The Empress of India (5 page)

“Let us create a chain of inductive reasoning,” Moriarty said, “and see where it leads us.”

“Go on,” said Mycroft Holmes.

“Either Holmes intended to disappear or he did not intend to disappear,” Moriarty began. “If he intended to disappear, would he not have left my friend Dr. Watson at home, or at least in a more comfortable place than sitting atop an open manhole? And would he not have said simply, ‘Watson, I plan to be away for a few days’?”

“We figured that out for ourselves, Professor,” Inspector Gregson said, trying not very hard to suppress the sneer in his voice. As far as he was concerned, Moriarty was a crook, and all the fancy houses and cultured accents and strings of letters after his name couldn’t change a thing.

“Ah! Did you?” Moriarty asked mildly. “Then we must proceed with our inferences and see how far they take us. If Holmes did not intend to
disappear, then his disappearance was the result of something that happened while he was down in the sewer tunnel. And what we must consider is whether the disappearance was voluntary or involuntary.” He looked politely at Gregson. “As I’m sure you’ll agree, Inspector.”

“Yes,” Gregson said. “Of course.”

“Let us examine the two scenarios separately,” Moriarty said. “If Holmes’s disappearance was voluntary, then after a ‘rush of water’ which may have soaked him, or even carried him away, he recovered, left the sewer at some point other than the one at which he entered it, took his outer clothes off, and vanished. Why did he take his outer clothes off? Well, quite possibly because they were water-soaked. Why, then, did he throw them in the dustbin? Could they not be washed and ironed and returned to serviceability?”

“Perhaps someone else disposed of them,” Inspector Lestrade suggested.

“Again, why?” Moriarty said. “We must close our eyes and imagine possible answers to these questions.”

“I have been doing so,” Mycroft affirmed.

“To what effect?”

“None, yet. The first thought was that the clothes were too soiled to wear, but I examined them and that was not so. If my brother disposed of his clothing himself, the reason eludes me.”

“Then let us look at the other possibility. It could be that Holmes’s vanishing was involuntary; that someone removed him from the sewer tunnel, took his clothes off, and spirited him away.”

“It was that possibility that brought us here this morning,” Mycroft observed wryly.

“Yes,” Moriarty said, “but consider what that implies. First, that someone, some enemy of Holmes’s, knew that he was planning to investigate the sewer system. Second, that this unknown person knew which entrance to the tunnels Holmes would use; a fact that Holmes himself didn’t know, according to the faithful Dr. Watson. Then this person
would have to know which way Holmes would turn when he entered the tunnel, and know just where to lie in wait for him.”

“That’s so,” Watson agreed.

Lestrade looked from one to the other of his companions. “But that would be impossible, wouldn’t it?” he asked.

“Not quite,” Mycroft offered. “If he knew what my brother’s object was, that is, what he was investigating, then he might be able to surmise where Sherlock would probably appear.”

“True,” Moriarty said. “Or if he were keeping a watch on the object of Holmes’s interest, Holmes might have stumbled into a situation he couldn’t control.”

“Even so,” Mycroft agreed.

“But then,” Moriarty continued, “the question remains. Why did Holmes’s captors remove his outer clothing? And why did they put it in a dustbin, where it had a good chance of being found? Why not burn it? Why not, for that matter, kill Holmes, if he stood between them and the object of their underground attention? Why bother capturing him at all?”

“That thought had also occurred to me,” Mycroft said.

“Have you checked the medical schools and teaching hospitals?” Moriarty asked.

“First thing we did, Professor, of course,” Lestrade said. “Mr. Holmes hasn’t been admitted to any hospital in London. We are having hospitals farther away checked by the local authorities.”

“I assumed that,” Moriarty said. “What I meant—”

Watson sat back, looking startled and almost spilling his coffee. “My God!” he exclaimed. “What a distressing idea. Still, I should have thought of that!”

“I did,” Mycroft said. “No body resembling Sherlock has been brought to the dissecting mortuary of any medical school in the past week.”

“Ah!” Moriarty said. “That’s reassuring, but it leaves the mystery intact. We can be reasonably sure that Holmes survived the temporary flooding of the tunnel, but what became of him after that we cannot tell at present. Perhaps the next few days will bring us additional information.”

“I fear that every minute that passes makes that more unlikely,” Watson said.

“Nonsense,” Moriarty said. “I can think of a dozen—a hundred—scenarios that would explain what has happened to Holmes. The difficulty is that we have no reason to favor one of them over another. But I have sources that, let us say, are not available to my friends from Scotland Yard. I shall set inquiries in motion immediately. I am not hopeful that they will discover anything useful, but who can tell?”

Mycroft pushed himself to his feet. “Do you positively assert, sir, that you had nothing to do with my brother’s disappearance?”

“I do, sir,” Moriarty said solemnly. “On my honor as an Englishman.”

“I thought you were Irish,” Watson said.

“My father was, Dr. Watson, but my brothers and I regard ourselves as Englishmen, having grown up in Warwickshire.”

“Ah!” Watson said.

“We must continue our search,” Mycroft Holmes said. “Goodbye, Professor Moriarty, we will not trouble you any further today.”

“We’d best get back to the Yard,” Lestrade said. “Perhaps some word has come in.”

“Very well,” Mycroft said. “We shall accompany you back to Scotland Yard, and ponder what to do from there.”

“I wish I had some useful suggestions, gentlemen,” Moriarty said, rising to his feet, “but at the moment nothing suggests itself.”

“Well, then—” Watson said.

“If you think of anything, or hear anything,” Mycroft said, “a message to the Diogenes Club will reach me in short order.”

The four visitors filed out of the room and to the front door in a calmer state of mind than they had entered. Only Gregson still glowered at Moriarty as they left, but he said nothing.

Mr. Maws let them out, and then returned to the professor’s office. “That was very good, that was,” he said. “They came in like lions and went out like lambs. And here I thought I was going to have to assist you as you were physically assaulted. At least two of them were prepared to commence pummeling you where you stood; I recognize the signs. But your soft answers somehow turned away their wrath, as the Bible says. I don’t know how you do it, Professor. I saw it being done, but I still don’t know how you did it.”

“I showed them the error of their ways,” Moriarty said. “I was clothed in the armor of my innocence.”

“You mean you actually had nothing to do with Mr. Holmes’s disappearance?” Mr. Maws asked, looking surprised.

“Mr. Maws!” Moriarty said, shaking his head sadly. “Not you, too!”

Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.

[He who fights with monsters must be careful not thereby to become a monster. And if you stare too long into an abyss, the abyss stares back at you.]

—Friedrich Nietzsche

I
t snowed most of the day on Monday, February 17, 1890. As dusk fell over London and the midwinter shadows grew longer, the east wind picked up and what had been a light snow turned to hard-driven sleet. Ice formed in the Thames, and crusted the rigging and mooring lines of the ships in the mélange of docks along the river. The streets of the city were deserted except for the occasional hansom cab or four-wheeler, its horse and driver braced against the icy wind, looking for one last fare before retiring for the night.

In the back room of a rags and old clothes store in Mincing Lane, within sight of the Tower of London if you stuck your head out the
window and looked sharply to your left, five men gathered around a massive oak table and schemed a mighty scheme.

First by the door was the Artful Codger, a small, wiry man, his thin, narrow face suggesting the cunning and weaselly soul of the man himself. He sat, legs crossed and tucked under him like a dervish, on a flat wooden chair with no back.

To his left was Cooley the Pup, who had cultivated the look of an innocent fresh-faced boy of fourteen until he was thirty-five. He looked now, at forty-five, ancient and wizened and like a man whose years were filled with unimaginable sins. He had pulled a dilapidated easy chair over to the table and was now sunk into its cushions until all that could be seen of him in the dim light was the tip of his nose.

By his side was Angelic Tim McAdams, a bullheaded, massive exnavvy, head of a gang of toughs known to be rentable for all occasions, with set prices for broken arms, legs, ribs, or bashed skulls; killing extra. He sat foursquare on a heavy wooden stool, his hands lying motionless and flat on the table.

The Twopenny Yob, whose appearance and mannerisms were enough like those of the younger son of an earl to gain him unquestioned admittance to the best social gatherings, and whose habits and morals were enough like those of a guttersnipe to get him kicked off the swell mob for conduct unbecoming even a pseudo-gentleman, was taking his ease on the far corner of the table, his legs swinging back and forth like a well-clad metronome.

The fifth man, the one who had called this meeting of equals in depravity and lawlessness, was the enigmatic Dr. Pin Dok Low. Possibly Chinese, somewhere between forty and ageless, infinitely knowledgeable in the ways of crime, he towered above the others in intellect and force of will. Now he sat in a high-backed armchair, its back to the rear of the room, smiling a slight inscrutable smile and nodding a tight nod across the table at his companions. “It is good that you have all come,” he said.

“Coo-ee, and how could we stay away?” the Artful Codger asked, clapping his hands together twice and then running them through his hair. “A million quid, you said, this job is worth.”

“You meant just that, I sincerely hope?” McAdams asked, leaning forward and thrusting his chin in the general direction of Pin Dok Low. “A million pounds? A real, touchable million pounds? I’d hate to be sitting here and find out you’ve been laying it on. I’d hate even worse to be where you’re sitting when it happens that I find that out, if you catch my drift.”

Dr. Pin nodded again. “A million pounds, I said, but I confess that the figure quoted was not an exact one. I picked a number that I knew would draw you here,” he said, looking impassively at each of them in turn.

McAdams rose and glared at Pin like a great bull preparing to do serious damage to the matador. “I don’t like being diddled,” he said flatly.

The Artful Codger leaped to his feet. “I’ll just be going,” he said to the others. “Do with ’im”—he waved a negligent hand toward Pin—“as you like.”

“The real figure,” Dr. Pin continued, the slight smile reappearing on his face, “might have frightened you away before I had a chance to speak with you. It is certain to be higher than a million pounds, much higher. I wouldn’t be surprised if each of us clears a million, even after splitting with our assorted, ah, henchmen.”

The Twopenny Yob laughed. “I knew it!” he said. “A Chink with a nose for money. I always thought you’d make me rich someday, Pin, while doing a bit of good for yourself, of course.”

McAdams sat back down. “I still don’t like being diddled,” he said. “Let’s hear it, and it better be good.”

“In brief, gentlemen,” Pin said, “there is a shipment of bullion—several tons of pure, unalloyed gold—arriving in London soon by steamship for storage in the vaults of the Bank of England.”

“Gold!” Cooley the Pup spit the word out inadvertently, and looked rather startled that he had said anything.

“The Bank of England,” the Codger said, shaking his head mournfully. “Can’t nobody break into the vaults of the Bank of England. Can’t be done, and that’s flat!” He spoke with the sad assurance of someone who had given the subject much thought in the past.

Dr. Pin looked around, the smile on his face even broader. “Ah, yes, maybe so, maybe so, but I know when the gold is coming, and where it’s coming, and how it’s coming. And, as you will see, I have devised a workable method of relieving the authorities of this dreadful burden before the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street has a chance to put her protective arms around it.”

“And you need all of us to be in on it?” the Codger asked.

Dr. Pin nodded. “You and your assorted associates and assistants—you will pick the ones you need. Obtaining the gold is not enough. It must be recast—one cannot trade in gold bars with the Bank of England seal on them—and transported and sold gradually and over a wide area.”

The Twopenny Yob lowered himself into a chair and flicked a spot of dust off his collar. “It sounds as if you might have something worth saying, old man,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll listen attentively, both ears and all that, but you’re going to have your work cut out to convince me that it’s a doable proposition. And if I don’t think it’s doable, then I’m not in.”