Scholar's Plot by Hilari Bell Page B

wants something, Michael doesn’t give up on it. But I like libraries, and I now had a deep curiosity to see this one.
    “The alphanumeric system. And he was only a scholar when he came up with it.”
    We emerged from the building that held the clerk’s office as we spoke. It was getting late in the afternoon, but with luck we’d have time to look at this forged thesis and maybe get some dinner, before returning to filch Nancy Peebles’ keys.
    “His brilliance didn’t make Mistress Peebles like him any better,” Michael said. “What is this system he created? You seem to know of it.”
    “Everybody knows about it,” I said. “Well, everyone who cares about books. My father went to a lecture about it once, and raved about its wonders for the rest of the week.”
    I hadn’t recognized it at the time, but I now wondered if some of his obsessive reaction had sprung from 
jealousy. It was always someone else who came up with the brilliant ideas. He’d died only a few months later. I pushed those memories away and went on.
    “It really was important, for scholars. What he did was to create numbers for everything there is.”
    Michael’s brows rose. “What, a number for horses? And flowers and clouds and spinning wheels and turtles and toothpicks and—”
    “Yes.” He was joking, but it was an enormous, incredible undertaking. “He created a number for toothpicks. A number for hoof picks for those horses, and for every disease those hooves can get. A number for everything there is, Michael.”
    He’d stopped joking, but now he was puzzled. “I can see ’twould be an enormous task, but why is it important?”
    “Because before he came up with these numbers, that he painted onto the spines of books about those subjects, there was no way to put books about the same topic in the same place. Oh, great libraries like this one, they’d have rooms for particular subjects, with shelves labeled for books about this and that. But all it took was one scholar putting a book down in the wrong room, or stack, and it could be lost for years. For decades, maybe. Even if it was in the right room, you still had to sort through stacks and stacks of books to find the one you needed. My father said the alphanumeric system would make tasks that scholars spent days and weeks on take minutes and hours instead. It revolutionized research, in every library and school in the Realm. That its inventor came up with it here, that he put his system to work in this library first, was a huge academic score for Pendarian. They won’t take his murder lightly.”
    “The more reason for them to forgive Benton, if you can prove who did it. Though I still think ’twill be the project that… We’re here.”
    Michael, who’d planned to burgle it himself, was the one who knew where the library was, but I’d noticed the building last night. An old, three story manor house, that like the tower, had been captured when the university walls went up. It stood out among the drab rectangles of the university buildings like a grand dame among laundry maids.
    We passed through the front doors into a lofty, marble-tiled entry hall. It had three arched doorways on the ground floor, with a split staircase winding up between them that came together at the center of the second story gallery. But the manor’s furniture had vanished, replaced by a battered table holding flyers, and a large map of the house with a numbered list beside it.
    I was stepping up to read it when a young man said, “Can I help you find something?”
    A familiar copper whistle hung from a cord around his neck.
    “Yes,” Michael said. “We’re looking for unpublished dissertations on ancient history. Particularly on excavation techniques.”
    “And do you have a pass to use the library?” It was clear he already knew the answer, but he was going to be polite about kicking us out. And there was only one person who could have told him we were coming.
    “Has Professor Dayless had