About nine o'clock I was rung up on the telephone. Morse spoke. He said he was now thoroughly rested, and was ready for a chat. If I hadn't seen the treasures of the library yet, he and Pu-Yi would be pleased to show them to me. And so, slipping on a coat over my evening clothes, and taking a light cane in my hand, I started out for Grand Square. It was again, I may mention here, a fine and calm night.
My host and the Chinaman were waiting for me in the great, Gothic room, and we inspected the treasures in some of the glass-fronted shelves. I was surprised and delighted to find that my future father-in-law had a real love for, and a considerable knowledge of, books. It was a side of him I had not seen before. I had not connected him with the arts in any way, which, when you come to think of it, was rather foolish. Certainly he had the finest expert advice and help to be found in the whole world in the building of the City in the Clouds. But I should have remembered that the initial conception was his own and that many of the details also came entirely from his brain. Certainly, in his way, Mendoza Morse was a creative artist.
My own collection of books at Stax, my place in Hertfordshire, is, of course, well known, and always mentioned when English libraries are under discussion. But Morse could boast treasures far beyond me. During the last year or two I had been so busy in working up the _Evening Special_ that I had quite neglected to follow the book sales, but I learned now that some of the rarest treasures obtainable had been quietly bought up on Morse's behalf. He had all the folios, and most of the quartos, of Shakespeare, a fine edition of Spenser's "Faërie Queene" with an inscription to Florio, the great Elizabethan scholar; there was Boswell's own copy of Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," with a ponderous Latin inscription in the sturdy old doctor's own hand, and many other treasures as rare, though not perhaps of such popular and general interest.
Pu-Yi made us some marvelous tea in the Chinese fashion, with a sort of ritual which was impressive as he moved about the table and waved his long pale hands. It was of a faint, straw color, with neither sugar, milk, or lemon, and he assured me that it came from the stores of the Forbidden City in Pekin. Certainly, it was nasty enough for anything, and I praised it as I had praised Morse's rose-colored champagne the night before--but with less sincerity.