One of the men spoke up before she left. “It’s not that simple, Detective. Many of the Hunt gifts have been in and out of the library over time. I think each of us, in our own collections, could be more helpful than any master list.”

Jill’s lips clamped together.

“What do you mean?” Mike asked.

“Take World War Two, for example. You know the windows in the reading room were entirely blacked out,” the man said. “There were legitimate fears of an air raid, and decisions had to be made about the safety of the most valuable books.”

“I get it.”

“The Gutenberg Bible, Washington’s Farewell Address, the Medici Aesops,” he went on. “Things like these were actually carried off-site for protection.”

“And some of the books that were taken away were once the property of Jasper Hunt?” Mike asked. “Is there some confusion about where they were housed after they were returned?”

“That, of course, Mr. Chapman. As well as the fact that some of the finest volumes simply never came back to us.”

“Because the Hunts kept them?”

The man looked to Jill Gibson before he answered, aware that he was crossing a line. “That’s my understanding. Jasper Hunt Jr., as well as several trustees, decided, rather quietly, it might be a good time to reclaim some of the things they’d given away.”

“Don’t wait around, Jill,” Mike said. “Something you already knew, apparently, and didn’t feel the need to tell me. Go ahead and get me your list anyway.”

Then he turned to Dutton. “You’re up, Bea. Tell them what you need.”

She addressed her colleagues, apologized for not being able to say exactly what we were after, and asked them to brainstorm for any insights that went beyond card catalogs, computer lists, and digitization.

“Let’s talk about the Napoleonic Description de l’Égypte,” Bea said.

She was starting with the most obvious hiding place-the one in which Prince Albert of Monaco had found the copy that Jasper Hunt Jr. purchased in 1905. It was logical that Hunt might have chosen to mimic the Grimaldis. Talbot had told us the day before that his father-probably unknowingly-had given a set of the twenty-volume classic to the library just two decades ago.

“Orientalia,” one of the men said. “I believe we have three sets of the Napoleonic expedition, all in Orientalia.”

“You know that’s not politically correct,” the older woman beside him joked. “It’s the Asian and Middle East department now.”

“Yeah. Rugs are the only things left you can call Oriental,” Mike said. “People-and I guess books-are Asian.”

I could tell he liked his new team. They were smart and sincere, and seemed to love the rare objects in their care.

“Any of you seen them, these books?”

A man in a madras plaid shirt, with a crew-neck sweater tied around his shoulders, raised his hand. “I’m Bruce. Bruce Havens. I used to work in that department. The Napoleonic expedition volumes have been completely digitized. You can view the entire thing online, without leaving home. The originals are locked away. Only scholars with a really good reason to see them can get access under a curator’s supervision.”

“Do you know the three copies, Bruce?”

“Let’s say I’ve seen them, Bea. Is that what you mean?”

“Provenance, Bruce. What’s their provenance?”

“Whew. It’s a tough issue in that particular collection. Much of what came in was without designation.”

Bea turned to us to explain. “Bruce means a lot of the photographs and foreign-language volumes were-what’s a polite word?-pilfered by explorers during their travels.”

“Sort of like the Elgin Marbles?” Mike asked.

“You got it,” Bea said to him. “Bruce, do you know the donors of the three Egyptian sets?”

“The prize of the three was a Lenox endowment. An absolutely pristine set of books, in a contemporary French speckled calf, board edges with gilt roll tool. Exquisite.”

“Under lock and key now?”

“Yes, it is. I know you’re interested in whether any of them are Hunt acquisitions,” Bruce said, “but I simply don’t know.”

“Any of them submitted to the conservators for repair?” I asked.

“Possibly, but not on my watch. They were actually shelved in the stacks.”

Mike heard the word “stacks” and stood up, signaling to one of the cops. “This gentleman’s going to take you downstairs to look for something. Stay with him.”

“I wouldn’t have access, Detective.”

“Why not?”

“In each department, there are cages-metal cages,” Bruce said. “Sort of wire mesh, where the rare books are locked.”

“Who’s got the keys?” Mike asked.

Bea answered. “We each have control of our own section. The front office has all the masters.”

Mercer walked to the door. “I’ll take them to Jill Gibson and make sure she gives up the key. You keep at it with Bea.”

“What’s next?” Mike asked her.

“The Most Noble and Famous Travels of Marco Polo,” Bea said. “How many different versions of that would you think we have?”

“Jill will know,” one of the men said.

“Forget Jill.” Bea was on a tear.

The older woman spoke. “We’ve got the Elizabethan translation by John Frampton in the Berg Collection. It was an Astor gift,” she said. “Not the Hunts’.”

“I know,” Bea said. “I’ve got a version with large folding maps, but it came to us recently out of Lord Wardington’s collection.”

I recognized Wardington’s name. He had been a mentor to Alger Herrick.

“There must be half a dozen of those spread around,” another man said.

“You.” Mike pointed at him as he spoke. “Take two cops and scout them out. Any copies you find come right back to this room before anyone cracks the cover, okay?”

Bea was calling on the remaining curators. “Think Hunt, ladies and gents. And then give me regions of the world. Japan, China, Africa, America-North and South.”

“I’ve got a huge box that Jasper Hunt donated,” a young woman said. “Erotic color prints of the Ming period. Sort of Chinese sex life from Han to Ch’ing.”

“We’ll take it,” Bea said.

“You got pornography here?” Mike asked.

“Art, Mr. Chapman,” Bea answered with a laugh. “Only the French library system has the backbone to exhibit the stuff, if that isn’t true to type. The rest of us just keep it hidden. Handwritten manuscripts by the Marquis de Sade, English ‘flagellation novels,’ Parisian police reports about nineteenth-century brothels, and shelves full of Japanese prints and Chinese illustrations. Some of them courtesy of Jasper Hunt.”

“Sounds like the Jasper Hunt who collected photographs of Alice Liddell,” I said.

“The Slavic and Baltic Collection has an elephant-folio chromolithographed account of the coronation ceremonies of Alexander the Second, the Tsar Liberator,” another voice chimed in, catching Bea Dutton’s enthusiasm for her task.

Mike paired the young man with a cop, and they were off to search.

“We’ve got several editions of the Edward Curtis American Indian photographs that are in folio form in our rare-books division,” a man said, standing and ready to move.

“You want Americana, Detective, we should give those a shot.”

“Tell me more.”

“Curtis took more than two thousand photographs of native Americans between 1907 and 1930 in an effort to document their lives. Tried to sell five hundred sets but went bankrupt before he could.”

“Are they Hunt connected?”

“The set I know was donated by J. P. Morgan. That usually made Hunt try to find something as good, or more elegantly bound. I’d like to look.”

“Go for it.”

Mike, Bea, and I were now alone in the room with a few of the officers still waiting to be assigned to a task. I imagined the library coming alive at night, just like in Jane Eliot’s stories, with curators and cops unlocking the cages and exploring the deep recesses of storage areas and stacks.

“I want you to see my thinking,” Bea said, unfolding and respreading the copy of the 1507 map on one of the trestle tables. “Track these books and drawings as they report back to us.