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 room.
"Is your tour scheduled to take you to Chicago?" asked Jack.
"As a matter of fact, it is," said Doyle.
"We travel tomorrow," said Innes.
"We're going with you," said Jack.
"Capital," said Doyle. Jack continued to stare at him. "What is it?"
"Someone I want you to meet tonight."
"Late in the day for a social call."
"My friend doesn't keep regular hours," said Jack. "Up to it?"
Doyle looked to Innes, who was nearly bursting with eagerness.
"Lead the way," said Doyle.
The wind blew colder as they rode uptown, the streets empty, leaves beginning to turn. Even this deserted, you could feel the immense restless dynamism of the city, thought Doyle, coursing up through the ground like the hum of a massive turbine engine.
As they trotted past the terraced palazzos and mansions on Fifth Avenue, he felt a twinge of self-reproach, realizing that a part of him still yearned after a style of living scaled to these grandiose dimensions. The homes of the ruling class sat silent as medieval fortresses, eye-popping shrines to vanity and greed, and yes, he still wanted one. In England, the rich handled fortunes discreetly, tastefully tucked away in the country behind the tall hedges—Doyle had a country house himself now, albeit a modest one. In America the robber barons erected these self-celebrating monuments along the busiest street in the world: By God, look at me, I've done it! Cracked the bank! Beaten the gods at their own game!
Telephone wires clogged the air between the mansions and the street, connecting the rich to each other by means of this latest craze; they hardly had anything to say to each other when they were face-to-face, thought Doyle, why did they need so many telephones?
What an exhausting interior life the wealthy must lead, driven to these superhuman accomplishments by fitful longings for immortality; the thought of all that misguided passion filled Doyle with melancholy before he corrected himself: Who was he to say these titans of enterprise had it wrong? Two thousand years from now, with this great city fallen into dust, there might be little else left standing besides these sturdy secular temples for archaeologists to sift through, weaving together from their artifacts the life of a dead and distant culture. A hairbrush, an urn, a privately commissioned bust, these intensely personal possessions might one day find themselves behind museum glass, transformed into relics of worship. What if some fragment of a dream or, to put it more plainly, a few resilient molecules of its owner survived embedded in the matter of the object? That seemed to Doyle to be as close to immortality as any human could hope for; the body would fail, memories would fade, but we might live on for centuries in the form of a toothbrush or a hatpin.
After they turned west and reached the Hudson River, a ferry conveyed their coach-and-four to the palisades of New Jersey. The four men inside settled into the rhythms of a long carriage ride through the dead of night. No one but Jack knew where they were going, and he sat above them in the driver's seat, holding the reins lightly in his mangled fingers. As they rode, Presto entertained them with tales about the princes and maharanis of Gwalior and Rajputana; cursed jewels, palaces of ivory and gold, man-eating tigers, marauding elephants, and, of the most interest to Innes, the illicit mysteries of the harem: Did these girls really paint certain essential parts of themselves crimson? Indeed they did, confirmed Presto: Oiled, polished, and sheened, the houris lived a life devoted to the giving, and receiving, of pleasure. In each other's arms, as well as those of their master. Innes's mind spun like a pin-wheel in a stiff breeze: Had Presto actually visited any of these perfumed seraglios?
"But how different are these women, finally, from the well-kept wives of our Western high society?'' said Doyle, sparing Presto the indignity of confessing the obvious. "I don't mean all of them, but those who spend their lives maintaining their physical charms—facial massages, six-gallon shampoos— transforming themselves
into a prize or accessory to decorate their wealthy husbands' arms."
"You can't keep up to fifty of 'em at a time, for starters," argued Innes.
"You'd be surprised," said Presto, with a salacious grin. "Provided money was no object."
"Putting the issue of multiples aside," said Doyle.
"I can think of one important distinction," said Stern. "In the West the sort of wife you're describing can leave the house if she wants to."
"Right, she's not a slave per se," said Doyle. "But what I'm getting at is, aren't they in a similar way slaves of the spirit? The wife here may leave the house as you suggest, but can she leave the situation? Fed up with her lot, can she run off and make a life of her own?"
"Why would she want to?" asked Innes.
"Theoretically speaking, old boy."
"She should be able to," said Presto. "And she certainly has legal recourse under Western law."
"But the reality is quite different: Western society is rigged to support free action on the part of the male and defended against the same rights being accorded the female. I believe it's something to do with unconscious protection of the reproductive function; the species must survive, at any cost; the woman must be shielded from harm, even if we aren't aware of it."
"I've always been too busy to take a wife," said Stern sifting through his regrets.
"Harem life doesn't sound so bad to me," said Innes. "Not much work. Lots of free time."
"You're lost in a dream about the harem's compliance and round-the-clock availability; do you have any idea what can happen to one of these girls if she runs afoul of the ruling male?" Doyle turned to Presto.
"Torture, disfigurement. Beheading," said Presto.
"Really? That's dreadful."
"But how would you feel if these women were granted the same equality of sexual freedom you enjoy? If they could choose to make love with whomever they wanted, whenever they wanted?"
"What an appalling thought," said Innes. "I mean the whole point of the thing is lost then, isn't it?"
"My argument is that while men have made the civilized world as it is, they have done so at the expense of these partners our Creator had the good sense to grace us with; they are the invisible oppressed among us."
"Are you in favor then of giving women the vote, Mr. Doyle?" asked Presto.
"Oh good God, no," said Doyle. "You have to go about these things sensibly. We should educate them first; they need to know what they're being asked to vote on. Rome wasn't built in a day."
"Maybe it wouldn't be so bad," said Innes, summoning up a rosy world of sexual equality. "Be a lot less expensive getting a bird in the bed; no flowers, no fancy dinners for two in some pricey bistro."
"I'm afraid the prospect fills me with despair," said Presto. "To abandon the ritual of the hunt, the thrill of conquest, and have everything I desired about a woman handed to me from the first moment without resistance or some modest reticence would ruin the entire experience."
"So you didn't actually enjoy your visits to the harem, then?'' said Innes, like a dog digging up his favorite bone.
The discussion continued, lively and spirited, nothing laid to rest, as if in this delicate and fertile area anything could ever be settled. Doyle looked up at Jack driving the carriage, missing his participation in exactly the sort of philosophical free-for-all in which he used to take particular delight. Certainly, Jack could hear what they were saying from up on that lonely perch, but he never glanced their way, remote and purposeful as a lighthouse keeper watching a storm out at sea. How far had Jack journeyed beyond the reach of these essential animal concerns; and if they were lost to him forever, could he still in the same way be thought of as a man?
It was nearly one in the morning when their destination appeared, in a valley spreading below them illuminated by an impossible volume of light: a quadrangle of long brick buildings ringed with electric lamps and a high white picket fence. No identifying signs. After a whispered conversation with a guard stationed at the gate, their carriage was admitted; Jack drove them to the tallest structure in the center of the square and parked outside; through its large windows, they could see vast rooms crowded with machinery, laboratory apparatus, and scientific supplies.
They followed Jack through a steel door, down a corridor, and into a great hall sporting a thirty-foot ceiling; second-floor galleries flanked either side of bookshelves climbing the far wall—at least ten thousand books, estimated Doyle. Immense glass cases displayed stores of minerals, compounds, and prototypes of various inventions. Greek statues filled corners; photographs and paintings packed every available inch of wall. The room felt both cluttered and spacious; objectively grand and intensely personal.
At a simple rolltop desk in the middle of the room, a rumpled middle-aged man slumped in a tilt-back chair, angled away from them, his worn boots resting on the edge of an open drawer. He appeared to be asleep; a steel bowl sat in his lap below his folded hands. Touseled, graying hair lay every which way on his large, noble head. Jack signaled the others for silence, and he crept closer to the man in the chair. Lionel Stern suddenly gasped.
"Do you know who that is?" whispered Stern.
Two steel balls fell from the man's hand and clanged in the steel bowl. The sound woke him; instantly alert, looking up to face them; broad brow furrowed to a deep cleft between bushy white eyebrows, a wide frowning mouth, and the keenest intelligence in his eyes. He spotted Jack first and beckoned him to the desk, shaking his hand, exchanging quiet pleasantries.
"That's Thomas Edison," said Stern.
Jack waved them over and made the introductions: Edison lit up like his famous incandescent bulb when he met Doyle.
"The Holmes generator, in the flesh," said Edison with a laugh; to their puzzled silence he explained that the "Holmes generator'' was well known in scientific circles as a precursor to the electromagnetic engine.
"Oh," said Doyle.
Edison seemed unable to express strongly enough his enthusiasm for Sherlock Holmes: Most novels teemed with creatures of such uninspired and feeble dimwittedness it was a wonder any author could be bothered to write about them; but what a joy to encounter such unapologetic brilliance in a fictional character! Doyle was flattered into utter befuddlement.
Edison leaped to his feet with the spring of a teenager, shimmied up the rolling ladder bolted to his library stacks, pulled down a leather-bound volume of Holmes, and insisted Doyle sign the title page for him.
"Any more Holmes stories in the works?" Edison eagerly wanted to know. "Surely our man's sharp enough to have found a way to survive that little problem at the waterfall."
"There's been some talk about it," said Doyle, hating to disappoint the great man. Innes stared at him as if he'd just spoken in tongues.
They chatted about Doyle's work habits, Edison keen on facts: How many hours a day did he write? (Six.) How many words did he produce a day? (Eight hundred to a thousand.)
Did he write by hand or with one of the new mechanical typewriters? (Fountain pen.) How many drafts of each book? (Three.) Then the conversation shifted to the mysterious origins of creativity in the mind. They agreed that the brain's relentless appetite for order resulted in the spontaneous development of organized ideas attempting to simplify the problems of daily living, be it a story that shed light on some troublesome aspect of human behavior or a machine that reduced the difficulty of essential physical labor.
"We're all detectives," said Edison, "wrestling with that question mark at the end of our existence. A large part of the universal appeal of your Mr. Holmes, I think."
"But he's just a machine, really," said Doyle modestly.
"Oh, but I disagree; with all apologies to Sherlock, and the prevailing medical wisdom, our brain is not a machine. When induced into the appropriate state of readiness, the brain, I believe, enters into contact with a field of pure ideas; not a physical place as we understand it, but not a purely theoretical one, either. A dimension of abstract thought that pa
rallels our own, overlaying and informing our world in ways hard to imagine. We experience it directly only through the auspices of a properly prepared human mind. And drawing down the visions that we find while visiting this 'other place' is the source of all great human inspiration."
"May I ask, sir, what you were doing with those balls and the steel bowl when we arrived?" said Doyle.
"I can see where our Mr. Holmes comes by his observational acuity," said Edison with a smile. "I discovered early in my life that the best ideas took shape in my mind when I passed through the dreamy borderland we cross on our way either into or falling out of sleep; I've come to believe this brief passage is when the brain reaches its optimum state of receptivity for making contact with this realm of pure reason. The difficulty comes in trying to maintain ourselves in that dreamy middle ground: We quickly fall either deeper into sleep or back toward wakefulness. So ..."
Edison picked up the bowl and the balls and sat down in his chair to demonstrate.
"Whenever I feel drowsy, I sit just so with my hand holding these over the bowl and let myself drift into that in-between territory. If I fall asleep, the balls drop from my hand and the clanging brings me back—I'm somewhat deaf, I need a good racket to do the job; I quickly pick the balls up and float away again. The more I practice, the longer I'm able to stay there. The thoughts come. Good things result. Any man can train himself to learn this technique, and I have found that with an hour or two spent in this productive state, I feel more rested than after a full eight hours in bed."