“Have you ever heard of Peter Byerly?” said Jean.

“Sure,” said Patton. “He’s a legend in rare books. Discovered that Shakespeare manuscript, right?”

“OK, so you do know something about books,” said Jean, sounding satisfied. “Fine. George Ripley was an English alchemist. Lived in the fifteenth century, I think. I don’t really know much about him, but there are these scrolls called Ripley Scrolls—mostly made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and supposedly copied from the same original, although they show a lot of variation. I was always sort of vague on the exact connection to Ripley himself, because for me the point was the artwork. Each scroll is, I don’t know maybe fifteen feet long when you completely unroll it. And they’re full of these amazing color illustrations showing things like how to make gold out of lead and how to make the Philosopher’s Stone. The secret to eternal life. All that sort of thing. Of course the science is bunk, but the art is exquisite.”

“Is that all we’re chasing?” said Nemo. “Some medieval crackpot’s idea of how to live forever?”

“There has to be more to it than that,” said Patton.

“Where can we find these scrolls?” said Nemo.

“Most of them are in the British Library in London or the Bodleian in Oxford. There are a few in other rare book libraries in the US. I read something about one that went missing before the war, but I don’t think there are any in private collections.”

“But didn’t you say they’re all different?” said Ruthie.

“There are variations, yes,” said Jean.

“So we don’t just need to see some Ripley Scroll, we need to see this one,” said Ruthie, tapping her finger on the ledger.

“The one that went missing before the war,” said Nemo with a smile.

“How exactly are you going to find it if it’s gone missing?” said Jean.

“We know who the last owner was,” said Patton. “If that’s any help.”

“Who was it?” said Jean.

“Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler,” said Patton.

“In that case,” said Jean, sitting up and looking fully alert for the first time since she escaped Ingrid Weiss’s house, “I know where it is. We need to go to Prague.”

To: Bavarian State Police

From: Ingrid Weiss, Columbia House, Munich