The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [45]
"NEXT TIME WE'LL KILL YOU."
"Close the door," said a voice.
Father Devine stood motionless in the corner of the room, arms folded, obscured in the crease of a shadow. The ship rolled to starboard and seams in the walls groaned with the strain. Doyle closed the door, cocked the hammer of the pistol, covered Devine, and lifted the lantern higher.
A body lay twisted grotesquely at the foot of the bunk; a figure in black, still wearing a mask. One of the assassins. Strangled with his own garrote. Three men killed; only one of them left alive.
"What do you want?" asked Doyle.
Father Devine took one step forward, did not shield his eyes from the light, and Doyle saw him clearly, head on, for the first time since they'd boarded the ship; saw the jagged ivory scar along his jawline, saw the light in the man's eyes he hadn't taken in before, and it pummeled the breath from his lungs.
The priest smiled thinly, looking down at the body on the floor.
"This one was waiting for you," he said, all the Irish in him gone. "He died before I could learn anything useful."
It wasn't possible.
Good Christ. Good Christ, yes it was. It was him.
Jack Sparks.
BOOK TWO
New York
chapter 5
SEPTEMBER 23, 1894
Discretion is required in describing the events of the last few hours. A request has been made to me for assistance. Having served the interests of the Crown on more than one previous occasion, I have remained ever willing to lend my services to that royal office again in whichever way circumstances describe. Suffice it to say that should the Queen herself have appeared in my cabin to make this appeal, it would have carried no greater influence upon my sympathies.
The facts are these: A book has been stolen. A book of enormous significance to the Church of England and consequently the throne. The Latin Vulgate Bible, the oldest biblical manuscript in the Anglican Church. Vanished from the Bodleian Library at Oxford six weeks ago. Public announcement has been withheld; the Vulgate was kept in a vault, not on display—the only persons likely to miss it to this point are scholars. It is hoped the manuscript can be recovered before such an announcement becomes necessary; however, as yet no requests for the ransom of its return have been received. As more time passes, it seems increasingly unlikely that a ransom is the thieves' objective. A secret investigation by a friend of mine on behalf of the Crown has been under way since the crime occurred and it has led him to this same ship making its crossing to America.
That this incident is central to the difficulties we have experienced since boarding the Elbe is unmistakable. I have set down elsewhere the events of the past few days surrounding
Lionel Stern, the attempted robbery of the Book of Zohar, and the murder of Mr. Rupert Selig. Three of the men responsible for those crimes are now themselves dead; a fourth man has either flung himself overboard, as did another of his accomplices, or is still in hiding somewhere on board; an exhaustive search is even now under way. The sabotage these men brought against the ship's engines has been discovered—an explosive charge detonated in the electrical generators—and thanks to the due diligence of the engineering crew its damage already repaired. We will arrive in New York tomorrow only hours later than originally scheduled and that due as much to the rough weather we have passed through as to the sinister efforts of these villains.
The man I mistakenly took for their ringleader was, as I suspected, posing as a Catholic priest—this concluded from observing an accumulation of small, troubling details: odd boots, rosary beads hanging off the wrong pocket, a ring bearing a Masonic design—but neither is he a criminal. He is, in fact, a man previously well known to me, whose credentials as an agent of the Crown are, or at least once were, beyond reproach.
We have spoken only briefly, and that has been taken up with the urgencies of our situation: His unexpected appearance foiled a potentially deadly attack against me by turning