door is numbered, a brass numeral in the center. As they walk down the hall the numbers are all low but do not appear to be sequential. They pass a door marked with a six and another with a two and then eleven.
They stop at a door near the end of the hall by the large barred window Zachary could see from the street, this one marked with an eight. The woman pulls a small ring of keys from her pocket and unlocks the door.
A loud chime strikes from below them. The woman’s hand pauses over the doorknob and Zachary can see the conflict playing out on her face, to go or to stay.
The chime strikes again.
“I can take care of this,” Zachary says, holding up the book for good measure. “I’ll see myself out the back. No worries.”
Too casual, he thinks to himself but his escort bites her lip and then nods.
“Thank you, sir,” she says, returning her keys to her pocket. “Have a pleasant evening.”
She takes off down the hall at a much brisker pace than before as the chime rings a third time.
Zachary watches until she reaches the stairs and then he opens the door.
The room inside is darker than the hallway, the lights arranged in a fashion he has occasionally seen in museums: the contents lit at carefully chosen angles. The bookshelves that line the wall are lit from within, books and objects glowing, including what appears to be an actual human hand floating in a glass jar, palm facing outward as though in greeting. Two long glass display cases run the length of the room, lit from the inside so the books appear to float. Heavy curtains hang over the windows.
It does not take Zachary long to find the book he has been sent for, there are ten books in one case and eight in the other, and only one is bound in brown leather. The light around it catches the formerly gilded edges of the pages, the pieces around the corners that have held on to their gold more tightly shimmering. It is one of the smaller volumes, thankfully, easily pocket-size. Others are larger and some appear quite heavy.
Zachary inspects the case, trying to recall if any of his instructions included how to open it. He cannot find any hinges or latches.
“Puzzle box,” Zachary mutters to himself.
He looks closer. The glass is set in panels, each book in its own transparent box even though the boxes are connected one to another. There are nearly invisible seams separating one from the next. The brown book sits in a section near one end, second from the last on the left. He checks it from both sides and then crawls under the table to see if it opens from beneath but finds nothing. The table has a heavy base made of some kind of metal.
Zachary stands and stares at the case. The lights are wired, so the wires must go somewhere, but none are visible on the outside. If the wires run through the table, maybe the entire thing is electric.
He searches the perimeter of the room for switches. The one next to the door turns on a chandelier he didn’t even notice in the shadows above. It’s simpler than those in the hall and doesn’t add much light.
The wall with the windows has complicated latches but nothing else. Zachary pulls open one set of curtains and finds a window that overlooks the brick wall of the building next door.
He pulls back the other curtains and finds not a window but a wall with a line of switches on it.
“Ha!” he says aloud.
There are eight switches in something that resembles a fuse box, and none of them are labeled. Zachary switches the first one and the lights on one of the bookcases go out, the suspended hand vanishing. He turns it back on and skips down to the eighth switch, guessing that the top six are the shelves.
The lights switch off in one case, not the one he’s attempting to open, the other one, and there is a clanking noise. He goes to inspect the case and finds that the glass has remained in place but the base has sunk down about a foot lower, allowing access to the books.
Zachary hurries back to the switches and turns the eighth switch back on as he turns the seventh one off. The clanking doubles as the tables move.
The brown leather book is now accessible and Zachary takes