“You had me going there for a minute,” he said, returning to his normal jovial mood. “You’ve obviously been hanging around too much with that young scalawag Austin. Where are Kurt and Joe these days? Last I knew, they were diving under the sea in the bathysphere replica.”

“They’re on their way to Micronesia on an assignment,” Gamay said.

“Micronesia?” he said. “That’s one place I’d like to visit. I hear they mark important occasions with feasts involving enormous amounts of food.”

Perlmutter escorted his guests into his kitchen, poured two more cupfuls of New Guinea coffee, and doled out the early brunch on three Limoges plates. They all sat around a polished wooden kitchen table, one of the few flat surfaces in the carriage house not piled high with books.

“Sorry for the early-morning call,” Paul began, “but there is some urgency to our search. We’re trying to track down the 1848 logbook of a New England whaling vessel named the Princess. We hoped you could tell us where to start.”

Perlmutter’s bushy brows bobbed up and down.

“Caleb Nye’s ship!” he exclaimed.

Gamay tossed her head back and laughed in surprise.

“You never cease to amaze, Julien,” she said. “We mention a whaling ship, one of hundreds, and you have the name of the captain on the tip of your tongue.”

“Only because the young man had an experience that was quite memorable in the annals of whaling. Caleb was not the captain. He was the ship’s green hand, the designation given the newest crew member. He claimed to have been swallowed by a sperm whale. The story enjoyed wide circulation in his day.”

“Is that even possible?” Paul asked.

Perlmutter nibbled thoughtfully on a croissant, then said, “That question has been debated going back to Jonah. Nye wasn’t the only one who claimed that a sperm whale had swallowed him. In 1891, some years after Nye’s adventure, a whaler named James Bartley, serving aboard the Star of the East off the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, reportedly disappeared after a sperm whale overturned his whaleboat. When the crew was carving the whale up later for blubber, they found Bartley alive doubled up inside. His skin and hair were bleached white, supposedly from the mammal’s gastric juices. He went back to work after a few weeks of rest. Or so the story goes . . .”

“I detect a note of skepticism in your voice,” Paul said.

“With sound reason. Bartley’s story is one of those tales that never die, like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. Occasionally, a writer who’s resurrecting that old chestnut will contact me. I refer such inquiries to the findings of Edward B. Davis, who thoroughly investigated the story.”

“His conclusions?” Paul asked.