The Girls From Fieu Dayol
By ROBERT F. YOUNG
They were lovely and quick
to learn—and their only
faults were little ones!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Up until the moment when he first looked into Hippolyte Adolphe Taine'sHistory of English Literature, Herbert Quidley's penchant for oldbooks had netted him nothing in the way of romance and intrigue.Not that he was a stranger to either. Far from it. But hitherto thebackground for both had been bedrooms and bars, not libraries.
On page 21 of the Taine tome he happened upon a sheet of yellow copypaper folded in four. Unfolding it, he read:
asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkjCai: Sities towms copeis wotnid. Gind snoll doper nckli! Wilbe FieuDayol fot ig habe mot toseo knwo—te bijk weil en snoll doper—Klio,asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj
Since when, Quidley wondered, refolding the paper and putting it backin the book, had high-school typing students taken to reading Taine?Thoughtfully he replaced the book on the shelf and moved deeper intothe literature section.
He had just taken down Xenophon's Anabasis when he saw the girl walkin the door.
Let it be said forthwith that old books were not the only item onHerbert Quidley's penchant-list. He liked old wood, too, and oldpaintings, not to mention old wine and old whiskey. But most of all heliked young girls. He especially liked them when they looked the wayHelen of Troy must have looked when Paris took one gander at her andstarted building his ladder. This one was tall, with hyacinth hair andliquid blue eyes, and she had a Grecian symmetry of shape that wouldhave made Paris' eyes pop had he been around to take notice. Pariswasn't, but Quidley's eyes, did the job.
After coming in the door, the girl deposited a book on the librarian'sdesk and headed for the literature section. Quickly Quidley loweredhis eyes to the Anabasis and henceforth followed her progress out oftheir corners. When she came to the O's she paused, took down a bookand glanced through it. Then she replaced it and moved on to theP's ... the Q's ... the R's. Barely three feet from him she pausedagain and took down Taine's History of English Literature.
He simply could not believe it. The odds against two persons taking aninterest in so esoteric a volume on a single night in a single librarywere ten thousand to one. And yet there was no gainsaying that thevolume was in the girl's hands, and that she was riffling through itwith the air of a seasoned browser.
Presently she returned the book to the shelf, selectedanother—seemingly at random—and took it over to the librarian's desk.She waited statuesquely while the librarian processed it, then tuckedit under her arm and whisked out the door into the misty April night.As soon as she disappeared, Quidley stepped over to the T's and tookTaine down once more. Just as he had suspected. The makeshift bookmarkwas gone.
He remembered how the asdf-;lkj exercise had given way to several linesof gibberish and then reappeared again. A camouflaged message? Or wasit merely what it appeared to be on the surface—the efforts of animpatient typing student to type before his time?
He returned Taine to the shelf. After learning from the librarian thatthe girl's name was Kay Smith, he w