Up until the moment when he first looked into Hippolyte Adolphe Taine's History of English Literature , Herbert Quidley's penchant for old books had netted him nothing in the way of romance and intrigue. Not that he was a stranger to either. Far from it. But hitherto the background for both had been bedrooms and bars, not libraries. On page 21 of the Taine tome he happened upon a sheet of yellow copy paper folded in four. Unfolding it, he read: asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj a