“I am,” I replied.
He almost smiled, but then said, “Continue.”
“I went right back to him, concerned that the museum had lost our book in transport. Bernard was irritated. Told me he’d facilitated the loan himself and the person I’d spoken to must have been an idiot.” I grimaced at the memory of that day—not once in the ten years I’d worked for him had he ever been angry with me.
And he’d been furious with me that day.
“What did you do?”
“I believed him.” I plucked at the edges of my notebook, uncomfortably guilty.
But Abraham’s face was neutral. “Next?” he prodded.
“After that, I kept a careful eye on him. He was keeping some strange hours. Requesting to clean some of the manuscripts himself, even though at this stage in his career he’d usually have someone else do that for him. A few times…” I shifted in my chair, feeling uneasy. “A few times I’d see him with people he swore were interns but I didn’t recognize them. And they wouldn’t come back again.”
“You gathered all of this information yourself?” He glanced at my stacks of scribbled notes with interest.
“It was the only thing that kept me grounded,” I admitted. “Because if you told me a month ago that Bernard Allerton was systematically stealing manuscripts from this library I never, ever would have believed you.”
“Is that why you didn’t report this sooner to the police? To Louisa?” he asked.
I rubbed my jaw. In the last hours, guilt and I had entered into a symbiotic relationship. “You have to understand. I’ve looked up to this man my entire career. No one garners more respect, more accolades, more admiration than Bernard. To accuse a man like that of doing the unthinkable…” I shook my head. “I didn’t fully believe it myself until tonight. I thought…I hoped I was wrong.”
He nodded.
“I know it was stupid of me to wait,” I confessed.
“Men like Bernard are experts in manipulation, Henry,” he said. “Take it from someone who’s spent his entire life chasing people like him.”
It didn’t make me feel better.
“Well,” I continued, “everything came to a head a couple days ago when I discovered two missing things. The first was page seventeen of Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. We own an extremely rare copy that contains his handwritten notes in the margin. It’s usually displayed, flipped open for viewers to see. It was scheduled to be cleaned, and that’s when I noticed the missing page. Like it was cut clean off.”
Abraham leaned forward. “Go on.”
“I didn’t say anything for a day, trying to come up with some strategic way to confront Bernard. I was also trying desperately to prove myself wrong, searching our index. Like maybe…maybe this copy had always been missing page seventeen.”
“I’m guessing that wasn’t accurate.”
“You would be correct,” I sighed. “And then the next day I discovered the missing Tamerlane.” I fanned my hands out over the scattered pages. “I hoped it would all be this great misunderstanding. Surely the most famous librarian in the world wasn’t a…”
“Criminal,” he finished.
“Yes,” I said softly. I told him the rest of the story—every bizarre bit of it, up to this current moment. To his credit, he stayed expressionless and nonjudgmental, even as I grew more and more furious.
“I know Louisa doesn’t believe me,” I said at the end. “And I’m not sure if you do. But that’s everything.”
Abraham was silent, eyes wandering over my notes. “That was very thorough.”
“One of the things I do best,” I said dryly. “Research.”
His eyes narrowed, like he was about to say something, but stayed quiet. So I asked, “Bernard’s on the run, right?”
“It’s looking like. A man like that can hide out in any number of countries without arousing too much suspicion. Not for long though.” He leaned back, crossing one ankle over his leg. “I believe you may have done the one thing both the FBI and Interpol have been trying to do for years.”
“What is that?”
“Make Bernard Allerton afraid.” His lips twitched in an almost-smile. “I’ve been hunting your mentor for a long time, Henry. Before I founded Codex, I was an FBI agent, working in their Art Theft department for more than a decade. I always had a gut feeling that Bernard was not the person he appeared to be. To be honest, I pegged Bernard as a criminal mastermind.”
The words Bernard and criminal mastermind couldn’t belong in the same sentence. My pulse skipped a rapid beat stomach twisting into more knots. “Then why hasn’t he been arrested sooner?”
“Same story,” he replied. “Bernard was always on a short list of suspects but entirely based on my gut. No hard evidence at the time. This, however”—he tapped my notes—“could be evidence.”
“Those letters he showed me. I didn’t sign them, Abraham. They’re forged. Is there a way…”
“Professionals can discredit forgeries,” he added, avoiding my eyes as he wrote something down. “Interpol should be able to clear your name once they’re analyzed.”
All the breath left my body.
“Can I have this?” he asked, indicating my folder.
“Of course.” The guilt I felt was being replaced with exhaustion. I wanted to lie facedown on the floor until all of this faded away. “What’s next?”
“For you? Sleep.” He tapped the pages together and slid them into a briefcase. “I’ll call if I need anything.”
“And what are you going to do?” I asked.
“Simple,” he said, standing up and extending his hand for me to shake. “I’m going to find that damn book.”
3
Henry
I leaned against a column at the back of the library, the glorious greens of Oxford stretching before me. It was early November, and frost dotted the blades while students rushed across the grass to make their classes in time.
Two days had passed since Bernard had fled and I’d confessed my story to the man from Codex. Louisa had instructed me to stay absolutely quiet about the theft to allow Codex the best chance to succeed. Which I’d done, however reluctantly. During the day, I pasted on a fake smile when people asked where Bernard had gone. Even though his excuse sounded flimsy to my ears— “A sudden speaking engagement cropped up and he had to leave quickly.”—students and staff didn’t bat an eye.
Bernard Allerton could come and go as he pleased in this world.
My mind rattled constantly with the information I’d learned in the last forty-eight hours: Bernard had forged my signature to make me complicit in his crimes. Bernard had fled the country. According to Abraham, Bernard had been suspected of being a book thief for a long, long time.
And through it all, my body thrummed with a feeling I didn’t yet want to address.
I watched two students stroll across the frost-covered green, holding science textbooks to their faces and laughing.