The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [83]
"Come on, Arthur; don't look back," said Innes, slowing to run alongside him.
Doyle nodded. Lungs on fire, speech beyond their capacity now, the brothers devoted every last effort to following Jack's lead, but the relentless hunters held the edge of local knowledge: As they moved north, the gap slowly and steadily closed. Runners following on the street below actually began to pull ahead. On the parallel south-running tracks across the street, a train lumbered by, momentarily obliterating the scuffling of their footsteps in the cinder bed, the rasp of their breathing. Rocks and bottles began to crash around them as the Dusters pulled within range. Doyle caught a glimpse of a gingerbread Swiss chalet built onto the margins of the platform and wondered if he was hallucinating. A street sign popped into his field of vision: still three blocks to go.
Jack stopped abruptly ahead of them and tossed back a cannister into the narrowing span between the Doyles and the Dusters: White pepper smoke billowed, but the Dusters had learned from their earlier engagement and either sprinted quickly through or waited for the cloud to dissipate: a net gain of only seconds.
Now the station came into sight ahead, but the gap between groups was less than fifty yards and closing fast—on the verge of collapse, Doyle's muscles seizing up, Jack apparently out of tricks—when the platform began to rumble and hum. A hot white beam of light sharply outlined the churning Houston Dusters as the train bore quickly down on them. A hundred yards to the platform: Innes grabbed Doyle's arm and urged him to the finish like an Irish jockey.
The booming sonic horn of the speeding engine blasted the Dusters off either side of the elevation, some dropped to the street, others clung to the outside shell of the scaffolding as the train thundered by. Doyle tripped and fell hard, cinders embedding his palms as he skidded on the railbed. Drawing on some untapped superhuman reserve, Jack appeared beside them and, with Innes's help, lifted and threw Doyle up onto the platform just as the braking train glided by them into the station.
The doors opened. Stern carried the Zohar; Innes dragged Doyle into the last empty car, and they collapsed in the final row of seats. As the train pulled away, Jack dropped the false copy of the Zohar on the tracks and they watched the reassembled Dusters' final rush toward the back of the car fall short by inches.
chapter 8
When the ringing at his door woke him from a dead sleep in President Cleveland's bed the next morning, Doyle had completely forgotten his appointment with Peregrine "Presto" Raipur, the alleged Maharaja of Berar. Elaborate apologies from both men as Doyle rang down for breakfast. Jack, who had spent what remained of the night in one of the suite's vast parlors, materialized like a wraith as Innes and Stern—wonderful, capable, reliable Innes—arrived with a timely pot of coffee. Doyle on his feet, trying to work the persistent kinks out of his joints, mildly concerned about the scene he'd caused in the lobby last night, arriving after midnight covered with grime, bloody knees poking out of the rips in his trousers; another tourist finding fun and adventure in Old New York.
Jack and Presto sized each other up like opposing chess players, Jack finally outlasting the stranger, but Presto did not rattle easily. Although he was still dressed for the part—riding jacket, jodhpurs, high boots, a red velvet vest—the foppish persona he had projected at the party was clearly an invention. His gaze level, steady, and assured, his voice a pleasing baritone; instead of fluttering like startled pigeons, his hands moved in silky, confident gestures that underscored his story about another missing book.
A rare manuscript edition of the Upanishads, centerpiece of the Rig Vedas, the constellation of books that formed the foundation of the Hindu religion: stolen six months ago from a holy temple in the city of Golcanda, in the princely state of Hyderabad, India. The theft had