Free Magic Terror by Peter Straub Page A

editions,” N said. “Something suitable for Molière, Racine, Diderot—you know the sort of thing I mean.”
    Avarice sparkled in Hubert’s eyes. “Yours is a large collection?”
    “Only a modest one. Approximately five hundred volumes.”
    Hubert’s smile deepened the wrinkles around his eyes. “Not so very modest, perhaps. I don’t have anything here that would satisfy you, but I believe I know where to find precisely the sort of thing you are looking for. As I stay open on Sundays I close on Monday, but perhaps you could take my card and give me a call at this time tomorrow. May I have your name, please?”
    “Roger Maris,” N said, pronouncing it as though it were a French name.
    “Excellent, Monsieur Maris. I think you will be very pleased with what I shall show you.” He tweaked a card from a tray on the desk, gave it to N, and began leading him to the door. “You are here for several more days?”
    “Until next weekend,” N said. “Then I return to Paris.”
    Hubert opened the door, setting off the little bell again.
    “Might I ask a few questions about some of the pieces?”
    Hubert raised his eyebrows and tilted his head forward.
    “Is your beautiful Second Empire table completely intact?”
    “Of course! Nothing we have has been patched or repaired. Naturally, one makes an occasional error, but in this case . . . ?” He shrugged.
    “And what is the provenance of the armoire I was looking at?”
    “It came from a descendant of a noble family in Périgord who wanted to sell some of the contents of his château. Taxes, you know. One of his ancestors purchased it in 1799. A letter in my files has all the details. Now I fear I really must . . .” He gestured to the rear of the shop.
    “Until tomorrow, then.”
    Hubert forced a smile and in visible haste closed the door.
     
    Ninety minutes later the Mercedes passed beneath the streetlamp at the edge of town. Parked in the shadows beside a combination grocery store and café a short distance up the road, N watched the Mercedes again wheel sharply left and race back into Mauléon, as he had expected. Hubert was repeating the actions of his dry run. He started the Peugeot and drove out of the café’s lot onto the highway, going deeper into the mountains to the east.
    Barely wide enough for two cars, the winding road to the auberge clung to the side of the cliff, bordered on one side by a shallow ditch and the mountain’s shoulder, on the other a grassy verge leading to empty space. Sometimes the road doubled back and ascended twenty or thirty feet above itself; more often, it fell off abruptly into the forested valley. At two narrow places in the road, N remembered, a car traveling up the mountain could pull over into a lay-by to let a descending car pass in safety. The first of these was roughly half the distance to the auberge, the second about a hundred feet beneath it. He drove as quickly as he dared, twisting and turning with the sudden curves of the road. A single car zipped past him, appearing and disappearing in a flare of headlights. He passed the first lay-by, continued on, noted the second, and drove the rest of the way up to the auberge.
    The small number of cars in the wide parking lot were lined up near the entrance of the two-story ocher building. Two or three would belong to the staff. Canny little M. Hubert, like all con men instinctively self-protective, had chosen a night when the restaurant would be nearly empty. N parked at the far end of the lot and got out, the engine still running. His headlights shone on a white wooden fence and eight feet of meadow grass with nothing but sky beyond. Far away, mountains bulked against the horizon. He bent down and stepped through the bars of the fence and walked into the meadow grass. In the darkness, the gorge looked like an abyss. You could probably drop a hundred bodies down into that thing before anyone noticed. Humming, he jogged back to his car.
    N turned into the lay-by and