Without the coat, the man looked even lankier. He seemed to be built entirely of angles, from his long legs to his hard cheekbones. He wore a simple, clean white shirt with no necktie, and a pair of plain brown suspenders. His wild hair looked coal black in the dim light of the room, and atop his gaunt frame it gave him the figure of a spent match.

“What else was Bragg onto?” I asked.

“I don’t know yet. But I believe the answer may lie in this.” He produced a folded piece of paper and handed it to me. “I found it concealed beneath the leather blotter on his desk. Tell me what you make of it.” I opened it and turned it around.

“It’s a map,” I said.

“Brilliant. Already making yourself an invaluable asset to the organization.”

I went on. “It’s not a proper, printed map. It looks like Bragg traced it, but it’s got a good bit of detail. The coastline looks all squiggly in the right places. There’s us in the center.” I pointed to the spot where Bragg had marked New Fiddleham. “And it looks like it goes out fifty miles or so above and below us. It’s too distant for street details, but he seems to have blocked out the nearby cities and county lines.”

All across the simple chart, the late Arthur Bragg had inscribed a dozen Xs in red ink. They were scattered on all sides of the city, some clustered in twos or threes, others far off on their own. In fine script he had written C.Wd. beside most of them, and N.Wd. beside a few. Each was marked with a date. The dates went back as far as three months prior, and as recently as just one week past. “What do you suppose these notes mean?” I asked.

“That is what I intend to find out.” Jackaby, apparently satisfied with the restocking of his pockets, left the coat on the mannequin and crossed into the hallway. I stepped aside as he passed, and followed him into his office.

He pulled a dusty rag off the chalkboard’s frame and gave an ineffectual couple of swipes across the surface. Having rearranged the chalky film to his satisfaction, he plucked a white stump from the tray and poised to write. “We’ll start with the dates,” he said. “Read them off to me. Start with the earliest.”

I read the earliest date aloud, October twenty-third, and scanned the numbers for the next oldest, and the next. I glanced up after four or five. “What’s that you’re drawing?” I asked.

Jackaby scowled. “Recording the dates. Keep going.”

“Is that an elven language or something?”

He stood back from the chalkboard and stared at it blankly. “No.”

“Are those pictograms? What’s that bit you just finished? The one that looks like a goose tugging at a bit of string?”