I was a rare book librarian, not a secret agent.
“Sheila discovered that the manuscript was missing late this evening, responding to an email from that professor whom you never answered,” she said. “She called me right away.”
“I thought it was important to confront Bernard first,” I said.
“Yes, and in the time it took you to act out that charade, it’s been hours since it went missing. Hours we needed to get it back,” she snapped.
I leaned against the wall, crossing my arms. “Bernard has been stealing books for some time. It could have been missing for months now.”
Louisa stopped searching, throwing her hands in the air with exasperation. “Henry, you and I have known each other for a long time. And that is the single most absurd story I have ever heard.”
“But I have notes on his actions and his movements,” I protested. “We need to inventory the collection—”
With an exaggerated flourish, she slapped a black-and-white business card down on the desk. She tapped the word CODEX with her fingernail, took out her phone, and began to dial the number listed on the back.
“We need to call the police.”
“No,” she said sharply. “Let me see what these people can do first.” She dropped her voice even though we were the only two in the building. “We don’t need the media spectacle of a stolen Tamerlane right now. Donors would be furious. I’ve heard excellent things about this company. They specialize in the recovery of stolen manuscripts. Quickly and quietly.”
I forced myself to take one steady inhale. “Where is Bernard now? If he was innocent, wouldn’t he be here?”
“Bernard has been dragged away last-minute for a speaking engagement in Greece. In fact, he was about to call and tell me when I called him about the missing Tamerlane.”
“He doesn’t have a last-minute event,” I fumed. “I know his schedule inside and out. Bernard is lying to you.”
“And Bernard Allerton has done more for the field of rare books than any man or woman who has come before him.”
Louisa wasn’t lying. The antiquarian community was small but powerful, and if we had monarchs, then Bernard would be king. Years ago, he had founded this very library’s collection of rare and specialty books. He was a professor at Oxford, he gave speeches around the world advocating for the power of libraries, the vitality of stories, and the democratization of library materials. Each year, the Bernard Allerton Research Fellowship was a grant awarded to the most promising scholar in our field—and this man gave tours to schoolchildren and lectures to presidents alike.
“I know you’ve worked with Bernard for ten years, but I’ve worked alongside him for twenty. The thought that he could steal the Tamerlane is so beyond ludicrous there are no words to accurately describe it.”
“He also threatened to turn me in to the police. He forged letters with my signature! And did you know he has a bodyguard? With a gun?” I said frantically.
There was a spark of indecision in her eyes—but she suppressed it.
“I don’t know what happened between the two of you this evening,” she hissed, “but there isn’t a single universe where Bernard Allerton is a book thief.”
“You look like hell.”
I squinted up into the fluorescent light to find a sharply dressed man leaning against the door. He had black hair peppered with gray at the sides and a scowl that appeared permanent.
“Excuse me?” I asked. “Who are you?”
The man smoothed down his tie and dropped into the chair across from me. “Abraham Royal. I’m the CEO of Codex.”
“You’re the company that Louisa hired.”
Abraham nodded, tapping his pen against a pad of legal paper. It’d been about ten hours since my conversation with Louisa, and I’d spent most of that time holed up in one of the smaller study rooms at the McMasters Library. Beyond this door was a 350-year-old library with vaulted ceilings and carved sculptures and some of the oldest books in human history.
But this room was claustrophobic, without windows and filled with stale air. My file and notes were spread around me, the table littered with scraps of paper.
“You got here quickly,” I said.
“For certain names, I will drop everything.” Abraham assessed me cooly. “Louisa tells me you have quite the story to tell.”
“She didn’t believe me.”
“Louisa suspects you,” he said simply.
“Of course she suspects me.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. Who would she believe? Me, or the most famous, well-respected man in the profession?
“Who are you, anyway?” I asked.
“We’re a small team of private detectives,” he explained. “All three Codex agents have a law enforcement background. But all three of us are now fairly…disenchanted with law enforcement. Clients like your library hire Codex to track down rare manuscripts without alerting the authorities. Usually.” He pressed his lips together into a grim line. “Without the red tape and bureaucracy of an FBI field office or a police department, Codex agents are pretty nimble. And highly successful.”
“I’ve never heard of you.”
“Exactly,” he replied.
I turned that information over in my mind, more intrigued with Codex than I cared to admit.
“Do you know what a codex is?” I asked.
“I know it’s Latin for book.”
My foot tapped an anxious rhythm beneath the table. “The codex is the style of bookmaking now universally popular in the Western world. It replaced the scroll because it was so compact and you could read it more easily while traveling. In Central America, their codices were printed on fig bark.”
The man from Codex was listening to me patiently, but there was an urgency to the way he gripped his pen.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m a little shaken up. The librarian in me wants to give you a lecture on scrolls now.”
“It’s been a tough night for you,” he said softly. “But why don’t you start from the beginning, okay?” Abraham flipped open his legal pad to a clean page. “Tell me who you think is responsible for the Tamerlane.”
The ten hours I’d spent in here—and lack of sleep—were warping my memories. Had I been enjoying an evening of refined academic discussion with Bernard just last night? I scrubbed my hands down my face and hoped that the stranger in front of me was prepared to believe every mystifying word.
“About a month ago, I started to suspect that Bernard Allerton had stolen something from our collection,” I began slowly. “A seventeenth-century book of Latin poetry that hadn’t been viewed or on display in years. When I asked him about it, he told me it was on loan to the Cardinal Madrid Museum in Spain.”
Abraham scribbled quick notes. “And why did that make you skeptical?”
“At first I thought it was missing the proper paperwork. Bernard is known for being meticulous, but an honest mistake wasn’t out of the picture, or maybe an intern filed it improperly. So I called the museum.”
Abraham’s brow lifted.
“It wasn’t there.”
His pen stopped.
“You’re sure of that?”