Free The Gallery by Laura Marx Fitzgerald Page A

papers. Each one of these books is worth a month’s wages, some more. If you so much as ripped a page . . .” Ma left the thought unfinished, a ripped page an unspeakable offense.
    I took a step back from the bookshelves, now afraid of even accidental contact. “No wonder Mr. Sewell wants to sell them.” I whistled under my breath. “Not that he needs the money, of course.”
    â€œMr. Sewell’s financial decisions are no concern of yours,” Ma snapped, but then paused. “But it’s like Mr. Sewell said, I suppose: living near the source of wealth—well, we could all learn from his vision.”
    Ma crossed over and withdrew my hastily shelved book.
    â€œI’ll have you know it’s not that Mr. Sewell doesn’t care for the books. Heavens, no! One of the most cultured, most learned men in New York, Mr. Sewell is! It’s that, as he says, these books could be working for him, instead of him for them. If he sold them,he says, he could put the money in the stock market and double it overnight! With all the information that flows into the paper, Mr. Sewell is always the first to hear of any stock tip.” Ma nestled the book back into its proper place in the 800s. “I’ve been thinking of putting a bit of money in the market myself. With Mr. Sewell’s guidance, of course,” she murmured to herself.
    I stood back and looked at the sea of books. Each one worth at least forty dollars, times what? A thousand, and then that doubled in the market . . . “So why doesn’t he sell them?”
    Ma stood back, glancing over the stacks to make sure all was in order.
    â€œThey’re not his to sell; they belong to Miss Rose. The books, the paintings, the house. They were all left to Miss Rose by her father. So as long as she chooses to keep them, Mr. Sewell is their keeper and protector.” Her eyes passed from one end of the bookshelves to the door. “And hers,” she murmured.
    She put her hand on my shoulder—a familiar grip the twins and I called “The Claw”—and began to steer me back toward the door. “And as his deputy, it’s up to me to see that all is maintained in the same condition in which it arrived in this house. Which means”—here she pushed me out into the hallwayand stepped out behind me, blocking the door—“no unauthorized visitors. And that includes you.”
    She turned back, and with her own jangling ring of keys, which dwarfed Alphonse’s, she turned the lock with a definitive click.
    And that was the end of Mr. Sewell’s library, for me.

Chapter
8
    T hat night on the subway home, I scanned the car for
Daily Standard
headlines while mentally depositing two pennies in my own Ovaltine jar.
    There wasn’t much to hold my interest (“ TROY MOTOR COMPANY STOCK CLIMBS ” “ INTEREST RATES RUMORED TO DIP ”), so I leaned back to read the
Yodel
over the shoulder of the engrossed office girl to my right. Today’s top story was a corker: A chorus girl from the Follies had been caught in Montreal with a congressman, pretending to be his wife. The real wife reportedly got wind and took off the next day for Reno for a quickie divorce, with a Portuguese waiter in tow. And now the chorus girl’s mother was suing the congressman for kidnapping. A delicious, scandalous mess, the whole thing.
    By the time I got home, I couldn’t remember what was so interesting about pomegranates and Ovid anyway.
    And Mrs. Sewell, if I thought about it.
    Did anyone care what made Georgie Riordan think he was King Tut? No, they just tipped their hats to him on Flatbush Avenue and told his ma “no charge, ma’am” when she came into their store. What made me think it was any stranger for a rich person to go loopy than some joe from the neighborhood? If anything, in that house filled with books of monsters and paintings of squiggles, it