The Six Messiahs

'Give me a hand. We should stow him out of the way before the tourists get wind of this.'

'Sure, pal, whatever you say.'

Pinkus reached down and Innes got a closer look; the clotted rivulets of phosphorescent sweat running off him made it look as if his face were melting. 'Probably a good idea if we stow you out of sight as well.'

Doyle found Lionel Stern and the engineer kneeling in the dark outside the hatch at the end of the corridor, attending to Captain Hoffner, who clutched a wounded arm.

'We heard the shots,' said Hoffner. 'Mein Gott, he was on us so quick I have had no time—'

'Like a shadow,' said the engineer.

'He ran right through us,' said Stern. 'Everything happened so fast I couldn't even tell you which way he went.'

'That's all right''said Doyle, bending down to examine the deck. 'He'll show us himself.'

He pointed to the walkway and the thin layer of phosphorus he'd laid down when they finished coating Pinkus. Doyle instructed Stern to stay with Hoffner, and along with the plucky little engineer, who clutched a huge monkey wrench in both hands, they followed the path of glowing footprints leading away from the phosphorus out into the void of the open deck.

The moon drifted behind an advancing cloud bank, and the darkness rendered the glow of the man's tracks even easier to read. Rolling heavily amidships with no power to steer into the heavy swells of the approaching storm, spray dousing her deserted decks, taut lines twanging like harp strings in the whistling wind, the Elbe felt less like a luxury liner and more like a steamship version of the doomed Flying Dutchman.

'Dis man,' whispered the engineer, as they paused before cautiously rounding a corner. 'He is like der Teufel.'

'The Devil,' said Doyle. 'Yes. But he is also just a man.'

As Doyle bent to examine another footprint, he heard a faint, steady metallic tapping, then noticed the wrench, shaking in the engineer's hands and knocking against the rail.

'What's your name?'

'Dieter. Dieter Boch, sir.'

'You're a good man to have around, Dieter.'

'Tank you, sir.'

They traced the steps up a flight of stairs to the rear deck, and through the clabbering gloom ahead Doyle thought he could make out the shape of a large man standing at the far end near the stern rail. Doyle reached for his pistol but the ship yawed severely as it dove down into the trough of a wave. Both men staggered to hold their balance; when Doyle looked up again, the figure at the rail was gone. He questioned his companion; the engineer had seen nothing. They pressed on. Lengthy gaps between their quarry's footprints indicated the man in black had continued to run; the prints led right up to the edge of the top deck and ended abruptly.

'Er ist going overboard?'

'So it appears,' said Doyle.

'Into dis wasser?' asked Boch, looking out anxiously at the towering crests of the waves. Like so many other seagoing men he lived in constant terror of the ocean. ' 'Why would dis man do such a thing?'

Why, indeed? thought Doyle: Why would two men take their own lives rather than face capture?

For the theft of a book?

They moved the Gerona Zohar from a hidden compartment in Doyle's steamer trunk to the safety of the ship's vault and placed it under twenty-four-hour guard. His injured arm in a sling, Captain Hoffner returned to the bridge, rallied his officers, and initiated a room-by-room search. As Doyle had predicted, the ship's first lieutenant could not be accounted for, although many swore they had seen him—a young, handsome blond man—in uniform on the command deck since the storm began.

Mechanics swarmed over the engine room, finally coaxing the emergency generator into operation; with running lights on and one quarter power restored to the screws, the Captain ruddered the Elbe into the teeth of the squall as it closed its jaws around them. While the crew redoubled efforts to repair the primary generator, passengers remained confined to cabins, rules of emergency in force, with strict instruction to lock their doors; the storm and complications posed by their loss of power were convincingly given as the rationale for these impositions. No mention made of the assassins still presumed to be at large somewhere on board the troubled ship.

Guards posted outside the door, the corridor in either direction cordoned off-limits to passengers, Doyle, Innes, Stern, and Pinkus—with whom they were now saddled, more reluctant to let him out of their sight than to endure his company— huddled in Stern's cabin around a kerosene lamp and the body of the black-clad suicidal assailant.

Removing his mask revealed a man of about thirty with clipped, straight black hair and a brown, broad- browed face— Javanese, perhaps Filipino, thought Doyle. A small distinctive tattoo of abraded skin discolored the hollow of the man's left elbow: a broken circle, penetrated by three jagged lines. This design matched exactly the drawing on the piece of paper in Doyle's pocket, sketched from the scratchings on the wall near Selig's body. Upon examination, Doyle realized the mark was not a tattoo but a severe burn. Of the sort one would find on branded cattle.

The man's clothes were fashioned from plain black cotton. Six weapons concealed on his person: knives holstered up each sleeve and pant leg, the suicidally employed double-barreled derringer, and a thin length of wire around his waist—a deadly garrote. Scars crisscrossed his burled knuckles and callused palms, knife wounds; a seasoned warrior. The bruises Innes and Doyle wore from their brief engagement with him bore vivid testimony to the man's mastery of hand-to-hand combat. Conclusion: a cold, efficient killing machine. They had no compelling reason to believe his surviving accomplices would be any less deadly.

Doyle dropped a sheet over the corpse. All four men had to continually brace themselves against the bulkhead or bunks to fight the grinding up-and-down gyrations of the storm.

'You still haven't explained, Mr. Doyle,' said Stern. 'How did the Zohar end up in your cabin?'

'Along with the pills sewn into the lining of Mr. Selig's jacket, I found this key,' said Doyle, holding it up for display. 'Obviously not the key to your room or any passenger cabin, although it bears the identifying stamp of the Elbe, here....' He pointed out a minute version of the ship's insignia.

'What's it for?' asked Pinkus impatiently.

'I applied the key to every lock I could find convenient to this room. There is a seldom-used storage closet behind the gymnasium—you'd never see it unless looking for it; its entrance is obscured every morning and night by stacks of lounge chairs and seat cushions. This key opened that door. Inside this shallow closet, I found a recessed panel in the wainscoting; a neglected and no longer serviceable fuse box. Mr. Selig moved the Zohar from its original hiding place here—a simple hole cut into his mattress, by the way; small wonder he was so reluctant to leave the room—to this other location yesterday evening, after the Captain refused your request to use the ship's safe, the conversation I overheard.'

'I had no idea ...' said Stern.

'No. He must have made the transfer while you were attempting to reach me before the seance last night, about an hour before the murder.'

'And how did his killers manage that without laying a hand on him?' asked Innes.

Doyle produced two small packets of paper from his pocket and opened them for the others to see. ' 'When we discovered Mr. Selig's body last night, I found a small clump of clay just inside the door. I removed this second identical sample this evening from inside one of the coffins in the hold; a good amount of it, over a pound, but only in one coffin.'

'Okay, fine, Doc. So what's a little dirt got to do with the price of beer?' asked Pinkus, with all the impartial tact of a seasoned journalist.

'Mr. Selig was a more devoutly religious man than yourself; is that a fair statement to make, Mr. Stern?' asked Doyle.

'Yes.'