“I don’t know what we’re looking for,” said Jean. “I’ve seen several Ripley Scrolls over the years and I honestly can’t imagine one that includes the actual secret to alchemy. All I can really do is look and tell you if I see anything unusual.”

“I don’t like this place,” said Nemo, pacing. “No quick exit.”

“Are you expecting trouble?” said Jean.

“I always expect trouble,” said Nemo.

They waited in awkward silence for almost twenty minutes and Jean was on the verge of asking Nemo about his career again—to break both the awkwardness and the silence—when Andrea returned with an armload of books.

“Not all of them yet,” she said, “but a good start I hope.” She set the stack of books, some of them the size of family Bibles, on the table. Jean noted a polished wooden box at the bottom of the pile.

“Is that the Ripley Scroll?” she said, pointing to the box.

“Yes, it’s quite a treasure,” said Andrea. “We actually just discovered it a few years ago and there has been a lot of talk about trying to determine its provenance.”

“Why is that?” said Nemo.

“Don’t you know?” said Andrea. “All these books you called up are from the occult library of Heinrich Himmler. You know, the Nazi leader.”

“Are they really?” said Nemo. “How interesting.”

“He almost certainly stole them from various libraries and collectors around Europe,” said Andrea, “and there is some question about whether we should try to find where they came from and return them—especially with items as valuable as the Ripley Scroll.”

“I think I’d like to start with that,” said Nemo.

“I thought you might,” said Andrea, extracting the box from the stack of books. “There has been a lot of interest in this since we discovered it. My colleague downstairs said he spoke to a woman on the phone about it a few minutes ago.”

Jean saw Nemo’s face harden and she knew exactly what he was thinking. Had Ingrid Weiss called about the Ripley Scroll? And if so, how the hell had she found out about it? Was she headed to Prague? How much time did they have before she got here? All this flashed across Nemo’s face in an instant, but Andrea noticed nothing. She was busy unrolling a medieval scroll elaborately decorated with color illustrations and the entire length of the massive library table.