In Plain Sight

“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.”