The Cthulhu Casebooks

by James Lovegrove

  “Professor James Moriarty is a queer fish,” Holmes said. “He is our age, and a mathematician of high repute. Some in the field have even called him a genius. At twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon the binomial theorem, which has had a European vogue and earned him a chair at one of our smaller universities. His lecture on the dynamics of an asteroid, which he has subsequently expanded and turned into a book of that name, is deemed the dernier cri on the topic. It is also, I might add, the only work on the topic, and having scanned a copy upstairs in the mathematics section, I can safely say that no one could dispute its arguments, since no one but Moriarty can understand them, and perhaps not even he.”

  He chuckled.

  “At any rate, what we have here, to all intents and purposes, is an academic who is destined for a stellar career. A permanent post at Oxford or Cambridge, laurels, a college chancellorship – it all awaits him. There is just one tiny problem.”

  “Namely?”

  “Moriarty is in disgrace. A scandal has blighted him. Some heinous deed prompted his dismissal from the groves of academe, and now he resides in a purdah he may never escape.”

  “What deed was that?”

  “Ah. There, we can discover some clarity, albeit not much. I have gone through the newspaper archives and have also spoken to dons at the University of London.”

  “A seat of learning of which I am an alumnus.”

  “Quite. Amongst the distinguished personages with whom I had audiences there, one alone was able to shed any light on the circumstances of Moriarty’s downfall. He, the current incumbent of the Chair of Political Economy at King’s College, was a contemporary of Moriarty’s at that other university, somewhere in the Midlands. He left before Moriarty did but he had been aware, while there, of the rumours that swirled around the man. There was talk of diabolism, blasphemous practices, black magic rites. He averred, however, that Moriarty was never anything less than pleasant on the occasions they met. In the common room, our political economist found him erudite, interesting and quite convivial company.”

  “Did he know what precisely it was that Moriarty did to lose his position?”

  “All he had to go on were oblique remarks in the letters of former acquaintances with whom he still corresponded. From those, however, and from a smattering of newspaper reports, I was able to compile a semi-coherent narrative. It would seem that Moriarty committed an act in his rooms one evening which caused a substantial commotion. Students and dons in neighbouring accommodation heard a roaring and a caterwauling as though of some enraged jungle beast, and there followed a loud cacophony of thumps, bangs and crashes, with Moriarty shouting to be heard above them. Knocks on the door brought neither an end to the ruckus nor a reply from the occupant. Eventually the noises ceased of their own accord, and Moriarty emerged a while later looking bedraggled and wan, like someone who had just gone several rounds in the ring with a heavyweight champion. The room itself was a shambles. Books had been tossed about, furniture smashed, the curtains torn to ribbons. It was as though a hurricane had passed through. When asked to give an explanation, he had none.”

  “Or refused to supply one.”

  “Just so. The only reasonable conclusion to be drawn was that he had indulged in a wild, unbridled tantrum, one most likely brought on by a less than complimentary critique of The Dynamics of an Asteroid which had just appeared in the Royal Astronomical Society’s Monthly Notices. It was judged that Moriarty was not of sound mind and was potentially a danger to his peers and pupils, and so he was invited to tender his resignation by the board of trustees.”

  “Do you put any store by that ‘tantrum’ notion?”

  “No more than you do. Something else occurred in the room that night. Moriarty essayed some sinister, arcane ceremony that got out of hand, and set something loose which he then struggled to banish back where it belonged. That was two years ago. The good professor is now in London, clinging to his title and the prestige that goes with it, if not the salary. He ekes out a living tutoring the scions of the wealthy to help them pass their British Army officer corps examinations. And…”

  Holmes consulted his watch.

  “He is expecting a visit from us at his home in three-quarters of an hour. He responded with creditable promptitude to my telegram requesting a meeting. He lives in Moorgate, so if we are to be punctual and not leave him twiddling his thumbs, we had best make haste.”

  THOSE FAMILIAR WITH MY PUBLISHED CHRONICLES of Sherlock Holmes’s exploits will be under the impression that I never met Professor Moriarty; indeed that I barely laid eyes on him. In the story titled “The Final Problem” I depict myself catching sight of a distant figure silhouetted against the verdure of the Swiss landscape who was more than likely, but by no means certainly, he. The only detailed description I provide of the man’s physical appearance is one furnished by Holmes.

  But meet him I did, this fellow whom I have dubbed a “famous scientific criminal” in The Valley of Fear, and he entered our lives far earlier than I have stated elsewhere. Eleven years earlier, to be precise.

  In person, Moriarty was a most unprepossessing specimen. He was tall and thin, not unlike Holmes, but had an enlarged, bony forehead which beetled over a pair of deeply sunken, puckered eyes. His shoulders were rounded, suggesting too much time spent bent over books, and the pallor of his complexion likewise suggested an excess of time spent cloistered indoors, away from fresh air and sunlight. His smile betrayed an attempt to be charming and ingratiating but revealed an array of pin-sharp teeth and too closely resembled the leer of an angry dog.

  His home was on the first floor of one of the shabbier houses on one of the shabbier streets in Moorgate. A smell of boiled cabbage and mildew permeated the entire building.

  His mode was courteous and hospitable. He offered us dry sherry. Holmes accepted; I, filled with mistrust, refrained. He invited us to sit upon a creaking sofa whose threadbare upholstery doubtless played host to his students while he coaxed some semblance of scholarly prowess from them. He seated himself on a hard wooden chair and observed us for a time with his head jutting forward and oscillating queerly from side to side, a slow questing motion that put me in mind of a snake. I had once seen a king cobra sway in a similar manner in front of a petrified mouse, moments before delivering the fatal strike. Moriarty seemed only a fraction less deadly than that reptile, a fraction less sleek and venomous, for all his superficial geniality.

  “Mr Sherlock Holmes,” he declared. “It was inevitable, I suppose, that you and I should meet. However, I did not imagine it happening quite so soon. Indeed, I envisaged our first encounter taking place several years from now, once we were both better consolidated in our respective positions. It is a privilege and a pleasure nonetheless.”

  “Tell me,” said Holmes, narrowing his eyes. “Have our paths crossed before?”

  “They have not,” came the reply. “Not until today.”

  “But your features are familiar, and I am not one to forget a face.”

  Especially, I thought, one as memorably ugly as Moriarty’s.

  “You must be mistaken,” said the academic. “We are strangers. But I will confess I have been following your fledgling career with no little interest. Did you know that Victor Trevor and I were once acquaintances?”

  “My old college friend?” said Holmes. “I did not.”

  “He embarked on a degree course in botany back in seventy-six, shortly after you and he came to a parting of the ways. I was conducting my postgraduate studies at the same university. He did not stick it out, and quit to become a tea planter in – Bengal, was it?”

  “Terai,” Holmes confirmed.

  “He told me once about your little joint escapade. Something to do with his father and the part he had played in a convict uprising aboard a transportation ship bound for Australia, the Gloria Scott. He spoke of your acute observational skills and how you had deduced a great number of truths about Trevor senior simply from his ears, a tattoo on his elbow, and t
he walking stick he carried. Also, how you deciphered a coded message in a note sent to him. It is regrettable that your participation in the affair served to precipitate the old man’s death. I suspect his heartbroken son never quite forgave you, hence the estrangement that arose between you. Victor spoke highly of you but in the somewhat bruised tones of a man trying very hard to find clemency in his soul.”

  “It was not I who caused Victor’s father’s stroke,” Holmes said stiffly. “That was brought about by the reemergence of a figure from his past, the author of the note which had such a calamitous effect upon his health. His own sins caught up with him. I was neither the agent nor the instigator of his terminal decline. I was only an interested bystander.”

  “Well, if that is how you choose to remember the events…”

  Holmes bristled, then composed himself. Moriarty was needling him, but he chose not to give the man the satisfaction of knowing that he had been successful.

  “Speaking of notes…” he said, but the other cut him off.

  “Ever since Victor told me about you, I have logged your name in my memory, anticipating I might need to keep an eye on you. Such an unusual Christian name, too. Sherlock. How innovative of your parents. Your older brother’s Christian name is no less unique. Mycroft.”

  I could not help aiming a sidelong glance at my companion. Holmes and I had not known each other long, but at no point yet had he alluded to an older brother, or to any sibling. What a closed-off fellow he could be, I realised. So jealous of his secrets and his private life, while so keen an enquirer into those of others.

  “Mycroft is something in the government, is he not?” Moriarty continued. “It is hard to fathom his precise role, but he is much lauded by those in the know, rising fast and destined for great things, they say.”

  “I would like to be flattered that you know so much about me, Professor. There comes a point, however, when curiosity shades into obsession, and I fear you are veering close to that.”

  “Not at all, Mr Holmes. Not at all.”

  “It is especially worrisome to me – embarrassing, even – given that until today I was not aware of your existence.”

  “That is only because I wished it to be so,” said Moriarty. “And it would have remained thus were it not for Gong-Fen Shou and his ill-advised attempt to make an ally of you, when he ought either to have ignored you or else disposed of you. He misjudged you, and it has set you on the trail that has led to this meeting. I blame his foreignness. He saw in you a man of great accomplishment and intellect, which you are, and it commanded his respect, to the exclusion of all other considerations. He did not discern, as a fellow countryman of yours would, your implacable streak of honour. He did not see one of those Englishmen who unthinkingly serve some spurious notion of decency, integrity, heroism.”

  He spat the last word, as though it were an expletive.

  “Gong-Fen was unable to read your character as I might,” he went on. “I understood what manner of man you are the moment Victor Trevor mentioned you. It was reaffirmed when I caught wind of that case you investigated not so long ago regarding Mrs Farintosh and her opal tiara. You rode to that lady’s rescue like a proper Sir Galahad. Such a scandal there would have been, had it become widely known to what purpose her husband had been intending to put the money he tried to claim from his insurers for the allegedly stolen tiara. You were there in Mrs Farintosh’s hour of need, able to return the treasured family heirloom to her and even negotiate a rapprochement between her and Mr Farintosh, such that they are now hailed as one of society’s most exemplary couples, the epitome of marital harmony. A miracle worker! And so keen to shun the limelight, too, often letting the dullards in the police force take credit for your successes. I can see, as Gong-Fen was unable to, that you are a shining incorruptible, and it was foolish on his part to have attempted to bring you into our little fold.”

  “A folly for which he paid the ultimate price.”

  “Tchoh!” Moriarty flapped a hand, as though swatting a fly. “He got no more than he deserved. Besides, he was on his last legs as far as I was concerned. For a time he was a good accomplice.”

  “His money made him so.”

  Moriarty acknowledged this with a nod. “He was useful in that regard. But lately he had become unreliable. I charged him, you see, with the task of finding fodder for the shadows to consume.”

  “Sacrificial lambs for the altar. The nobodies of Shadwell.”

  “Yes. The latest of them being one of Gong-Fen’s own underlings, whom he volunteered for the role in retaliation for the man’s having displeased him.”

  “You call them fodder. I call them human beings.”

  “As you wish. Those human beings, with the gift of their life force, have been sustaining a certain party whose influence I have been cultivating for some while. The monthly supply of nourishment, conveyed to him via the shadows, has been sating his appetite and currying me his favour.”

  “And that party would be…?”

  “I cannot mention his name.”

  “Cthulhu?”

  “Not he. That would be too brazen by far, even for me. I may be ambitious, Mr Holmes, but I am not mad. At any rate, Gong-Fen agreed to help. In truth, the man was so much in my thrall he would have done anything for me. But then he chose to farm out responsibility for the work to another.”

  “Stamford.”

  “Fancy doing that!” Moriarty exclaimed. “Delegating something so important to an individual of such questionable aptitude. Of course I can follow his reasoning. A well-spoken Englishman roaming the stews of the city would give a far greater impression of trustworthiness, and be far less liable to arouse suspicion and draw notice, than an Oriental. Stamford could merge into the background in a way that Gong-Fen could not. All the same, Gong-Fen ought to have consulted me first. I would have persuaded him that he was making a mistake. It was sloppy of him. Lazy, even. Perhaps his huge wealth had left him soft, made him careless.”

  “Then how good of you to relieve him of some of it.”

  “Money serves a purpose, but it is not the be-all and end-all. Look around you.” Moriarty indicated his modest abode and gestured to his cheap, ill-fitting clothes. “Material goods matter little to me. All worldly trappings are ephemeral. There are greater and longer-lasting rewards to be had, and they do not originate from this earthly plane. At any rate, Gong-Fen then proceeded to attempt to draw you, Mr Holmes, into our little coterie – and that was the last straw, as far as I was concerned. I could overlook the Stamford matter, even forgive it. I could not, however, be so magnanimous about his decision to recruit a man who would inevitably, as anyone with sense might see, prove inimical to our enterprise. When I learned how he had overstepped the mark, how egregiously he had blundered, well… that was when I knew he had outlived his usefulness.”

  “In attacking Gong-Fen with those shadow creatures, you nearly killed Watson and me into the bargain,” said Holmes. “I presume that does not trouble your conscience.”

  “A conscience is something I can ill afford. I admit I had no idea you two were in his carriage with him. In a way I am glad you survived, else we would not now be having this enjoyable little gathering, would we? On the other hand, had you not survived – well, I would have rid myself of a potential nuisance as well as an actual one. The proverbial two birds with one stone.”

  “And Thacker the coachman? He would be another ‘potential nuisance’ you have disposed of?”

  Moriarty gave a quizzical grin. “Has the body not turned up yet? Maybe it never will. The Thames flows fast at this time of year. A man leaping from, say, Waterloo Bridge at dead of night, his pockets full of stones, might drown in a trice. With the high tide ebbing and the current running west, his corpse might be carried straight out into the German Ocean with no one any the wiser.”

  “A suicide?”

  “A willing one. I can be very persuasive, you know, especially where lesser minds are concerned. The mental processes of a workin
g-class menial are easily manipulable, until—”

  I had had enough. I could take it no longer. Professor Moriarty’s crowing, his wheedling tone, his sheer arrogance grated on me to the point of becoming unendurable.

  “Dash it all, Holmes!” I exploded. “Do you expect me to sit here and listen to this villain? We should be dragging him off to the police, making sure he is clapped in irons. He has openly confessed to two murders. He has attempted much the same on us. He is rubbing our noses in his wickedness.”

  “Ah, finally,” said Moriarty. “The lapdog bares his fangs.”

  “Lapdog? Why, you…!”

  Holmes restrained me from leaping on the man and giving him a thorough drubbing.

  “Watson, calm yourself. Professor Moriarty knows, as I do, that we have no concrete proof of his involvement in any malfeasance. He can brag all he likes, secure in the knowledge that it is impossible to link him directly to Gong-Fen’s death, or that of Thacker. Not in any way that will stand up in a court of law.”

  “The note,” I said. “What about the note he sent?”

  “A few words of wry disapproval. They hardly constitute an expression of malicious intent.”

  “Then… then… the theft of the Necronomicon from the Sequestered Volumes archive of the British Museum. How about that? There at least we have him. All we need to do is look for the book. It is somewhere close at hand, surely, in these very rooms.”

  I was clutching at straws. I knew it. Holmes knew it. So did Moriarty, who shook his head condescendingly and said, “It is not here, I assure you. But I see now how you picked up my scent. It was not Gong-Fen who gave you my name; it was Miss Tasker’s ledger. In retrospect, I ought to have signed in under a pseudonym. However, my decision to take the Necronomicon was made on the spur of the moment. The idea occurred only after I realised how straightforward it would be, having seen for myself how lax was the security at Sequestered Volumes. A dusty, secluded section of the building, a superannuated crone as sole steward… It was all but an open invitation to larceny, and I could not refuse it. Impulsive of me, but there you go.”