Page 10 - Lulu and Bob in Verbo City
P. 10
Bob cranked up his inventiveness, fueled by desperation. “I know
that! But they are three-dimensional, no matter how they hunker
down. All we need is a raking light to pick them up on a flat surface.”
“I’ll bet Uncle Bunster has a flashlight in one of these desk
drawers.” Lulu slid out and in several of the latter before finding one
of the former. “Okay. Watch this, Bob.” She quickly went around the
study, shining her torch at an acute angle to the bookshelves.
“Nothing here, unless one of those words means ‘ancient dust
adhering to deckle edges.’ If so, I’d have to pull every one of these
books out for further scrutiny.”
“No, nothing like that,” replied Bob. “Let’s go in the library.”
They went. Again Lulu searched for sesquipedalians on the large
table, on the lamps and chairs, and even in the elaborate patterns of
the Persian carpet on the floor. Having no success, she reluctantly
turned to the walls and their floor-to-ceiling books. “At least Uncle
keeps them lined up nicely and in order—thanks a whole lot to us:
how many hours do you think we’ve spent reshelving books in here?”
“I have no idea. There’s not much else we can do to help him. He
must pull out a couple of dozen a day. Hold on: go back up there in
the biography section: I thought I saw a shadow.”
9