The assistant librarian was passing by the writer’s table with a load of books. He waved her over.

“Find something of interest in that last box?” she said.

“I don’t know how interesting it is, but it’s certainly old.”

Angela examined the hidebound box, and then she went through the pages from top to bottom. The handwriting looked familiar. She went to the stacks and came back with a book on the American Revolution. She opened the volume to a photo of the Declaration of Independence and held one of the papers next to the page. The similarity of the flowing, tightly written script on both samples was remarkable.

“Notice anything?” Angela said.

“The handwriting is practically identical,” Stocker said.

“It should be. Both these documents were written by the same person.”

“Jefferson? It can’t be.”

“Why not? Jefferson was a gentleman farmer, a scientist, and a meticulous keeper of records. Look here, in the corner of the title page. Those tiny letters are TJ.”

“This is great! There isn’t much here that would interest the average reader, but the fact that a Jefferson document on artichokes ended up with all this other stuff is worth at least a couple of paragraphs.”

Angela wrinkled her brow. “It must have landed here by mistake.”

“How could someone misfile original Jeffersonian material?”

“The society has an incredible filing system. But we’ve got eight million manuscripts and more than three hundred thousand volumes and bound periodicals. My guess is that someone saw the title, didn’t notice who had written the treatise, and tossed it in with the other agricultural material.”

He handed over the diagram. “This was in the file. It looks like a garden that was laid out by a drunk.”

The assistant librarian glanced at the diagram, then picked up the perforated cardboard and held it to the light. An idea occurred to her. “Let me know when you’re through. I’ll want to make sure that it goes back in with the other Jefferson material.”

She returned to her desk. As she worked, she glanced impatiently from time to time at the writer’s table. It was near closing when he stood and stretched and slid the laptop into its bag. She hurried over.

“Sorry for the mess,” he said.

“Not a problem. I’ll take care of everything,” she said.

She waited for the other patrons to leave and took the Jefferson file over to her desk. Under the light of her desk lamp, she placed the cardboard on top of the first page of writing. Individual letters showed through the small rectangles.