Defeat: The Forgery Mistake
Relieved to have found what appears to be the prize, you lift the gilded volume from the pedestal cushion, tuck it beneath your rain poncho, and make a hasty exit through the lower cellar storm doors.
Two hours later, safely under the warm lights of a diner across town, you carefully examine your prize. You turn past the ornate title page, only to find crisp modern pulp paper, printed with offset halftone lithography rather than 17th-century woodblocks.
Stamped cleanly in red ink on the final leaf is a collector's mark:
EXHIBITION REPLICA #1692-C Prepared for public estate cataloging. Master manuscript retained in private secure containment.
Alistair Vance's trap worked precisely as designed. While you fled with a fifty-dollar display copy, the true 1699 folio remained locked away in his private study safe-where the auction liquidators will uncover and sell it at public auction before noon.
Where Did It Go Wrong?
The Grand Library acquisitions ledger (entry #1692-C) explicitly warned that the tome placed
in open view was an aution decoy. The genuine volume (entry #1699-X) was locked in the Study
safe upstairs.