The Sacred Cipher (3 page)

Spurgeon walked quickly down Great Dover Street, toward Weston Street and the Thames,
trying not to look over his shoulder. His umbrella helped deflect much of the downpour
but also restricted his vision. As he turned into Black Horse Court, by habit, his
gaze swiveled to the rear. For weeks, his anxiety had been fed by a foreboding that
he was being watched, followed. With the rain pounding on his umbrella, he failed
to hear the fast-approaching hoofbeats on the cobblestones. The horse missed him,
but the front wheel of the livery wagon caught his shoulder as it flashed past, driving
him back to the wall and down to the sidewalk. Spurgeon may have thought it an accident
except for the arrow that thudded into the wall next to his head, and the second that
clipped his coat as he twisted to look at the first.

He had fled for his life, leaving both his umbrella and his dignity on Black Horse
Court. Now, here he was, not far from his church and his world—cold, wet, hiding in
the dark, terrified of some unknown, but very real, threat.

Spurgeon often wondered if the scroll he held in his pocket would lead others to pursue
its path, bringing them to him. Now he had his answer.

Soaked to the skin, remaining in the dark, Spurgeon twisted his head to the left and
tried to look up the street. A shadow moved on the right in a garden, and another
on the left in the lee of a stable. But what Spurgeon focused on was the shape coming
around the corner and toward his hiding place.
Please God
, Spurgeon mouthed in silent prayer. The shape slowed and stopped halfway down the
street. Spurgeon waited. The door opened and closed, and the shape slowly moved forward.
Spurgeon waited. Only as the hansom came abreast of his hiding place did Spurgeon
toss himself out of hiding, arm raised. “Cabbie!” Startled, the hansom driver reined
up. Spurgeon was already scrambling through the door and into the cab. “Shad Thames,
the docks at Curfew Street—quickly, please—we must get there before the tide.”

A snap of the whip just as Spurgeon spun his head. The cab rocked forward, so he would
never be certain. But snatching a look out the rear window as the cab began to move,
Spurgeon caught a momentary glimpse of what appeared to be two men clothed in kaftans
and kaffiyeh, running in the shadows of the buildings on either side of the street.
Two arrows thumped into the back wall of the cab, their pointed barbs his only companions
as the cabbie raced to the river.

“Your wife’s strudel is always the highlight of each crossing.”

“Thank you, Captain Paradis. As soon as she heard you at the door, she went to the
kitchen to prepare one in your honor. But we will both have to wait until after dinner,
I’m afraid. Here, sit,” said Louis Klopsch. “What have you brought from Charles this
time?”

Captain Timothy Paradis reached into the canvas boat bag that was propped against
his chair, the one with
Kronos
stitched on its side. “I’m not sure, Dr. Klopsch, but this one is certainly not a
book.” Paradis lifted a bundle from the bag and cautiously unwrapped it.

Making sure debris fell into the boat bag and not onto Mrs. Klopsch’s clean floor,
Paradis shook off remnants of sawdust and held aloft an ornately designed, red silk
purse. From the purse, he withdrew a metal tube about the size of a collapsed telescope,
with designs etched on its surface.

“Reverend Spurgeon said I was to deliver it to you, and you alone,” said Paradis,
passing the tube into Klopsch’s hands. “And I was to do it personally. Reverend Spurgeon
was quite emphatic on that point, I must say.”

Dr. Louis Klopsch’s friendship with the famous London preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon
extended well beyond the two years since Klopsch had purchased a unique newspaper
owned by Spurgeon,
The Christian Herald and Signs of Our Times
. Klopsch continued publishing the newspaper, and it had grown into a place of prominence
among New York City’s faithful.

Klopsch hefted the metal tube in his hands. “I mentioned to him once that I had an
interest in ancient documents,” he said to Paradis. “Now, I have no more room to store
the gifts he, and his colleagues, have sent me from around the world. I have a closet
there, in the hallway, which is full of books from Dr. Spurgeon. Believe me, I’m grateful.
But . . .” Klopsch shrugged his shoulders. “And this . . . what could this be? It
is very . . .”

Gerta Klopsch stood silently in the doorway, a towel in her hands, a smile on her
full face, and the smell of cabbage swirling in her wake. “It is lovely,” said Gerta.
“But I think it must wait. Louis . . . Captain . . . dinner is ready.”

After two weeks eating in the galley of the
Kronos
, Paradis was up and out of his chair in a lick.

“Well, we’ll just put this away for now,” said Klopsch. He returned the tube to the
silk purse, which he fastened shut. Entering the hallway to the dining room, Klopsch
stopped, turned a key in the lock, and opened the door to a closet.

“Upon my word,” said Paradis, “I never dreamed you had so many . . . you are right,
sir. There is no more room.”

Klopsch pulled the silk purse tight around the metal tube and wedged it into a small
space in the corner of a bottom shelf. “When next you see Charles, please tell him
what you witnessed here tonight.” Klopsch closed the door, turned the key, and escorted
Paradis down the hall. “Please, tell him no more . . . no more books.”

The
Kronos
was moving on the tide, sliding smoothly out of New York harbor, when Captain Timothy
Paradis caught the smell of apples on the air and was reminded of Gerta Klopsch’s
apple strudel, the last piece of which sat on a bench to his left, wrapped in brown
paper. It was then he remembered the letter.

The letter from Spurgeon to Klopsch that was inside the purse. The letter he had forgotten
to tell the doctor about.

“Louis? Do men from the mission know our address?”

Dr. Louis Klopsch lowered his newspaper and considered his wife’s question. “No, Gerta.
Why do you ask?”

Gerta Klopsch took a step into the sitting room, her twisting hands tangled in the
embroidered apron that tried valiantly to cover her ample proportions. “Today, two
men came. Strange men . . . foreign . . . they look like sailors. They come to the
gate in back. I surprised them when I went out with wash clothes. They asked for you
by name. Who should know we live here?”

Klopsch laid the paper in his lap, the last gasps of a brittle winter sun barely piercing
the windows of their home, a small, two-story Federal-style house in Lower Manhattan.
He didn’t like the sounds of this. He and Gerta made their home far enough away from
the Bowery Mission—on Ryder’s Alley, a thin, L-shaped lane between Fulton and Gold
streets—that none should stumble into their yard by mistake. In the two years since
he had purchased the facility, a rescue mission for the homeless and derelict along
New York’s infamous Bowery, this was the first time that anything like this had occurred.

“These men, what was their purpose?” he asked. “Did you inquire why they sought me?”

“No, Louis . . . forgive me. They ask for you. I say you are not here. And they leave.
Quickly. I can ask them nothing more.”

Klopsch rose, placed the newspaper neatly on his chair, and crossed the room to his
wife. He rescued her hands from the wrinkled apron and held them softly in his own.
“All is well, Gerta.” He placed a finger under her chin, tilting her face toward his.
“There is nothing to fear. I will discover more about these men, of that I am certain.”

Klopsch was confused, unsure about the sound that woke him that night, until he heard
it a second time. Breaking glass.

He slipped out of bed—fortunately Gerta was a sound sleeper—and pulled his pants under
his nightshirt. Suspenders hanging at his sides, Klopsch moved silently to the top
of the stairs and listened to the night. He felt a chill draft rising from the floor
below, brother to the one rising up his spine. A crackling sound . . . two thumps
. . . and Klopsch edged swiftly down the stairs, his body leaning back against the
wall.

Klopsch heard a muffled crack to his left as he cleared the final step. Standing in
the foyer, he hesitated for just a moment—should he grab his heavy-handled walking
stick or try to light the gas lamp? In that brief moment, a dark shape backed out
from the closet to his left and into the hall. The shape appeared to be carrying bundles
in his arms.

“Stop!” Klopsch grabbed the stick in his right hand and raised it over his head. Feet
ran into the darkness, the back door burst open, and two shadows fled into the yard
before Klopsch could move an inch.

Gerta, her hand to her mouth, stared at the pile of discarded books in the hallway,
the glass scattered on the floor of the sitting room, as Klopsch came back from securing
the back door.