The Six Messiahs

chapter 2

"My name is Werner. If there is anything I must do to make your voyage more comfortable, please you will let me know."

"Thank you, Werner."

Doyle made to enter his cabin but Werner blocked his way.

"If I might be so bold: I have read about your famous detective, sir, and I would like to demonstrate that the great Mr. Holmes is not alone in his power of the deductive capability," said the dapper German steward in his crisply accented English.

"Fine. How do you wish to do this?" said Doyle politely.

' 'I have observed you for only a few moments, you agree, yes?"

"I cannot dispute you."

"And yet I am able to tell you that from within the last year you have traveled to Cherbourg, Paris, Geneva, Davos, Marienbad, back to London, once to Edinburgh, and twice to Dublin. Will I not be correct, sir?"

Doyle had to admit that he was.

"And would you like me to tell you how I have reached this conclusion, sir?"

Doyle was compelled to admit that he would.

"I have looked at the labels on your luggage."

Werner winked, wiggled his little blond moustache, gave a smart salute, and slipped smoothly down the passageway. Doyle had just begun to unpack when Innes rushed into the cabin, knocking off his derby on the doorway overhead.

"Smashing good news," said Innes, retrieving his hat. "I've found someone who'll be of tremendous help to us when we reach New York."

"Who's that, Innes?"

"He gave me his card. Here," he said, producing it. "His name is Nels Pimmel."

"Pimmel?"

"A reporter for the New York Post. You'll be ever so amused by the fellow, Arthur. He's what you would call a real 'character.' ..."

"Let me see that," said Doyle, taking the card.

"And a most agreeable chap. Seems he has the acquaintance of nearly everybody who's anybody in the entire United States...."

"And what did Mr. Pimmel want from you?"

"Nothing. He's invited us to dine with him tonight."

"You didn't accept of course."

"I didn't see the harm in it.. .."

"Innes, listen to me carefully; you are not to seek out, speak to, or encourage this man's advances from this moment forward in even the slightest way."

"I don't know why; he's a perfectly pleasant sort of bloke."

"This man is not a bloke, chap, or any other sort of regular person; he's a journalist and they are a breed apart."

"So you immediately assume he must be cultivating my friendship only so he can get closer to you, is that it?"

"If this is the man I think it is, be assured he is not remotely interested in your friendship or even your passing acquaintance. ..."

Two small spots of red appeared on Innes's cheeks and his pupils contracted down to pinpricks—oh dear, thought Doyle, how many times have I seen those dependable beacons of distress before.

"So what you're saying is I'm ridiculous to assume that anyone might take a genuine interest in me alone as a human being...."

"Innes, please, that's not what I'm saying at all."

"Oh, really?"

"There are different rules for social intercourse on board ship. This Pimmel or Pinkus or whatever his name is has al-ready accosted me once. Give him one inch of encouragement now before we've left sight of land and the man will be living in our pockets for the remainder of the cruise."

"Do you want to know what I think?" said Innes, bouncing up on his toes, voice rising alarmingly in pitch. "I think you've read too many of your press clippings. I think you think you're better than other people. I'm twenty-four years old, Arthur, and I may never have been on a ship before, but that doesn't mean I've forgotten my manners and I shall speak to or dine with whomsoever I choose."

Punctuating the impact of his outburst with a dramatic exit, Innes turned to go and threw open the door to the closet. To his credit, he kept his composure, gave the contents of the closet the once-over as if that had been his original intent, slammed the door with a satisfied grunt, and swept out of the cabin, knocking his hat off on the overhead again for good measure.

Five months without Larry, thought Doyle. Good Christ, I'll never make it back to England alive.

That evening, Doyle dined at the table of Captain Karl Heinz Hoffner unaccompanied by his younger brother, who took his first meal at the far end of the elegant hall, in the company of Ira Pinkus/Nels Pimmel and the other four pseudonyms under which Pinkus plied his trade for six different New York newspapers. Pinkus/Pimmel expressed glancing disappointment that Innes's illustrious brother would not be joining them, but then a worm doesn't eat its way to the center of the apple by starting at the core.

Infuriated by Arthur's snobbery, Innes experienced no misgivings afterward about the full menu of Conan Doyle anecdotes he trotted out for Pimmel as the meal progressed—what was the harm in it? Wasn't as if the man was openly interrogating him, and he seemed every bit as engrossed by Innes's own escapades with the Royal Fusiliers as he was about anything to do with the life and times of the Great Author. And Pimmel himself proved supremely entertaining on the subject of New York, particularly his intimate and apparently inexhaustible lowdown on Broadway show girls.

Why, no, it wouldn't be any trouble at all to introduce you to some of these gals, Pimmel assured him. Say, here's an idea: Why don't the two of us go out on the town one night with a great big bunch of them? Better yet, we'll throw a party! Let them come to us! Have a little more wine, Innes!

Outstanding fellow, Pimmel.

Realizing he was expected to spend every evening of the cruise with Captain Hoffner—a stolid pillar of a man singularly preoccupied with maritime statistics, shipboard etiquette, and the tide tables, all untainted by the slightest hint of humor—Doyle rolled out the questions he'd dreamed up about the Elbe at a measured pace, hoping the Captain's replies might buy enough time to root out other areas of conversational fertility. But Hoffner's answers lacked wind; they were as precise, as streamlined, and about as riveting as an engine manual recited by a myna bird. The man had spent so much of his life at sea he had failed to acquire an opinion on any unseaworthy subject and had apparently never even cracked open a novel. Certainly none of Doyle's, at any rate.

Fellow guests at the table weren't much help, either; a congregation of beer executives from Bavaria and their well-groomed wives, off for a pleasure tour of midwestern American breweries. All in possession of modestly serviceable English that they chose for the most part not to exercise, spending the better part of the meal hanging on Doyle's every word as if each utterance contained hidden religious significance: Sherlock Holmes was Big Business in Germany.

The Famous Author syndrome usually provided sufficient inspiration to hoist Doyle into the saddle of some pet high-horse of his, but tonight every time he rolled up to the edge of a really first-rate pontification the sight of Innes huddling with Pinkus/Pimmel across the room knocked him right off his perch. He felt as dull and becalmed as the glacial Captain Hoffner. As the lapses between exchanges became longer and grimmer, the screech of cutlery grinding on china grew deafening.

"I remember reading somewhere that you have an enduring interest in the occult, Mr. Doyle," said the lone English woman at the table, who had until that moment maintained a watchful silence.

Indeed he had, replied Doyle. An interest tempered by a natural and healthy skepticism, he was quick to add.

Glum faces around the table assumed new life. The burghers' wives ganged up on Hoffner with a hard flurry of German, attempting to prod him to some unknown action involving Doyle. Hoffner held his ground during the brief, one-sided engagement before turning to Doyle with a look of deeply felt apology.

"I have been telling a story last night at dinner as we crossed the Channel," said the Captain. "It seems some of my crew are convinced we are having a ghost on board."

"The ship is haunted," said the English woman.

She roosted on the edge of her chair, small and birdlike, and throughout the meal he hadn't taken much notice of her, but now that she had set foot in her element, Doyle recognized that slightly deranged sparkle in her pale eyes: She was a True Believer.

"I am afraid that I cannot say this is true with any assurance, Mrs. Saint-John," said Captain Hoffner. Then to Doyle, again apologetically: "We have been having over a period of some years on board the Elbe a series of strange and ... unexplainable occurrences."

"Why don't you tell Mr. Conan Doyle about your most recent episode, Captain?" said Mrs. Saint-John, flashing a nervous smile, eyes blinking rapidly.

"This has happened earlier this evening," said Hoffner with a shrug, lowering his voice.

"After we set sail?"

Hoffner nodded sharply. "A passenger hears some strange noises from the cargo hold; a series of shrieking cries, a repeated knocking sound...."

"Any other witnesses?" asked Doyle.

"No; just this one woman," said Hoffner.

"It is a classic haunting," said Mrs. Saint-John, her hands nervously fidgeting her napkin ring. "I'm sure you would agree with my diagnosis, Mr. Conan Doyle; footsteps in an empty hall, thumps, raps, mournful voices. And a sighting of a large, looming gray figure in a cargo hold passageway."

"None of this I am ever seeing myself, you understand," said Hoffner, minimizing; there was clearly no room for a bona fide ghost on his ship.

"Captain, have there been any tragedies aboard the Elbe?" asked Doyle.

"This ship is now ten years at sea; I am sailing with her every one of those days. Whenever there is such a regular gathering of human lives tragedy must inevitably, sadly, play a part in the experience," said Hoffner.

"Sadly true," said Doyle, surprised at how near Hoffner's observation had approached eloquence. "Are there any that stand out particularly? Any violent murders or brutally memorable suicides?"

The burghers and their wives seemed slightly taken aback.

"Pardon my bluntness, ladies and gentlemen, but there's no point in our mincing any words; phenomena of the sort described by Mrs. Saint-John usually result from some terrible unhappiness that cannot be wished away by our tiptoeing around the facts in the interest of propriety."

At last, thought Doyle happily, a subject I can take to the bank.

"In former times," the Captain said cautiously, "there have been a few such instances."

"Just so; I shan't trouble you over mixed company at dinner for the details. I'll offer one interesting theory about ghosts, meine Damen und Herren, and the most credible to my way of thinking if you credit the phenomenon at all: The specter constitutes the emotional residue of a life that ended unexpectedly or in great spiritual confusion—this is why sightings are frequently related to murder or accident victims, or suicides—the equivalent, if you will, of a footprint left on a sandy beach, a remnant that lives on outside our perception of time, with no more actual connection than that footprint has to the person who leaves it behind...."

"Oh no. No, no, no; what one encounters is the immortal soul of the poor unfortunate itself," said Mrs. Saint-John. "Trapped between heaven and earth, in a purgatorial void...."

"That is another point of view entirely," said Doyle, annoyed to have been so aggressively knocked off his rails. "One I'm afraid I cannot wholeheartedly endorse."

' 'But I can assure you, Mr. Conan Doyle, that this is indeed the case. It has been our experience with them time and again...."

"Our experience?"

Mrs. Saint-John smiled assuredly at the other guests. "I refer to my companion, largely, and myself to a much more limited degree."

"Companion."

Oh dear; not one of those invisible spirit guides that certain slightly hysterical middle-aged women allege to have trotting around after them like a Pekingese dog. Definitely a nutter, thought Doyle.

"I'm afraid Sophie wasn't feeling well enough to join us for dinner tonight," said Mrs. Saint-John. "She's just completed an exhausting lecture tour of Germany and we're traveling on to America without a stop at home."

"It sounds as if you and your friend are very much in demand," said Doyle, relieved that at least her "friend" currently resided in a human body.

"Yes. We were introduced three years ago, not long after my husband died. I was quite naturally bereft. Inconsolable, really, because I felt then very much like you apparently do now, Mr. Conan Doyle: that my dearest Benjamin was simply gone. And then, in my despair, a close friend insisted that I must meet Sophie. Sophie Hills."

"The Sophie Hills."

"Ah, so you are familiar with her."

Sophie Hills was the most celebrated, if not notorious, psychic-medium in England of the moment. The woman claimed to be attended by a vast congregation of disembodied spirits, all with direct links to the central switchboard of the hereafter, which time and again had coughed up on request verifiably accurate information about dead relatives, lost envelopes, missing engagement rings, mysterious medical ailments, and, in one sensational instance, a revelation about an unsolved decade-old crime in Heresfordshire that resulted in a confession of murder. Sophie occasionally demonstrated the peculiar talent of apport mediumship, the ability to manifest out of thin air three-dimensional objects as oddly diverse as African bird nests, ancient Roman coins, and exotic—still flopping—fish. Her puzzling faculties had been subjected to exhaustive tests by the scientific community and to date not a single reasonable doubt had been confirmed as to their authenticity. In one such instance, before credible witnesses, while strapped into a strait-jacket and wearing a gunnysack on her head, under the guidance of Miss Hills one of her spirit guides played ' 'Turkey in the Straw" on an accordion stashed across the room under a bushel basket.

Oh yes, Doyle was familiar with Sophie Hills. And more than passingly interested in a chance to have a whack at the old girl in action.

"I have proposed to Mrs. Saint-John," said Captain Hoffner, "that one night during our crossing we might impose upon Miss Hills to give a demonstration of her powers."

"And in so doing put to rest the tormented spirit that haunts the good ship Elbe," said Mrs. Saint-John. "After hearing that you were to sail with us, it was my suggestion that we solicit your participation, Mr. Conan Doyle. And if you were to find such a demonstration of sufficient scientific rigor, the strength of your reputation could go a long way towards persuading the general public of the goodness of Sophie's powers."

"Perhaps tomorrow night, then," said the Captain. "I would propose that we do this after dinner?"

"I should be delighted, Captain," said Doyle.

Now if there were only some way to keep Ira Pinkus from finding out about it. He could just see the headline waiting for him in New York: HOLMES CREATOR CHASES SHIPBOARD SPOOK.

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Look at yourself, Jacob: What you are doing here? Can there be any doubt? No, truthfully, I don't believe so. At the ripe old age of sixty-eight, when most men of your profession have long ago achieved mastery of their mind and self, you have taken complete leave of your senses.

You old fool, the best part of your life was just beginning; remember how you sustained yourself through the striving and deprivation with the promise that after retirement you would devote yourself to scholarship? No domestic distractions or professional obligations, alone in your library, a lifetime's accumulated wisdom lining the walls, peace and quiet and months without end of metaphysical study and solitary contemplation. The logical, satisfying culmination of a life's work and such a joyous time this was going to be! And with it, within reach, the genuine possibility of enlightenment.

But instead of sitting at your desk surrounded by books, in your cozy basement office on Delancey Street, a cup of hot tea with lemon in your hands, here you stand on a railway platform in the pouring rain in downtown Chicago, Illinois, waiting to board a train for—where?—Colorado, God forbid, where you don't know a soul in the world. And when was the last time they saw a rabbi in Colorado, I'd like to know.

Because a dream told you to do it.

All right, not a dream, exactly; a vision, if you like, that's haunted your sleep for the last three months. A vision powerful and frightening enough to send you careening out of your rabbit hole into the wilderness like some mad biblical prophet. The kind of Old Testament, bone-rattling nightmare you used to read about with such interest. In your comfortable chair. Warm, dry socks on your feet.

Meshugener mamzer! You don't need a one-way ticket to the wild West; what you need is a doctor. This is probably the onset of an exotic fever or a galloping mental illness. There's still time to reconsider: You could be back in New York without a word of this madness to anyone before your son gets off the ship. And listen, Jacob, do you have any idea how disturbed Lionel is going to be when he arrives with the book he's gone to such trouble to get for you and you've vanished into thin air? There's a train leaving for New York in two hours; what in God's name should prevent you from being on it?

You know perfectly well what's stopping you, old man.

Having dedicated your life to studying the myths and allegories of Kabbalah, you know they're more than words on old parchments handed down through the ages. You know this earth is a battleground between forces of light and darkness and when you are called to serve in that struggle—you know in your heart that's what's happened here, Jacob—you do not wriggle off the hook by reciting a list of your infirmities ... although between your neuralgia and your arthritis, God knows you could make a convincing case.

What did the rabbis tell you when you first took up Kabbalah? Only a man who is married, who has reached the age of forty with his feet firmly on the ground should study this strange book. What's inside these covers is far too dangerous for a dilettante. Knowledge is power and esoteric books are like sticks of dynamite, they said; it takes a special man to make this commitment.

"I am that man," you told them.

Why, what possessed you? If it was thirst for wisdom, there were hundreds of less dangerous wells from which to drink. And twenty-eight years later, here you stand waiting for a train. Mysterious, isn't it?

Be honest with yourself, old man: Some part of you knew from the moment you opened the book—the authentic Sefer ha-Zohar—that as a result one day something extraordinary would happen to you. You wanted it to. So really, what's to complain about? What's so precious about this life you're living, anyway? Your wife gone six years now, rest her soul, your son grown. And Jacob, your office in that basement on Delancey Street? It's not exactly been the sanctuary you'd imagined. It's boring: There, you said it.

You're going to get on that train to Colorado, Rabbi Stern, and make this journey to God-knows-where for the same reasons that brought you to Chicago: because you are a man who believes oracular visions must be paid attention to, even when they come unasked for to sixty-eight-year-old men in less than the best of health who have not led lives you would be tempted to describe as vigorous. Because you've since discovered that part of that vision has already come to pass—the copy of the Tikkunei Zohar has been stolen from Rabbi Brachman's temple in Chicago.

Most of all because if you turn your back now and Lucifer does manifest in a desert somewhere and the earth ends up falling into the hands of the Evil One as this dream of yours suggests... well, if you feel poorly now, just imagine how rotten you're going to feel then.

Here comes the train. God in Heaven, watch over my son— maybe I should wait for Lionel to arrive before running off. What if he's in danger as well? I could at least write him a letter—

No. That's not what the vision advised. Relax, Jacob. Breathe; still your heart. That's better. There's a wonderful confidence that comes with losing your mind; you don't have to put up with nearly so much second-guessing.

Have you got your ticket? Yes, here it is. If only this old suitcase weren't so heavy; I've never packed for such an unpredictable journey before, who knew how much to bring—

Stop now: What were those words you always used to console the suffering in your temple? All of our problems are temporary, so why be sad about them?

And you can also take some comfort, can't you, from that other part of the vision you don't understand. Those words that keep repeating in your mind.

We are Six.

Don't have a clue what it means. Sounds somewhat encouraging, though, doesn't it?

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

The Canton made port in San Francisco by the middle of the afternoon, but night had fallen before the authorities let the first workers off the ship. Better for the city's white citizens not to see so many Asians setting foot on their shores in the light of day, thought Kanazuchi.

As the mob pressed forward to disembark, he made his way to the back of the pack where he could observe activity on the pier. Two Chinese at the base of the gangway shouted instructions in Mandarin as the workers left the ship—straight ahead, no talking, into the building! Guards in black uniforms carrying long sticks framed a loose corridor, and the immigrants massed along it like cattle toward the high entrance of a long processing shed.

Inside the shed, following more barked orders, they obediently fell into lines and produced their papers for a row of white officials sitting on high benches. At wide tables leading to the benches, the workers' belongings were taken by the guards and opened for inspection.

Kanazuchi realized he would have to make other arrangements.

Three slovenly crew members on the foredeck above him were braying about their coming shore leave; using his second sight, Kanazuchi could see the anticipated drunkenness and debauchery already stimulating their lower centers. He slipped back into the shadows as the last of the Chinese were herded down the gangway.

With the steel strength of his fingers, he shimmied twenty feet up a halyard, dropped silently behind the crew members, and waited until one of them broke away, a muscular, bandy-legged engineer's mate, moving to the sea-side rail to empty his bladder. As the mate finished urinating, two hands clamped onto his face with the strength of bear claws; whip motion, a quiet crack, the man's neck snapped. His clothes stripped in thirty seconds, body hoisted and carried over the side on the Holy Man's back.

Kanazuchi used the rail to slide sideways along the ship's bulwark until he reached the anchor line, then lowered himself and the engineer's mate down along the heavy chain to the water, where he gently set the body adrift in the oily bay. Holding his clothes and the bundle that carried his weapons, powders, and herbs dry above the water, he swam a quarter mile along the pier to an empty berth and scaled a ladder to the wharf.

The clothes were a reasonable fit. A small amount of American money in the pockets. So far the gods were smiling, but his journey had only begun. Kanazuchi did not neglect to thank the dead man for the gift of his life and prayed that he was already enjoying his reward.

He climbed over a fence undetected, slipped the pack that held the Grass Cutter over his shoulder, and started walking toward San Francisco. He knew his conscious mind need not worry about where he was going or how he would arrive: Sensei had said the vision which had chosen him for this task would lead him to the missing Book.

A dark tower rising from the sand.

A black labyrinth beneath the ground.

Chinese coolies digging a tunnel.

An old thin man with a white beard and a round black hat.

We are Six.

As he walked Kanazuchi repeated the phrase he used to begin his meditation: Life is a dream from which we are trying to awaken.

BUTTE, MONTANA

"Now they will never return me alive to that cursed black tower of Zenda! And I have you to thank for my life, my best

and dearest friend, Cousin Rudolfo, and for my return to the throne of Ruritania!"

Bendigo Rymer dropped heavily to his knees beside the king's sickbed, and as usual the shock shimmied the moth-eaten backdrop of the lush, cartoonish Ruritanian Alps. Rymer windmilled his arms, indicating the depths of emotion he wrestled with; speech, just this once, deserting him.

"Come on, you ridiculous cow, don't flog it to death," muttered Eileen, watching from the wings as she waited for her entrance; she checked the pins in her hair to make sure her cheap paste tiara wouldn't go flying into the orchestra pit as it had last week in Omaha.

"Your Majesty, my work here is finished, I can accept no praise. I am only too happy to have served you in the only way an Englishman knows how: with all my heart and soul," said Rymer finally, before rising and turning across the footlights to the audience. "Sacrifice in the service of so noble a cause is no hardship."

That brawny declaration begged for applause from the men, brought out the ladies' hankies, and once again the good citizens of—where were they, Butte, Montana?—were only too happy to hold up their end; Rymer basked in the snug glow of their uncritical affections.

Eileen snorted in disgust. Even for an actor, a breed not celebrated for their sense of restraint, the man was completely incapable of shame.

"But there is still one way in which I can be of use to Your Majesty...." Bendigo made a dashing beeline north, upstaging the witless nincompoop playing King Alexander before he could counter the move; six months on tour and the moron still hadn't learned how to hold center stage. "I shall return to you the love of your fiancee, Princess Flavia, who has stood by through the darkest hour of your uncertain fate, praying for your return."

Ha! If I was Flavia waiting to marry this bad haircut, | thought Eileen, by now I'd've slept my way through a squadron of Royal Mounted Dragoons.

Rymer gestured toward the wing; Eileen gave her bosom a shove to encourage a plump decolletage—getting a little long in the tooth for this ingenue crap, aren't we, dearie?—and pranced ethereally onstage.

"My lord, you're alive! My fondest hope! Heaven bless you!"

She draped herself over King Chucklehead and sniffed experimentally. Good, at least he hadn't been munching green onions while offstage in the tower of Zenda. Then the big kiss—the kid hadn't thrust his tongue down her throat again since she gave him a knee in Cleveland—and Bendigo's ever so touching turn downstage, shielding his eyes from the indelicate spectacle of watching the woman he loved returning to the king whose life he had saved, as the final curtain fell and predictably brought down the house.

American audiences were pathetically easy to please.

"Eileen, darling, in our final scene together when I declare my, uh, undying love for you, do you suppose you could come back with your line about my ring always being on your finger just a bit, uh, faster?"

Bendigo Rymer was staring at himself in the mirror, at the midpoint of stripping off his shiny greasepaint. Mesmerized as a charmed snake.

What in the world does he think he's looking at? wondered Eileen. Sharing a stage with the man was punishment enough; inhabiting the same dressing room, as necessity required in some of these rural outposts, felt like a prison sentence.

"Bendigo, darling, the point of Flavia hesitating has to do with being torn between her obligation to Kingy-poo and the incredible passion she feels for dear Rudolfo. If she replies too quickly, I'm afraid it suggests you don't hold nearly the same dangerous command of her affections."

She waited for the gears of his mind to engage the idea and could nearly hear them grinding. "That's always been my interpretation anyway," she added modestly.

"If it's played that way ..." he said, stroking his chin; as with every pose he struck having to do with thought, it seemed effortful. "It's rather useful to us, that pause then, isn't it?"

"If Flavia is desperately in love with you, it's probably best to let the customers in on the secret."

"How right you are!" he bellowed, jumping to his feet.

"Bless you, my dear! I have always maintained you are a genuine asset to my company!"

Bendigo tilted his head back and showered his mouth with a deluge of the McGarrigle's Throat Comforter he kept in the atomizer on his table.

Oh God, that means he's going to kiss me.

Rymer's breath generally gave the impression that he'd recently devoured an embalmed cat; the McGarrigle's only succeeded in making it seem as if the cat had been marinated in cheap cologne.

Rymer loomed over her. Eileen skillfully, and somehow graciously, offered him only the top of her head; grease smeared her hair as his lips struck a glancing blow. Then Bendigo was off pacing the room, running his hands through his long dyed locks, simulating the look of a man in the frenzied grip of inspiration.

I'm living a nightmare, thought Eileen Temple, not for the first time. Not even the first time that night. When she'd set sail for America ten years before on the wings of hope and youthful ambition, who could have imagined her star would plummet so far below the visible horizon?

Bendigo Rymer's Penultimate Touring Players. (She'd never had the heart to ask him if he knew the actual definition of "penultimate"; her guess was no.) Former matinee idol Bendigo Rymer—Oscar Krantz from Scranton, Pennsylvania, truth be known; she'd come across his birth certificate once in the company strongbox—was pushing fifty, if it hadn't toppled already.

If only I hadn't slept with him that one time in Cincinnati, thought Eileen: A moment of weakness early in their tour; she'd sipped too deeply of the vino bianco and the poor sod could still look half-handsome—his good side, anyway, the one he unfailingly tried to present—in the right light, for instance the pitch darkness of a mine shaft.

And after all, she reminded herself forgivingly, you're only human, ducks, and loneliness does make strange bedfellows Rymer's subsequent attempts at seduction had been pathetically easy to fend off; he was far too preoccupied with himself to sustain an enduring interest in another human being—and the occasional conquest of some adoring, doe-eyed plain Jane as they trooped their way west seemed more than enough to satisfy his somewhat, how should she put it kindly, meager masculine needs.

What about my needs, then? Eileen asked herself. Life on the stage had fallen so short of the land of milk and honey she'd grown up hoping for. Oh, there had been some thrilling early days in New York: every light on Broadway sparkling with the promise of fame, riches, and an endless supply of fabulously attractive men. That lasted about a week. And the theater was a harsh mistress when a girl hit the downhill side of thirty. Thank God for makeup, long, thick hair, decent bone structure, and a body that didn't run to fat or she'd've been out of a job years ago. Eileen was grudgingly a realist of both the heart and mind, a distinct handicap in a profession full of dreamers and losers. In reality, the best parts usually fell to some younger, hungry-eyed girl, and all most of those stage-door johnnies were looking for was a weekend furlough from dreary marriages they were only too eager to bore you to death about over bottles of rotgut champagne.

Lord, what these upper-crust American wives knew about sex you could engrave on the head of a gnat. Why else would their husbands be out every night baying at the moon? Eileen kept an up-to-the-minute inventory of her shortcomings, and lousy in bed wasn't one of them: Shame she couldn't make a living at it. Not that she hadn't considered the idea—she'd heard generous enough offers—but although she would on occasion accept with good grace extravagant trifles from her admirers, she'd never allowed their more explicit proposals to jeopardize her standing as a gifted, enthusiastic amateur. No, turning sex into business would only suck all the fun out of it, and fun was in short enough supply in her life. Nor did she have any intention of turning into one of these rumpot wardrobe mistresses who creaked around backstage half-swilled, mumbling about the good old days: playing opposite so-and-so, wearing such a glorious dress.

But what had she planned for the inevitable day when even the Bendigo Rymers of the world didn't want her for a third-rate provincial tour of The Prisoner of Zenda. She hadn't exactly socked away a nest egg over the years, what with maintaining a well-accessorized wardrobe to keep the gents half-interested....

Don't think about the future, love: Get through tonight and let tomorrow take care of itself. One more show in Butte, then on to Boise, Idaho. Three more weeks on the road, working our way south into ever deeper obscurity. Bendigo had just added another city near Phoenix that she couldn't even find on a map; some sort of religious settlement, he said, like the Mormons in Utah. Didn't matter to him who the pikers worshiped, as long as they paid cash to park their behinds in the seats.

Amazing the disappointments to which you can accommodate yourself in life, she thought, watching Bendigo pace the floor, flinging his arms about like an angry monkey. What was he raving on about now?

".. .he had no legitimate reason to let me go! I was brilliant in that role. Brilliant! I modeled my performance after Kean: Shakespeare played by flashes of lightning! It was only the damn-ned jealousy of Booth himself...."

Ah, the Edwin - Booth - fired - me - at - twenty - six - threatened - by - my - genius - single - handedly - destroyed -my - reputation - preventing - my - career - from - reaching - the - Olympian - heights - which - had - always -been - my - destiny routine. No wonder my mind wandered. Look at him fume, the fossilized clown. Shame he hasn't any talent to complement his epic self-esteem. But then if it weren't for delusions of grandeur, he'd have no grandeur at all.

Yes, well, on the other hand, Miss High and Mighty, look, who's sharing the short end of his Butte, Montana, dressing room: Is your common sense any more use to you than his delusions are to him? They tossed gold nuggets on the stage when the great Adah Isaacs Menken toured the West. Bendigo still snags the occasional threadbare bouquet on opening nights. You're so grateful for a wilted handful of daisies from some lovesick high-plains Romeo, offered with dumb, stuttering sincerity as you slip out the stage door, that it reduces you to tears.

Not much of a life, finally, but your own, dear. No husband to order you about with his sweaty socks to mend. No bawling babies crawling up the drapes. New places to see. New people to meet. Always the chance something sunny and surprising might lie around the next bend. And how many girls can wake up to that thought every morning?

The triumph of hope over experience.

After I've strutted and fretted my hour on the stage, she thought, let them carve that on my tombstone.