From the Tales of Saint Anthony, the Johnny Holiday Mysteries
These short stories follow the lives of people who populate the fictional city of Saint Anthony (Minneapolis, Minnesota), and make their appearance in the first Johnny Holiday novel, The...
Dr. Johnson cursed himself as he walked away from the lake, gripping his cane tightly in one hand, not bothering to swing it while moving as fast as he could.
He was rattled.
He wanted to get back to his car, and to his offices at Augsburg.
He had been followed from Ingrid Magnusson's bookstore by a man who looked like he could be police...or a prizefighter.
Perhaps he was one of St. Anthony's notorious Park Rangers, the professor thought.
This prospect worried Dr. Johnson most of all.
The young-man was tall and broad-shouldered. He had been sitting by himself in a chair at the reading room when the professor had arrived to collect a rare book, the Albigensian Grimoire.
He had finally gotten permission from his patroness, Ingrid Magnusson, to examine it.
He had been waiting more than a year for it to become available. He had followed her to St. Anthony so that he could be in proximity to it, and he was eager to look into its pages, both to examine its ancient lore, as well as the modern interpolations that had been made by Lord Crowley and his minions, and their predecessors in the Golden Dawn.
Now he had lost it, and he feared Ingrid's partner, Karl Thorrson, would not let him live it down...the professor was certain that the one-eyed giant would not let him live for losing it.
Dr. Johnson was not a brave man, nor did he aspire to be one; a fear of violent reprisal had haunted him since childhood. Despite his height, which gave him a somewhat imposing disposition, he was graceless and physically weak.
When he first had the notion that the young man from was following him he panicked and began walking toward Loon Lake.
The professor was hoping that he was imagining things; he suffered from paranoia. But, then the man turned with him on Hennepin, and then again on 31st Street, and he matched his gait.
When Dr. Johnson got to the lake he attempted to lose the fellow in the brush growing on the steep hill that formed a ridge on the lake's east side.
It did not work.
Then the professor decided that the man must be one of the Rangers, a semi-private police force, like licensed-gangsters that everyone in St. Anthony tried to steer clear of.
Dr. Johnson did not want to be caught with the book in his hands so he decided to hide it beneath some shrubs, figuring that he could come back for it later.
He walked away from it then, walking right past the man who had stopped on the path to watch him.
The professor went along calmly, feeling as smug as could be, telling himself that he had outsmarted the sleuth, pretending for a moment that he was the better man.
The feeling did not last.
Within the space of ten paces his heart began to fall into stomach.
He knew the man would retrieve the book, and he contemplated the implications.
He would need to do something desperate if he was going to survive this blunder.
Dr. Johnson looked out over the surface of the water as he turned away from the lake, fearing that he would be sleeping there soon, eighty feet below the surface...perhaps before the night was through.
He needed to see Ingrid, she might protect him, and he needed an ally...he thought he should call his protégé, Celene Forrester, and solicit her aid...she might introduce him to her father, the Colonel. He felt that he might be safe with someone like the great man to shield him.
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