Doyle held out the flier, Presto lit a match, and they saw a crude pen and ink sketch of a diabolical-looking Asian man above a brief, lurid description of his alleged crimes.
" 'Chop-Chop the decapitating Chinaman,' " read Innes. " 'Wanted for ten terrible murders throughout the Arizona Territory. Suspected in countless other dastardly crimes.' "
"Busy little bugger, isn't he?" said Presto.
" 'The most dangerous man alive,' " read Doyle, darkly amused. "At least they resisted the impulse to hyperbolize. And a five-thousand-dollar reward. That explains the volunteers."
"Good God, could one man have done all this?" asked Presto, looking out at the slaughter around them.
"Not by himself. These men were caught in a crossfire," said Doyle, pointing to two sides of the clearing. "From here and there, behind the rocks. Four men, at least."
"With repeating rifles," said Innes, from behind the rocks. "Shells all over the place."
"And they all still have their heads," said Presto. "Hardly this Chop-Chop's traditional modus operandi..."
The flier was snatched out of his hands; Jack had walked up behind them and now held the paper, staring at the picture intently.
"What is it, Jack?" asked Doyle softly.
"He knows," said Walks Alone.
"Knows what?"
"That man is in the dream," she said, pointing to the flier. "One of the Six."
Jack looked up at her, agreement shining in his eyes.
"Then we can conclude these men were tracking him toward The New City when they were attacked," said Doyle.
Jack handed back the flier and ran purposefully toward the horses.
"Let's go," said Doyle.
"We should provide them a proper burial first," said Presto, looking around at the vultures gathering again at the perimeter.
"The desert will take care of it," said Walks Alone, moving back to the opening in the rocks.
"Bad form, don't you agree?" asked Presto of the Doyles.
"Yes," said Doyle, starting after her.
"Haven't you seen this fellow in the dream yourself?" asked Innes.
"Suppose I have, now that I think on it," said Presto in his peculiarly indifferent way, staring at the drawing. "Not much of a likeness, finally."
"Hope the bloke's half as good with that sword they say he's carrying as you are with your rapier," said Innes, running after Doyle.
"Let's hope he's on our side," said Presto quietly. He crossed himself, intoned a silent prayer for the dead, and left the scene of the massacre.
Jack was already on his horse by the time the group returned, and he galloped off to the west with Walks Alone close behind him before the others mounted. No one said a word as they scrambled to keep up with them; the secret delight Doyle felt at the signs of Jack's recovery was tempered by thoughts of what might be waiting for them in The New City.
The shirts made for a peculiar audience, thought Eileen. But why should that be different from anything else about them? Their attentiveness to the claptrap, Ruritanian melodrama bordered on reverent. Applause broke from a field of white in uniform bursts as unexpectedly as thunder. All their responses—laughter, sighs, gasps—came in a chorus, like one mind with the same thought expressing itself with a thousand voices.
Rymer had seemed irrationally pleased by the Players' lackluster rehearsal that day and he could not stop raving about The New City Theater. Was it only her imagination or was the man behaving even loonier than usual? For all his excitement, you would have thought the late Edwin-fucking-Booth was going to be in the audience that night.
She had to agree with him on one point: To her eye the theater's backstage facilities looked functional and well de signed, if a bit rudimentary, but the auditorium itself was a stunner, plush and fancy as any she'd seen in New York or London, let alone the horse opera circuit they'd been hunting for the past six months. Perhaps the sight of such velvety opulence had thrown Bendigo into some fever-dream of Broadway; he was ripping through the text tonight as if they could hear him clear across the Hudson.
Eileen had played her first-act scenes—nearly deafened by Rymer's rampaging histrionics, most of them blasted only inches away from her face—but instead of retiring to the dressing room, she found a quiet spot in the wings where she could look out and study the audience.
Disturbed: Frank had not come back with news of Jacob, but he had told her it might take until after the curtain came down. Trying to silence her fears. She could depend on Frank McQuethy to keep his word, of that much she felt certain. In the presence of such a—there was no other way to put it— such a man, under any other circumstances it would have been herself she wasn't sure she could trust.
When Frank returned with Jacob after the show, the three of them would ride out of town and she would file Bendigo Rymer neatly in with the rest of her mistakes. Let the penny-pinching crackpot keep her damn salary; tonight was her last performance with the Penultimate Players. One more clinch with Bendigo and her prison sentence ended.
Then what? She would travel east with Jacob, make sure he returned safely home. Beyond that; well, yes, she loved the old man dearly, but be realistic, love: Is living with Rabbi Stern honestly the sort of Me you see for your retirement, settling on the Lower East Side, doing the washing up in your babushka, seeing him into his declining years—and how far off can they be? Now Frank McQuethy, on the other hand ...
A row of men wearing black caught her eye—the first she'd seen in anything other than white—above stage right, in the | foremost of the mezzanine boxes. Standing around one man sitting alone in the first row of seats beside the rail. She shielded her eyes from the glare of the footlights.
Reverend Day.
Their meeting must have ended. She felt a dizzying flutter in her chest. But that should be good news. Frank and Jacob would be waiting for her. Why was her heart sinking?
The hard edges of the Reverend's face as he watched the play seemed lit from within by some wicked, hideous glee, radiating cold intelligence and cruelty, his head permanently craned to one side on that awful thrusting stalk of a neck.
Jacob was not safe and she knew it.
She heard a distant popping sound, like a string of firecrackers somewhere outside the theater, followed by faint shouts and the deep sounding of a bell—the actors suddenly looked silly; the real world intruding into their fragile, posturing make-believe, the illusion exposed as hollow and mildly ridiculous.
The guards in the box straightened up at the sounds; the Reverend spun around and gestured, two of them quickly exited. The Reverend's attention withdrawing from the action on stage—Bendigo strutting around, waving his sword, in the throes of heroism. None of the other actors aware ...
A handful of black-shirted guards burst back into the box, led by the huge man in the long gray coat Eileen had seen on the street; Reverend Day turning to them, voice rising in alarm, competing with the actors now.
"No! NO!" shouted Reverend Day.
Heads turning in the audience, a buzz of confusion. Chaos in the box on the verge of boiling over.
"NO! NO! NO! NO!"
Reverend Day screaming at the men around him; they recoiled from his rage. The actors losing their way, falling out of character, staring out at the disturbance. Stagehands peering up from the wings. Bendigo dropping his focus in the scene, tracing the problem to its source, then marching impatiently down to the footlights.
Reverend Day wheeling around, limping to the edge of the box, shouting at the audience, all eyes turning to him, a desperate eagerness distorting his features.
"IT COMES! IT COMES! THE SIGN! IT IS BEGUN, MY CHILDREN! THE TIME!"
Instant a storm of terror sweeping through the white shirts below; moans, wailing, screams, men and women both. Terrible, piteous, abject.