The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [70]
"But that's, good God, Arthur, that's Holmes," gasped Innes.
"No," said Doyle, pointing at Jack. "That is. And he needs our help."
"No one has seen my father for nine days," said Lionel Stern. "He has a young assistant, a rabbinical student who comes in once a week to help organize the library—Father forgets to put books back on the shelves when he's finished with them, as you can see____"
Stern swept his arm around the tables, chairs, and stacks of the low-ceiling basement room; every square inch occupied with books. Doyle, a dedicated bibliophile, had never seen such a varied and enviable selection.
"His filing system is to say the least a little archaic, and when he gets lost in following a line of inquiry, well, once he had books piled up so high he couldn't find the door. He had to tap on the window and alert someone passing by to come let him out." Stern pointed to the casement window that looked up and out at a busy street, shaking his head in fond memory. "When Father's assistant came last week and he wasn't here, it didn't alarm him—Father had missed appointments in the past without explanation. But when he came the second time, yesterday, and the room was exactly as he'd seen it the week before, that was quite a different story."
He loves his father very much, in spite of their disagreements, thought Doyle. He's trying to conceal how much his lather's absence hurts him.
"Has he gone off like this in the past?" asked Doyle.
"For a day or so, never longer. He took a walk once, trying to sort out some biblical discrepancy—he likes to walk while he thinks; keeps blood moving through the brain, he says— and he solved it all right, but by that time it was dark and he was in the middle of the Bronx Botanical Gardens."
"No friends or relatives he might have gone to visit?"
"I'm his only family. Mother died five years ago. There are other rabbis he knows, scholars, colleagues; most of them live in the neighborhood. I've spoken to them; no one's had any word. Aside from one other occasion, he's never been out of New York City before."
Innes stepped forward to lift up a peculiar leather-bound manuscript embossed with an inscription that appealed to his eye.
"Don't touch it," said Sparks sharply.
Innes jumped back as if he'd burned his hand on a stove.
"Don't touch anything. The answer is somewhere in this room." Sparks moved slowly between the bookshelves, eyes traveling methodically from one detail to another, accumulating information. Doyle carefully watched him work; this much about him seemed unchanged.
"When did you last hear from your father?" asked Doyle.
"He wired me before Rupert and I left London, ten days ago; routine communication, asking about our arrival, business having to do with the acquisition and transportation of the Zohar."
"And you replied?"
"Yes."
"Anything in your answer that might have prompted his leaving?"
"I can't imagine what it might have been; I'd already sent him an identical wire the week before answering all the questions he asked me in his. He probably lost it. Keeping mindful of what he calls the 'bookkeeping' of life is not his strength: you know, comings and goings. Paying his bills. All of that falls to me for the most part."
Sparks pulled a pair of long tweezers from his coat and extracted a sheet of yellow paper protruding a quarter inch out from under a stack of books on the table.
"Here's your first telegram," said Sparks. "Unopened. Unread."
"See what I mean?" said Stern. "If he won the sweepstakes, the check could get lost in here for twenty years."
"It is a most impressive theological library," said Doyle, walking between the stacks. "I've never seen such a concentration of rare volumes in any private collection before; quartos, folios, first editions."
"Must be worth a fortune," said Innes, one of the few statements he'd felt confident enough to utter in Sparks's presence.
"Whatever small amounts of money have passed through