“Ohhhhh no.” Black puffed another blue cloud of smoke and wagged a slim finger back and forth. “There’s more to it than that. Isn’t there? You know, Mother Deare confided something to me that you might care to hear: the professor likes you, in spite of your misdeeds toward him. It seems … now how did she put it? … oh … it seems you remind him of his deceased son. Or … of what he might have been, had he not been beaten to death at a young age. But, Matthew … let us be honest … he doesn’t like you enough to set you loose from that village of his, not even with Devane riding on your back. What’s the truth?”

Matthew continued to warm his hands. He thought it was Black’s presence that was making the room so terribly cold.

“We can get it out of Devane,” Black said. “I’d like to cut him up a little.”

Matthew looked over at the demoniac and saw that Black had set his pipe aside on the low table, had drawn a curved dagger with strange markings on the blade from his jacket, and was commencing to use it to clean his long sharp fingernails. “Come now,” Black urged softly. “Confess it.”

Still Matthew remained silent.

“Let me play at being a problem-solver,” Black suggested, as his blade continued to probe. “That’s what you are, correct? Mother Deare told me about that episode on Fell’s island. That he hired you to act a part? And now here you are again, acting a part, but I suspect it wasn’t planned this time.” He paused in his nail-cleaning to draw on his pipe once more. “Your agency excels in such work. I mean to say, the work of solving problems for your clients. Such as … oh … finding objects that have been lost. Or … people who have for some reason been lost. I put my mind to this, Matthew. I shunted it back and forth, trying to make sense of why Fell would send you after the book. I came to the conclusion that … and I hardly could believe this myself … you volunteered for the task. Likely Devane didn’t, but he was made to come along. Now … with that in mind, why would you volunteer for this? Well, is it to win freedom for those two friends of yours, the man and the girl Mother Deare told me she took to the village? But no … I don’t think that’s all of it. I think you bartered with Fell for something else, if he would allow you to come after the book and win the freedom for your friends. Fell is not that easily bargained with. He would want more than the book. He would want … shall I tell you, or do you already know?”

“Is it your voice or the whine of the wind that’s making my skin crawl?” Matthew asked.