The Gospel of Sheba Read Online Free Page B

well again,” I answered. Another man stepped forward from the depths of the carpeted dining room, and I stepped aside to include him. “But I cannot understand how such a thing could be possible outside the realm of ghost stories. The best sort of ghost stories, of course.”
    â€œI thought precisely as you did, Mr. Lomax,” admitted the newcomer. “Especially since I failed to suffer the symptoms associated with exposure to the book myself. It all seemed the merest coincidence, or else an especially grim fairy tale. But as the evidence mounts, I grow ever more convinced that my find was a monumental one. Mr. Sebastian Scovil, at your service, and eager to hear your conclusions.”
    If I come from old money which leaked away from the Lomax family in small but steady trickles, surely Mr. Scovil’s funding commenced with the Pharaohs and built its way upward from there. He was a small man, very quietly dressed in grey, with every seam and tuck so perfectly tailored in the finest traditional taste that you could have made a model of the chap based solely upon his clothing and not the other way round. His brown eyes twinkled, his apple cheeks shone with cheer, and the pocket watch he consulted after shaking my hand cost a hundred quid if it cost a shilling. Which it probably hadn’t, since the initials etched upon it ended duly in S . An inheritance, no doubt, to the diminutive yet decisive heir apparent. Mr. Sebastian Scovil was so very small, as a matter of fact, and so very wealthy in appearance, that he brought to mind a Lilliputian dignitary.
    â€œI am eager to see it, as I’ve dedicated my life to books of all sorts,” I owned, my pulse quickening.
    â€œCome, come sir!” Mr. Grange exclaimed. “I told Mr. Scovil as much, and you shall examine it at once! Right this way.”
    We passed further into the dining area, towards a table where several well-to-do fellows stood muttering—some angrily, some raptly—over a cloth-veiled object. They were successful businessmen on the clubbable model, warm when it came to handshakes and ruthless when it came to figures. The fact they didn’t suppose consorting with the devil to be any particular blemish so long as the chequebook balanced at the end of the day failed to shock me; the acquisition of money is a high virtue indeed in some circles.
    I was such a man myself once, at university. For a month after I was given to understand there would be a small allowance but no inheritance from the Lomax estate, I studied with the deliberate intent of becoming a tycoon. Then a fellow cricketer left a book upon Persian stonemasonry lying about and I was lost to the world for days save for the classes I could not miss. After coming out of my trance by means of finishing the final page, I realized that I didn’t actually desire the rare objects money could procure me—I only wanted to know all about them. I told Lettie that tale, on one of her tours when I scandalously joined her in Paris before we were wed, and she smirked and reached in all her bare glory for her wine glass and said it was all right, we could have the smallest house in the West End.
    â€œBut in the West End , mind,” she’d added mock-sternly, pulling her fingertips down the planes of my chest.
    â€œMr. Lomax is here as an impartial expert!” Mr. Grange squeaked. “Please, gentlemen, step aside and allow him to view The Gospel of Sheba uninhibited. Your questions and comments will be answered in due course.”
    â€œIt’s not much to look at,” Mr. Scovil said ruefully as the Brotherhood parted and he flipped aside the black velvet wrapping. A pair of white cotton gloves rested next to the shabby volume he uncovered, and I donned them after sliding my half-spectacles up my nose. “Which to my way of thinking—as a connoisseur and never a professional, mind—stands in its favour. I’ve a wretchedly old