bullet-proof for so long. Interpol and the Bureau couldn’t possibly keep it under wraps forever. And if Bernard was announced, publicly, to be a wanted man, would he flee, out in the open, easy to capture?
Or only dig himself further underground?
“Where does he go in the city to hide out?” Sloane asked. “Not to belittle your friendship. Perhaps he’s just in need of a little isolation right here in London.”
Humphrey was shaking his head vigorously. “Reggie and I have spent a lot of time at Bernie’s other houses. Greece, Switzerland, Paris… his vacation homes are much more beautiful than his flat here in London, even if it did cost him a pretty penny.”
The reminder that Bernard could have fled to Switzerland—the perfect place to hide if you were a wanted man, internationally—had me hiding a wince. I caught Sloane covering hers just in time.
“You’re a good friend to be worried,” she said. “It sounds like he’s a real man of mystery. He’s dipped out on you before, correct?”
“Ah,” Humphrey said, waving a hand. “The man disappears often. I’ve gone a full year without speaking to him. He’s extremely focused on his travels to acquire the rarest of books. Bernie does not permit distractions.”
Even from his best friend? I wanted to ask, except Sloane and I needed to appear friendly toward Bernard, not combative.
I took a long, deliberate drink. Thought about how quickly I’d positioned Sloane and me as partners, working together, when no such thing was happening. We didn’t need to appear to be doing anything right now—I was merely here while she got information from her source. Perhaps my newly paired-off employees were finally rubbing off on my behavior.
“He hides it well, but Bernard has a sensitive heart,” Humphrey continued. “All the pressure of running that library, being a spokesperson, speaking across the world. It’s a dream come true and also far too much stress for any one man to take. Plus, he’s always working with new people, interns or museum employees, or traveling to book shows or up late on a conservation project.”
I felt not an ounce of sympathy for this portrait of an overworked-and-underpaid Bernard. I knew those “interns” to be hired thieves he worked with; the museum employees were all part of his pyramid of criminals; the book shows, the conservation projects—often excuses he used as he dealt rare books like drugs and profited like a king.
Sloane leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and placed her chin in her palm. “What do you guys think is in those private papers after all?”
“Everything Eudora Green has ever wanted,” Reggie said.
Humphrey harrumphed into his beer. “Everything Bernie has ever wanted.”
I tapped Sloane. She said, “And what is that, exactly?”
Humphrey looked at his husband, who smiled dreamily before speaking. “Arthur Conan Doyle was the greatest literary genius our country, and I’d say the world, has ever known. He’s been studied and profiled and written about for decades, and scholars like those in the Society can never read enough. But…” Reggie paused. “There comes a time where one reaches a limit of what can truly be known of a man who’s been dead for ninety years.”
“I’ve not seen them, no one has seen them,” Humphrey added. “They could be notes he wrote about birds he saw out the window for all we know. None of us bloody care. These papers mean we have a new limit. These papers expand the limit. For the first time in ages, we have something new to learn about the man, and the characters, we worship so much.”
Even I was sitting forward, drawn into the implications of what he was saying. Sloane tapped me. “Bernard…” I stopped, pretended to think for a second. “Bernard would be trying his hardest for the Society to own those papers as part of their collection, correct?”
“With what funds though?” Reggie said. “Even with our best efforts, we can’t compete with the collectors of the world who have millions at their disposal. We are mere scholars.”
Bernard wasn’t a mere scholar though.
Bernard had access to millions of dollars.
Bernard had access to a network of highly trained thieves who could easily pull off a theft of this magnitude. They’d been helping him pull off stunts like this for twenty years now.
I imagined laying out this story for Freya, Sam, Delilah, and Henry. I imagined them yelling at me, in their own special ways, to pay attention.
“Did Bernard ever get over losing the first batch of private papers?” Sloane asked, immediately on the