• TheBookStopsHere

(SimonBooth)

TheUnitySociety is on the trail of a lost book... but where will the trail end?

guest starring Bill Bailey as ArkadyKoldun and Dylan Moran as "Huck" Marbury

Personal accounts can be found in JacksJournal and LisasJournal

Sunday, 15th April 1923

TheCharacters were sipping teas in the Tea Room, when MrFlanagan knocked on the door. A man wished to see the members of TheUnitySociety. They asked that he be showed in, and he introduced himself as Mr. ArkadyKoldun, of JenkinUniversity.

Mr. Koldun explained that shortly after he came to Unity, he was roobed of a book which had been the subject of his studies, and which had a great sentimental value to him. While the police had caught the robbers, they did not recover the book, and they lost interest in the case once they were caught. He had thought the book lost, but he recently heard that TheUnitySociety had a good reputation for helping people such as himself.

He described the book as black cracked leather, bound in silver, with the title KnigaIvana (except in cyrillic). This rang bells for many of the society members, and most of them went upstairs to TheLibrary to search for the book.

EthanLocke and RobertJohnson remained in the Tea Room with Mr. Koldun, and asked him more about himself and the robbery. RobertJohnson realised that ArkadyKoldun was the same lecturer he'd been hearing rumours about for some time. EthanLocke found out the rough date of the crime. Mr. Koldun left, and Ethan and Robert decided to go down to TownHall to find out more. The others decided to check out Unity's second-hand bookstores.

By chance, it was Robert who found the particular volume containing the records of the burglary. The criminals, MarcusDelany and RonaldSmith, were still in Unity, at the LincolnDistrictPenitentiary.

Posing as their lawyer, Ethan obtained entry for himself and Robert to the penitentiary. Mr. Smith was holding his knees and swaying, but Mr. Delany proved more talkative. He told them how "Ron" was a bit of a bookworm, and wnated to set the two up as modern highwaymen. They hijacked a carriage from Providence, and finding few valuables, they took the book. Their first attempt to fence it to JenkinUniversity drew the attention of the UnityPoliceForce, so they lay low under a large pine tree just outside of town. While they could not understand the book, Ron knew a bit of cyrillic and read a section of the book aloud, wondering what it could mean. That night, both men were awoken with a sudden fear. Marcus spotted movement in the tree above them, and a creature dropped on Ronald. The creature was "maybe a worm, maybe a snake, maybe a slug - maybe lots of slugs". Marcus dispatched the creature and the two ran into Unity. They sold the book to HucksBooks, then rented a room for the night. However, that night, Ronald's screams woke the landlady. She called the police, and the pair were arrested.

After doing what they could to improve the pair's conditions, Ethan and Robert headed to HucksBooks, just as the others' searches brought them to the same place.

Once suitably bribed, "Huck" Marbury told them that he had sold the book to a man with "impressive facial hair" who "gave himself airs". TheCharacters decided to retire to 122, and to contact Mr. Koldun again.

As HayesWebster served EricColigny a tea, he asked how the search had gone. Hayes then asked whether he could try to obtain a copy of the same book. On seeing the title, he reached down and pulled out the black, cracked leather binding that was hiding the vintage cognac. The title was Книга Ивана (KnigaIvana).

Hayes revealed that he'd thrown away the pages of that and the other books, but that MrFlanagan had saved them as scrap. MrFlanagan was sent for, and he said he probably had some of the paper, but that the old, useless, soft paper he had put out as bedding for OldAlex, a hobo who sometimes slept behind the society. He had never seen Old Alex again, but six months later he found a bindle with $500 in it, which he'd taken as a gift and put away as a nest egg in the NationalBank.

The trail having gone cold, the characters returned to their fruit teas, and wondered what to tell Arkady.

Monday, 23rd April 1923

while TheCharacters were drowning their sorrows (see CohenUnderground), ArkadyKoldun returned to ask whether there was any progress finding his book. EricColigny told him that they had followed the trail until it got cold, at a vagrant called Alex. Mr. Koldun was clearly concerned by parts of the story, and seemed unusually worried about what type of tree the robbers had hidden under. This stirred memories in AlsoudHassam which he could not quite place. EthanLocke and RebeccaSwarovski then asked more about the book; Mr. Koldun was clearly evasive, and when pressed started to tell a story "from the book" which many were certain he was making up as he went along.

AlsoudHassam then decided to investigate Mr. Koldun at JenkinUniversity. After sweet-talking his way into the records, he found that all the documents pertaining to Mr. Koldun's appointment were curiously smudged.

Next: HereBeDragons