In Plain Sight

26 The Monograph

The sun was setting by the time Alex and Iggy got home. Neither felt much like eating, and Iggy looked tired and worn.

“Make up a fire,” he said. “Then I think we should talk.”

“Sounds good,” Alex said. He reached for the coal bucket and poured some on the grate.

While Alex worked, Iggy went upstairs. Alex knew from experience that the doc would get out of his suit coat and into his smoking jacket. He lit the fire, then selected a book from the shelf, and sat down in the chair nearest the wall.

It only took Iggy a few minutes to return.

“How about some…” he began, but his face went white when he saw Alex. “No!” he gasped. “You must not read that!”

His voice sounded desperate, like a man facing death while clinging to the last vestiges of life.

Alex sat in the soft, wing-back chair with his legs crossed. A thin book bound in red leather lay open on his lap, illuminated by the light of the table lamp. He had taken it from the space next to the hollowed-out book where he kept his money.

Hiding in plain sight.

“It’s a little late for that, Iggy,” Alex said, turning a page. “I read this book last week.”

“Alex,” Iggy told him. “You’re not ready.”

“For the truth?” Alex said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the paper Leslie had given him. The culmination of a mission he’d sent her on when he first found the red book. “You know,” he said, unfolding it, “I bet you could ask everyone in New York who wrote the Sherlock Holmes books and they’d say Arthur Conan Doyle. Every one of them.”

“Alex,” Iggy said, imploring him not to go on.

“I bet not a single one of them knows that his real name is Arthur Conan Ignatius Doyle, and that he faked his own death four years ago and came to America.”

Iggy sat down in the other chair and just stared at the fire.

“How did you figure it out?” he asked.

“You trained me to be a detective, Iggy. Or should I call you Arthur?”

“Iggy is fine,” he said. “You decrypted the finding rune.” It wasn’t a question, just a simple statement of fact.

“Last Saturday while you were making those disguise runes,” Alex said. “You can imagine how surprised I was to discover that the infamous Archimedean Monograph, the book so many people died trying to find, was sitting on our bookshelf right next to my book safe.”

Iggy nodded, shaking his head. “Once you knew I had the Monograph, you would have guessed that my name was an alias. Did you search the records of this house’s ownership?”

Alex nodded. “You bought the home in your son’s name, Kingsley Doyle. It took Leslie a long time, but she finally traced the name to a doctor in the British army. He was killed in the big war. The New York Times printed a story about it because of his famous father. The man who invented Sherlock Holmes.”

“You did do the thing properly, didn’t you?” Iggy chuckled darkly.

“I also know that Bell is the last name of your favorite professor from medical school, a man you once said was the inspiration for Holmes.”

“I was going to tell you,” he said. Iggy hung his head and cradled it in his hands.

“When?”

“When I absolutely had to and not a moment before,” he said, standing up and pacing to the fire. “You don’t know what you’ve done by reading the Monograph.” He paused, looking into the fire. “I wanted to spare you that. For as long as I could, anyway.”

Alex closed the book and set it aside on the table. “I get it,” he said, standing and moving to the fire. “There are some very dangerous runes in there. Things I don’t want to even think about. But you should have trusted me.”

Iggy put his hand on Alex’s shoulder.

“I do trust you, lad. But you don’t understand. Evelyn Rockwell isn’t the only person searching for that infernal book. There are others, many others. Most of them are incompetent dreamers, but some are talented — and dangerous. That’s why I had to leave my family. That’s why I faked my death and came here.”

Alex nodded, suddenly understanding. “The story you wrote,” he said. “About the Mary Celeste.”

“I wrote a fictional account of that ship, leaving out the finding rune in the captain’s cabin and the shadows on the wall,” Iggy said. “I wanted to point people in the wrong direction, erase any connection with the Monograph.”

“I take it that didn’t work,” Alex said. “What happened? Someone find out about your trip to Gibraltar?”

“Probably.” Iggy shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter. People began writing me, asking me thinly veiled questions about the runes in the Monograph. I never answered any, of course, but that only made them bolder. One night, a few years ago, I received a letter from a friend, begging me to come see him at his home. Luckily, I knew he had gone to the seaside for the winter. I contacted the police, and they caught five runewrights who were lying in wait for me. That was when I knew I had to disappear.”

“I don’t get it,” Alex said. “Why were they so convinced that you had the Monograph?”

“As you’ve seen, my lore book is full of unique and powerful runes,” Iggy said. “I developed most of them using concepts from the Monograph.” He sighed and looked into the fire. “But mostly it’s because of those runes Sorsha was looking for. Your government stole them from mine, but how do you think the Royal Army got them?”

“You gave them to the British? Why?”

“It was after my son died,” he said, his voice distant. “I wanted to do whatever I could to end the war. I thought the government runewrights could use those five to help. They already had the finding rune. It didn’t matter, though. I was wrong. As soon as they knew the Archimedean Monograph had been found, they wanted the rest. Luckily for me, I had taken the precaution of sending the runes to them anonymously.”

“What happened?”

“The military put out bulletins seeking runewrights of exceptional ability. They searched my home, and the homes of others, seeking the Monograph. When the war ended, they officially gave up, but the runewrights on the army payroll had seen enough of what the Monograph had to offer that they couldn’t let it go. They formed a secret society to search for it.”

“And you already had a target on your back.”

“And now, so do you,” Iggy said. “Don’t you see? Anyone who knows about the Monograph is a target. That’s what I wanted to spare you from. Just imagine what would happen if your friend Daniel suspected that you have the book? What if he were to mention those suspicions to his father in casual conversation?”

Alex developed a sudden chill. Danny wouldn’t care that Iggy had the Monograph, but his father wouldn’t be able to resist it. He’d try to bust down the door to the brownstone and take it.

“And what about Sorsha?” Iggy continued. “Why she’d…” Iggy stopped, a startled expression on his face. He slowly turned to Alex. “You said she used a truth spell on you at Thomas Rockwell’s workshop,” he said. “That was last night. After you discovered the book. Does she know?”

Alex laughed and shook his head. “You know she doesn’t,” he said. “You were just about to say what she’d do if she knew the book was here, and you’d have been right.”

“Then how…?”

“Truth spells aren’t illegal because they work,” Alex said. “They’re illegal because they’re unreliable. Remember the Lindberg case? By the time they got the truth out of the accomplice, the baby was already dead. All you have to do to beat a truth spell is have a better truth to tell.”

“I… don’t understand,” Iggy said. He still had a look of alarm on his face.

“Sorsha asked me if I could finish unraveling the rune Evelyn used,” Alex said, ticking it off on his finger. “I designed that rune so that it can’t be unraveled, not without going back to the original and starting over. I did that in case it fell into the wrong hands.”

“So when you said you couldn’t, you were telling the truth,” Iggy said. “Just not the whole truth.”

“Truth spells compel you to answer,” Alex said. “They don’t force you to elaborate. Next,” he said, ticking off another finger. “Sorsha asked me if I had found the Monograph.”

“But you had found it.”

Alex shook his head with a grin. “No, I just discovered it sitting on our bookshelf. You found it. You can only find things that are lost, and a book on a shelf in plain sight isn’t lost.”

Iggy looked incredulous.

“Isn’t that just your interpretation?”

“Of course,” Alex said. “But the spell was cast on me; its effect is limited to what I believe.”

“Was that it?”

“No, she asked me if I would ever search for the Monograph in the future. I could honestly tell her that I had no intention whatsoever of looking for the Monograph.”

Iggy chuckled, but then his face became serious again. “You got lucky,” he said. “If she’d asked better questions, I’d have had to disappear again. That’s why you need to forget what you’ve read in that book. If you start adding new and powerful runes to your repertoire, she’s going to figure it out. She isn’t stupid, you know.”

Alex shrugged. Iggy was right, of course. The Monograph was filled with amazing and powerful concepts, but he’d have to keep those out of his professional life.

Well, most of them.

Alex closed the Monograph and held it up.

“There are some very interesting things in here,” he said. “I’d love to hear your thoughts on them.”

Iggy laughed.

“There are notes in there from DaVinci and Ben Franklin,” he said. “I doubt I could add very much.”

“Not the way I see it,” Alex said. “You took these runes and made them part of your lore book. You had to make them powerful, but not so powerful or complex that people would wonder about their origin. I think you still have a lot to teach me.”

“But for how long?” Iggy whispered.

“Does that matter?” Alex said. “I did what you would have done in my shoes, what Sorsha would have done if she could have. Are you going to let that ruin our friendship?”

Iggy straightened up and took a deep breath. “No,” he declared at last. “But I’m still angry about the book.”

“I’m sorry,” Alex said. He didn’t know what else to say. He should have realized that Iggy would have a good reason for keeping those things from him. He should have trusted the man.

“I’m sorry too,” Iggy said, leaning heavily on the mantle. “The Monograph is a burden I would have spared you, but I am glad that you know the truth.”

“What now?” Alex asked after a long moment passed.

Iggy pushed away from the mantle and slipped the Archimedean Monograph back into its place on the bookshelf.

“Now, we carry on as if nothing has changed,” he said. “It’s our responsibility to keep the book out of the wrong hands.”

“But we study it,” Alex said. “There’s a lot in there I want to know.”

“Agreed,” Iggy said. “But I decide what we study. You’re not ready for all of it yet.”

“Agreed,” Alex said.

Iggy stuck out his hand and Alex shook it.

“I’m as hungry as a wolf,” he said, clearly feeling better than he had in days. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

Alex put the screen in front of the fire while Iggy changed back into his suit jacket. He didn’t feel any different, but he knew the ground had changed under his feet. The hat Iggy had loaned him hung on a peg in the hallway, and he slipped it on over his white hair before stepping outside onto the stoop. In the distance, Empire Tower reached up to the sky, glowing with the energy it contained. Occasionally a bolt of lightning would reach down from above and strike the spire on top.

“Ready?” Iggy asked, stepping out beside him.

Alex nodded, turning the brim down on the hat before following the old man to the sidewalk.

“After dinner we’ll look at the Monog—”

“We should probably call it the Textbook when we’re out in public,” Alex said.

“Good point. Well, when we get back, there are a few interesting things I want to show you in the Textbook.”

Iggy’s old enthusiasm seemed to be back, and Alex grinned as they made their way to The Lunch Box. He didn’t know how much of his life he had left, but he had a feeling none of it would be boring.