The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [47]
Good Christ; they're chanting my name as if I were a football team. The epidemic of overfamiliarity in individual Americans had never troubled Doyle before, but encountering it at this mob level gave it the appearance of a prelude to human sacrifice.
Arrayed in front of police department sawhorses that restrained the masses was a constellation of greater and lesser lights from the firmament of Manhattan celebrity—luminaries from the publishing and newspaper worlds, dashing matinee idols, plump haberdashers, slick-haired restaurateurs, and a squadron of obscure city officials, interwoven throughout by a comely brood of decorative chorus girls; apparently Pinkus had not overstated this one critical aspect of his story, realized Innes ecstatically.
A gigantic, loose-limbed mountain of a man in riding boots, jodhpurs, a canary-yellow cutaway jacket, and a beaver hat perched on a shaggy head half the size of a buffalo's broke out of the pack and clapped a smothering bear hug onto Doyle before he could defend himself.
"Bless my soul! Bless my soul!" bellowed the man in a deep, creamy Virginia accent.
I must know this man, thought Doyle, thoroughly panicked. Considering the way he's greeting me, we must be first cousins at the least.
The giant stepped back and shouted into Doyle's face, "Proud, sir! It does my heart proud to see you here!"
Doyle searched desperately for some clue to his identity— surely he would have remembered someone this size. Over the giant's shoulder, he caught a glimpse of Innes, who had decided his dress-blue Royal Fusiliers uniform the only appropriate outfit for their arrival, being sucked into a cloud of perfume, feminine ruffles, and gargantuan floral hats.
"Didn't I promise you a fine how-do-you-do in New York? Did we not do it up right for you?" said the giant, his smile exposing a piano's worth of unnaturally gleaming white teeth.
"I'm afraid you have the advantage of me, sir," said Doyle, uneasily eyeing the battalion of celebrities bearing sharply down on them.
"Why it's Pepperman, Mr. Conan Doyle," said the man, doffing his hat gallantly. "Major Rolando Pepperman. Impresario of your literary tour; at your service."
"Major Pepperman, of course, do forgive me...."
"No, not at all. It is I who have failed you, sir, by not providing in my cables a more detailed description of my person."
His startling blue eyes sparkled, the muscles bulging his jacket crackled with excess energy—everything about the man seemed built to an incredibly overscaled set of plans: America's exuberant essence distilled down into one gigantic prototype.
Pepperman shot an arm around Doyle's shoulder and turned him to face the crowd: "I give you Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the great Sherlock Holmes! Welcome to New York!"
Pepperman thrust his hat up into the air; the crowd shifted into an even higher gear of frenzy as the band dueled them for control of the audible threshold. A battery of photographers' flash powder exploded in Doyle's wide-open eyes, leaving black spots dancing in place of the faces of the New York elite as they pressed in around him.
Doyle shook fifty hands and received as many business cards; the cacophony swallowed their bearers' shouted messages but Doyle retained the impression that every one of these somebodies wanted him to either eat at their restaurant, appear in their magazine, attend their latest theatrical triumph, or reside at their deluxe hotel. The disquieting phrase "in exchange for a commercial endorsement" often followed hard on the heels of these flattering offers.
The only desire in the crowd that remained unclear to Doyle was exactly what the spectacular show girls wanted from him, although Innes, the axis of a cluster of them orbiting nearby, interpreted their giggling avoidances of his overtures as a solid basis for indulging his eager repertoire of wishful thinking.
Pressed into Doyle's possession by a hierarchy of politicians were a scroll proclaiming an official welcome and a hefty be-ribboned brass object he guessed must represent a