The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [41]
Removing his mask revealed a man of about thirty with clipped, straight black hair and a brown, broad-browed face— Javanese, perhaps Filipino, thought Doyle. A small distinctive tattoo of abraded skin discolored the hollow of the man's left elbow: a broken circle, penetrated by three jagged lines. This design matched exactly the drawing on the piece of paper in Doyle's pocket, sketched from the scratchings on the wall near Selig's body. Upon examination, Doyle realized the mark was not a tattoo but a severe burn. Of the sort one would find on branded cattle.
The man's clothes were fashioned from plain black cotton. Six weapons concealed on his person: knives holstered up each sleeve and pant leg, the suicidally employed double-barreled derringer, and a thin length of wire around his waist—a deadly garrote. Scars crisscrossed his burled knuckles and callused palms, knife wounds; a seasoned warrior. The bruises Innes and Doyle wore from their brief engagement with him bore vivid testimony to the man's mastery of hand-to-hand combat. Conclusion: a cold, efficient killing machine. They had no compelling reason to believe his surviving accomplices would be any less deadly.
Doyle dropped a sheet over the corpse. All four men had to continually brace themselves against the bulkhead or bunks to fight the grinding up-and-down gyrations of the storm.
"You still haven't explained, Mr. Doyle," said Stern. "How did the Zohar end up in your cabin?"
"Along with the pills sewn into the lining of Mr. Selig's jacket, I found this key," said Doyle, holding it up for display. "Obviously not the key to your room or any passenger cabin, although it bears the identifying stamp of the Elbe, here...." He pointed out a minute version of the ship's insignia.
"What's it for?" asked Pinkus impatiently.
"I applied the key to every lock I could find convenient to this room. There is a seldom-used storage closet behind the gymnasium—you'd never see it unless looking for it; its entrance is obscured every morning and night by stacks of lounge chairs and seat cushions. This key opened that door. Inside this shallow closet, I found a recessed panel in the wainscoting; a neglected and no longer serviceable fuse box. Mr. Selig moved the Zohar from its original hiding place here—a simple hole cut into his mattress, by the way; small wonder he was so reluctant to leave the room—to this other location yesterday evening, after the Captain refused your request to use the ship's safe, the conversation I overheard."
"I had no idea ..." said Stern.
"No. He must have made the transfer while you were attempting to reach me before the seance last night, about an hour before the murder."
"And how did his killers manage that without laying a hand on him?" asked Innes.
Doyle produced two small packets of paper from his pocket and opened them for the others to see. ' 'When we discovered Mr. Selig's body last night, I found a small clump of clay just inside the door. I removed this second identical sample this evening from inside one of the coffins in the hold; a good amount of it, over a pound, but only in one coffin."
"Okay, fine, Doc. So what's a little dirt got to do with the price of beer?" asked Pinkus, with all the impartial tact of a seasoned journalist.
"Mr. Selig was a more devoutly religious man than yourself; is that a fair statement to make, Mr. Stern?" asked Doyle.
"Yes."
"So am I correct in assuming as a practicing Jew he would have been conversant with aspects of Judaic history and mythology?"
"Absolutely: Rupert studied for many years."
"Would it also be fair to say Mr. Selig took what those studies might have given to him very close to heart; one might almost say as gospel?"
"Definitely—what are you driving at?"
Doyle lowered his voice and leaned in over the lantern, the light from below setting off his features in a dramatically sinister way. "Are you at all familiar, Mr.