The Six Messiahs

by Mark Frost

He walked calmly, with a lilting grace, like a man taking a stroll in the park. Every other body in sight making angular, frantic moves; men on either end of a vicious assault. Only by contrast did you even notice the figure moving placidly between them. Guards would catch sight of the man passing a foot away, reach out to swing a stick at him and before they'd taken the club completely back they were already on the ground, limbs snapped like kindling, faces broken. The Chinaman's arms and legs seemed to whirl out away from him in effortless patterns and then circle back; at one point he appeared to hang in the air. By the time he reached the edge of the yard and the two Pinkertons faced him down with their revolvers pulled, news had reached the rest of the bulls that something disastrous was happening in their midst.

  That's when in a single smooth gliding motion the Chinaman pulled the sword out of its sheath along his pant leg, swung it around twice in a loop—you could see reflections from the fire glinting off its edges—and the heads of those Pinkerton men dropped like ripe melons.

  The Chinaman ran. He was a blur. He was gone.

  When they saw the wreckage he'd left behind, the fight gushed out of those bulls like a busted water bag. While they started to tend to their dead, the yard bums who could walk stumbled away into the night, scattering like shrapnel, carrying their bundles and what small fragments of the nightmare they had witnessed. As time went by, Denver Bob did the most talking; thanks primarily to him, in the world of the railroad bums, the story about the man with the sword who had saved the camp at Yuma passed into legend.

  By dawn of the following day, a more practical consequence, the manhunt to track down this murdering Chinaman, was already under way.

  NEW YORK CITY

  Dazzling electric light displays lit up the span of the boulevard and revealed a street carnival of humanity crowding around the theaters and groggeries and dime museums and particularly outside the town's newest sensation, the five-cent Kinetoscope parlors lining either side of Broadway. Roving vendors hawked a warehouse of cheap movable goods—toys, shoes, scissors, suspenders, pots, and pans. Knife grinders threw sparks off their whetstones; ragpickers jangled the bells on their carts. Promenaders dined on baked apples, hot cross buns, steamed clams for sale out on the street. Winsome young girls offered cobs of hot corn—an attraction Innes did not fail to pick out of the mix. Some blew bugles to sound their wares, others wore block-printed sandwich boards, most depended on their voices; sharp, repetitive choruses cutting through the din.

  Electric streetcar operators leaned on their horns and carved a path through the dense carriage traffic, edging jittery horses still not accustomed to their presence out of the way. Double-decked omnibuses trundled tourists looking for a thrill around the tangled midtown streets; every few yards of fitful progress brought a fresh sensation into view. Bohemians in berets and garish neckerchiefs. Gamblers and grifters sniffing out their next big play. Local toughs footpadding in striped sweaters and floppy gang hats. Preening swells in plaid suits, pearl-gray derbies, and matching spats taking the air with a dolly on each arm. Streetwalkers between jobs stumbling off their gin or hop. Irish cops patrolling a beat, bouncing their sticks off the sidewalk. A Salvation Army band pounding drums, fishing for recruitable strays. Pimps, rummies, newspaper boys, jugglers, runaways, Chinese cigar sellers.

  "Can you imagine, Arthur?" said Innes. "Ten o'clock at night and the streets this full of life? By Jove, have you ever seen the like!"

  Doyle watched Innes eyeing the parade, feeling a protective swell of affection for his brother's exuberance and untested innocence. Was there a danger he'd corrupt those qualities by leading him further down this path he'd begun to follow? He'd never mentioned a word to Innes about Jack Sparks or what they'd been through together, not even since Jack reappeared on the ship. Was it right to expose Innes to the sort of danger Jack courted as a matter of routine? Given his responsibilities to wife and family and his professional obligations, Doyle questioned whether he had any business putting himself in harm's way, either.

  Sparks sat in the driver's perch above them, anonymous, cold. Doyle studied his face as he picked their way through traffic; he had harbored serious reservations about Jack's state of mind ten years ago: his obsessions, dark mood swings, his closeted appetite for drugs. He could only guess at what horrors the man had lived through since; he might have become perfectly deranged by now. Could he be trusted?

  "This can't be the most direct way to the hotel, can it, Arthur?" said Innes, not minding at all.

  It was not too late to fling open the door, spirit Innes away from Jack Sparks and everything he represented. Doyle saw the image of his wife's hands, folded peacefully in her lap. Irrationally, another woman's face drifted into his mind: the actress, Eileen Temple. The lights of these Broadway theaters must have summoned her up. He knew she had come to this city, leaving him flat at the end of their brief romance, to follow her career and seek her fortune. Her black Irish beauty; their fleeting time together had haunted him ever since. We want most what we can never have, thought Doyle. Could she be out here tonight, nearby, performing on one of the stages they passed, maybe even at this minute walking in this crowd that surrounded them? He scanned the faces, half hoping to find her. After so many years of intimacy with his wife, the thought of seeing Eileen now felt alien, illicit and thrilling. He could hardly remember who he'd been when he'd known her. Would he even recognize her after all this time?

  Yes. He would remember her face until the day he died.

  Then a third figure materialized. Queen Victoria. Proud. Frumpy. Enormously endearing. The bond of his word to her echoing back to him: He was hers to command whenever, wherever she required. She had never abused the privilege. And he remembered her unshakable faith in Jack Sparks, her most trusted secret agent, the man who had fought so bravely at his side. The man who had been such a friend to him ...

  There, he caught it, the root of his anger: He felt cheated. Jack had come back into his life as Doyle had always hoped he would, but the man that had shown up in his place was a shell, a remnant, depriving Doyle of the satisfaction of a true reunion. Still too early to tell if any trace of the Sparks he had known remained inside the ghostly shade driving their carriage; the evidence so far was anything but encouraging.

  But Jack's stepped this far out of the grave against all odds; perhaps I can help him the rest of the way. Don't I owe him that much? Isn't this man responsible for so much of the good fortune that has come into my life? Yes, my Christ: If there is a chance of his recovering, I have to see this through.

  Jack glanced down at him from the driver's seat. Was there a flicker of feeling in his eyes, that old affinity between them? As if he had picked up Doyle's thoughts and looked down to reassure him:

  I'm still here. Have faith. It will take time, not words, to repair this damage.

  Or was that nothing more than wishful thinking?

  "Arthur?" asked Innes again. "Aren't we going back to the hotel?"

  Doyle studied his brother: Innes had enlisted in the Royal Fusiliers at the earliest legal age, a soldier still in his heart, always itching for a fight and eager to serve the interests of the Crown. Hadn't he proved himself beyond a doubt in the action on board the Elbe?If he had to take someone into his confidence, who better than his own flesh and blood?

  "We have some business to attend to first," said Doyle.

  "Business? What sort of business?"

  Doyle took a deep breath; yes, he would tell him. "A man I used to know. Name of Jack Sparks. He worked as a secret agent to the Queen."

  "Never heard of such a thing," said Innes skeptically.

  "That's why it was a secret," said Doyle patiently.

  "Hmm. What about this Sparks fellow?"

  "We met ten years ago. Innes, you must never speak about this to anyone; I need your solemn word."

  "You have it," said Innes, his eyes growing rounder.

  "Jack had an older brother: Alexander. When they were boys, Alexander murdered their sis
ter. Six months old. Smothered her in the crib."

  "He must have been mad."

  "Dyed-in-the-wool. But unable to establish his guilt, they sent him off to school. One night years later, while Jack was at school in Europe, Alexander returned. Their home, an estate in Yorkshire, burned to the ground, killing everyone inside. But not before Alexander defiled and slaughtered his own mother before their father's eyes."

  Innes narrowed his eyes in shock. "Terrible." Doyle had never told anyone Jack's story before, but his reaction was no surprise.

  "Their father survived long enough to dictate Jack a letter describing Alexander's crimes. From that day forward, Jack dedicated his life to tracking down his brother. Along the way, he made himself into the greatest enemy the criminal element of our country has ever known. Eventually he entered the Queen's service, performing the same duties in service to the Crown.

  "Then, ten years ago, Alexander finally revealed himself, mastermind of a foul plot against the throne; six other conspirators, they called themselves the Seven. With some small help from me, Jack thwarted their mad plan and pursued Alexander to the Continent. It ended with them both taking a deadly plunge over Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland."

  "But that's, good God, Arthur, that's Holmes," gasped Innes.

  "No," said Doyle, pointing at Jack. "That is. And he needs our help."

  "No one has seen my father for nine days," said Lionel Stern. "He has a young assistant, a rabbinical student who comes in once a week to help organize the library—Father forgets to put books back on the shelves when he's finished with them, as you can see____"

  Stern swept his arm around the tables, chairs, and stacks of the low-ceiling basement room; every square inch occupied with books. Doyle, a dedicated bibliophile, had never seen such a varied and enviable selection.

  "His filing system is to say the least a little archaic, and when he gets lost in following a line of inquiry, well, once he had books piled up so high he couldn't find the door. He had to tap on the window and alert someone passing by to come let him out." Stern pointed to the casement window that looked up and out at a busy street, shaking his head in fond memory. "When Father's assistant came last week and he wasn't here, it didn't alarm him—Father had missed appointments in the past without explanation. But when he came the second time, yesterday, and the room was exactly as he'd seen it the week before, that was quite a different story."

  He loves his father very much, in spite of their disagreements, thought Doyle. He's trying to conceal how much his lather's absence hurts him.

  "Has he gone off like this in the past?" asked Doyle.

  "For a day or so, never longer. He took a walk once, trying to sort out some biblical discrepancy—he likes to walk while he thinks; keeps blood moving through the brain, he says— and he solved it all right, but by that time it was dark and he was in the middle of the Bronx Botanical Gardens."

  "No friends or relatives he might have gone to visit?"

  "I'm his only family. Mother died five years ago. There are other rabbis he knows, scholars, colleagues; most of them live in the neighborhood. I've spoken to them; no one's had any word. Aside from one other occasion, he's never been out of New York City before."

  Innes stepped forward to lift up a peculiar leather-bound manuscript embossed with an inscription that appealed to his eye.

  "Don't touch it," said Sparks sharply.

  Innes jumped back as if he'd burned his hand on a stove.

  "Don't touch anything. The answer is somewhere in this room." Sparks moved slowly between the bookshelves, eyes traveling methodically from one detail to another, accumulating information. Doyle carefully watched him work; this much about him seemed unchanged.

  "When did you last hear from your father?" asked Doyle.

  "He wired me before Rupert and I left London, ten days ago; routine communication, asking about our arrival, business having to do with the acquisition and transportation of the Zohar."

  "And you replied?"

  "Yes."

  "Anything in your answer that might have prompted his leaving?"

  "I can't imagine what it might have been; I'd already sent him an identical wire the week before answering all the questions he asked me in his. He probably lost it. Keeping mindful of what he calls the 'bookkeeping' of life is not his strength: you know, comings and goings. Paying his bills. All of that falls to me for the most part."

  Sparks pulled a pair of long tweezers from his coat and extracted a sheet of yellow paper protruding a quarter inch out from under a stack of books on the table.

  "Here's your first telegram," said Sparks. "Unopened. Unread."

  "See what I mean?" said Stern. "If he won the sweepstakes, the check could get lost in here for twenty years."

  "It is a most impressive theological library," said Doyle, walking between the stacks. "I've never seen such a concentration of rare volumes in any private collection before; quartos, folios, first editions."

  "Must be worth a fortune," said Innes, one of the few statements he'd felt confident enough to utter in Sparks's presence.

  "Whatever small amounts of money have passed through his hands over the years ended up in a book, that much I'm sure of," said Stern. "Most of them were gifts, donations from friends, various institutions."

  "A fine tribute to your father's standing as a scholar," said Doyle.

  "There's really no one else quite like him," said Stern, settling onto a stool. "After Mother died, he began spending more and more of his time down here alone. Most nights he'd sleep on that sofa over there." He pointed to a poor-looking daybed in the corner. "To be honest, I never could understand half of what he was talking about. Maybe if I'd made more of an effort, I could have understood and he—" His voice choked; he hung his head, trying to stave off tears.

  "Here, here," said Innes, a hand on his back, the closest to him. "We're sure to find him. Without fail. No quit in this bunch."

  Stern nodded, grateful. Sparks turned and walked right up to him, offering no acknowledgment of his emotion.

  "Your father's methods of study," said Sparks. "He took notes as he read."

  "Yes. Volumes."

  "A pen in his left hand. Sitting in this chair." Sparks walked to a chair at the desk.

  "How did you know?"

  "Worn on the rests; scratches along the left arm; he wore a long coat, with buttons on the sleeves."

  "Yes, he almost always wore that coat. He was usually cold down here; poor circulation, the doctor said, but to tell the truth Father was always a bit of a hypochondriac."

  Hasn't lost his observation skills, thought Doyle. Sparks sat in Rabbi Stern's chair and stared at the books cluttering the desk directly before him. He peered closer, reached in, and lifted one book off the pile, unveiling a pad of white lined paper underneath. He leaned down and studied the pad.

  "Have a look at this," he said.

  Doyle and Stern joined him; the paper covered with sketches, doodles, scrawled phrases, snatches of academic doggerel; the quality of the drawings surprisingly expert and detailed.

  "Yes, Father often did this sort of thing when he worked," said Stern. "Drew odd bits while thinking something through—he was clever that way. I used to sit with him and watch when I was a boy; he'd sketch street scenes, faces, people passing by."

  Two central images on the page: a large tree with drooping, denuded branches, holding ten round, white globes arrayed in a geometric pattern and connected by straight lines.

  "That's the Tree of Life," said Stern. "An image I've seen in kabbalistic books. I'm afraid I couldn't begin to tell you the significance of it."

  The other image: a black castle, stark and forbidding, a single window illuminated in its highest tower. Sparks's eyes narrowed as he stared at it.

  "Looks like something out of, what do you call it, you know," said Innes, snapping his fingers. "The dwarf and the pretty girl..."

  "Rumpelstiltskin?" said Stern.

  "Rapunzel let down your ha
ir and all that," said Innes.

  Doyle didn't take his eyes off Sparks; something was rumbling up from deep inside the man.

  "What does this mean?" said Sparks, pointing to a boldly sketched cuneiform figure on the page below the castle.

  "Schischah," said Stern. "That's the Hebrew word for six."

  "The number six?" asked Sparks.

  "Yes," said Stern. "It has other meanings, in the kabbalistic sense, but you'd need a scholar to—"

  Sparks stood up abruptly and jumped back from the table; chair legs screeched against the floor. He stared over at the bed in the corner, a wild, uncontained look passing through his eyes, as if he'd seen a ghost.

  "Jack? You all right?" asked Doyle.

  Sparks didn't answer. Tension coming off him permeated the room. A water pipe dripping rhythmically somewhere sounded as loud as gunshots.

  "Where is the Gerona Zohar?'' asked Sparks.

  "The safe in my offices," said Stern. "A few blocks north of here."

  "I need to see it. Now."

  "I'll take you there."

  Sparks and Stern started for the door.

  "Bring that pad of paper," said Doyle quietly to Innes. He pried the pad out from under the books without knocking over the stack and they followed Jack out of the tenement.

  Gaslight threw weak ripples of light into the damp air. Sparks led the way like a bloodhound straining at its leash; footsteps echoing, streets empty as midnight approached.

  In the shadows across the way from Stern's building on St. Mark's Place loitered two young toughs, cigarettes hanging off their lips. As the party went inside, and lights flickered on in the fourth-floor window of the office, one of the toughs ran off down the street; the other stayed to watch.

  Lionel Stern dialed the safe's combination, removed the wooden crate, set it down on his desk, and lifted the cover. The Gerona Zohar was large, nearly two feet square and three inches deep, bound in dark antiquated leather. Stern slipped on a pair of frayed white gloves and opened the cover; the binding creaked like an arthritic elbow.

  "Backwards, isn't it?" asked Innes.