A painting that was expected to fetch thousands at auction in New York is no longer for sale, after some old-fashioned sleuthing by a Toronto police clerk and a machine called “The Turtle” revealed that the painting was actually stolen.

The discovery was made after the Bonhams auction house in New York called Toronto police about a 19th century oil painting they were about to sell. The painting, by Czech artist named Antonietta Brandeis, is a lovely depiction of the port city of Naples, in Italy, and was expected to fetch up to $10,000 at auction.

But the auction house suspected the work might be the same as one that Interpol had flagged as stolen from Toronto in 1982. The auction house needed Toronto police to check their records for documentation about the theft.

Police computer records for such thefts don’t go back that far. So the auction house’s inquiry ended up in the hands of Ada Perihana, a clerk in the Toronto police records management services department.

With no database to check, Perihana had to dust off the old microfilms in the police records archive. With little information to go on -- just the painting’s title, the artist’s name, and the theft date – she began her search.

Perihana scrolled and scrolled, using a machine so old and slow by today's standards, records management staff have labelled it "The Turtle.” After 14 hours of searching, Perihana had found no mention of a stolen painting.

"I was really close to giving up, I’m not going to lie," she told CTV Toronto.

But on the night before the auction, just minutes before the end of her shift, Perihana finally found what she'd been looking for.

"I saw ‘art gallery’ at the very top, and as I scrolled down, I saw the name of the artist and the name of the painting, and I knew I had it," she said.

The police record Perihana found stated that two paintings had been stolen from a gallery on Toronto’s Queen Street East and neither work had ever been recovered.

The gallery where the theft occurred is long gone. In fact, the building it was in is gone too. Police reports from the time revealed that an insurance claim was filed and paid.

With the painting finally found, the next challenge is to find its rightful owner. Police say their investigation into the painting’s theft -- and the whereabouts of the second missing painting -- continues.

With a report from CTV Toronto’s Scott Lightfoot