The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [40]
Doyle found Lionel Stern and the engineer kneeling in the dark outside the hatch at the end of the corridor, attending to Captain Hoffner, who clutched a wounded arm.
"We heard the shots," said Hoffner. "Mein Gott, he was on us so quick I have had no time—"
"Like a shadow," said the engineer.
"He ran right through us," said Stern. "Everything happened so fast I couldn't even tell you which way he went."
"That's all right'"said Doyle, bending down to examine the deck. "He'll show us himself."
He pointed to the walkway and the thin layer of phosphorus he'd laid down when they finished coating Pinkus. Doyle instructed Stern to stay with Hoffner, and along with the plucky little engineer, who clutched a huge monkey wrench in both hands, they followed the path of glowing footprints leading away from the phosphorus out into the void of the open deck.
The moon drifted behind an advancing cloud bank, and the darkness rendered the glow of the man's tracks even easier to read. Rolling heavily amidships with no power to steer into the heavy swells of the approaching storm, spray dousing her deserted decks, taut lines twanging like harp strings in the whistling wind, the Elbe felt less like a luxury liner and more like a steamship version of the doomed Flying Dutchman.
"Dis man," whispered the engineer, as they paused before cautiously rounding a corner. "He is like der Teufel."
"The Devil," said Doyle. "Yes. But he is also just a man."
As Doyle bent to examine another footprint, he heard a faint, steady metallic tapping, then noticed the wrench, shaking in the engineer's hands and knocking against the rail.
"What's your name?"
"Dieter. Dieter Boch, sir."
"You're a good man to have around, Dieter."
"Tank you, sir."
They traced the steps up a flight of stairs to the rear deck, and through the clabbering gloom ahead Doyle thought he could make out the shape of a large man standing at the far end near the stern rail. Doyle reached for his pistol but the ship yawed severely as it dove down into the trough of a wave. Both men staggered to hold their balance; when Doyle looked up again, the figure at the rail was gone. He questioned his companion; the engineer had seen nothing. They pressed on. Lengthy gaps between their quarry's footprints indicated the man in black had continued to run; the prints led right up to the edge of the top deck and ended abruptly.
"Er ist going overboard?"
"So it appears," said Doyle.
"Into dis wasser?" asked Boch, looking out anxiously at the towering crests of the waves. Like so many other seagoing men he lived in constant terror of the ocean. ' 'Why would dis man do such a thing?"
Why, indeed? thought Doyle: Why would two men take their own lives rather than face capture?
For the theft of a book?
They moved the Gerona Zohar from a hidden compartment in Doyle's steamer trunk to the safety of the ship's vault and placed it under twenty-four-hour guard. His injured arm in a sling, Captain Hoffner returned to the bridge, rallied his officers, and initiated a room-by-room search. As Doyle had predicted, the ship's first lieutenant could not be accounted for, although many swore they had seen him—a young, handsome blond man—in uniform on the command deck since the storm began.
Mechanics swarmed over the engine room, finally coaxing the emergency generator into operation; with running lights on and one quarter power restored to the screws, the Captain ruddered the Elbe into the teeth of the squall as it closed its jaws around them. While the crew redoubled efforts to repair the primary generator, passengers remained confined to cabins, rules of emergency in force, with strict instruction to lock their doors; the storm and complications posed by their loss of power were convincingly given as the rationale for these impositions. No mention made of the assassins still presumed to be at large somewhere on board the troubled ship.
Guards posted outside the door, the corridor in either direction cordoned off-limits to passengers, Doyle, Innes, Stern, and Pinkus—with whom they were now saddled, more