His emphasis, once again, tended to dwell predominantly on size. There was Marshall Field's Department Store: thirteen acres of floor space! The Reliance Building: fifteen skyscraping stories of shimmering glass! Wrigley's gum factory: most popular gum in the world! ("Here, have a stick of Juicy Fruit! The hit of the World's Fair!") By the time they reached their hotel ("The Palmer House: biggest hotel between New York and San Francisco!"), the Major's well-intentioned but increasingly desperate enthusiasm had numbed the brothers' minds to a frazzle.
As they had arranged on the train, Sparks, Stern, and Presto took rooms at a smaller hotel around the corner from Doyle's and secured the Gerona Zohar in the hotel safe. In the moments they spent alone before parting at the station, no reference was made by either Sparks or Doyle to their conversation the night before; Doyle experienced gnawing discomfort about both the damning content of Jack's confession and what he felt to be the inadequacy of his own coldhearted response. What could he do to break this impasse? Sparks, still shamed, barely met his eye.
During the day, while the Doyles executed the responsibilities of Arthur's tour, the other three men paid a visit to the temple of Rabbi Isaac Abraham Brachman, the results of which they relayed to the brothers that evening in front of the fire in Arthur's suite at the Palmer House. Lionel and Presto did the talking; Jack sat apart, silent, unresponsive.
Rabbi Brachman had received no further word from Jacob Stern. Nor could he draw any clues from Jacob's behavior during his visit that threw light on his subsequent whereabouts. He had seemed very much himself: cheerful, a trifle distracted, more attuned to the abstract than the physical. Terribly concerned, as all the scholars were, over the theft of the Tikkunei Zohar, about which Brachman could offer no encouraging news, either. The matter had been referred to the police, who were at best dutiful, if not indifferent, to the loss of such a rarefied item: If it had been a draft horse or a vintage cuckoo clock, it might have stirred them to action, but the value of an obscure religious manuscript, and a non-Christian one at that, seemed to elude their grasp.
Facts were spare: The Tikkunei Zohar had simply disappeared; there one night, studied by Brachman, locked in a cabinet in the temple library; the next morning gone. No physical clues; no breaking and entering; the lock picked cleanly.
Thoroughly professional job. They chose not to burden Rabbi Brachman, a frail, wispy man of seventy-five, with any information about the possible involvement of the Hanseatic League or the other missing holy books. And Brachman took great comfort in hearing that the Gerona Zohar still rested safely in their possession.
More disappointment: The Rabbi could not recall a tall, raggedy evangelist preacher who had attended the Parliament of Religions. Over four hundred clergy from around the world had taken part and a year had passed; nearly impossible for a man of his age and failing memory to pick one face out of the crowd. He would be more than willing to comb through his records to see what he could find; that would take a day or so.
Not until Presto asked Brachman if he had received any unusual visitors in the days leading up to the robbery did any startling information emerge. No one before the robbery, he told them, but strange you should mention it: A collector of rare religious manuscripts had been to see him that very morning. A German businessman, Gentile, blond, tall, good-looking: come to express his sympathy about the theft of the Tikkunei Zohar. After some related idle conversation, the man mentioned he had recently purchased a rare religious book in New York; if he brought it to him, would the Rabbi be able to authenticate that the manuscript was indeed genuine?
Although the man seemed the soul of unobtrusive friendliness, solid instinct advised Rabbi Brachman to hold his tongue. How had this fellow heard about the theft of the Tikkunei Zohar? Only a few people outside of their temple had been told; it had not even been publicized.
No, he was sorry but his eyesight was failing, said Brachman. To be of any help in a matter requiring such rigorous examination would be quite impossible. He had a friend who might be of assistance but the man was away on a trip at the moment. They spoke awhile longer, quite innocently, before the man departed, leaving his card with Brachman; if the friend returned soon, would the Rabbi be good enough to let him know?
Presto magically produced an identical copy of the business card he had shown to them in New York: Frederick Schwarz-kirk, the same Chicago-based collector whose path had crossed Presto's before.
The Zohar ruse had worked, said Doyle; the man had the false book, but he also had his suspicions. If the information on his card was correct, Mr. Schwarzkirk's office lay within walking distance of the Palmer House. That would be their next stop, one consequence of which did not occur to them, as it seemed to offer no significance at the time:
Traveling there by the more direct route would take them directly past the Water Tower on Chicago Avenue.
All day the Voices in his head told Dante Scruggs this would be the night his luck would turn. The Indian bitch had spent nearly a week staked out in front of the damn Water Tower, dawn to dusk, hightailing it back to her boarding house before dark. Hadn't looked for any work; hadn't even stopped in a single store, and that just wasn't natural in a woman. All she did at the Tower was stand and stare at people as they walked past, drifting every hour from one side of the building to the other, always staying with the crowds, never leaving him a single opening to make his move. There were times when Dante began to wonder if she sensed that he was tracking her: Indians were crafty that way, like animals.
Frustration began to boil up inside him like steam in a locomotive; had he picked himself out some sort of wrong-headed freak? If the bitch was crazy, that cut the edge off his interest; she wasn't prime. Maybe the time had come to reconsider his original investment. But the Voices that morning sounded so confident; something was in the wind and he couldn't ever remember a time when the Voices steered him wrong.
Sure enough: Night came on and when the lamplighters made their rounds, she stayed put in front of the Tower. He had no way of knowing the Indian heard voices she depended on, too—voices of her ancestors—and tonight they had advised her to wait this one time until after dark. As the streets and sidewalks emptied, she planted herself under a gaslight near the Tower entrance. Seven-thirty came and went, then eight. Getting on toward Green River Time: Dante Scruggs watched from across the street, out of her sight, his anticipation and excitement slowly mounting, hands deep in the pockets of his pants; one on his Johnson, the other on his knife.
And once again, intent as he was on his prey, Dante remained unaware that he in turn was being observed: a tall, blond man this time, wearing an expensive suit, sat in a carriage on the far side of the street, eyes trained on Dante Scruggs.
Nine o'clock rang out on the city's choir of church bells. As the last peal faded, the woman seemed to have reached some kind of limit; her shoulders drooped with disappointment and she started slowly walking away. Dante perked up: This might be it. Just one more sign ...
A man walking across the street dropped a newspaper. There it was; the Voices had spoken.
Dante unscrewed the cap on the bottle of chloroform in his pocket and shook some out into his handkerchief, put the cap back on the bottle, shoved the handkerchief and his hand down into the outside pocket of his coat, and stepped out to cross the street. If she followed her usual path back to the boarding house, the first left turn would take her down an empty side street lined with warehouses where the gaslights were few and far between, and one of them hadn't worked in the three days since Dante pinched off its supply line. The mouth of a dark alley intersected the street a few steps away. That was the spot he'd picked out to take her: under the dead lamp.