Professor Moriarty: The Hound Of The D’urbervilles (28 page)

When the ball was at its height, on that still and tropic night,

She thought of him
*
and hurried to his room;

As she crossed the barrack square she could hear the dreamy air

Of a waltz tune softly stealing thro’ the gloom.
§

*
the least she could do, all things considered. Note that M.C. being stabbed didn’t stop her having her bally party. – S.M.

§
poetic license at its most mendacious. You imagine an orchestra conducted by Strauss himself and lilting, melodic strains wafting across the parade ground. The musical capabilities of the average hill station run to a corporal with a heat-warped fiddle, a boy with a Jew’s harp and a Welshman cashiered from his colliery choir for gross indecency (and singing flat). The repertoire runs to ditties like ‘Come Into the Garden, Maud (and Get the Poking You’ve Been Asking For All Evening)’ and ‘I Dreamt I Dwelled in Marble Halls (and Found Myself Fondling Prince Albert’s Balls)’. – S.M.

His door was open wide
*
, with silver moonlight shining through;

The place was wet and slipp’ry where she trod;

An ugly knife lay buried in the heart of Mad Carew
§
,

’Twas the vengeance of the little yellow god.

*
where were the guards? I’d bloody have ’em up on a charge for letting yak-bothering clod-stabbers through the lines. – S.M.

§
how much worse than being stabbed with a pretty knife, eh? – S.M.

There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
*

There’s a little marble cross below the town;

There’s a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,

And the yellow god forever gazes down
§
.

*
yes, J. Milton skimps on his poetical efforts by putting the first verse back in again. When Uncle Bertie or the bank manager’s sister read it aloud, they tend to do it jocular the first time, emphasising that rumty-tumty-tum metre, then pour on the drama for the reprise, drawing it out with exaggerated face pulling to convey the broken heartedness and a crack-of-doom hollow rumble for that final, ominous line. I blame Rudyard Kipling. – S.M.

§
Have you noticed the ambiguity about the idol? Is it only one eyed because M.C. has filched the other, or regularly configured like Polyphemus and now has its single eye back? Well, Mr Hayes was fudging because he plain didn’t know. To set the record straight, this was always a Cyclopean idol. And the poet didn’t hear the end of the story. – S.M.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking – if Mad Carew’s emerald-pinching escapade led to a twit-tended grave north of Khatmandu, how did he fetch up un-stabbed in our London consulting room, presenting a sickly countenance? Ah-hah, then read on...

‘I took the eye from the idol,’ Carew admitted. ‘I don’t care what you’ve heard about why I did it. That doesn’t matter. I took it. And I didn’t give it away. I can’t give it away, because it comes back. I’ve tried. It’s mine, by right of... well, conquest. Do you understand, Professor?’

Moriarty nodded. If he understood, that was more than I did.

‘I had to fight – to kill – to get it. I’ve had to do worse to keep alive since. They’ve not let up. They came for me at the hill station. Nearly had me, too. If letting them have the stone would save my hide, I’d wish it good riddance. But it’s not the gem they want, really. It’s the vengeance. Blighters with knives have my number. Heathen priests. That’s an end to it – they think, at any rate. Some say they
did
get me, and I’m a ghost...’

I’d not thought of that. He didn’t look like any ghost I’d run across, but, then again,
they
don’t, do they. Ghosts? Look like what you’re expecting, that is.

‘I didn’t just take this thing. I copped a fortune in other stones and gold doodads, too. Not as sacred, apparently. Though most folk who bought from me – chiselled at a penny in the pound, if that – are dead now. Even with miserly rates of fencing, I netted enough to buy out and set myself up for life. Thought I could do a lot better than Fat Amy Framington, I tell you.

‘Resigned my commission, and left for India... with the little brown men after me. More of ’em than I can count. Some odd ones, too – brown in the face, but hairy all over.
White
hairy, more brute than man. There are a few of ’em left in mountain country.
Mi-go
or yeti or Abominable Snowballs. They’re the trackers, when the priests let them off their leashes. They dogged me over India, into China... across the Pacific and through the States and the Northern Territories. Up to the Arctic with them after me on sledges... they have yeti in Canada too, Sasquatch and windigo. I heard the damned beasts hooting to each other like owls. Close scrape in New York. Had to pay off the coppers to dodge a murder charge. Steam-packet to Blighty.

‘They nearly got me again in a hotel in Liverpool, but I left six of ’em dead. Six howling bastards who won’t make further obeisance to their bloody little yellow god. Now I’m here, in London. The white man’s Kathmandu. I’ve still got this green lump. Worth a kingdom, and worth nothing...’

‘This narrative is very picturesque,’ Moriarty said, ‘though I would quibble about your strict veracity on one or two points. You could place it in the illustrated press. What I fail to perceive, Major Carew, is what exactly you want us to do?’

Carew’s eyes became hooded, shifty. For the first time, he almost smiled.

‘I heard of you in a bazaar in Peking, Professor. From a ruined Englishman who was once called Giles Conover...’

Him, I remembered. Cracksman, and a toff with it. Also enthusiastic about precious stones, though pearls were his line. Why anyone decided to set a high price on clams’ gallstones is beyond me. Conover went for whole strings. Lifted the Ingestre Necklace from Scotland Yard’s Black Museum to celebrate the centenary of the burning down of Mrs Lovett’s Fleet Street pie shop. I’ll wager you know that story.
^[4]

The Firm had done business with Conover. Before his spine got crushed.

‘You are... what was Conover’s expression... a consultant? Like a doctor or a lawyer?’

Moriarty nodded.

‘A consulting criminal?’

‘A simple way of stating my business, but it will suffice. Professionals – not only doctors and lawyers, but architects, detectives and military strategists – are available to any who meet their fees. Individuals or organisations have problems they have not the wits to solve, and call on those with expertise and experience to do so. Criminal individuals or organisations have problems too. If sufficiently interesting, I apply myself to the solution of such.’

‘Conover said you helped him...’

‘Advised him.’

‘...with a robbery. You – what? – drew up plans he followed? Like an engineer?’

‘Like a playwright, Major Carew. A dramatist. Conover’s problem required a certain flamboyance. Parties needed to be distracted while work was being done. I suggested a means of distraction.’

‘For a cut?’

‘A fee was paid.’

The Prof was being cagey about details. We arranged for a runaway cab to collide with a crowded omnibus at the corner of Leather Lane and St Cross Street. This convenient calamity drew away night guards at Tucker & Tarbert’s Gemstone Exchange long enough for Conover to nip in and abstract a cluster known as ‘the Bunch of Grapes’. Nobody died except a drunken Yorkshireman, but seven passengers were handily crippled – including a Member of Parliament who couldn’t explain why he was in the hansom with two tight-trousered post office boys and had to resign his seat. A fine night’s work all round.

Carew thought about it for a moment.

‘They are in London. The brown priests. The yeti. They mean to kill me and take back their green eye.’

‘So you have said.’

‘They nearly had me in Paddington two nights ago.’

The Professor said nothing.

‘Consider this an after-the-fact consultation, Moriarty,’ Carew said, taking a plunge. ‘I don’t need help in planning a crime. The crime’s done with, months ago and on the other side of the world. I need your help in
getting away with it.’

It became clear. The Professor ruminated. His head oscillated. Carew hadn’t seen that before and was startled.

‘You will be killed,’ the Professor said. ‘There’s no doubt about it. In all parallel cases – you have heard of the Herncastle Heirloom, I trust
^[5]
– the, as you call them, “little brown men” have prevailed. Unless some other ironic fate overtakes him first, the despoiler is routinely done to death by the cult. Did Conover tell you of the Black Pearl of the Borgias?’

‘He said he’d lost the use of his legs and been driven from England because of the thing, and he didn’t have it in his hands for more than a minute or two.’

‘That is so,’ Moriarty confirmed. ‘There are differences between your circumstances, between your Green Eye and his Black Pearl, but similarities also. With the Borgia pearl, the attendant problem was not presented by brown men, but by a white man, if man he can truthfully be called. The Hoxton Creeper. He has haunted the pearl through its unhappy chain of ownership, breaking the backs of all who try to keep hold of it. He crushed Conover’s bones to powder, though the prize was already fenced. I dare say the Creeper, a London-born Neanderthal atavism, is as abominable as any Himalayan snowman.’

Some in dire situations are gloomily happy to know others have been in the same boat. Not Carew.

‘Hang the Creeper,’ he exclaimed. ‘There’s only one of him. I’ve a whole congregation of Creepers, Crawlers and Crushers after me!’

‘So, you must die and that’s all there is to it.’

The last remaining puff went out of Mad Carew. He might as well change his daredevil nickname to Dead Carew and be done with it.

‘...and yet...’

Now the Prof’s eyes glowed, as other eyes glowed when the emerald was in view. His blood was up. Profit didn’t really stir Moriarty. He loved the numbers, not the spoils they tallied. It was the problem. The challenge. Doing that which no one else had done, which no one else could do.

‘All indications are that you must die, Carew. The raider of the sacred gem is doomed, irrevocably. Yet, why must that be? Are we not greater than any fate or superstition? I, Moriarty, refuse to accept any so-called inevitability. We shall take your case, Major Carew. Give Colonel Moran a hundred pounds as a retainer.’

Surprised and suspicious, Carew blurted out ‘Gladly!’ and produced a cheque book.

‘Cash, old fellow,’ I said.

‘Of course.’ He nodded glumly, and undid a money belt. He had the sum about him in gold sovereigns.

I piled them up and clinked them a bit. Sound. Coin, I can appreciate!

‘You are to take lodgings in our basement. There is a serviceable room, which has been used for the purpose before. Meals are provided at eight shillings daily. Breakfast, dinner, supper. Should you wish high tea or other luxuries, make private arrangements with Mrs Halifax. I need not tell you only to eat and drink what comes to you from our kitchen. We must preserve your health. I prescribe Scotch broth.’

Now, he was talking like a doctor. The Moriarty Cure, suitable for maiden ladies and gentlemen of a certain age.

‘One other thing...’ he added.

‘What? Anything?’ Carew said.

‘The Green Eye. Sell it to me for a penny down and a penny to pay at the end of the week, with the stone returned to you and the first penny forfeit if I fail to make the second payment. I shall have a legal bill of sale drawn up.’

‘You know what that would mean?’

‘I know what everything would mean. It is my business.’

‘I’ve sold it before. It comes back, and the buyers... well, the buyers are in no position to come back. Ever.’

The Professor showed his teeth and wrote out a legible receipt.

‘Moran, give me a penny,’ he said.

Without thinking, I fished a copper from my watch pocket and handed it over. Seconds later, it struck me! I’d roped myself in along with Moriarty on the receiving end of the curse. Don’t think the Prof hadn’t thought of that, because – as he said – he thought of bloody everything.

Moriarty exchanged the coin for the emerald.

It lay on his desk like a malign paperweight.

So, we were all for the high jump now.

Our client was snug in the concealed apartment beneath the storerooms – a cupboard with a cot, where we stashed tenants best advised not to show their faces at street level. Mrs Halifax, alert to the clink of a money belt, supplied tender distractions and gin at champagne prices. When Swedish Suzette (who was Polish) went downstairs, Mrs H. called it a ‘house call’ and charged extra. If Mad Carew wasn’t dead by the end of the week, he’d be dead broke.

Professor Moriarty disappeared into the windowless room where he kept his records. We were up to date on the
Newgate Calendar,
the
Police Gazette
and
Famous Murder Trials.
The Professor knew more about every pickpocket and high-rip mobster than their mothers or the arresting officers. The more arcane material was in code or foreign languages, or translated into mathematics and written down as page after page of numbers.
^[6]
He said he needed to look into precedents and parallels before deciding on a plan. I had an intimation that would be bad news for some – probably including me.

While the Prof was blowing the dust off press cuttings and jotting down cipher notes, I had the afternoon to myself. Best to get out of the flat and beetle about.

I decided to scratch an itch. On constitutionals through Soho, I had twice had my trouser cuffs assaulted by a pup in Berwick Street Market. The tiny creature’s excessively loud yapping was well known. It was past time to skewer the beast. You could consider it a public service, but the truth is – and I don’t mind if it shocks more delicate readers – killing an animal always perks me up. I’d prefer to stalk big game in the bush, but there’s none of that in London except at the zoological gardens. Even I think it unsporting to aim between the bars and ventilate Rajah the Lion or Jumbo the Elephant, though old, frustrated guns have tried to swell their bags this way when gout or angry colonial officials prevent them from returning to the veldt.