The Queer Principles of Kit Webb - Cat Sebastian Page 0,14

of you. No wonder this place is such a bustling success.”

Webb wordlessly plonked a cup of coffee onto the table, causing a not insubstantial quantity to spill over the rim of the cup. Percy ignored both the spill and the coffee.

“Good God, Kit,” said the man who sat beside Percy. “You’ll soak my book if you don’t mop that up. Give me a rag, why don’t you.” Then, turning to Percy, “The place goes to ruin without Betty here to see to things. Ruin, I tell you.”

“Ruin,” Percy agreed, and apparently that was all one needed to do at a place like this to begin a conversation, because then they were off. The man told him what a grave tragedy it would have been if Kit had managed to destroy his book when here he was, mere pages from the end. And that prompted Percy to confess that he hadn’t read the book.

“You must take it!” the man cried. His name was Harper, or Harmon, or possibly even Hardcastle. He spoke with a rustic accent that sounded like so much nonsense to Percy’s ears. Also, Percy did not much care what the fellow’s name was. “Here,” said Harper or whoever he was, pressing the book into Percy’s hands.

“I couldn’t possibly,” Percy said. If Percy wished to read this book about a Tom Jones, or some such common-sounding fellow, he would order a copy bound in the same green leather as the rest of his library. He would certainly not read a book that belonged to an utter stranger and which looked like it had been read by several people with hands in various stages of dirtiness. “I don’t wish to impose on your kindness.”

“And you wouldn’t be, my good man. It’s not my book. It’s Kit’s.” Harper gestured at a wall on the far side of the room, lined with bookcases and hardly visible through the tobacco smoke.

“Is Mr. Webb running a lending library as well as a coffeehouse?” Percy asked. The mind boggled at the career choices of retired highwaymen.

“That,” said a man across the table, not looking up from a paper on which he had been furiously scribbling, “would imply that he charged.”

“I do charge!” interjected Webb, who was stomping around the table collecting empty cups.

“No, you don’t,” said the man across the table.

“You’re supposed to put an extra penny in the bowl.”

“Nobody does that,” Harper told Percy in confiding tones. “You just take the book and put it back when you’re done.”

“And put a fucking penny in the bowl,” said Webb. “What are you all still doing here? Don’t you have homes to go to?”

Harper left soon after, shoving the book in front of Percy as he went. Percy ignored it, preferring instead to watch Webb poke at the fire and grumble at the pot of coffee that brewed near the hearth.

Around supper time, the crowd at the coffeehouse began to thin. Percy really ought to be going as well. When he checked his watch, he discovered he had been sitting on a hard wooden bench for three hours. He had read four pages of the novel, idly listened to a debate that sounded shockingly seditious on both sides, and spent the rest of the time watching Webb.

He watched Webb sweep, add what seemed to be utterly indiscriminate and unmeasured quantities of herbs to the coffeepot, pour coffee in a way that could only be described as reluctant, shelve a pile of books in a manner that could have nothing to do with the alphabet, and tell about three dozen patrons that “Betty isn’t here, God damn you, just drink your coffee and get out.”

Percy knew nothing about shop keeping and would have been gravely insulted by anyone who suggested otherwise, but he had spent enough money at enough places to know that Webb’s manner of running his business was both eccentric and not especially likely to encourage customers to return. But still, the place had been full every time Percy had seen it.

Maybe they were all there to admire the proprietor. There was certainly a lot of him to admire. Even his scowl didn’t ruin his looks. He had the jaw to carry it off, making the scowl into a proper manly glower.

Now there were only three people left, including Percy himself, and surely it was past time for Percy to be going. He had only meant to show his face and remind Webb of what fun and intriguing criminous activities he could be engaging in