Professor Moriarty: The Hound Of The D’urbervilles (50 page)

‘Twenty-seven,’ she said. Her eyes were clear.

It was important to me, in that moment, that she was
more
than half my age. If only technically.

Of all the women in the room, Sophy was the one who wouldn’t want paying. I know, I know... I’ve said it before: you always end up paying, and with tarts at least you know that beforehand and can be cheerful about it. Sometimes you need the
illusion
of a thing freely given.

I claimed a birthday kiss. But we fit together wrong.

Another moment passed. Throttler Parker set his Jew’s harp twanging – he’s a virtuoso on the noise-making nuisance, so I’m told by experts – and Mistress Strict hauled Polly about in a regimented foxtrot.

Sophy, kindly if wet-lipped and moustache-scratched, asked me if I’d care to, but I’ve had too many evenings end with women smashing crockery to be tempted by Greek dancing. She was taken away by Simon Carne, nimble and limber despite his fake hunchback.

A while later, I left the party to avail myself of the lavatory on the first-floor landing. I was steady on the stairs, though I’d a lot of drink in me. It’s a Bangalore Pioneer point of pride to be ready for inspection (indeed, for battle), no matter how much firewater was downed in the mess. On my way back, I lingered at the door of Fifi’s boudoir. I heard the rattle of a bedstead and her famous screeches of abandon – louder, I fancied, than ever – all to a rhythmic pulse. The subaltern gasped as if the life were being yanked out of him.

I should have wrenched the door open, dragged the young pup off the girl, tossed him into a corner, and told him to sit quietly and take notes as I demonstrated the Basher Moran Special. I’d make Fifi scream, all right. Scream like the Mountmain banshee having her toenails pulled out. I’d rattle the bedstead till it flew apart, and we were rutting on springs.

I should have.

Instead, I succumbed on the stairs. I sat down for a moment’s rest, and fell asleep. I woke hugging the airgun case like a hard pillow. For some reason, I’d taken Moriarty’s present with me from party to
pissoir.
Well past midnight, the house was quiet except for someone sobbing in a distant room. It wasn’t my birthday any more.

After several dozen gins, Mrs Halifax finally cornered Throttler with a demand the little man put his Jew’s harp skill to lower purpose. The next morning, the Madame was indisposed, so Polly brought in breakfast. When bending over to polish the silver and ‘surprised’ by a caller who fancied himself Master of the House, Poll was frolicsome and saucy. Obliged to do actual drudge work, she was sour-tempered and tended to clatter.

I wasn’t fresh as a daisy. I could hardly look at my kedgeree. Moriarty, emerged refreshed from his wasp den, set to decapitating boiled eggs as he looked over a sheaf of telegrams. Some were strings of numbers. His plans proceeded well, I gathered. If thwarted, he’d be in a mood to torture his eggs before topping them. His oscillation was almost cheerful. He cut his toast into soldiers, for dipping in yolks.

The air rifle was on the table, locked in its case.

I was still astonished the Professor had thought to get me a birthday present, even if it was a tool I’d be expected to use in his service. I supposed I should show gratitude, or even interest.

‘The Von Herder, Moriarty... is it to be used in your pre-emptive strikes?’

His head stopped moving and he looked at me queerly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘To dash down the heroes before they set out on their quests. I assume you’ve a list of coconuts for the shy. Which budding genius of detection will first present a target for a silent potshot?’

Moriarty laid down a half-eaten soldier. He had yolk on his lips.

‘Moran, you should know better.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ I said, perplexed. ‘Your lecture to your peers, about the threats we face...’

‘Real enough and we’ll deal with them in time, but what I said in the tomb was mostly
yarning.
A distraction from the true purpose of the gathering.’

Even for Moriarty, this was rum.

‘You mean you do not propose “a commonwealth of criminal empires?”

‘Of course not. Can you imagine such a thing operating for more than a week? Would you care to be in business with Jack Quartz? The man’s insane, for one thing. An habitual, compulsive betrayer. They all are. Things we might do for expedience, they do out of habit. The Lord of Strange Deaths despises the white races and would always seek primacy. To that Chinaman, you and I and General Gordon and Queen Victoria are all the same barbarian breed.
Les Vampires
are French, no more need be said of them. Any arrangement such as I seemed to propose would lead to internecine wars and ruin us more swiftly than a dozen police forces acting in concert.’

“‘Seemed
to propose”?’

‘A diversion, Moran. A serious enough proposition to be listened to for a short while. None of our guests will have considered it past nightfall. Even the Creeper. No, that was not the purpose of the summit I convened. I had to be sure one man would attend. An invitation to him alone would have been too obvious a trap. His flaw is vanity, you know. He wanted to look me in the face again and feel he had the measure of me... but, even more than that, he wants to be of our party, on a level with Professor Moriarty and Dr Nikola and the Countess Cagliostro. He does not lack ambition.’

‘Who are you talking about?’

‘Mabuse, of course. Dr Mabuse, or whatever else he may call himself. He likes “the Great Unknown”. The man without a real face. The master of disguise. The fake fake Carnacki. The shadow man of the
Kallinikos.’

‘Dr Mabuse was the ringer?’

Moriarty clapped, once. ‘Enlightenment dawns. Yes, Moran. Dr Mabuse was the master spy who tried to steal the secret of Greek Fire. Oh, he’s had me marked for some while, observing at a distance, learning my methods. He was in the audience at Stent’s Red Planet League lecture. The droll student who shouted, “I say, Stent, is that the sick squid you owe me?” In the business of the Bensington Rejuvenator, he was one of the researchers in Cologne who falsified the experimental logs. Then, he assumed the guise of a London rough called “Frog Junkin”, and was even – at two or three removes – on our payrolls for a month, doing odd jobs in the East End. The Frog stood lookout when Parker garrotted the Reverend John Jago during the Spitalfields Anti-Vice Crusade. After that, he became a Neapolitan for a year, in the Camorra under Don Rafaele Corbucci. He was at the Battle of the Six Maledictions, and pretended to die with a Templar sword through him. All the while, he has been maintaining multiple lives in Berlin – as an alienist, a financier, a rabble-rouser, a rabbi, a washerwoman, a card shark, a policeman. Plagiarising my methods, he has built up his own gang. I do not know where his mania comes from, for mania it is. He wishes to steal everything from me. He wants to
be
me.’

My jaw was slack, and I dribbled tea.

Why on earth would anyone want to be Moriarty? Of all the people to idolise, to envy, to imitate... Professor James Moriarty! I honestly think the Grand Vampire got more enjoyment out of his calling, and his life expectancy could be calculated in months. Moriarty was what he was because his nature gave him no other option. He had grown crooked from stony ground, leeching what water he could from deep roots. To set out to become such a solitary monster was beyond understanding.

This kraut plainly couldn’t bear to be whoever he originally was. Else, why try on all the other faces? Great impersonators are all the same. Simon Carne and Paul Finglemore were just as cracked – ditchwater dull as themselves, but alive when they could hide under crepe hair, wax noses and trick corsets. Even
that bitch
dressed up for character parts and flung herself about to put clear blue ocean between Miss Irene Adler, international adventuress, and Mrs Irene Norton, New Jersey bourgeoise.

‘Surely, if the picklehead’s barmy, he’s liable to wake up one morning frothing at the mouth claiming he’s transformed into a giant beetle. You know what these disguise wallahs are like, Moriarty. It’s a short hop, skip and hysterical fit from padded cheeks to padded cell. No need to worry about competition from inside the madhouse.’

‘In the end, you are right, Moran. The strains of living so many lives are too much for one man. Yet, in the short term, Dr Mabuse will prove troublesome.’

‘You’ve only just found this out?’

‘I had to be sure Mabuse was the mastermind of the
Kallinikos.
Only face to face could I determine beyond doubt he was the creature who interfered with us in that business. Hah! The cheek of it! Playing Finglemore playing Carnacki, and running all those other agents as if they were rivals not minions. He uses mesmerism, of course. Symptomatic of a need to control what cannot be controlled. Very German. He’s no spy, not through conviction or calling. He set out to steal Greek Fire not for profit, though I daresay he could have turned a penny selling the secret on an exclusive basis to five or six governments. No, he took an interest because he knew my brothers – my cursed brothers! – would pull me into the affair. He came at me through my
family,
Moran.’

‘Low, I admit... but he
is
a foreigner.’

The Professor thumped the table, rattling the silverware. By his standards, he was impassioned.

‘I cannot tolerate such impudence. It’s to the death, now. There can be no other outcome. Mabuse must fall that Moriarty can endure.’

‘He’s no hero, no
detective...
’

‘Try to keep up, Moran. At present, we’ve little to fear from bloodhounds and magnifying glasses. My would-be doppelganger is a direct threat. Mabuse was the most likely, but the Grand Vampire and Hentzau were possibilities. I had to include them to rule them out. Even Théophraste Lupin was suspect. Only a scheme as vast as my balloon about a “commonwealth of criminal empires” could justify the guest list necessary to flush out our foe.’

My head span. It was not yet ten o’clock, and I could have done with a lie-down. The most outrageous aspect of what the Professor had done – the most inadvisable, to my feeble mind – was daring to summon the deadliest men and women on Earth as set-dressing.

It was all about some bloody German.

The likes of the Lord of Strange Deaths and Countess Cagliostro would not care to be ‘also in the cast as courtiers, gentlemen, sailors, gondoliers, etc.’ If they ever found out, they’d seek redress from the Professor. And, by association, everyone in the Firm – including me. These creatures didn’t last as long as they had – and the Lord and the Countess had, by some accounts, lasted for centuries – by being the sorts who don’t find things out. If his scheme went wrong, Moriarty would have his commonwealth of criminal empires all right – an alliance of evil geniuses, master crooks and deadly assassins directed against his oscillating head! Mabuse would only have to hold the others’ coats while they dismantled us piece by piece!

‘So, we hit Mabuse?’

‘How, Moran? He won’t look like he did yesterday.’

‘You said you’d know him however he was disguised.’

‘So I would. But I’d have to see him to know him. He won’t show himself now until he chooses to.’

‘Why didn’t we shoot him yesterday?’

He looked at me, piercingly. I recollected an alligator whose eye I caught while dropping off a New Orleans friend in a bayou. I half thought Moriarty would take up nictitating some day.

‘Moran, I would back you against Rupert of Hentzau, though you are twice his age... I would give you even odds against Irma Vep or Princess Zanoni... and you could best Arthur Raffles despite his boxing blue. But the Daughter of the Dragon? Dr Nikola? The Creeper? All of them together? I fear you would not survive a scrap like that. Which is why I took this from you...’

He returned my small-of-the-back revolver.

‘You do have a plan, Moriarty?’

‘Several.’

He went back to his breakfast and his telegrams. I was not reassured.

What happened over the next three months was in the papers. Oh, the press didn’t make the connections. But the facts were noisy enough.

In the middle of February, someone with a Clontarf accent called Inspector Lukens on the telephone and told him a dynamite outrage was imminent in North London. That night, a terrific explosion in Kingstead Cemetery destroyed the Thoroughgood tomb. So many bodies – and parts of bodies – were flung about Egyptian Avenue that it was four days before they were sorted out. Then, the Special Irish Branch announced this ‘Fenian atrocity’ was not mere vandalism, but foul murder. Walter Grimes had been caught in the blast, prompting amusing ‘man found dead in graveyard’ headlines. The sexton’s widow couldn’t say why he was at the cemetery well after normal service hours.

Of more concern to the Firm, especially when Patterson of the Criminal Investigation Division took an interest, was that examination of supposed Thoroughgood corpses turned up one or two recognisable heads. The senior Mr Bulstrode sweated it out when called in to explain how he had come to mistake the absconded Belgian financier Maupertuis for Uncle Septimus. The undertaker acted befuddled, more concerned that the CID not examine the contents of the coffins in his private parlour than with trifling accessory to murder charges. Inspection of the ruins by those police laboratory bods the Prof had got his peers all steamed up about disclosed some curious facts. The dynamite had been smuggled into the tomb in the coffins of young Will and Harry. The trigger was a very slow-acting fuse, an ingenious – indeed, scientifically admirable – gadget. Acid took weeks to dissolve a metal catch, whereupon two chemicals rushed together in a glass chamber to produce a sudden flame and set off the bomb. It was a very
Moriartian
device, though I knew better than to say so in his presence.

If the bomber had hoped to provoke yet another sweep against London’s Irish poets and navvies, his purpose was achieved. More Mountmains were roughed up and tossed into cells. Lukens announced that the Invincible Republican Irish were now known to have been behind the cornering of quap, and Baron Maupertuis just the front man. Inspector Patterson counter-announced that the Fenians would have been pretty foolish then to draw attention to the fact with a bombing which returned the Baron to the public eye (so to speak) and reopened the old case. Lukens agreed that the Fenians, on the whole, were pretty foolish. In which case, Patterson idly wondered, why did Scotland Yard need a whole well-funded department to do battle with a bunch of inept clods who thought dynamiting a sexton advanced the cause of Home Rule? This public row did not convince me that the police were ever going to hamper the business of the Firm.