For a time, though, it seemed General Drafting had been quite the enterprising underdog in the field. The founder, a man named Otto G. Lindberg, had come over to the United States from Finland in the early 1900s with just a few hundred dollars in his pocket and set himself up in New York City as a draftsman. Even though American cartography was dominated at that time by two gigantic mapmakers, Rand McNally and H.M. Gousha—names Nell easily recognized, despite her exclusive focus on antique maps—Otto and his assistant, Ernest Alpers, were the first to invent and produce this type of cheap folding map and gained their own small foothold in the industry for it.
But that was almost all there was. She did find some evidence that there had been a controversy of some sort, and a lawsuit, around the same time that this 1930 edition of her map had been published, but she couldn’t find the outcome of the case, or any information thereafter. And employees who had been working at General Drafting at the time of the suit were all long gone, having died decades before, so there was no one to ask. There weren’t even business records to go through. For a time, there had been physical copies archived in an old historical building in New Jersey, where the company had moved after Manhattan real estate prices soared, but the place had burned down in an accident decades ago, everything lost.
Nell had also called a few of the other libraries and museums that the interinstitution database showed had once owned copies of the same map, but they all had been lost so long ago that almost no one at those places could tell her anything useful, either. There was only one librarian, a now elderly woman who had been working part-time at her local branch in southern Connecticut for decades, who remembered the insignificant little map in question.
It had been the most peculiar thing, she’d said to Nell. The robbery had occurred in 1989 or 1990, she recalled, but the thief was never caught, because the police couldn’t actually prove there had been a break-in at all. None of the doors or windows had been damaged and were all still locked when the librarian had entered the building the next morning. And their simple alarm system, which was set to go off if any of the doors were opened before it was disarmed, had not been triggered.
But it had rained all night, and when she went into the history section, she found muddy footprints on the carpet.
She and the other librarians checked and double-checked everything that day, going through the entire catalog by hand. Only that map was gone—nothing else.
Nell sighed. The more she looked into it, the fewer answers, and more questions, she had.
Ramona was her only lead. She had no choice.
She just hoped the dealer might know something more about the map than just its price—or maybe could even tell her who her father’s potential buyers for it were.
The bell on the door dinged as Nell pushed it cautiously open and stepped inside. A darkness fell over her immediately, the shop being so much dimmer than the bright morning outside. As her eyes adjusted, a small, involuntary gasp escaped her lips.
It looked as though she’d left Chinatown and stepped into a secret world.
The interior of RW Rare Maps was made of wood and painted black, giving the place an ancient, solemn feel more like a magician’s workshop than the dry, stuffy map dealers’ offices Nell was used to. Instead of typical overhead lights in the ceiling, lantern-like sconces dotted the walls, casting a soft, yellow glow over everything. And every inch of available space—the display tables, the shelves, the sales counter, even empty spots on the floor—had books and maps stacked everywhere.
As she stood there taking it all in, Nell realized what it reminded her of. The kingdom of buried treasure in the uncatalogued basement of the NYPL.
Where had Ramona gotten all of these maps? It was far, far more than any dealer had. It was more than some small archives had, even.
Her fingers itched with curiosity. She wanted to open every atlas, turn every single page, to see what treasures were hidden inside.
“We’re closed,” a voice said from behind, startling her.