The Emerald Key - By Christopher Dinsdale Page 0,52

heaved. The wooden frame made an ear-splitting crack and the door popped open. It only took a brief search before he found an oil lamp sitting on a corner table. He quickly lit it and his heart fell. The office was far bigger than he’d expected, and there were books everywhere. There was a large mahogany desk to the left while rows upon rows of cupboards and cabinets lined the remaining walls. Where should he start looking?

Take a moment to think this through, Jamie thought to himself. If I was the head librarian, where would I store a priceless item that I just recently purchased?

He examined the office again.

I would keep it as close to my workplace as possible.

Jamie went straight to the desk. All of the drawers were locked. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, but Jamie didn’t hesitate to jam the crowbar into the first drawer and send splinters of mahogany flying through the air, snapping the drawer open. He rummaged through numerous papers and letters. Nothing. He broke open the remaining two drawers with the same frustrating results. Where should he look next?

Suddenly, a loud bang erupted from somewhere deep in the building. Jamie froze. He ran back out into the main library. In the distance he could hear voices … angry voices. His worst fears were realized when he heard thunderous footsteps rushing down the hallway. Torchlight suddenly flickered through the cracks beneath the library’s locked oak doors. He sprinted back to the rope, the hatch far above.

“Beth!”

“I’m here!”

“There are people inside the building! I think the mob has broken in through the front door! Quickly! Pull up the rope and keep it up with you until I call for it! Then close the hatch almost all the way. We can’t let anyone know we’re here! Understand?”

“All right!” she shouted back.

The rope and pulley quickly ascended up toward the ceiling.

Jamie ran back into the office. As quickly as he could, he started to snap open the nearest locked cupboards. Files, more letters, and books that were in need of repair filled the shelves. Just as he was about to jam the crowbar into a smaller, locked cabinet, the library’s doors exploded open and the vast room was inundated with a tsunami of enraged shouts and flickering firelight. Jamie blew out the lamp and dove under the desk. He could hear men shouting instructions. People were knocking over shelves and throwing irreplaceable collections onto the marble floor. Then, to Jamie’s horror, the dim flickering light in the library began to grow in intensity.

The mob was setting fire to the library! This was insanity! Jamie had always bemoaned the fact that the great library of Alexandria had been destroyed by pillaging Roman armies in what was considered the greatest loss of ancient knowledge in human history. He had always chalked up such insanity to the fact that it had happened almost two thousand years ago. He had assumed that human nature had grown and matured since then, that a repeat of the destruction of the library of Alexandria could never be repeated in today’s nineteenth century.

But at this very moment, he was being proven wrong. The records of an entire nation were being put to the torch! Suddenly, it became crystal clear to Jamie why the ancient Irish had kept their sacred texts hidden from the general population. If a modern society could do this to a library, it didn’t deserve the irreplaceable works of knowledge and art that were hidden in the Irish countryside. His thoughts were interrupted as a large man stomped into the office. He threw a torch onto the pile of papers and books that Jamie had made next to the desk and then ran for the hallway. The clamour of insanity faded away from the library and was slowly replaced by a much more ominous sound, the snaps and crackles of a growing fire. Jamie crawled out from under the desk and got to his feet. He almost died from the horror of what he saw.

Tongues of fire were already licking bound volumes of reading material all over the library. Centuries of written records and Canadian history were turning to smouldering ash. The thrown torch had also set off a small fire in the office. Jamie whipped the sweater off his body and used it to whack the flames. With a combination of determination and panic, he managed to extinguish the fire in the office, but there was nothing he could do