The white strip was wider than I remembered.
I stood at the public end of the archive corridor with my collection slip in my left hand. The clerk had gone to fetch the copy requested yesterday. Beyond the cabinets, the separate door was shut. Its seal still crossed the latch, but a broad piece of white paper now covered the place where I remembered a narrow one.
I moved far enough to see around the edge of a cabinet.
Two thin ends of older paper showed beneath the new strip. One had curled away from the wood. I could see its shadow when someone carrying books passed between the door and the lamp.
On my first visit there had been an unbroken narrow seal. I had noticed it while copying the receiving entry. I hadn't measured it or written down the angle at which it crossed the latch.
