Life: so much life. Fish in a stream, horses running free down a lush box canyon. A mountain cat moving peacefully through herds of grazing antelope and deer. Hawks wheeling in a cloudless sapphire sky. And there far down below, near the horizon, what was that? What complete perfection of line, color, and shape dazzled his eye?
A City blooming out of the desert like a hothouse orchid. An oasis around its towers, rising up a thousand feet to meet the heavens. Towers of glass or crystal, red, blue, amber, twinkling in the brilliant sunlight like a canopy of jewels.
Tears flowed down Cornelius's cheeks. His lips blubbered with inexpressible joy. He felt a deep loosening in his chest; his heart opened like a night jasmine.
Through the translucent walls of the City, he saw some greater radiance illuminating its interior. A whisper of a thought and he glided toward the light, drifting through the walls as if they were an insubstantial mist. There were people below, a great mass of them, gathered peacefully on a tree-lined green around a raised platform from where the light originated. Hovering over the crowd now; he'd never seen such peaceful, welcoming faces. They held up their hands to him, guiding him gently down into their warm enveloping embrace.
Love. They loved him. He felt it flooding his senses, filling every corner of his mind. Pouring out of this crowd and into him; oh, the powerful feelings he felt in return ...
He loved them all so much.
The crowd around him turned as one to face a figure of light standing above them on the central column. He gasped: The light came from within a beauty unearthly. Form obscured, features indistinct—golden, burnished— emanating from within a halo of perfect love and generosity and peace.
The figure titanic. Wings spreading out beyond the eye's capacity. No way to measure their span.
An angel.
Eyes found him: great round disks of sky. His angel, there for him and him alone. Eyes held him in the embrace of their gaze. Loving him. A smile; a blessing. The angel spoke without words: He heard them in his head.
'Are you happy here, Cornelius?'
'Oh yes.'
'We have been waiting for you.'
'Waiting for me?'
'Waiting for the longest time. We need you, Cornelius.'
'You do?'
'The time is drawing near. There is so much for you to do.'
'I want to help you.'
'You've been treated very badly by those people; those people out there.'
Tears ran from his eyes. 'Yes.'
'They don't understand you at all, do they? Not like we do.'
'No.'
The angel's immensity filled his field of vision; its voice echoed deeply through every fiber of his body.
'Do you want to stay here, with us, Cornelius?'
'I want to, yes. I want to so much.'
The angel smiled. Wind ruffled back Cornelius's hair with a sound like a thousand muffled drums. Hands folded in silent prayer, the angel flapped its wings again and ascended from the platform into the firmament. All eyes turned skyward, watching the departure. Music rising to a grand crescendo, drowning out the blissful murmuring of the crowd.
Cornelius smiled, sharing now in their secret knowledge:
He was home.
chapter 4
DEAD SEA AROUND THEM. BLACK, OILY WATER, becalmed: a false peace and a certain promise of violence. Vague, evil shapes flickered along the surface. Squall lines hanging black curtains across the northern horizon. Drab light from the west, yellow, greasy on the scummy foam. A full moon rising soon behind them, precise counterweight to the setting sun.
Doyle stood at the aft starboard rail. Tried to roughly calculate their position at sea; nearing the 30th parallel, 50 degrees north. Nearest landfall the Azores, a thousand miles south. He heard the whine of the screws below. Engines laboring. Innes would be along any minute; no one would overhear them at this end of the ship.
Doyle stared at the sketch he'd made of the scrawl on Selig's wall, aching to make sense of it. He had worked throughout the day on the whole problem, agonizingly close to unraveling the mystery, but the last piece that would complete the puzzle remained just out of his reach. And still no sign of that priest, Father Devine. He felt reluctant to approach Captain Hoffner with only his current conclusions, but the danger was unmistakable; if he didn't, Lionel Stern might not live through the night.
Here was Innes.
'Aside from what they stowed in their cabin, Rupert Selig and Stern brought four pieces of luggage,' said Innes, producing a list. 'Steamer trunk, two valises, one crate. Saw them myself; sitting in the hold, undisturbed.' Doyle raised an eyebrow. 'I slipped this bloke in the engine room a fiver.'
'Good work.'
'Crate's sealed with an intact customhouse band. About the size of a large hatbox. Figure that for the Book of Zohar, what?'
Doyle said nothing.
'Where's Stern now?' asked Innes.
'Captain's cabin, well looked after for the moment. There's an inordinate amount of paperwork to sort out a civilian death at sea.'
'Never even occurred to me: What do they do with the body?'
'Refrigerated lockers. Necessity on any cruise liner with their older clientele: a good many of them overfed, apoplectic, sclerotic ...'
Innes shivered involuntarily. 'Not too near the kitchen, I hope.'
'Separate area. Nearer the hold, where they store those coffins we saw them loading in port.'
'Put a man right off his mutton.'
'Listen: The ship's doctor insists on labeling Selig's a natural death,' said Doyle.
'He can't be serious.'
'All outward signs indicate Selig died of acute coronary failure. I can't dispute that, and that's surely what his killers would like us to. believe. There's no facility to conduct a proper autopsy on board; if there were, I'm not sure the results would contravene. And the last thing the Captain needs on board his luxury liner is idle talk about the murder of a passenger.'
'But of course that's exactly what we think it is.'
'Frighten a man to death? Send an excess of adrenaline racing through his system and literally explode his heart? Yes, I'd call that murder.'
'What could have set him off?'
Doyle shook his head.
'Maybe he caught a glimpse of the ship's ghost wandering around belowdecks,' said Innes.
'Good Christ.' Doyle stared at him, wide-eyed, as if he'd been struck with a mallet.
'Are you all right, Arthur?'
'Of course; that's it. Well done, Innes.'
