WILLIAM BRITTAIN
The Man Who Read Dashiell Hammett
“Prichard? I know you’re in here somewhere. Probably with your nose stuck in another of those mystery thrillers. Well, come out at once. I need you.”
Mr. Deacon’s nasal whisper was strangely muffled amid the closely set shelves of books that made up the fiction room of the Caldwell Public Library. Clarence Prichard, his aged joints creaking almost audibly, rose stiffly from the little stool on which he had been sitting. With a sigh of regret he closed the book he had been reading and slipped it into its place. The urbane conversations between Nick and Nora Charles would have to remain frozen in print till he could get back to them.
“Oh, there you are, Prichard.” Mr. Deacon, the head librarian, rounded the corner of a passageway between the shelves and caught sight of the old man. “I wish you’d keep the front desk informed of your whereabouts. We aren’t the size of the big city libraries, but it’s sometimes devilishly hard to find a stack boy when we need one.”
. . .
