The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus (42 page)

             
"Here, you!" the sub-lieutenant yelled, "where the deuce do you think you're going? Stop or we'll fire!"

             
"Holmes, Watson, get off this boat!" Moriarty yelled, swinging the
Water Witch
onto a path that would intercept the Whitehead torpedo. "Captain Coster, jump!"

             
Holmes swung himself over the aft rail. "Leap for it, Watson," he yelled, before cutting the water with a clean dive toward the Navy cutter. Watson spun his bowler toward the horizon and joined Holmes in the water. The ship's one crewman appeared from somewhere below and leaped overboard.

             
"My boat man!" Captain Coster screamed, trying to grab the wheel from Moriarty. The professor picked him up by the front of his pea jacket. "Victoria will buy you a new one," he said savagely, and with seemingly superhuman strength he lifted Coster high and threw him over the stern rail.

             
Moriarty made a final adjustment in the course of the boat, lashed the wheel in position, and then raced back to the stern rail. Making one last check on the closing trajectories of the boat and the torpedo, he decided that the
Water Witch
would intersect a full ten yards before the torpedo reached the
Victoria and Albert.
Then he stripped off his jacket and dove, a long, flat dive, into the bay.

             
He was in the water no more than a few seconds when the Whitehead torpedo punched into the
Water Witch.
It drove through the scantling on the port side, all the way through the boat, and out the starboard side before it exploded. A great geyser shot up, cresting a hundred feet in the air, and fell back across the bow of the
Victoria and Albert,
causing the big yacht to rock ponderously in place. A moment later the concussion wave reached Moriarty, throwing him out of the water and putting a deep trough under him when he fell back down. Then the water closed over him and he had to struggle hard to reach the surface before his lungs gave out.

             
The
Water Witch
took on water rapidly, settling by the bow. The deck was already awash, and only the small cabin was clear of the sea. Then the stern lifted clear of the water and the bow plunged. It stood frozen in that position for a long moment before sliding, bow first, to the bottom.

             
A moment later the Navy cutter reached Moriarty, and two seamen pulled him from the water. Holmes, Watson, Captain Coster, and his crewman were already on board. Holmes was deep in discussion with the young sub-lieutenant.

             
"Oh, my God," Watson suddenly screamed, pointing across the water to the Royal Yacht. There, etched by the rays of the Western sun, the clear wake of a second Whitehead torpedo could be seen cleaving a path toward the bow of the
Victoria and Albert.

             
One of the guarding Navy steam cutters, now on the lookout, raced to intercept it. For a moment it seemed as though the cutter would be too late, but then, scant feet from the bow of the Royal Yacht, it crossed the line of the torpedo. The sailors on the cutter scattered, jumping overboard in every direction; but the young officer at its helm stayed motionless behind the wheel, calmly steering the craft into the torpedo.

             
And then the cutter was gone, and an exploding cloud of white water marked where it had been. A second later the
crump
of the explosion reached them, rocking and shaking their
boat. Then the cloud of water fell back, obscuring the
Victoria and Albert
for a moment and drenching its decks. A large concussion wave spread out from where the launch had been, and the Royal Yacht bobbed up and down like a rowboat for a few seconds. Of the cutter and the young officer, there was no sign.

             
The sub-lieutenant, his face white, turned to Moriarty. "Mr.

             
Holmes has been telling me what this is all about, Professor Moriarty," he said. "I am Lieutenant Simms. How can I help?"

             
"Find that damned submersible," Moriarty said.

             
"Has it any more Whitehead torpedoes?"

             
"I think that's the lot," Holmes said.

             
"It can't fire more without surfacing at any rate," Moriarty said. "I'd like to get him before he has a chance to reload.
"

             
"
You think he's going to try?"

             
"No. I think he's going to leave as expeditiously as possible. He—look there!"

             
A red starburst lit the sky above them. "North," Moriarty said. "Barnett is still on the job. Trepoff has decided not to run the Solent."

             
Another red burst spread its crystal light, followed by a white ball of fire.

             
"North-northeast," Moriarty said. "Have you a compass?"

             
"Don't need one," the officer said. "It would be, let's see ..." He looked around and sighted along his arm. "Just that way."

             
"Right back toward Miro's tethered aerostats," Moriarty said. "Trepoff may have a land vehicle concealed somewhere about. We must try to beat him to the shore."

             
Lieutenant Simms leaned over to a brass speaking-tube by the wheel and blew into it. "Engine crew!"

             
"Aye, sir?" came a thin voice out of it.

             
"I want you men to shovel coal into that boiler until you redline the gauge. That's an order.
"

             
"
Aye, aye, sir."

             
"Kelly," the lieutenant said, turning to the young seaman at the wheel, "make a straight course for that great tethered balloon abaft the fitting station. As straight a course as you can without running us aground or hitting anything."

             
"That balloon's coming down, sir," the sailor pointed out.

             
"It's pretty big," the lieutenant said. "I don't think it will descend from sight. But if it does, then make a course for where it was."

             
"Aye, aye, sir."

-

             
In a minute the sturdy cutter was plowing through the water in a mechanical frenzy, the tie rods from the double pistons clanking madly in their housing. In two minutes the escape valve for the boiler was whistling and burbling as it released some of the tremendous pressure that had been built up.

             
"Is this safe?" Watson asked the young officer, looking nervously at the escaping steam.

             
"They don't usually blow up," Lieutenant Simms said. "They are supposed to be built for a twenty-five percent overload. Of course, this is an experimental model. We shall see."

             
"Umph," Watson said, and he made his way to the bow.

             
Holmes stood on top of the wheelhouse, clutching the small signal mast for support. "There," he said. "Look! It has surfaced."

             
Moriarty peered over the water in the direction of Holmes's pointing finger, but he couldn't make out anything, so he climbed up to join Holmes. "Where?"

             
"Over there!"

             
"Oh, yes," Moriarty said. The thick metal cigar was moving rapidly through the water dead ahead of them, with its small conning tower completely above water. "On the surface, with air for its engine, it can make surprisingly good time." He pulled out his watch and timed the closing distance between the cutter and the submersible against the submersible's approach to the shore. "It will beat us ashore," he said. "But only by a minute or so."

             
"Ashore or not," Holmes said, "he will not escape me. I will get this man."

             
"We," Moriarty corrected, "will get this man." Holmes turned a bleak eye on him. "Did you see the Queen?" he asked.

             
"What do you mean, Holmes? When?"

             
"After the
Water Witch
exploded—you were still in the water—I saw Her Majesty come forward on the upper deck of the
Victoria and Albert
to watch what was happening. The wave from the second explosion washed right over her."

             
"Was her Majesty hurt?"

             
"I don't believe so. But, dammit, Moriarty, that was the Queen of England! That man was trying to assassinate the crowned head of the English people merely to accomplish a political end in a country two thousand miles away from here."

             
A sudden gust of wind blew salt spray in Moriarty's face and he took out his handkerchief to wipe it. For a moment he was surprised to find that his handkerchief was soaking wet already. "True," he said.

             
"She is not perfect, Moriarty," Holmes said, clenching his fist.

             
"I'll admit that, dammit, she is not perfect. But I've never known England without Victoria, and I have no desire to. She stands for decency and morality and everything that's good in this imperfect world."

             
"I don't want to argue with a man in the grip of a patriotic passion," Moriarty said, doing his best to wring his handkerchief out. "Besides, you may be right. At any rate, we saved her life. Doesn't that make you feel good?"

             
"You saved her life," Holmes said. "You and the officer at the wheel of that cutter. What a strange thing fate is that it should twist so: Moriarty saving the life of his queen. Surely one of the great ironies of our time."

             
They had gained greatly on the submersible in the past minute, and it was now clearly in view. But it was also much closer to the shore by now. Even with the great difference in speeds, the submersible would reach the shore ahead of the cutter. The only question was by how much.

             
Silently, impotent in the hands of the immutable laws of physics and mechanics, Holmes and Moriarty watched the submersible ground itself on the rocks of a small strip of beach, even as the cutter halved the distance between them. Three men popped out of the forward hatch of the submersible and ran off up the rocks.

             
"She's beached!" Lieutenant Simms yelled. "The sub is beached. We'll reach her in less than a minute. I'll run the cutter right in alongside her. Probably rip the bottom out." He whistled into the speaking tube. "Stop shoveling! Prepare to run aground!" Then he turned to his wheelman. "Kelly, I'll take the wheel. You stand by that strain valve and be ready to release the pressure on my command. Instantly, you understand, or we'll all be blown into the next life."

             
"Aye, aye, sir," Kelly said, taking a firm grip on the strain valve rope.

             
Lieutenant Simms artfully headed the launch into the same small strip of rocky beach that the submersible had found, aiming for a spot immediately to the right of the submersible. Holmes and Moriarty went forward to join Watson, and the three of them braced themselves against the coming shock of running aground.

             
At the last possible second Simms threw the engine out of gear and yelled: "Now, Kelly!"