Someone is stealing scrolls from the Library of Celsus…

A light flickers on the street.

Our scroll thief came racing down this old marble street in the dark, and nobody runs at night without a light. Something was dropped in a hurry somewhere close to where you are standing.

The goggles go on.

Night vision is on, detective, and the scene looks green and grainy. Somebody lost a little light source in one of the dark doorways along the colonnade just behind you.

Darkness inside the reading hall.

You have slipped inside the old reading hall, and it is pitch black in here. The scroll cupboards once stood in niches along these walls, above a raised stone podium. Something small and made of iron is waiting on that podium.

Four stone ladies saw everything.

Celsus himself rests in a tomb beneath this building, so tread softly. Four statues named Wisdom, Virtue, Thought and Knowledge watched the thief run up these steps toward the doors.

The trail turns toward the gate.

The footprints swing toward the triple archway beside the library, but the thief doubled back along the old wall to stash the loot. Two freed slaves of the emperor Augustus paid for that gate.

Dawn breaks over the library.

The sun is coming up and the thief has fled through the gate into the market square. The loot is close, hidden behind one of the fallen column capitals in the morning light.