Chapter Seven
Arris concluded after a few minutes of standing in the library that it contained almost nothing written after 1960, so far as he could tell from his brief perusal of the shelves, but it did contain a lot of books. A visitor in 1960 might have considered it to be one of the most extensive private collections of fiction and non-fiction in existence at the time, given the sheer number of leather bound early editions of Victorian literature lining the shelves. Arris had no way to be sure, but he thought the entire collected works of Charles Dickens, Henry James, Jane Austen, and George Eliot were represented.
Oddly, the library did include what Arris took to be full collections of several modern-day thriller writers and everything Stephen King had written, including the pseudonymous works. That stuck out like a sore thumb because most of the King books were paperbacks while everything else was either hardcover or leather-bound. Onorien had either come to King late in the writer’s career or purchased somebody else’s collection at a yard sale.
Arris pulled out a hardcover fist edition of To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway and opened it. On the blank liner page inside was an inscription, “Konnie, you can’t have all, but never stop trying, Ernie.” Arris shrugged and put the book back on the shelf.
He worked his way along the shelves, passing through hundreds of books on history, archaeology, anthropology, ornithology, medical tomes and other scientific subjects until coming to a collection of works he found curious: The Transmutation of Base Metals, Forged Metals and the Divine Aspect, and Alchemy: Lead & Gold. There were many others. Clearly, Onorien had a wide range of reading interests.
“So, have you found anything good to read, Mr. Arris?” said Nereika from behind him.
Arris turned and shrugged. “Eh, your boss has a pretty extensive collection of books here, but not much in the way of stuff I like to read,” Arris said. “And, anyway, I was thinking of heading down to the beach to see if I can find some of the equipment I should’ve come ashore with. Care to join me?”