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Albert immediately left his office and made a call from a pay phone and arranged to meet with Seagraves outside the Capitol later.
When Seagraves arrived, Trent said, “We’ve got a problem.”
Seagraves listened and said, “Well, their next move is obvious.”
“You’ll take care of it?”
“I always take care of it.”
Chapter 53
While Milton and Stone were making their investigative rounds, Caleb glanced up from his desk in the reading room as A
“Can I help you, Miss …”
“Charlotte Abruzzio. Yes, I was looking for a certain book.”
“Well, you came to the right place. After all, this is a library.” Caleb laughed.
A
Caleb retrieved the volume from the vault, and A
An hour later Caleb jumped up. “Ah, Jewell, how are you? Jewell, it’s so good to see you,” he said, advancing quickly on the older lady after giving A
At her seat A
A few minutes later Caleb gave Jewell a book from the vault, and she settled down with it. Caleb kept going back over to her often and then glancing at A
When Jewell was done an hour later, she packed her bag, said good–bye to Caleb and left. A
“Oh, my Gawd,” A
“That’s all right, dear,” Jewell said, a little out of breath from the collision.
“Y’all have a nice day,” A
“You too,” Jewell said pleasantly as she climbed into the cab.
A
“All right, Caleb,” Dawn said.
The pair went inside the vault, and Caleb led A
Caleb did so and then immediately pulled them off. “My God, that’s weird; it’s like looking through three or four layers of different glass, with little sunspots. I don’t understand. I could see through her other pair perfectly.”
“Which is why she gave you those glasses and not these. Otherwise, you would’ve been suspicious. Do you have the book she was looking at?”
He held up the Beadle. “I just pretended to reshelve it.”
A
“That’s the whole point. They’re dime novels from the nineteenth century.”
“The thing is she looked like she was reading this book okay with these glasses. I mean, she was taking notes.”
“Yes, she was, wasn’t she?” Caleb slowly put the glasses on and, squinting, opened the book.
“Can you read anything?” A
“It’s a bit blurry.” As he turned the pages, he suddenly stopped. “Wait a minute, what’s that?”
“What’s what?” she said.
He pointed to a word on the page. “This letter is highlighted. Don’t you see, it’s glowing yellow, bright as day.”
A
“Right there!” he exclaimed, putting his finger on a letter e in a word on the first line.
“It’s not glowing to me, and —” She broke off. “Caleb, give me the glasses.” A
Caleb was staring at the page with his naked eye. No glow. He put the glasses back on, and the letter e glowed. “And there’s a highlighted w and an h and an f.” He flipped to the next page. “And there’s another w and an s and a p. And a lot more letters. All highlighted.” He took off the glasses. “E, w, h, f, w, s, p. That’s gibberish.”
“No, it’s a code, Caleb,” A
He looked astonished. “A secret code?”
“Do you know what other books she’s looked at recently?”
“They’re all Beadles, but I can check the call slips.”
A few minutes later he’d rounded up six books. He went through them page by page wearing the glasses, but there were no glowing letters. “I don’t understand. Was it just the one book?”
“It can’t be,” A
“No, this is not a lending library.”
“Not even you?”
“Well, yes, I can. But I’d have to fill out a four–part call slip.”
“So someone at the library could know you’ve checked it out?”
“Well, yes, they could.”
“That’s no good. We could inadvertently tip someone off.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Caleb, someone here had to highlight those letters. If you take home one of the books involved, it could alert people who are behind whatever the scheme is.”
“Are you saying that someone at the Library of Congress is involved in putting secret codes in rare books?”
“Yes!” she said in exasperation. “Give me the book. I’ll get it out of the building. It’s small and thin, it won’t be a problem. Wait a minute, do the books have electronic antitheft devices built into them?”
He looked appalled by the suggestion. “My God, woman, these are rare books; that would be tantamount to desecrating them.”
“Yeah? Well, it seems that someone already did that by making the letters glow. So I’ll just borrow the book for a while.”
“Borrow it! That book is the property of the Library of Congress!”
“Caleb, don’t make me hit you. I’m taking the book.” He started to protest again but she cut him off. “This might have something to do with Jonathan’s death,” she said. “And if it does, I don’t care what the rules are here, I want the truth about how he died. You were his friend. Don’t you want to know too?”