The Six Messiahs

'So am I correct in assuming as a practicing Jew he would have been conversant with aspects of Judaic history and mythology?'

'Absolutely: Rupert studied for many years.'

'Would it also be fair to say Mr. Selig took what those studies might have given to him very close to heart; one might almost say as gospel?'

'Definitely—what are you driving at?'

Doyle lowered his voice and leaned in over the lantern, the light from below setting off his features in a dramatically sinister way. 'Are you at all familiar, Mr. Stern, with the legend of the golem?'

'The golem? Yes, of course, I mean, in a passing way; as a boy my father told me the story many times.'

'Golem? What's'zat?' said Pinkus, who still emitted a faint sickly greenish glow in spite of an hour's scrubbing with a stiff steel brush.

'The word golem derives from the Hebrew for fetus, or unformed life,' said Doyle. 'Said to be the name that Jehovah gave Adam when he breathed life into the figure he molded from the common clay of Eden.'

'Jehovah?' asked Pinkus, popping his chewing gum. 'You mean ... jumpin' Jehovah?'

'Jehovah is the Hebrew name for God,' said Stern, amazed at the depths of the man's blockheadedness.

'But the story of the golem that is more relevant to this discussion,' said Doyle, turning to Stern, 'begins in the Jewish ghetto of Prague in the late sixteenth century. A campaign of bloody pogroms was brought against the Jews of Prague, as there had been throughout Eastern Europe. But the attacks in Prague were particularly vicious and bloodthirsty. One of the elders of the temple was a scholar by the name of Rabbi Judah Low Ben Bezalel, a gentle, almost saintly figure. Rabbi Low desperately sought a way to protect the Jews in the ghetto from this deadly persecution. He spent years searching through the old temple libraries looking for an answer. One day, so the story goes, buried deep in the cellar of the Great Synagogue he found an ancient book of great and mystical power....'

'Not the Book of Zohar, by any chance,' said Innes.

'The name of this book is not specified, but a copy of the Zohar would surely have been in the synagogues of Prague; a man of Rabbi Low's learning would certainly have known of it. In any case, as he read through this book, the Rabbi allegedly stumbled across a passage that contained a secret coded formula that with his incredible scholarship he was able to decipher....

'The entire Zohar, by the way, is supposedly written like that, every sentence hiding some metaphysical mystery,' added Stern.

'So like what are we talking about here, some kind a' turning lead into money-type deal?' asked a wide-eyed Pinkus.

'This passage revealed to Rabbi Low nothing less than the formula for bringing human life out of base earth that Jehovah used for the creation of Adam, the first man.'

'You gotta be kiddin' me,' said Pinkus.

'It's ... a legend, Pinkus,' said Doyle.

'How did he allegedly do it?' asked Innes.

'Using pure water and clay from a pit dug in sanctified ground, he crafted the limbs, head, and torso of a giant figure crudely resembling a man. Then, according to the precepts of the ritual, he connected the pieces together and wrote a sacred Hebrew word on a slip of paper which he inserted under the figure's tongue....'

'What word was that?' said Innes.

'You'd have to ask Lionel's father about that, I'm afraid,' said Doyle.

'So did the golem come to life?' asked Pinkus anxiously.

' 'The next thing he knew, the golem, as he called it, sat up and began to move. When he spoke to it, the golem did exactly as he ordered; Rabbi Low realized he had created a servant that would follow his instructions to the letter. Eight feet tall, powerful arms and legs; small rocks in place of eyes, a crudely fashioned mouth. He used the golem for household labor until his confidence about its obedience grew; then Rabbi Low began to send the golem out into the night, frightening away anyone who might come into the ghetto to harm the Jews.

'Every evening he would insert the paper, giving life to the monster. When its work was done at dawn, the golem returned home, the Rabbi removed the paper, and the golem lay like a statue in the Rabbi's basement. And people were so terrified of this horrible being roaming through the night that violence against the Jews in the ghetto came to a halt.'

'Not a bad yarn,' said Pinkus, holding on to the bunk beds for dear life. 'Kind a' like that whachamacallit, that Frankenstein guy.'

'It's been suggested that Mary Shelley derived a large part of her famous work from the legend of the golem,' said Doyle.

'No kiddin',' said Pinkus, with not the slightest idea who Mary Shelley might be.

'There's more,' said Doyle. 'One Sabbath morning, when Jews make their religious observances and must stop all manual labor until sunset, Rabbi Low forgot to remove the slip of paper from the golem's mouth.'

'Uh-oh,' said Pinkus. 'I smell trouble.'

'You would be right, Mr. Pinkus. With Rabbi Low's control over the golem lost, the monster went on a terrible rampage. Block after block of shops and houses broken and ruined; many innocent people killed, most of them Jews, crushed and trampled by its mindless fury. Nothing could stop the golem until Rabbi Low finally tracked it down and removed the paper, saving the rest of the ghetto from certain destruction.'

The others were silent, hanging on every word.

'The myth of the golem has always seemed to me to be a perfect metaphor for the apocalyptic power of unchecked human rage, as well as a wonderful parable about the life-affirming compassion of the Judaic tradition,' said Doyle.

Innes and Pinkus glanced sideways at each other like mystified schoolboys, both drawing a total blank.

'Well, jeez,' said Pinkus.

'So what happened to the golem?' asked Innes.

'The body of the golem was carried by Low and his friends to the cellar of the Great Synagogue of Prague, where it supposedly lies buried to this day, waiting for its life to be restored.'

Struggling to keep his balance as the battered ship took a particularly nasty twist, Doyle took out another piece of paper. 'Gentlemen, I have here the ship's copy of the agent's manifest for those five coffins in the hold. Would you like to hazard a guess as to their port of origin?'

'Not Prague,' said Innes.

'Exactly,' said Doyle.

'You gotta be joshin' me,' said Pinkus.

'Please, Mr. Doyle. You're not seriously suggesting that the golem of the ghetto of Prague was in one of those boxes,' said Stern.

'Or that an eight-foot-tall clay monster is still roaming around somewhere on board the ship,' said Innes.

'I suggest this,' said Doyle. 'If you're trying to obtain something from a man on board a ship in the middle of the ocean and you wish to attract no undue attention to yourself—''

'Eight-foot-tall clay monsters are a choice idea,' said Pinkus smartly.

'—and you're aware that the man from whom you wish to obtain this object has a history of heart trouble and that he's aware of a legend about an eight-foot-tall clay monster that may be connected to the object you're attempting to steal and that you need to kill this man in order to get it but circumstances demand that his death not appear to be an obvious murder...'

'You scare him to death,' said Innes, the pieces falling into place.

'Smuggle four men and one coffin full of clay covering an armature of some kind on board. Label the coffins as coming originally from Prague, to support the superstition. Remember: The passenger who heard the 'ghost' shriek also saw a large gray figure roaming in the hold and these second-class cabins are only two flights of stairs away; when the knock came at Mr. Selig's door last night and he opened it as far as the chain would allow ... I believe it was the sight of this 'golem'— being held by these two men—standing outside that precipitated his fatal