'Uh-huh.'
'I think you knew a cousin of mine down in Tombstone a few years back, Sally Ann Reynolds? She was a waitress there at the Silver Dollar Saloon?' The blonde blushed red as an apple when Frank didn't immediately respond. 'Anyway ...'
'How is Sally Ann?' he said with a smile, and not the slightest idea who she was talking about.
'Fine; she's married now, living in Tucson, has a couple of kids.'
'You must be sure and give her my regards.'
'I can't tell you how excited she'll be to know we've spoken.'
There was that look in her eye: the flash of light in a cheap diamond. Frank felt simultaneously cornered and stimulated. Story of his life.
'We know you have a terribly busy time ahead of you, but we were wondering if it would be possible to invite you to lunch sometime while you're here in town.'
Frank smiled again and, as was perpetually the case, every memory of every unhappiness ever visited on him by a woman vanished like tax money.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Her name was Mary Williams: Dante Scruggs found that out from two old biddies at the boarding house. She'd told them that she came from a small town in rural Minnesota, where she'd been a schoolteacher, and that she was hoping to find the same work in Chicago. They took her at her word. Dante told them he was from the school board and wanted to check her references: Better if you don't tell Miss Williams I stopped by, he said with a smile. What a charmer, the old ladies thought.
Mary was of Greek heritage, they had decided; that accounted for her dark exoticism without violating any squeamish racial borders. The fools had no idea she was an Indian.
She left the house each morning at eight o'clock sharp. The first day she bought a map of Chicago; following the map, she methodically walked each block of the downtown area, looking for something. Dante followed her around that way for three days. Always stayed far back in the crowd, never moving too close. Once she turned sharply around as if she had forgotten something and marched straight at him; he turned his back and stared into a shop window. He was sure she didn't see him, but she kept to the busiest streets and always returned to the boarding house before dark.
On the third afternoon, she seemed to find what she was looking for: They called it the Water Tower, on Chicago Avenue. One of the few buildings that had survived the Great Fire; spires of sandstone arrayed around a pale central tower like something from a fairy tale dropped into this hub of modern commerce.
She wandered up and down the street for over an hour, examining the Water Tower from every angle, but never went inside: What was the woman doing here? Dante wondered.
He asked himself that question a hundred times that day: She stayed on that street corner in front of the Tower until twilight. Never said a word to anyone, just watched people coming and going. Like she was waiting for somebody. An odd one, Dante decided, watching from a soda fountain across the street, sipping a root beer float. He followed her back to the boarding house just as the lamplighters started to make their rounds.
The man who had spent the last few months watching Dante Scruggs, the dark-eyed man with the tattoo on his left arm, trailed quietly behind. He would watch Dante enter his apartment and then return to their local office to finish up his report; the man's superior was arriving the next day by train from New York—he had the book with him—and then they would take action in the matter of Mr. Dante Scruggs.
NEW YORK CITY
As the Toast of Manhattan, Doyle drifted through his responsibilities, dutifully playing the part of the Famous Author but feeling as if his real self lagged one step behind this frantic routine; the cloud of intrigue swirling around Jack and the missing books was far more compelling than endlessly answering the same set of questions about his dead fictional character, a level of journalism on par with the now almost fondly remembered Ira Pinkus. But pressing the flesh in bookstores, feeling the honest enthusiasm of his readers firsthand, restored him; occasionally some dear soul who had even read his historical novels materialized with a rare copy for signature.
His dramatic reading at the Fifty-seventh Street Calvary Baptist Church that night was a smash; Doyle had decided to give his audience, packed to the rafters with the faithful, exactly what they had come to hear: Holmes, Holmes, and more Holmes. Applause deafened the hall. Celebrities crowded the reception afterward—the same faces showing up at these things with depressing regularity—elbowing each other out of the way to grab Doyle's hand and pump his arm in that peculiar American way, as if they expected oil to gush from his mouth.
A distressing percentage of them came equipped with business investments to propose; from a line of Holmes-inspired apparel to an English-style pub called Sherlock's Home, complete with waiters wearing deerstalker hats and cloaks. I ought to introduce these two, thought Doyle; it's a match made in heaven.
An intense, muscular young man named Houdini made an indelible impression: He eagerly offered to demonstrate for Doyle how he could escape, while wearing a chained strait-jacket, from inside a locked safe deposited at the bottom of a river.
I'd be far more interested if you could show me how to escape from this party, confided Doyle.
The young man laughed; at least he had a sense of humor.
Major Pepperman glowed like a signal fire as they totaled the box-office receipts; his ship may not have come in yet, but if this was any indication of how the tour would go, his fleet was drawing within sight of the harbor. After wrestling his way through a crowd to his carriage, Doyle again declined Pepperman's invitation to dine—hate to disappoint, responsibility to this taxing schedule etc., etc., leaving Pepperman no reasonable objection—and he and Innes returned to the more abiding concerns awaiting them in his Waldorf suite; Jack, Presto, and Lionel Stern, already convened for a briefing of their day's activities.
After attending Rupert Selig's funeral in Brooklyn, Stern had found waiting for him a detailed wire from Rabbi Isaac Brachman in Chicago: Jacob Stern had been with him there as recently as four days ago. When he left, Brachman assumed Jacob had traveled back to New York and was shocked to hear he hadn't arrived; no other destination had been discussed, and regrettably he had no idea where Lionel's father might have gone.
Rabbi Brachman's telegram brought another serious matter to light: The Tikkunei Zohar, the book Lionel had obtained last year for Brachman to study, had disappeared five weeks before from the archives of his temple. Brachman did not elaborate beyond a tantalizing hint that he suspected the theft held some connection to the Parliament of Religions, part of the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, an event Jacob Stern had attended as a representative of American Orthodox Judaism.
Presto gave his report: He spent the day returning to rare book shops he had visited upon arriving in New York, and one Lower East Side shop owner reported an intriguing encounter.
'A well-spoken German gentleman—good-looking, tall, athletic build—came into this man's store just yesterday, representing himself as the agent for a wealthy private collector interested in purchasing rare religious manuscripts. He understood that such documents were exceedingly difficult to come by and usually resided in the hands of established scholars or institutions. He expressed particular interest in the Gerona Zohar and wondered if the man had heard about the book recently coming into this country. This bookstore'—Presto paused for effect; melodrama an inescapable part of his nature—'is less than two blocks away from the offices of Mr. Stern.'
'The German bloke again,' said Innes.
'He told the shopkeeper that he had recently returned from Europe,' said Presto.
'And he's undoubtedly by now in possession of the false Zohar we left on the railroad tracks,' said Doyle. 'Any idea who he claimed to be?'
With his flashing smile and a flourish worthy of a magician, Presto produced a business card out of thin air: 'Mr. Frederick Schwarzkirk: Collector. No other title. Offices in Chicago.'
'Schwarzkirk? Odd name.'
'That means 'Black Church,' ' said Jack.
Doyle and Jack looked at each other: the dream about the tower. This was no coincidence. Silence in the
