The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [31]
"May I be permitted to ask what we are doing in the morgue?" asked Hoffner.
With Innes holding up a lantern, Doyle cracked open one of the refrigerated lockers and rolled out its enclosed metal tray, introducing the rigid enshrouded outline of a corpse. He pulled the sheet away from the face and dispassionately yanked down the lower eyelids of the late Rupert Selig, revealing congested spiderwebs of blue and purple capillaries.
"Contrary to your ship physician's opinion that he was in perfect health for a man his age, Mr. Selig suffered from heart disease and severe high blood pressure, evidenced as you can see by these massively ruptured vessels in the soft tissue under his eyes—a condition he kept secret even from you, Mr. Stern. You were not aware of it, were you, sir?"
Stern shook his head.
Doyle showed them a small glass vial of medicine; round, white pills. "Mr. Selig carried this homeopathic remedy—a mixture of potassium, calcium, and tincture of iodine of no small popularity but little established benefit—in a hidden pocket sewn into the lining of his jacket."
"All very well and good, Mr. Doyle; it supports in fact my doctor's conclusion that a heart attack was being the cause of the gentleman's death, but what does it have to do with—"
Doyle raised a hand, cutting Hoffner off again. "One point at a time, Captain; there is a design at work here, if you will trust me to bring it to light in the appropriate sequence." Doyle tossed the sheet back over Selig's gray face and gave the tray a shove, and it slid home with a metallic clang that echoed through the grim room.
"Innes, if you please ..." said Doyle.
Innes took the torch from the engineer and illuminated the far corner of the room; an orderly row of coffins lined the floor next to the wall.
"You accepted these five coffins as cargo in Southampton, isn't that correct, Captain?"
"Yes, so?"
"All from the same shipping agent, I trust."
"That would be customary."
"I shall in short order wish to examine the bill of lading lor them," said Doyle, accepting the hammer and crowbar from the engineer. "There was only one insurmountable dif-ficulty in the resolution of my theory; as we saw while boarding the ship, security was airtight—which is more than I can say for this casket." Doyle shimmed the crowbar with the hammer into a gap beneath the mahogany lid of the first coffin.
"Mein Gott, sir, think what you are doing...." Hoffner moved to stop Doyle from proceeding with the exhumation: Innes clamped a strong hand on his arm, holding him back, as Doyle continued.
"If a band of professional assassins have found their way onto the Elbe—and I assure you, Captain, that is exactly what we are dealing with here—they had to have managed it by some less conventional means than strolling up the gangplank in plain view—"
"I must order you to stop this at once...."
"You'll recall one of your passengers heard the cries of a 'ghost' from somewhere in the hold our first day out of port...." Doyle heaved at the crowbar; with a piercing shriek of protest from its nails, the coffin lid separated and lifted an inch from the sides. The shriek echoed hauntingly down the steel passageways around them. Doyle took a strong grip on the exposed edge of a coffin lid and pulled it open the rest of the way.
"This is a desecration...." Captain Hoffner broke free of Innes and rushed forward to discover that the plush pink satin-lined interior of the coffin was completely empty. Hoffner stared at Doyle, mouth agape.
"The 'ghost's' cries were followed shortly thereafter by a loud, rhythmic knocking."
Doyle dropped the lid shut and hammered the nails back in.
"Look closely and you can see the indentations made when they hammered the nails back in," said Doyle, beckoning Hoffner closer to the box. "Your cargo hands have assured me that each coffin carried the full, shifting