He hung up and sat back in his chair, a smug expression on his face. He remembered the first time someone had asked about the Princess logbook of 1848. The call had come in years before from a young woman at Harvard. He told her he would put out the word, but she said she would have to wait because she was going home to China. He hadn’t thought about the inquiry again until a few weeks ago when an Asian man dropped by the shop looking for the same item. The man was an unlikely customer, young and tough-looking, and he didn’t hide his irritation when he was told the book was not available.

Brimmer could not have known that the visit from the young man had been instigated when Song Lee called Dr. Huang from Bonefish Key and mentioned the story of the New Bedford anomaly. She told her mentor that she was convinced that the medical curiosity had a bearing on her work and she was thinking of going to New Bedford to see an antique book dealer named Brimmer when she had time.

As instructed, Dr. Huang had passed along the details of every conversation he had with the young epidemiologist. Within minutes, a call had gone out to a social club in Boston’s Chinatown with orders to visit Brimmer’s shop. Soon after that, the leader of the local Ghost Dragons chapter walked into Brimmer’s shop and said he was looking for the 1848 logbook of the Princess.

Now the couple from NUMA.

Brimmer didn’t know what was going on, but there was nothing a dealer liked better than to have collectors bidding against one another. He would go through the motions and make a few calls. He would keep the finder’s fees from all three parties and offer them something else. He was a master of bait and switch. Business had been off lately, and this promised to be a profitable day.

What he didn’t know was that it would be his last day.

THE TROUTS STEPPED FROM the dim shop into the afternoon sunshine and walked up Johnny Cake Hill to the Seamen’s Bethel. They tossed a few bills in the donation box and went inside the old whaling men’s church. The pulpit had been rebuilt in recent years to resemble a ship’s prow, as it had in Herman Melville’s time.

Paul waited for a couple of tourists to leave and then turned to Gamay.

“What did you think of Brimmer?” he asked.

“I think he’s a slippery old eel,” she said. “My advice is not to hold our breath waiting for him to come through. He’ll dig out the first logbook he can get his hands on, forge a new date, and try to sell it to us.”

“Did you see his expression change when we mentioned Captain Dobbs’s 1848 logbook?” he said.