White Fire

52

Three o’clock in the morning, December twenty-fourth. After flitting like a specter past the worn shopfronts and dark windows of Old Town, Pendergast took just seconds to break into the Ideal Saloon, picking the picturesque but ineffectual nineteenth-century lock.

He stepped into the dim space of the bar-cum-museum, its interior illuminated only by several strips of emergency fluorescent lighting, which cast garish shadows about the room. The saloon consisted of a large, central room, with circular tables, chairs, and a plank floor. A long bar ran the entire length of the far end. The walls consisted of wainscoting of vertical beadboard, gleaming with varnish and darkened by time, below flocked velvet wallpaper in a flowery Victorian pattern. The wall was decorated with sconces of copper and cut glass. Behind the bar and to the right, a staircase led up to what had been a small whorehouse. And farther off to the right, in an alcove partly under the staircase, stood some gaming tables. Velvet ropes just inside two swinging doors created a viewing area, preventing visitors from proceeding into the restored saloon.

Moving without noise, Pendergast ducked under the ropes and took a long, thoughtful turn about the room. A whisky bottle and some shot glasses stood on the bar, and several tables were also arrayed with bottles and glasses. Behind the bar stood a large mirrored case of antique liquor bottles filled with colored water.

He moved through the bar and into the gaming area. A poker table stood in one corner, covered with green felt, with hands of five-card stud laid out: four aces against a straight flush. A blackjack table, also artfully arranged with cards, stood beside a splendid antique roulette wheel with ivory, red jasper, and ebony inlay.

Pendergast glided past the gaming area to a door under the stairs. He tried to open it, found it locked, and swiftly picked the lock.

It opened into a small, dusty room, which remained unrestored, with cracked plaster walls and peeling wallpaper, some old chairs, and a broken table. Graffiti, some bearing dates from the 1930s, when Roaring Fork was still a ghost town, were scratched into the wall. A pile of broken whisky bottles lay in one corner. At the back of this room stood a door that led, Pendergast knew, to a rear exit.

He took off his coat and scarf and carefully draped them over one of the chairs, and looked around, slowly and carefully, as if committing everything to memory. He stood, quite still, for a long time, and then finally he stirred. Choosing a vacant spot on the floor, he lay down on the dirty boards and folded his hands over his chest, like a corpse in a coffin. Slowly, very slowly, he closed his eyes. In the silence, he focused on the sounds of the snowstorm: the muffled wind shaking and moaning about the exterior walls, the creaking of the wood, the rattling of the tin roof. The air smelled of dust, dry rot, and mildew. He allowed his respiration and pulse to slow and his mind to relax.

It was in this back room, he felt certain, that the Committee of Seven would have met up. But before he went down that avenue, there was another place he wished to visit first — a visit that would take place entirely within his mind.

Pendergast had once spent time in a remote Tibetan monastery, studying an esoteric meditative discipline known as Chongg Ran. It was one of the least known of the Tibetan mind techniques. The teachings were never put down in writing, and they could only be transmitted directly teacher-to-pupil.

Pendergast had taken the heart of Chongg Ran and combined it with several other mental disciplines, including the concept of a memory palace as described in a sixteenth-century Italian manuscript by Giordano Bruno titled Ars Memoria, Art of Memory. The result was a unique and highly complex form of mental visualization. With training, careful preparation, and a fanatical degree of intellectual discipline, the exercise allowed him to take a complex problem with many thousands of facts and surmises, and mentally stitch them together into a coherent narrative, which could then be processed, analyzed — and, especially, experienced. Pendergast used the technique to help solve elusive problems; to visualize places, via the force of his intellect, that could not be reached physically — far distant places, or even places in the past. The technique was extremely draining, however, and he employed it sparingly.

He lay for many minutes, as still as a corpse, first arranging a hugely complex set of facts into careful order, then tuning his senses to the surrounding environment while simultaneously shutting down the voice in his mind, turning off that incessant running commentary all people carry in their heads. The voice had been especially voluble of late, and it took a great deal of effort to silence it; Pendergast was forced to move his meditative stance from the Third Level to the Fourth Level, doing complex equations in his head, playing four hands of bridge simultaneously. At last, the voice was silenced, and he then began the ancient steps of Chongg Ran itself. First, he blocked every sound, every sensation, one after another: the creaking of the building, the rustling of the wind, the scent of dust, the hard floor beneath him, the seeming infinitude of his own corporal awareness — until at length he arrived at the state of stong pa nyid: the condition of Pure Emptiness. For a moment, there was only nonexistence; even time itself seemed to fall away.

But then — slowly, very slowly — something began to materialize out of the nothingness. At first it was as miniaturized, as delicate, as beautiful as a Fabergé egg. With that same lack of hurry, it grew larger and clearer. Eyes still shut, Pendergast allowed it to take on form and definition around him. And then, at last, he opened his eyes to find himself within a brightly lit space: a splendid and elegant dining room, refulgent with light and crystal, the clinking of glasses, and the murmur of genteel conversation.

To the smell of cigar smoke and the learned discourse of a string quartet, Pendergast took in the opulent room. His eyes traveled over the tables, finally stopping at one in a far corner. Seated at it were four gentlemen. Two of the men were laughing together over some witticism or other — one wearing a broadcloth frock coat, the other in evening dress. Pendergast, however, was more interested in the other two diners. One was dressed flamboyantly: white kid gloves, a vest and cutaway coat of black velvet, a large frilled necktie, silk knee breeches and stockings, slippers adorned with grosgrain bows. An orchid drooped in his buttonhole. He was in deep descant, speaking animatedly, one hand pressed against his breast, the other pointing heavenward, index finger extended in a travesty of John the Baptist. The man beside him, who seemed to be hanging on his companion’s every word, presented an entirely different appearance, a contrast so strong as to almost be comical. He was a stocky fellow in a somber, sensible English suit, with big mustaches and an awkward bearing.

They were Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Slowly, in his mind, Pendergast approached the table, listening intently, as the conversation — or, more frequently, monologue — became audible.

“Indeed?” Wilde was saying, in a remarkably deep and sonorous voice. “Did you think that — as one who would happily sacrifice himself on the pyre of aestheticism — I do not recognize the face of horror when I stare into it?”

There was no empty seat. Pendergast turned, motioned to a waiter, indicated the table. Immediately, the man brought up a fifth chair, placing it between Conan Doyle and the man Pendergast realized must be Joseph Stoddart.

“I was once told a story so dreadful, so distressing in its particulars and in the extent of its evil, that now I truly believe nothing I hear could ever frighten me again.”

“How interesting.”

“Would you care to hear it? It is not for the faint of heart.”

As he listened to the conversation taking place beside him, Pendergast reached forward, poured himself a glass of wine, found it excellent.

“It was told to me during my lecture tour of America a few years back. On my way to San Francisco, I stopped at a rather squalid yet picturesque mining camp known as Roaring Fork.” Wilde pressed his hand to Doyle’s knee for emphasis. “After my lecture, one of the miners approached me, an elderly chap somewhat the worse — or, perhaps, the better — for drink. He took me aside, said he’d enjoyed my story so much that he had one of his own to share with me.” He paused for a sip of burgundy. “Here, lean in a little closer, that’s a good fellow, and I’ll tell it you exactly as it was told to me.”

Doyle leaned in, as requested. Pendergast leaned in, as well.

“I tried to escape him, but he would have none of it, presuming to approach me in a most familiar way, breathing fumes of the local ubriacant. My first impulse was to push past, but there was something about the look in his eye that stopped me. I confess I was also intrigued — in an anthropological fashion, Doyle, don’t you know — by this leathern specimen, this uncouth bard, this bibulous miner, and I found myself curious as to what he considered a ‘good story.’ And so I listened, and rather attentively, as his American drawl was nigh indecipherable. He spoke of events that had occurred some years earlier, not long after the silver strikes that established Roaring Fork. Over the course of one summer, a grizzled bear — or so it was believed — had taken to roaming the mountains above the town, attacking, killing…and eating…lone miners working their claims.”

Doyle nodded vigorously, his face concentrated with the utmost interest.

“Naturally, the town fell into a state of perfect terror. But the killings went on, as there were many lone men upon the mountain. The bear was merciless, ambuscading the miners outside their cabins, killing and savagely dismembering them — and then feasting upon their flesh.” Wilde paused. “I should have liked to have known whether the, ah, consumption commenced while consciousness was still present. Can you imagine what it would be like to be devoured alive by a savage beast? To watch it tear your flesh off, then chew and swallow, with evident satisfaction? That is a contemplation never even considered by Huysmans in his À Rebours. How sadly lacking the aesthete was, in hindsight!”

Wilde glanced over to see what effect his words were having on the country doctor. Doyle had grasped his glass of claret and taken a deep draught. Listening, Pendergast took a sip of his own glass, then signaled a waiter to bring him a menu.

“Many a fellow tried to track the grizzled bear,” Wilde continued, “but none was successful — save for one miner, a man who had learned the fine art of tracking while living among Indians. He conceived a notion that the killings were not the work of a bear.”

“Not the work of a bear, sir?”

“Not the work of a bear, sir. And so, waiting until the next killing, this chap — his name was Cropsey — went a-tracking, and soon discovered that the perpetrators of this outrage were a group of men.”

At this, Doyle leaned back rather abruptly. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Wilde. Do you mean to say that these men were…cannibals?”

“Indeed I do. American cannibals.”

Doyle shook his head. “Monstrous. Monstrous.”

“Quite so,” Wilde said. “They have none of the good manners of your English cannibals.”

Doyle stared at his fellow guest in shock. “This is no matter for levity, Wilde.”

“Perhaps not. We shall see. In any case, our Cropsey tracked these cannibals to their lair, an abandoned mine shaft somewhere on the mountain, at a place called Smuggler’s Wall. There was no constabulary in the town, of course, and so this fellow organized a small group of local vigilantes. They cognominated themselves the Committee of Seven. They would scale the mountain in the dark of night, surprise the cannibals, and administer the rough justice of the American West.” Wilde toyed with his boutonnière. “The very next night, at midnight, this group gathered at the local saloon to discuss strategy and no doubt fortify themselves for the coming ordeal. They then departed by a back door, heavily armed, and equipped with lanterns, rope, and a torch. This, my dear Doyle, is where the story turns…well, not to put too fine a point on it, rather ghastly. Do steady yourself, there’s a good chap.”

The waiter brought over a menu, and Pendergast turned his attention to it. Three or four minutes later, he was jarred from his perusal by Doyle’s sudden violent rise from the table — knocking his chair over in his agitation — and subsequent flight from the dining room, his face a mixture of shock and disgust.

“Why, whatever’s the matter?” Stoddart said, frowning, as Doyle disappeared in the direction of the gentlemen’s lounge.

“I suspect it must be the prawns,” Wilde replied, and he dabbed primly at his mouth with a napkin…

…As slowly as it had come, the voice began to fade from Pendergast’s mind. The sumptuous interior of the Langham Hotel began to waver, as if dissolving into mist and darkness. Slowly, slowly, a new scene materialized — a very different scene. It was the smoke-filled, whisky-redolent back room of a busy saloon, the sounds of gambling, drinking, and argument penetrating the thin wooden walls. A back room, in fact, remarkably similar to the one in which Pendergast was — in the Roaring Fork of the present — currently situated. After a brief exchange of determined voices, a group of seven men rose from a large table: men carrying lanterns and guns. Following their leader, one Shadrach Cropsey, they made their way out the back door of the little room and into the night.

Pendergast followed them, his incorporeal presence hovering in the cool night air like a ghost.