Professor Moriarty: The Hound Of The D’urbervilles (55 page)

Moriarty knew who he was facing.

Mabuse knew what to expect.

Theirs was a brief meeting, over by the time Irene sat down at our table. It left Mabuse naked in the face – layer upon layer of make-up flayed away – and broken in mind. I don’t know how Moriarty did it, or at what cost to himself. I fancy he just uttered a formula, forcing into his pupil’s mind an addictive, insoluble equation Mabuse was compelled to devote all his intellect to working out, but which opened up vast chasms of uncertainty. The man who was no one was condemned to a world where nothing was anything. Babbling in several languages, the nameless man was found by the bewildered constables, and taken away to an asylum... Later, he was let out, and returned to Berlin and his old tricks. However, he was never the same again, and was eventually defeated by his own madness.

If no one stopped them, bested them or killed them, the clever ones all drive themselves mad in the end. They look for nemeses, and – if none are available – make them up. I’ve heard it said that Moriarty
was
the Thin Man. I understand why people jump to that conclusion, for the one
needed
the other. In the way neither needed anyone else, not Dr Watson... and not Colonel Moran.

That was what Irene wanted to talk about.

I don’t know if any of the big brains put her up to it – the ones who are so clever they can put an idea into another person’s head without them knowing it – or if it was something she’d come up with on her own one-tier-down level of cunning and self-interest. A lot of it came, I think, from trying to get close to men – or a man – who would not let her in. That’s above my level, though.

She knew how to put it to me.

‘Hunter and hunted,’ she said. ‘You say in your book – which could afford to lose the chapters about guns, by the way – that the world is divided between the two types. To avoid becoming one, you must become the other. Do you still believe that, Sebastian?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘The hunter and the hunted. Predator and prey. Alive and dead. The guns and the bag.’

‘At present, I have a gun. Aimed at you, Irene.’

‘It hasn’t escaped my notice. But, Sebastian, you miss a category. Native bearers. Guides. Orderlies. Hounds. Where do they fit in? Neither hunter nor hunted. Of the party of the hunter, but not the hunter. Small lives. To quote you, “a currency to be spent freely for a chance of a clean shot”. In this coming world Moriarty outlined, of very great villains and equally magnificent heroes, are you – are
we –
not such a currency? Are we not native bearers?’

I might have shot her. My finger tightened, involuntarily, on the trigger. It would have been only fair, for she had shot me. With the worst, most deadly ammunition. Purer than a silver bullet.

The truth.

Steiler came into the breakfast room, with another of his notes. This time, for me. From Moriarty.

Mabuse broken. Come to the Falls. The hide we scouted. Bring the Von Herder. On my signal, take the shot.

M.

On the journey, we had discussed this. The hide he mentioned was a perfect lay, marked on a tourist map Moriarty had given me.

‘Sebastian,’ Irene said. ‘Your master whistles.’

So, we come to it. Above the Reichenbach Falls.

I had my lay. I set out well after Watson, who was rushing back up the mountain, but was at the Falls comfortably before him. Forward planning, you know. Always a good idea. Moriarty was a master at it. From my snug nest in the snow, I had a good view. The roar of the torrent was muted. I saw the narrow path, and judged where the antagonists might meet. A ledge, cropping out, with a grassy patch. No easy way to avoid a determined enemy there.

The Thin Man thought a few Japanese wrestling tricks would serve him in a fight with an old maths tutor. He’d not seen the Professor kill two Swiss wardrobe-carriers – the only souls I ever saw him personally murder, by the way – with a letter opener. If it came to a grapple, it would be a more even contest than the detective knew. With dead-eye Moran in hiding to ensure the outcome, it was no contest at all.

The Von Herder was assembled, loaded and primed. It took twenty minutes’ vigorous pumping for a single shot. Once the gun was discharged, I’d be reduced to chucking rocks. As I said, I usually only need a single shot. I had a small pile of rocks ready, though. More planning.

I was flat out, on a blanket of fresh snow. Not the foul stuff back at the village, but a white, crisp, cold virgin fall. The air was thin and I was quite merry. Your brain gets like that in the mountains. You can hear bells and birdsong and voices in the waterfall if you let yourself.

I had the stock to my cheek, the telescope sight to my eye.

There was no more Firm. It was smashed and scattered. In his talk of starting anew, Moriarty had spoken in the singular person. There was no ‘we’ in his world.

I had prospects. Even without funds, I had my wits. And Sophy was handy. I had not been netted by Scotland Yard and even had the last of my reputation as a hero of the Empire and a cool hand in a crisis. In time, London would welcome Basher Moran. I could always get up a hand of high-stakes whist at the Bagatelle Club.

Tiny figures were struggling down the mountain path.

Through the telescope sight, I saw the antagonists come face to face. They had words. They broke off. One scribbled a note he left on a rock – a notice of the cancellation of milk delivery in Baker Street?

I saw two masterminds, two hunters, two tigers. From my perch, above them, they were small boys playing fight. A red and a white ant. Bacteria.

Then, it was on.

Professor Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes rushed at each other.

Moriarty raised his arm – the signal!

I took my shot.

PREFACE

1.
...and reputedly, as Montacute Blore Box (1896–1953) was wont to boast, ‘in Hell!’

2.
‘Regardless of other crimes, anyone who founds a UK-based white rap label and signs up Danny Dyer should have his head kicked into an Essex marsh.’ – Charles Shaar Murray, Facebook update, November 16, 2008.

3.
London: Virago and Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2004.

4.
An expansion of my article ‘Mrs Warren and Mrs Halifax: Controlling Male Desire and Female Economic Emancipation’,
Victorian Studies,
41 (2), 1998. Considering the mentions,
passim,
of Mrs Halifax in the Moran manuscript, further research into this remarkable woman is a priority.

5.
Victoria Gorse,
Gender in Asylums,
1890–1914. Ms Gorse’s thesis remains incomplete, and the student’s whereabouts unknown... though odd text messages purporting to be from her are received to this day. The last I had was ‘cha0s ra1nz!’.

6.
In his introduction to an otherwise valuable edition of this long-suppressed work (University of Brichester Press, 2004), Dr Paul Forrestier dismisses Moran’s candidacy and settles on Lord John Roxton as the author. As I pointed out in a review
(History Today,
February 2005), the editor’s ‘conclusive evidence’ boils down to a scattering of big-game hunting terms throughout the text – which equally supports the case for Moran. We await a retraction from Dr Forrestier.

7.
Box Brothers offered their clients discreet secretarial services in the interwar years. Looking over their employee lists from the early 1920s, it is probable that the typist of the Moran manuscript was either Miss Kathleen Greatorex, later popularly known as the ‘Penton Street Poisoner’, or Mrs Elsa Shank-Goulding, who was shot as a spy in 1943.

CHAPTER ONE

1.
Henry James Prince (1811–99), excommunicated from the Church of England for ‘radical teachings’, founded a pseudo-religious order, the Agapemone (Abode of Love), in Spaxton, Somerset, in 1845. His most fervent disciples were women with money. The Agapemone was one of several nineteenth-century communions run along the lines of the groups later established by Sun Myung Moon or L. Ron Hubbard. The circumstances of Moran’s encounter or encounters with Prince are not known at this time. See:
The Reverend Prince and His Abode of Love
(Charles Mander, EP Publishing, 1976).

2.
A more balanced account of these incidents can be found in
Riders of the Purple Sage
(Zane Grey, Harper & Brothers, 1912).

3.
See
A Study in Scarlet
(John Watson and Arthur Conan Doyle,
Beeton’s Christmas Annual,
1887).

CHAPTER TWO

1.
‘bread and honey’. Yes, the slang expression ‘bread’, usually associated with American crooks or hippies, is Victorian cockney rhyming slang: ‘bread and honey – money’.

2.
Past and future exponents of this long con include the explorer Allan Quartermain (H. Rider Haggard,
King Solomon’s Mines,
Cassell & Co., 1885) and the journalist Tintin (Hergé,
Le Temple du Soleil/Prisoners of the Sun,
Casterman, 1949).

3.
According to ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ (John Watson and Arthur Conan Doyle,
The Strand Magazine,
1888), Irene Adler was a coloratura soprano. None of these are coloratura roles.

4.
For more on the Ruritanian succession, see
The Prisoner of Zenda: Being the History of
Three Months in the Life of an English Gentleman
(Rudolf Rassendyll and Anthony Hope, J.W. Arrowsmith, 1894) and
Rupert of Hentzau
(Friedrich von Tarlenheim and Anthony Hope,
The Pall Mall Magazine,
1895). For a revisionary view of Ruritania in the 1890s, see ‘The Ruritanian Resistance: How and Why’ (‘Doc M’,
http://www.silverwhistle.co.uk/ruritania/
).

5.
In the original manuscript, the allusion is followed by a parenthesis which has been heavily scored through. From the few discernible words, the redacted section seems to be a homophobic rant. Other passages in the memoirs, especially those concerning his time at Eton, indicate Moran shared his era’s prejudice against homosexuality, but didn’t despise gays more than he hated anyone else. Equally, his bile against ‘natives’ and foreigners is tempered by general misanthropy. Sebastian Moran
especially
loathed straight white male British Christians.

6.
Ruritania is a German-speaking country, though Rudolf II tried to make French the court language.

7.
Crusher: Police constable.

CHAPTER THREE

1.
Joss: Luck.

2.
Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday
(1884–1916). A weekly comic newspaper built around the popular comic strip character of Ally Sloper, created by Charles Henry Ross and Marie DuVal.

3.
I could use this footnote to reveal the identity of the holder of this title – or at least the name he most commonly used – but Dame Philomela assures me that, even after a 120 years, this would not be advisable: ‘You’d be risking a lot more than getting your pussy’s ear clipped!’

4.
The Si-Fan: A Chinese criminal-political faction, active throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

5.
See: John Watson and Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Speckled Band’,
The Strand Magazine,
1892.

6.
See: John Watson and Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Red-Headed League’,
The Strand Magazine,
1891.

7.
The draper’s clerk was H.G. Wells, who evidently learned something about this business. See:
The War of the Worlds, Pearson’s Magazine,
1897, and ‘The Crystal Egg’,
The New Review,
1897.

8.
Less well remembered than rival cinema pioneers the Lumière Brothers, Georges Méliès or Thomas Edison, Paul Aloysius Robert (1870–1944) was a significant contributor to the early days of the motion picture. He directed
What Happened to Maisie Under the West Pier
(1895), the first British film to be seized and suppressed as pornographic, and
A Fight with Sledgehammers in Rottingdean
(1902), labelled the ‘original kinema “nasty”’. On the strength of Moran’s memoirs, it seems he could have laid claim to the invention of special effects techniques later associated with Méliès.

CHAPTER FOUR

1.
See Thomas Hardy, ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented’,
The Graphic,
1891.

2.
The American jurist Roy Bean (c. 1825–1903) dismissed a case against Paddy O’Rourke because – after close examination of the Revised Statutes of Texas – he declared ‘homicide is the killing of a human being, however I can find no law against killing a Chinaman’. At the time, Bean’s saloon-cum-court in Vinegaroon, Texas, was surrounded by 200 Irish labourers who declared they would lynch the judge if O’Rourke were convicted. This might have influenced the decision. By the standards of his times, Bean was a lenient judge. Most of those he found guilty were fined the amount of money they had about them at the time of arrest and set free; he only sentenced two men to hang, and one of those escaped.

3.
Colonel Thomas Blood (1618–80) talked his way into the jewel house of the Tower of London, posing as a clergyman, and made off with the Crown jewels. He and his confederates were caught on Tower Wharf. Charles II, supposedly taken by Blood’s roguish daring, pardoned him. In preparation for the raid, Blood befriended Talbot Edwards, master of the jewel house, and cajoled a private viewing, whereupon – presumably with roguish daring – the elderly man was struck with a hammer, knocked down, bound and gagged and stabbed. Blood’s gang forgot to bring suitable swag-bags and had to improvise: Blood hammered flat St Edward’s crown, his brother-in-law sawed the sceptre into two parts and a man named Parrot stuffed the orb down his trousers.

4.
See Frederic Van Renssaelaer Dey, ‘3,000 Miles by Freight; or, The Mystery of a Piano Box’, The Nick Carter Library, 1891.