At the top of the scroll a bearded man in a green cloak held a massive glass flask inside of which a series of circular vignettes showed various alchemical experiments. Below the flask was a stylized tree filled with strange creatures. Near the bottom of the scroll, a bizarre green dragon held some sort of creature in his mouth. In the center of it all, a bird with the crowned head of a queen stood on a circle of water. Above the bird, in a yellow circle, a man in purple robes wearing a golden crown held aloft a casket of gold. Nemo leaned over the scroll, trying to make out some of the words that flowed from the mouths of the creatures or lined the tops and bottoms of the pictures. As Peter Byerly, he was supposed to be an expert, so he couldn’t very well ask what all this meant. Yes, he could see it might record the work of some crackpot medieval alchemist, but it certainly did not look like an actual recipe for creating gold.

Jean made a pretense of looking at the scroll from top to bottom, though she had already spotted the irregularity.

“Have you seen many of these before?” she asked Andrea.

“I haven’t,” said the librarian. “It’s something I know needs further investigation, but it’s a bit out of my field. Someone in the manuscript department will get to it sooner or later, I imagine. You know we have over six million items in the collection, so even important pieces like this often get overlooked.” As Andrea secured the far end of the scroll with two book weights to prevent it from rolling up on itself, Jean scribbled in her notebook and then passed it to Nemo.

“I wonder, Andrea,” he said, having glanced at the note, “if the library has a copy of Romano’s book on representations of the Magi?”

“I could certainly check for you, Mr. Byerly.”

“Please,” said Nemo as Andrea strode toward the door, “call me Peter.”

As soon as Andrea had left the room, Jean pulled Nemo by the arm to the center of the scroll. “Do you see that,” she said, pointing to the man in purple holding the golden casket.

“Is that the gold that the alchemist has created?” said Nemo.

“He doesn’t belong there,” said Jean. “That yellow circle is supposed to be the sun. Someone has added this figure at a much later date. You see the style—it was done by a different artist than whoever created the scroll originally.”

Nemo leaned close to the figure. While the alchemist at the top of the scroll looked almost like a caricature, this man, though much smaller, had eyes that glowed with life and exquisite detailing in his garments. On the back of his robe, Nemo could just make out, stitched in gold, the letter M.

“Who is he?” said Nemo.