The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [51]
"You don't say."
"I'm told there's even been a run on magnifying glasses and meerschaum pipes."
"Honestly? Well, I never."
"I attended a costume party at the Vanderbilt mansion some few weeks ago and I would hazard to say that no less than every third man there came dressed as Mr. Sherlock Holmes,'' said Major Pepperman, sipping the hotel's complimentary champagne and idly tinkling on the grand piano that sat before the picture window looking down on Fifth Avenue, its lights twinkling to life as night settled slowly over the city.
"How extraordinary," said Doyle.
How mind-numbingly terrifying, he thought.
Seated snugly in the sitting room of his suite at the Waldorf Hotel—a room considerably larger than every entire flat he had ever lived in until recently—Doyle picked grapes from a courtesy fruit sculpture the size of Rodin's Balzac while paging through a stack of the daily tabloids; in all but one of the rags his arrival had rated front-page news. But no stories in the Herald under the byline of Ira Pinkus, or in any of the other papers under his various noms de plume, and nothing within the existing write-ups referred remotely to any nefarious events on board the Elbe. Whatever pressures Jack had applied to Pinkus had silenced his bark, realized Doyle, allowing himself a private sigh of relief.
"Perhaps that strange fellow we met in the lobby had been at your party as well," said Doyle.
A frumpy pear-shaped man in full Holmes regalia and two equally suspect accomplices had staked out the Waldorf entrance, jumping into Doyle's path as they arrived: "Conan Doyle, we presume?" Then, with stone-faced ceremony, they handed him an engraved plaque—commemorating mr. Arthur conan doyle's first american visit, courtesy of the official new york chapter of the baker street irregulars—an organization Doyle had never heard of, which according to Pepperman had spontaneously sprouted out of Sherlock mania like a wild toadstool.
This Holmes impersonator then insisted on delivering a rambling, poorly memorized soliloquy in the most wretched simulation of an English accent Doyle could remember hearing, presumably, although it was difficult to tell, as the character of Holmes paying tribute to his creator. This paralyzing assault went on for nearly five minutes, during which time the smile pasted on Doyle's face began to cramp painfully. In the awkward aftermath, it took all Doyle and Pepperman could do to dissuade the sorry trio from following them into the elevator.
An awful thought struck Doyle: What if Jack were to materialize in the middle of such a scene?
"So ... tell me, is he really dead?"
"Who?"
"Why, Mr. Sherlock Holmes."
"Oh, good God, man, he fell a thousand feet into a waterfall."
"There's one school of thought thinks he might have found some way to survive."
"I can't believe people are honestly walking around thinking about such things."
"As I tried to communicate to you in my cables, Mr. Doyle, you have no idea the powerful impression your stories have made on readers over here," said Pepperman. "A continuing series of mysteries featuring the same characters is just so plumb bob audacious, it's a plain wonder no one ever dreamt it up before. Honestly, sir, I've never seen the like; I used to promote a traveling circus so I've got a sense of the way things catch on, the common touch, how folks want to spend their hard-earned buck. I don't believe you can as yet fully appreciate what Sherlock means to these people."
Doyle smiled absently, feeling it would be impolite to ask but hoping Pepperman would leave soon so he could unpack. He reached for and opened another package off the Matterhorn of ornately wrapped gifts that they'd found piled inside the suite.
A lurid red satin pillow needlepointed with the inscription though he might be more humble, there is no police like holmes.
"I'm beginning to get a grasp of it," said Doyle, heart sinking as he realized he was now obliged to favor each gift-giver with a reply as etiquette required.
With his obsessive devotion to order, he could