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the experience. I was familiar with some of the businesses already, having seen their receipts among Maulding’s records, but in every case it appeared that Maulding’s dealings with them had been relatively minor and involved few volumes of significant value. When I raised the title of the Atlas of Unknown Realms , I was met variously with blank stares or denials of its possible existence. Meanwhile, any mention of Dunwidge & Daughter elicited largely negative responses, underpinned by what I thought might have been a degree of unease.
    Stanford’s was still doing business when I arrived, for it stayed open later than most stores of its kind in order to cater to the students whose formal studies absorbed all the hours of daylight. I asked after Young Mr. Blair and was told that he was fetching his hat and coat and would be leaving by the front door. I waited for him there, night now fully descended, the fog embracing the city. I blew my nose to clear it of some of the filth, and wondered, not for the first time, what the air in the city was doing to my lungs. Those I could not purge so easily.
    Young Mr. Blair emerged from the shop like an infant being pushed from the womb, forced from a warm, familiar place into the cold, hostile world without. He took a final, fond glance back at theinterior before placing a cloth cap on his head, carefully adjusting it so that as much of his ears as possible might be covered. His brown leather briefcase, weathered but not worn, rested by his right leg, his umbrella by his left. I could see him wrestling with the apparent familiarity of my face as I approached him, before the light of recognition illuminated his features. He had a benignity about him that I liked, a happy disengagement from the futilities and ugliness of life’s toil that one encountered in those who had discovered a way to take something for which they had only love and gratitude, and make it their means of support.
    I greeted him and asked if I might walk with him for a time, to which he assented with a nod and what I thought were the words “Of course,” and “Pleasure, dear fellow,” although they were so interspersed with various “ums” and “ahs” and unintelligible words that it was difficult to be sure. Together we headed toward Tottenham Court Road and on to Oxford Street. As we passed the first of the Lyons Corner Houses he sniffed wistfully at the air, and he required little convincing to enter.
    A Gladys took an order for tea and sandwiches, and while we waited for them to arrive Young Mr. Blair sat with his hands clasped in his lap and a pleasant smile on his face, taking in the bustle and life around him. It must have constituted quite the racket compared to the near-monastic silence of Stanford’s, but Young Mr. Blair basked happily in it all. I could see no ring on his finger, and I could not imagine that the junior members of staff spent much of their leisure time with him once Stanford’s closed its doors. With the passing of his nemesis, Old Mr. Blair, he was now the most senior bookseller, and there would have been few peers to keep him company, even if they could have understood more than a fraction of what he was saying.
    I recalled that wistful look he had cast back at the store as he left it. Stanford’s was his true home. Wherever he laid his head at night was merely an adjunct to it.
    I suspected that Young Mr. Blair, when away from the shop, was sometimes rather lonely.
    So we ate our sandwiches and drank our tea, and when Young Mr. Blair had cleaned his plate by licking an index finger and dabbing it on the china so that not even a single crumb might escape, I suggested some apple tart with whipped cream. I raised a hand to the passing Gladys, and Young Mr. Blair, with only a token effort at resistance, agreed that, yes, some tart would be very nice, and so we continued eating, and had our teapot refilled, and it was while we were