"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 his hands over the years ended up in a book, that much I'm sure of," said Stern. "Most of them were gifts, donations from friends, various institutions."
"A fine tribute to your father's standing as a scholar," said Doyle.
"There's really no one else quite like him," said Stern, settling onto a stool. "After Mother died, he began spending more and more of his time down here alone. Most nights he'd sleep on that sofa over there." He pointed to a poor-looking daybed in the corner. "To be honest, I never could understand half of what he was talking about. Maybe if I'd made more of an effort, I could have understood and he—" His voice choked; he hung his head, trying to stave off tears.
"Here, here," said Innes, a hand on his back, the closest to him. "We're sure to find him. Without fail. No quit in this bunch."
Stern nodded, grateful. Sparks turned and walked right up to him, offering no acknowledgment of his emotion.
"Your father's methods of study," said Sparks. "He took notes as he read."
"Yes. Volumes."
"A pen in his left hand. Sitting in this chair." Sparks walked to a chair at the desk.
"How did you know?"
"Worn on the rests; scratches along the left arm; he wore a long coat, with buttons on the sleeves."
"Yes, he almost always wore that coat. He was usually cold down here; poor circulation, the doctor said, but to tell the truth Father was always a bit of a hypochondriac."
Hasn't lost his observation skills, thought Doyle. Sparks sat in Rabbi Stern's chair and stared at the books cluttering the desk directly before him. He peered closer, reached in, and lifted one book off the pile, unveiling a pad of white lined paper underneath. He leaned down and studied the pad.
"Have a look at this," he said.
Doyle and Stern joined him; the paper covered with sketches, doodles, scrawled phrases, snatches of academic doggerel; the quality of the drawings surprisingly expert and detailed.
"Yes, Father often did this sort of thing when he worked," said Stern. "Drew odd bits while thinking something through—he was clever that way. I used to sit with him and watch when I was a boy; he'd sketch street scenes, faces, people passing by."
Two central images on the page: a large tree with drooping, denuded branches, holding ten round, white globes arrayed in a geometric pattern and connected by straight lines.
"That's the Tree of Life," said Stern. "An image I've seen in kabbalistic books. I'm afraid I couldn't begin to tell you the significance of it."
The other image: a black castle, stark and forbidding, a single window illuminated in its highest tower. Sparks's eyes narrowed as he stared at it.
"Looks like something out of, what do you call it, you know," said Innes, snapping his fingers. "The dwarf and the pretty girl..."
"Rumpelstiltskin?" said Stern.
"Rapunzel let down your hair and all that," said Innes.
Doyle didn't take his eyes off Sparks; something was rumbling up from deep inside the man.
"What does this mean?" said Sparks, pointing to a boldly sketched cuneiform figure on the page below the castle.
"Schischah," said Stern. "That's the Hebrew word for six."
"The number six?" asked Sparks.
"Yes," said Stern. "It has other meanings, in the kabbalistic sense, but you'd need a scholar to—"
Sparks stood up abruptly and jumped back from the table; chair legs screeched against the floor. He stared over at the bed in the corner, a wild, uncontained look passing through his eyes, as if he'd seen a ghost.
"Jack? You all right?" asked Doyle.
Sparks didn't answer. Tension coming off him permeated the room. A water pipe dripping rhythmically somewhere sounded as loud as gunshots.
"Where is the Gerona Zohar?'' asked Sparks.
"The safe in my offices," said Stern. "A few blocks north of here."
"I need to see it. Now."
"I'll take you there."
Sparks and Stern started for the door.
"Bring that pad of paper," said Doyle quietly to Innes. He pried the pad out from under the books without knocking over the stack and they followed Jack out of the tenement.
Gaslight threw weak ripples of light into the damp air. Sparks led the way like a bloodhound straining at its leash; footsteps echoing, streets empty as midnight approached.
In the shadows across the way from Stern's building on St. Mark's Place loitered two young toughs, cigarettes hanging off their lips. As the party went inside, and lights flickered on in the fourth-floor window of the office, one of the toughs ran off down the street; the other stayed to watch.
Lionel Stern dialed the safe's combination, removed the wooden crate, set it down on his desk, and lifted the cover. The Gerona Zohar was large, nearly two feet square and three inches deep, bound in dark antiquated leather. Stern slipped on a pair of frayed white gloves and opened the cover; the binding creaked like an arthritic elbow.
"Backwards, isn't it?" asked Innes.
"Hebrew reads from right to left; this is the front of the book," said Stern.
"I see," said Innes, wishing he could swallow his fist.
Sparks stared at the parchment of the first page, yellow and crusted with age, densely covered with fading handwritten words.
"Let me see that pad," said Sparks.
Innes handed it to him. Doyle watched Jack: What was he on to?
"Is this a drawing of the Zohar, here?" asked Sparks, pointing to a sketch on the pad's margin: an open, leather-bound book, strikingly similar to the one before them. Matching script scribbled inside its front page.
"Could be," said Doyle.
Sparks took out a magnifying glass, leaned over and examined Stern's drawing then scrutinized the first page of the Gerona Zohar.
"Your father has never seen the Gerona Zohar?" asked Sparks.
"No."
"Then how has he in this sketch exactly reproduced its first • page?"
Sparks handed the glass to Doyle: The minute writing in Rabbi Stern's sketch was identical to the book. Stern examined the two fragments as well.
"I can't account for it," said Stern.
"What do you make of this?" asked Sparks, pointing to a dark shape on the pad drawn over the corner of the book.
"A shadow," said Doyle, looking closer. "A hand. Reaching for the book."
"Did your father ever talk about his dreams?" asked Sparks.
"Dreams? No, not that I can recall."
"What are you driving at, Jack?" asked Doyle.
Sparks looked at the pad and pointed to the drawing of the castle.