Chapter 5

Frank already had coffee brewed when Keith and Maddie awoke in the morning. He sat Keith at the dining room table to redress his wounds while Maddie went to take a shower.

“Bad cuts on your hand, but it looks like it will heal,” Frank said softly. “I’m worried about your eye, though.”

“My right hand was protected by my computer case when I fell,” Keith said. “The case covered some other vital parts, too. But my left hand was flat on the pavement when the shit hit. Luckily my mouth was closed.”

“Don’t understand why people would do this,” Frank said.

“That’s why we needed to come here as quickly as possible, Granddad. It’s about the other Gutenberg. We have a new clue,” Keith said, pointing to the archival box on the table.

“Are you sure you want to go there?” Frank asked. “It’s been hidden for 600 years. Maybe it should stay hidden.”

“Finding this means someone else knows, too,” Keith said. “Someone else is looking.” He opened the box and lifted the pages of the book just enough to remove the letter fragment. Frank pulled a pair of latex gloves from a box in the kitchen and reached for the fragment.

“If your rare books curator found you handling these documents without gloves she would be very upset,” Frank said as he took the letter. “What does she think of it? Have you verified that it’s genuine?”

“Maddie hasn’t seen it yet. It all happened just before the explosion. Spectrographic analysis indicated late 1400s,” Keith said. “I thought we could finish it here.”

“It was just loose in the manuscript?” Frank asked.

“Yes. This is a catalog of books that were in a monastery near Württemberg Mountain,” Keith responded. “It was stuck between two pages of the catalog. I verified about half the book as being genuine, but haven’t checked every page after the late 1400s where this was inserted. But this letter hadn’t been there since the 1400s. The book was rebound around 1680 or so. You can tell by the stitching in the leather. There’s no residual impression of the letter on the pages surrounding where I found it. It hadn’t been in the book more than a few years at most.”

“And you think there is some significance to it being where it was?” Frank asked.

“Open the book and I’ll show you where I found it.” Frank began turning the pages, commenting on the quality and importance of the manuscript. As he found the page that Keith pointed out, Maddie entered the room and gasped.

“What are you doing with that open here? We need a controlled environment!” she exclaimed.

“Sorry to start without you,” Keith said turning toward her. He was arrested by the image of Maddie standing in the doorway. Frank, too, seemed speechless.

She was dressed in a sea-green pāreu, wrapped around her waist and drawn up and tied behind her neck. It left a mile of leg and acres of flesh exposed. Keith gazed open-mouthed. Maddie stared at the book open between Frank and Keith.

“Wow!” Keith said, breathlessly.

“Wow, indeed,” Frank agreed. “Are you cold, Madeline?” he asked. “I don’t usually turn the heat on during the day.”

Maddie looked at her pāreu and grinned at Frank.

“We were on our way to Jamaica when they blew up the library,” she said. “I’m afraid I didn’t repack.”

“Little island, little clothes,” Frank said. “You’ll probably want to go into town and buy something warmer. I’ll keep the heat on.”

“Maddie’s right,” Keith said, changing the subject back to the book. “We should have taken this to the lab.”

“Well, it’s not too late,” Frank said. “Forgive our enthusiasm for getting right to the book,” he said to Maddie. If you wouldn’t mind helping to transport it, we’ll take it to a proper facility. He pointed to the box of latex gloves and Maddie snapped a pair on before closing up the book and boxing it. She paused to look at the letter fragment before putting it in the box as well.

Frank opened a door into a cozy study lined with bookshelves. Opposite a small secretary at one side stood a library table with reading stand, camera, and electronic equipment. The setup, in fact, was very similar to the reading rooms in The Whit. Maddie crossed to the stand and sniffed the air.

“There’s a filtration system that ionizes the air to remove particles,” Keith said. “It’s where I did most of the research for my thesis.” Maddie nodded approvingly. She unboxed the book, placing it carefully on the reading stand.

“Where were you?” she asked, taking charge of opening the pages. Keith quickly explained the section of the book they were looking at and what he was looking for. Frank crowded in on the other side of Maddie with a magnifying glass and looked at the entry Keith pointed to.

“Wyrich family Gospels,” Frank read. “What makes you think that could have anything to do with it? You think Gutenberg printed a Gospel?”

“It’s possible,” Keith pondered. “But what if Gutenberg’s secret wasn’t a book he printed, but one he owned. It could be his mother’s family Bible. They may not have been able to afford a whole Bible. If it shows names of his grandparents with dates that correspond, that could be what’s missing.”

“So where is it?” Frank asked.

“That’s a problem,” Keith sighed. “We have to find it.”

“Well, there you are, back to what the Guild has been hunting for 500 years,” Frank said.

“It’s a different age now, Granddad,” Keith said. “We have different tools.”

“This thing, you mean?” Frank said, pointing to Keith’s laptop bag. “What can it do?”

“Do you remember Rob Nelson?” Keith asked.

“Yes. I had great hopes for that boy,” Frank said with a hint of disappointment in his voice. “I thought he’d be your equal in the Guild until he got seduced away by computer technology.”

“He’s doing quite well in that field,” Keith said. “And he’s written me a program to help in on-line searches. It’s called a spider—kind of a super search engine. I enter keywords into it and it gives me results after searching the entire Web. The longer it runs the more results it returns.”

“You are looking for a real book,” Frank said. “Paper and leather and ink, not some electrons floating around in outer space.” Frank had never been a big fan of computer technology. It had destroyed print, as Keith had heard him say on numerous occasions.

“It will show me any references that have been made to the real book,” Keith went on. “I just need to tap into the dish and send out the query.”

“Well, it’s still there,” Frank conceded. “Won’t hurt to find out if somebody mentioned this fabulously rare book of the 15th century on SpaceBook or YouHoo.”

“Granddad, you’re getting all technical on me now.”

“Do it!” the old man commanded. “I want to examine the letter. Care to join me, Miss Zayne?” he asked Maddie politely.

“Perhaps you could tell me about the Guild and this secret project you mentioned,” she said. “It seems to be something Keith neglected to tell me.” Maddie smiled at him and soon the two were bent over the letter and Frank was telling her about the ancient Guild to which he and Keith belonged.

Keith sat at his computer and started to design his search.

This room was more home to Keith than anywhere he had lived in the past twenty years; it always gave him pleasure to return to it. On his first visit to his grandfather, the old man had brought him to this room and shown him to a desk. Keith divided his time between study at the desk and work in the shop.

Frank had a small but exquisite collection of early American printing, including flawless specimens of Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac and Thomas Payne’s Common Sense. He said it was a great reminder that the press brought freedom with it wherever it arrived.

Keith devised several keywords that would help him locate references to the book, including the way it would be classified in a library. The Wyrich Family Gospels would probably be in a private collection, but if it had been sold there might be a registry entry or sales record in someone’s database. He cross-referenced the keywords with an index of names and places that were relevant in the Gutenberg saga. He was so intent on getting his search parameters set up correctly that he didn’t hear Maddie come up behind him. Frank had left the study to make lunch.

“Keith?” she said softly from a few steps behind him. He started and spun to face her.

“You take my breath away, darling,” he said looking up at her through his one good eye. “Even when you aren’t startling me half to death.” Maddie was still dressed in her island wrap, but she seemed hesitant and a bit in awe. “What is it, Maddie?”

“Keith, your grandfather has a copy of the Mainz Psalter in a glass case,” she said, pointing to a case in the bookshelves beside the desk. She shook her head in disbelief. Keith had forgotten all about the pristine volume his grandfather kept in a museum case. He realized it must look very suspicious to Maddie. “There are only ten of these known to be in existence,” Maddie continued, “and this one isn’t documented. It must be worth three million dollars, at least.” Keith smiled and hugged her. Her fresh scent nearly overwhelmed him.

“It would be,” he said, kissing her ear, “if it were genuine.”

“You can’t be serious!” Maddie exclaimed, dragging him with her to the case. “This is a counterfeit?”

“One of the best ever printed. It looks perfect, but it wouldn’t withstand carbon-14 dating. It’s only about fifty years old,” Keith laughed. “Spectrographically, though the inks are almost indistinguishable from the originals. Granddad made me test my analysis theories by dating this piece.”

“But it’s perfect,” she said. “Your grandfather printed it?”

“He won a rather profitable competition with it,” Keith said. “It was before electronic publishing, and cold type was still just starting. Everybody was moving to offset lithography and the Guild decided to hold a competition among the members to see who could reproduce a historic work with the greatest accuracy. The Guild chose the Mainz Psalter as one of the greatest examples of incunabula. The prize was $100,000 at a time when that wasn’t a common salary.”

“And your grandfather won?”

“By a unanimous decision,” Keith affirmed. “There was only one close contender as I understand it. He did pretty well, too. His copy was broken up and sold as limited edition artwork and may have made him more than Granddad’s did. There was one hanging in the library. I mean your library. I hope it wasn’t harmed in the explosion.”