The Six Messiahs

  "What do you want, mister?" asked Dante finally.

  Still holding the Colt to him, the man slid the nose of the barrel along Dante's forehead, down to his blank eye socket, where it rested. Slight smile on his lips. "You may call me Frederick."

  "What do you want, Frederick?"

  "Why, I want to help you, Mr. Scruggs."

  "Help me? How's that?"

  "Let me begin by saying I am an admirer of your work: I want to help you do your work."

  "What do you know about it?"

  "We have had our eye on you for some time now, Mr. Scruggs. And we have been most interested watching you advance in your ... career."

  "You have?"

  "Oh yes. We take a great interest in the sort of work you do. And I must tell you, we like what we see. We like it very much."

  "If you help me, like you say ... what do you get out of it?"

  "That is a fair question, Mr. Scruggs, and it has a simple answer: I will help you ... because I want you to help me."

  "How can I help you?"

  "In ways you cannot possibly imagine. Why don't you come with me now, so we can ... talk it over."

  Something dark and insinuating and frightfully amused in Frederick's light eyes. The Voices weighed in: We like this one. Dante surprised: Unusual for Them to trust anybody he'd ever met so quickly. But he couldn't argue the point.

  He liked him, too.

  Doyle had been the first to cry out when they saw a man dragging a body into the alley ahead, and he was the first to reach her. Lionel Stern lit matches to give him some light and Doyle worked furiously to revive the woman in the plain gingham dress while Jack and Innes gave chase to her attacker. Presto pulled a rapier from his walking stick and searched the area; he lifted a bloodstained, chloroform-soaked handkerchief lying nearby and they realized she had nearly succumbed to its potent vapor. When he found the carpetbag in an adjacent warehouse, loaded down with rope, cutting tools, and crude surgical instruments, they realized with a shudder how near the woman had come to meeting an unspeakable end.

  By the time the others returned, empty-handed, the woman's breathing had deepened and her pulse stabilized, but she remained unconscious and not entirely out of danger. Doyle could sense Jack preparing to argue that this should not interfere with their business, but before he could speak, Doyle insisted that they transport the woman to safe quarters at once.

  Jack offered no protest and Doyle realized that now he had received his confession, Sparks was reluctant to openly oppose him: Doyle held a trump card on Jack now, but he would have to use it judiciously.

  Presto hailed a carriage; minutes later they took the rear entrance of the Palmer House, the four men surrounding Doyle as he carried the woman to an empty service elevator. As they exited the car and made their way down the hall to Doyle's suite, Major Pepperman had the misfortune to appear around the corner, his habitually eager expression changing to dismay.

  "Thought I'd see if you're up for a nightcap," he said, faltering rapidly. "Brought a couple of newspaper men, waiting downstairs in the bar...."

  "Sorry, old man," said Doyle, smiling as he swept by him, the limp female body in his arms. "Some other time."

  Innes unlocked the door. Doyle carried her inside and the others quickly followed; an unsavory-looking group at best. One of them dark as a Negro, dressed like a dandy; another wore a fearsome scowl and a scar worthy of a pirate. The door closed in Pepperman's collapsing face, his mind already composing the scandalous headline (HOLMES CREATOR CAUGHT IN LOVE NEST!) and personal ruination that would be sure to follow.

  Doyle had been up to something untoward from the moment he arrived in America, Pepperman decided; the evasiveness, his impregnable reticence and persistent requests for privacy; why, the clues had been there from the beginning. What were Doyle and those men doing with that woman in his room? The Major was no genius but he could still add two and two together: The man was a secret deviant!

  Waiting for the elevator, the Major lowered his shaggy head and banged it morosely against the wall. He had put up his own money to fund this tour, and until he realized some returns, he would have to do everything in his power to protect his expenditure; no one must learn of Doyle's loathsome habits, whatever they might be. Promoting a famous author—an English one, practically reeking respectability—had seemed such a safe investment at the time. Why hadn't he stuck to the circus?

  Doyle laid the woman down on a sofa and afforded the men their first clear look at her: about thirty years of age, dark skin and hair, strong bones and features, not beautiful by any means, but arresting and handsome, a face hewn with resilience and fortitude.

  "An American Indian," said Jack, as both he and Presto stared at her with something mysteriously close to recognition.

  "Do you know this woman?" Doyle asked them observantly.

  Jack shook his head uncertainly.

  "How could I possibly?" said Presto. "Unless she's been to London and how likely is that? And yet, all the same, she does look familiar to me."

  Doyle cracked open a vial of smelling salts under her nose; she jerked her head away, her eyes fluttered open. She stared in alarm as she saw the five male faces staring down at her. Doyle calmly reassured her and introduced the others, explaining how they'd found her in the street and where she was now, the sort of aftereffects she could expect from exposure to the drug. She listened attentively, her enormous self-possession reforming as she tried to patch the gaps in her memory: The image of her attacker's empty blue eye came back, staring into her, lifeless as a marble.

  She said little, drinking water, surprised that she felt no impulse to bolt, but she did not sense danger from these men. Quite the contrary: By then she had picked out Jack and Presto and returned their inquiring gazes with equal curiosity.

  "What is your name, miss?" asked Doyle.

  She looked at his face before answering. "My name is Mary Williams."

  "Have we met before, Miss Williams?" asked Presto.

  The three of them, linked somehow. Did they know it was the dream?

  "Yes," she said.

  "Why do you suppose that is?"

  She knew the answer; reluctant to voice it yet.

  "Where are you from, Miss Williams?" asked Doyle.

  She told them.

  "You are American Indian, then."

  "Yes; Lakota."

  "Really?" said Innes, brightening. "How ripping."

  Doyle gestured; Innes backed off.

  "Had you ever seen this man who attacked you before?" Doyle asked.

  "He has followed me since I got to Chicago."

  "Do you know his name?" asked Jack.

  "No. I know nothing about him," she said.

  "Why didn't you go to the police?" asked Doyle.

  "He had done nothing to me."

  "Still, they might have helped—"

  "I know how to protect myself."

  The obvious answer hung in the air; she responded to it. ' 'Tonight I made a mistake; my mind thinking of other things. It was the only moment he could have hurt me."

  "The only one he needed," said Jack.

  "If he comes again, I will kill him." Her tone left no reason to doubt her.

  "Still, you are very lucky to be alive, Miss Williams," said Presto.

  He showed her the contents of the carpetbag he'd found in the warehouse. She stared at the instruments of disfigurement without reaction. What she saw did not surprise her—nothing about that blue, blank-eyed nightmare would have—but she agreed that yes, she had been fortunate.

  "If I may ask, under the circumstances, what were you doing out there tonight alone?" asked Doyle.

  "Waiting for someone. They did not arrive. In my disappointment, I was not paying attention. That is how he caught me.

  "Waiting for whom?" asked Doyle.

  She looked back and forth between Jack and Presto. "I believe that I have been waiting for these two gentlemen."

  The two seemed to receive this bomb
shell in stride; Doyle, Stern, and Innes looked shocked.

  "You believe so?" asked Doyle. "On what basis? ..."

  "Let her speak," said Jack.

  Walks Alone waited; yes, it felt safe to tell them.

  "I have seen you in a dream," she said, looking right at Jack.

  "Good night," whispered Innes.

  "You know I am telling the truth. Both of you do," she said calmly, including Presto. "You know the dream."

  Jack and Presto glanced at each other warily.

  "Tell us," said Presto, testing her.

  "A dark tower, in the desert. Tunnels beneath the earth; an altar or temple underground. Six figures gather; I am there. And so are both of you."

  "Yes," said Jack.

  "A black devil rising from the earth; a man. And he looks something like you," she said, nodding to Jack.

  "Right. Scotch for me," said Doyle, moving to the bar.

  "I'll join you," said Lionel Stern.

  "Make mine double," said Innes to Doyle as he poured.

  "You have had this dream," she said. "You have seen the tower."

  Both Presto and Jack agreed.

  "It started three months ago," she said. "Slowly at first; now it comes almost every night."

  Jack nodded. Doyle watched him from across the room. Fire in his eyes again, feverish and disturbed, but still a sign of life.

  "Two or three times a week," said Presto. "Wakes me in a cold sweat."

  "Do you know what it means?" asked Jack.

  "No," she said hesitantly; why frighten them with my interpretations?

  Fortified with drink, Doyle moved back to them, unfolded Jacob's drawing from his pocket, and held it for her to see. "The tower in your dream; does it look anything like this?"

  "Yes; this is the same."

  Doyle looked back at Lionel Stem, who drained his drink and poured himself another with trembling hands.

  "It also looks like one they have here in the city," she said.

  "The tower is here? In Chicago?" asked Doyle.

  "No; the one in the dream is like this but larger, built of black stone."

  "What tower are you talking about?" asked Doyle.

  "They call it the Water Tower. That's where I've been waiting for you. That's what the dream told me to do."

  "The dream told you to wait for us?" asked Presto.

  She nodded solemnly.

  "Can you take us there?" said Jack, pressing forward.

  "Yes; it's near where you found me; where you would have found me if I had waited a little longer."

  "Let's go," said Jack, heading for the door.

  "Miss Williams, you've been through a great deal; I strongly advise you to rest before—" said Doyle.

  "No," she said with enormous authority as she rose to heR feet.

  On their way to the taxi stand, the odd sextet marched past the bar in the lobby of the Palmer House; Major Pepperman sat at a table near the door, force-feeding two reporters from Milwaukee stories about Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle's manly appeal.

  "Say, isn't that him now?" asked one of the reporters, catching a glimpse of the man exiting the hotel.

  "Couldn't have been," said Pepperman quickly. "Doyle's been asleep for hours."

  "I think that was him," said the reporter.

  "Not possible," said Pepperman, through clenched, smiling teeth.

  When the two cabs stopped in front of the Water Tower, Doyle asked the drivers to wait as they climbed out for a look. Starkly lit by dramatically positioned gaslights, the Tower looked like a fairy tale castle rising from the darkness. Both Jack and Presto agreed it bore great similarity to the one from their dreams; Doyle took out Jacob Stern's drawing and they found many exact points of comparison as well.

  "That explains the sketch," said Doyle, to Lionel Stern. "Your father must have seen this while attending the Parliament of Religions."

  And yet Jack, Presto, and Mary Williams felt something wasn't right. The Water Tower was and wasn't the same; it seemed perhaps a model or template for the tower in the dream: one taller, darker, more ominous and forbidding. And there was no mistaking central Chicago for a desert. Their discovery delivered less than it seemed to promise, compounding the mystery and dampening their spirits.

  What to make of the intersecting of their dreams? wondered Doyle. He had once investigated a case of three mediums in scattered parts of the world simultaneously picking up different pieces of the same spirit message, but each had received the information during trance states, not sleep, and it involved only a, simple written message, not complicated imagery woven together with an apparently identical narrative.

  From what they had learned, it seemed likely Jacob Stern had be,en party to the dream sharing. Why had these four been singled out to receive this particular message? Mary Williams seemed a likely candidate to possess the gift; Jack had never exhibited signs of mediumship, although his brother had occult powers and Jack's dabbling with drugs could have brought them on. But Presto bore no resemblance to the classic medium's profile: He was a lawyer, for God's sake, how much more earthbound could a man be?

  The other common thread: The men each had some connection to a holy book of central importance to their religion or culture; Mary Williams had no involvement with such a book but she came from a people without a written language.

  None of which answered the crucial questions: What was the meaning and purpose of the dream? What did it have to do with the missing books?

  I may not have been given the dream, thought Doyle, but this much I can do: I must find the answer to those questions so they can finish whatever task this dream has called them to perform... .

  Doyle turned to look at Sparks, standing apart from the others, staring silently up at the tower.

  And unless I can find a way to bring Jack back to himself, he realized, they'll never make it.

  A few blocks west of the Water Tower, as Doyle and the others studied its enigmatic facade, Frederick Schwarzkirk escorted Dante Scruggs into his fifth-floor office; the printing on the front door spelled only his name and a single word: COLLECTOR. At this late hour, Frederick's office was the only one in the building that showed any signs of life.

  Inside the dimly lit suite, a swirl of activity: half a dozen men boxing up books and papers, carting them out to the hall. The men dressed in black and wearing gloves. The front room had been cleared except for a massive oaken desk in its center; on the desk a telegraph key and trailing from it a strip of paper bearing the dots and dashes of a received message.

  "I have just returned from business overseas," said Frederick. ' 'And as you can see, Mr. Scruggs, I am in the process of relocating my operation."

  Dante nodded, smiled, and said nothing. As they rode over in the carriage, he had decided the fewer questions he asked Frederick the better; the man gave off an aura of confidence .ind power that made Dante feel dumb as a stump, but at the same time affectionately well cared for, like a favorite dog. And the Voices kept telling him not to worry; he could relax and trust that this man would carry him to safety. Dante felt as warm and snug in Frederick's company as a snake in a sleeping bag.

  Frederick made no attempt to introduce Dante to the other men and left him momentarily alone to direct some of the work in the inner office, barking out sharp instructions in German. As one of the men passed carrying a box out to the hall, his sleeves rolled up, Dante noticed a strange tattoo on the inside crook of the man's left arm: a broken circle with three jagged lines darting through its borders.

  Dante hopped agreeably out of the way to allow two more men through, pushing a stack of boxes on a rolling dolly. His movement put him close to the desk and the strip of telegraph paper, and he couldn't resist leaning over to take a peek at its hieroglyphs—he had worked as a telegraph operator during two of his army years. He could just make out the phrase BRING THE BOOK IMMEDIATELY when he heard a floorboard creak as Frederick reentered. Dante leaned away from the desk, looked down and studied his shoes, trying to
convey a generalized innocence. Frederick walked past him and took a seat behind the desk.

  "Naughty boy," said Federick, wagging a playful finger at him.

  Dante giggled and smiled sheepishly, unable to conceal his guilt.

  "You are a naughty boy, aren't you, Mr. Scruggs?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Naughty boys sometimes get punished," said Frederick, picking up the telegraph strip and scanning it quickly between his slender fingers.

  Dante felt confused and thickheaded, but he didn't seem to mind it much; there was no fear involved. When he finished reading the strip, Frederick set a match to it and dropped the burning strand on the floor. He toggled on the telegraph and tapped out a message; listening carefully, Dante heard him spell the words A GLORIOUS DAY before Frederick began to speak over the clack of the key, disrupting his concentration.

  "You enjoyed being in the army, did you not, Mr. Scruggs?"

  "Oh yeah. More than anything."

  "Enjoyed that pride of authority," he said, with that same teasing smile; how could the man talk and send Morse code at the same time?

  "Uh-huh."

  "A sense of power."

  "Yeah."

  "Being a part of something larger than yourself; a sense of meaning in your life."

  "Yeah, I liked that."

  "A loyal soldier. Your every waking moment devoted to a purpose that served a design far greater than your ability to comprehend. Shoulder to shoulder with other men of like mind, marching forward, dedicated to serving the same high ideals."

  "Huh?" This was getting a little rich for him.

  Frederick laughed and smiled like a loving father. "You'd like to be a soldier in an army again, wouldn't you, Mr. Scruggs?"

  "I guess so." Dante wasn't so sure.

  "Not one ruled by a distant, unenlightened government, overrun with fat, incompetent commanders; corrupted cowards afraid of their own shadows. An entirely different sort of army, Mr. Scruggs, where you truly felt you belonged. Where instead of being punished for the unique qualities that make you who you are, you are rewarded for them. An army that would allow you, no, encourage you to continue your... personal work. You would like that, wouldn't you, Mr. Scruggs?"