
    â€œWell, I’m sorry he’s not around to complicate life any more,” she said, wistful, looking at the Patek Philippe, which she had secured loosely around her wrist, tightening its buckle as far as it would go.
    He is, though, I thought, as I reached over and squeezed her hand.
    D OBBS FERRY IS KIND OF a riverside version of Montauk, at least in the sense that Manhattan is so proximate and yet feels light-years away. Having taken the day off from work and telling Meghan I wanted to do some solo book scouting—there are very good shops in the area with shelves bowing under the weight of first editions, and I needed to take a break—I drove up the Saw Mill River Parkway, turned off at the exit I’d looked up earlier, and found my way to the address listed on Henry Slader’s invoice. I had already tried to look him up in both dealer directories and the phone book but didn’t find him listed. Admittedly, I wasn’t surprised by his absence from the grid but did have to wonder why in the world he would have provided Adam with an invoice in the first place rather than make a cash deal for the Sherlock Holmes archive, sidestep the paperwork, and call it a day. A banner day at that.
    As I pulled onto the street, I felt both foolish—some faux private eye on his first stakeout—and unnerved—what was I going to do if I did locate Henry Slader? Ask him if perchance he had a lost Sherlock tale lying around the workroom? It was a residential lane, more suburban than rural, with neat houses up and down the block flanked by mature chestnut, oak, and maple trees in full June glory and green, green grass. Meant he worked at home, just as I did once upon a time. I brought my car to a stop across the street from a modest red brick, two-story house. Oddly, or at least unexpectedly, some children’s toys were scattered about on the lawn—a pink foam soccer ball, a small bicycle lying on its side, colorful plastic tassels dangling from the handlebar butts. Other than this evidence of liveliness, the stodgy facade of the house, with its black front door centered between two windows, shades half-drawn, looked like a man lost in slumber. Before climbing out of the car to go knock on that dark