Read Murder at the 42nd Street Library: A Mystery (Thomas Dunne Book) for Free Online Page A

we take. Perhaps you might reassure—”
    “I don’t need another explanation,” Yates said, not raising his voice.
    Harry puffed up, as he did when he was put out. “I explained to Mr. Yates that the collection was sold to the library without restrictions.”
    “Harry’s right, Nelson. In the deed of transfer, you give the library the right to make decisions about how the collection is used,” Ambler said.
    Yates held up his hand to stop Harry, who was about to say something. “I could have given my papers to Max Wagner and Whitehall University. They offered me more money than you did.”
    “He’s a respected scholar—” Harry said.
    Yates shot him a withering glance.
    “He has a letter of introduction from you,” Ambler said.
    “Mary, my wife, tricked me.”
    “If you’re suggesting fraudulent—”
    Yates waved Harry off. “I’m not bringing my wife into this. I thought the letter of introduction was for Jim Donnelly.”
    Ambler shot a meaningful glance at Harry before turning to Yates. “You gave my friend McNulty the bartender the impression Donnelly’s murder wasn’t a surprise to you. ‘Chickens coming home to roost?’”
    Yates hesitated, puzzled. “Did I say that?” His eyes clouded and he seemed lost in thought. When he came back to the present, he stared at the space in front of him. Looking at him, you’d think he was unsure of himself, until his eyes caught yours and he spoke with authority as he did here. “What I said was a comment … musing … a thought that found voice. Something came out of Jim Donnelly’s past. It could happen to anyone.” He looked at Ambler and then at Harry. “It might well happen to me or either of you.”
    “Was there a problem between him and Max Wagner?”
    Despite his general lethargy, the expression in Yates’s eyes was shrewd. “They were rivals.” Yates appraised you in a way that seemed to be seeing something about you that you’d rather he didn’t, your secrets, especially the ones you were embarrassed by. “Why do you ask? Do you think Max killed him?”
    “I don’t know. Do you?”
    “It wouldn’t make for a very good plot.” He laughed, a chuckle followed by a hacking cough. When he finished coughing, he reached into his pocket. “Can I smoke?”
    Harry made a move like he was going to tackle him. “No! No! It’s a library.”
    Yates put his cigarette pack back in his pocket. “I used to smoke here, years ago, in the Allen Room. Smoke and drink. Back when writers wrote on typewriters.” He winked at Ambler. “We were expected to do that sort of thing.”
    Ambler persisted. “Was there bad blood between Max and James Donnelly?”
    Yates shook his head. “I hadn’t seen either of them in years. Jim Donnelly wrote me some time back. He wanted to write a literary biography, something very different from the crap Max writes. He asked for some of my writing, my notebooks, asked to read my letters. I thought the whole idea sounded pretentious.”
    He chuckled, followed by another fit of coughing. “When I signed the letter my wife tricked me into signing for Max Wagner, I thought it was Jim trying again. I was going to let him look through the collection.”
    The three men sat in silence until Ambler spoke. “He wouldn’t take it lying down, you know. Taking something from Max is like taking a bone from a pit bull.”
    “I know what he’s like.” The writer’s tone changed, as if he sensed something from Ambler that he hadn’t heard from Harry. “Your boss says you’re a friend of his.”
    “We were in graduate school together. Not friends.”
    Yates smiled with his eyes to let Ambler know he got it. “He was my protégé. I welcomed him into my family, treated him like a son. If you know Wagner, you know he’d swindle his mother out of her widow’s pension.”
    “I think he did,” Ambler said.
    The older man chuckled. “He betrayed me.”
    “But your wife—”
    “She doesn’t know. It was before her