Virgil put down the boot. Footnote transferred his affection to this interesting new smell. Virgil approached a ladder which hung from a long top rail that snaked about the perimeter of the room. Clearly the ladder was designed to slide for easier access to the highest shelves. Rue had thought it quite ordinary, except for being metal instead of wood, but Virgil seemed to know otherwise. On one side, down near the first rung, was a dial, and the ladder had a cranking mechanism with a pin reader at the railing above. The railing was perforated at multiple points with patterns of holes so that when the operator set the dial, the ladder would roll along until its pins dropped into the matched holes, stopping the ladder abruptly at a prescribed point.

Rue said, all innocence, “The professor lent me this slim travel memoir and I wanted to return it. To the, erm, the section with travel journals.”

Virgil bent down and clicked the dial over to the number seven. Rue made a mental note. The boy jumped onto the ladder and flattened himself against it, clutching with both hands. He then pressed a button on one side and in a puff of steam, the ladder whooshed off more rapidly than Rue thought possible. With an audible click, it stopped some distance away behind the stacks.

“This way, Lady Captain,” sang out Virgil’s disembodied voice.

Rue and Prim wended through the shelves and piles of books. The ladder was near the only porthole left unblocked in the room. Virgil jumped off.

“Of what type is the travel book, Lady Captain?” he asked.

“Bad?” said Rue cautiously.

The boy grinned. “No, I meant what part of the world, flowery retelling or solid factual detail?”

“Oh. Egypt.”

Primrose added, “And flowery. Definitely flowery.”

Virgil led them around the back of two chairs, both covered in rolls of maps, metal scrolls for aetherographic transmitters, and current charts. He pulled one of the chairs away and pointed down to a shelf near the floor stacked with small, cheaply made, slim travel memoirs. There were an awful lot of them. Fortunately, none of the others was pink. Percy, great collector of the written word though he may be, evidently did not already own a copy of his mother’s infamous work. Rue tucked the volume in among its fellows in as innocuous a location as possible.

She straightened. “Thank you very much for your help, Virgil.”

Prim asked, “Does my brother have anything in a less flowery vein on travelling in India, do you know?”

“Over here.” Virgil pointed up at a higher part of the same shelf. The books there had been disturbed and stuffed with bits of notepaper marking pertinent sections. Percy had obviously been following instructions to read up on their destination.

Prim stood on tip-toe to read the spines. She selected The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook by Flora Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner.