Emerald Aisle by Ralph M. McInerny Page B

trying to reach you. Come in, come in.”
    Inside, with the door closed, Greg led his visitor to his own desk chair, the only one remotely capable of containing the Huneker Chair of Catholic Studies. Roger settled into the chair, by stages, and then looked expectantly at Greg. The archivist pointed wordlessly at what lay upon his desk, and soon Roger was leaning over them. He did touch one of the letters, as one might touch a first-class relic. Then he looked up at Greg and spoke softly. “How did you come into possession of these?”
    Greg handed him the FedEx envelope in which the items had arrived. This was not at all the reaction he had hoped for. Roger studied the package. He put a pudgy index finger on the sender’s
name, Primero. Just Primero. But the address was in Highland Village, Saint Paul.
    â€œThese are from the Primero Collection, Greg.”
    â€œWhy would he have sent these now?”
    â€œGreg, he has reported a theft.”
    Greg reacted as to a blasphemy. Roger promised him a full account. For the present, he suggested that Greg record the reception of the package and itemize its contents, then leave it on Wendy’s desk. Meanwhile the two of them would go off and ponder the mystery.
    Roger, Greg learned, had been with Phil to Minneapolis, summoned by Primero in their guise as detectives, where they had been told of missing items from the Primero Collection.
    â€œHe suspects Waldo Hermes.”
    Greg found this preposterous and said so. He had been working closely, if electronically, with Waldo Hermes ever since the decision had been made by Primero that the eventual destination of his Newman Collection was the Notre Dame Archives. Greg had recognized in Waldo the essential mark of the custodian of treasures amassed by another but destined for the common good. Daily traffic with such priceless collectibles strengthened the instinctive belief that they belonged to everyone, not to one alone. They were part of the common patrimony destined to be available, in principle, to all. From patron, to private collector, to museum or archive—that was the trajectory described by items destined to play a role in the common culture. To be a custodian was to be a trustee of the race, present and future; and in his dealings with Waldo Hermes, Greg Whelan had recognized a kindred spirit. To steal items in one’s care was tantamount to seeking to appropriate the common air that all must breathe. Theft was unthinkable. Theft suggested that the common
could be private property. The Maecenas, the private collector, eventually came to realize this himself. But for the custodian it was a self-evident principle.
    â€œOf course this can hardly be regarded as theft if someone sent them to their intended eventual destination.”
    â€œIt seems to have been Mrs. Primero who sent them.”
    â€œEven so.”
    Greg was glad that it was Roger he had informed of the receipt of these priceless items. Whatever shenanigans in Minneapolis explained the surprising and premature transfer of these items from the Primero Collection, it was important that the university and the Archives—as well as his own reputation—not be tainted.
    â€œI think I understand what happened,” Roger said.
    â€œWhich is?”
    â€œI want to talk to my brother first.”
    â€œIt seems a kind of joke.”
    â€œYes, but on whom?”
    After Roger left, Greg kept the treasure for a time, once more laying out on his desk the letters written in a hand familiar to the archivist because he had seen so many reproductions of it. But he had never before seen an actual holograph, the very page the cardinal had had before him and on which he had formed those inky words, fully legible now a century and a half later. These of course were first drafts, fair copies of which would have been made and posted. The amount of time spent on correspondence then, the need to draft and then copy, involved much