“If you come by tomorrow, I’d be glad to show it to you,” Rachael said.

“We’ll be back in Washington by then,” Gamay said. “If there is any chance . . .”

“Well, after all, your generous contribution made you members of the Dobbs Society in good standing,” Rachael said. “Let’s go down to the basement.”

The basement of the Dobbs mansion was big and musty. They wove their way through antique odds and ends to a floor-to-ceiling cabinet that Rachael explained was an airtight, temperature-controlled walk-in safe. She opened the safe’s double doors to reveal metal shelves stacked with plastic boxes, each labeled. A cylinder-shaped object around six feet long, wrapped in plastic, filled the lowest shelf.

“This is the Nye diorama,” Rachael said. “I’m afraid that it’s a bit heavy, which is probably why no one has dragged it out to have a look at it.”

Paul squatted down and lifted one end of the cylinder up a couple of inches.

“It’s doable,” he said.

All through college, Paul had helped on his father’s fishing boat, and since then he’d spent hours at the gym keeping in shape for the physical demands of his job. Gamay was even more of a fitness nut, and although her long-legged figure could have come out of the pages of Vogue she was stronger than many men. Working together, the Trouts easily hefted the package and carried it upstairs.

At Rachael’s suggestion, they took the cylinder to the tent, where there was space to unwrap it. The Trouts removed the plastic and undid the ties wrapped around the diorama. It had been tightly coiled, with its blank brownish gray back side facing outward.

Carefully and slowly, they unrolled the diorama.

The first panel became visible. It was an oil painting around five feet high and six feet wide, depicting a whaling ship tied up at a dock. There was a caption under the picture:

JOURNEY’S END.

“We must be looking at the last section of the diorama,” Rachael said. “This shows a ship unloading its catch in New Bedford. See the barrels being rolled down a ramp to the dock?”

The colors of sea and sky were still bright, but the other colors were garish, in the style of a circus poster. The brushstrokes were bold, as if the paint had been applied in a hurry. The perspective was wrong, seen through the eyes of an untrained artist.

“Any idea who painted this?” Gamay asked. “The technique is rough, but the artist had a good eye for detail. You can even see the name of the ship on the hull: Princess.”