by Kim Newman
‘True.’
‘So you lied to him?’
‘No. I seldom lie. It spoils the equations. When I clapped his shoulder, I gave him a present...’
He opened his hand. The Black Pearl of the Borgias wasn’t in it.
‘It will take the next assassins months to get here from Nepal. It will take but hours for the Creeper to get out of the river.’
XVIII
So, now you know how it came out. According to Carew’s will, he was to be buried at his last posting. They fit him in a coffin, face up but toes down, and some obliging Nepalese who happened to be visiting London transported him all the way there. The emerald went with him and was stolen from his body before burial. So, the poet had the truth of it, after all – with the exception that Amaryllis Framington married a tea trader and retired to Margate.
There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There’s a little marble cross below the town;
There’s a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the yellow god forever gazes down.
CHAPTER SIX: THE GREEK INVERTEBRATE
I
‘James,’ the Professor said.
‘James,’ his brother acknowledged.
‘You’ve not met my associate,’ Moriarty said. ‘Colonel Moran, Colonel Moriarty.’
‘Colonel,’ nodded the thin-faced cove.
‘Colonel,’ I responded.
I’ve seldom had cause to mention Moriarty’s family. Read on, and you’ll find out why.
Until that winter, I knew little of the clan. The parents had been lost at sea some years previously. The single odd thing my partner in crime – not just a turn of phrase – had let slip about his people was that Mr and Mrs Moriarty had such a liking for the name ‘James’ they gave it to each and every child of their union.
‘It’s James, James,’ the Colonel said.
Yes, there was a third Moriarty brother. It was fortunate there were no sisters.
The triplicate nonsense would have been even more confusing if any of the three brothers could lay claim to a single intimate acquaintance who might wish to address them by their first name. You’re feeling sorry for them now, aren’t you? No love for the Jameses Moriarty, boo hoo hoo. Just goes to show you never met any of ’em. If you had, you’d suppress a shudder and nod sagely. Only one Moriarty is a villain in the public eye (though not, as it happens, a court of law), but if you ask me the Professor wasn’t the worst of them.
Most of us are saddled with relations. I’ve touched on my own from time to time. Seldom happily. With regret, I discern traits passed down – though not anything useful, like the family loot – from old Sir Augustus to me. He was a terror, a bully and a cool shot in the service of Queen and Country. I’ve worked for myself – or the Prof – but otherwise carry on in pater’s tradition. I’ve also attained that sorry point in life when I look into the shaving mirror after a heavy night in the tap-room and see the old man staring back at me with bloodshot orbs. The propensity for slipperiness with cards, believe it or not, I have from dear Mama, who showed me how to deal from the bottom while I was in velvet knickers and had ringlets.
Somehow, the notion that Professor Moriarty had parents – might have been a child – never sat right. A viper is a snake straight from the egg. I couldn’t help but picture little Jamie as a balding midget in a sailor suit, spying Cook and the baker’s boy rolling in flour on the kitchen table through his toy telescope, and blackmailing them for extra buns.
It had been a profitable season for the Firm. We’d done nicely out of the Mystery of the Essex Werewolf, come out of the lamentable business of the Four Lemon Drops with surprising credit, and salvaged more than could be expected from the disaster of Loki Tunnel. Lately, England was too confining a laboratory for Moriarty’s experiments in crime.
We were expanding on the continent, tactfully skirting – for the moment – territories claimed by others and offering consultant services to blackguards in Spain, Holland and Poland. Moriarty had put his stamp on a series of coups – kidnappings, major thefts, an assassination – which raised his stock as the premier criminal mastermind in Europe.
Queen Victoria could unroll a map of the world and take pride in the extensive red patches which mark the Empire; the Prof had similar ambitions for the globe in his study. Stuck with red-headed needles wherever a Moriarty crime had been accomplished, the globe increasingly resembled a pincushion.
I had recently greatly enjoyed murdering a Member of Parliament with a garrotte of red ribbon, then providing succor to his saucy widow, his blushing twin daughters... and, thanks to a fortuitous midnight encounter, his tweeny maid. I’d have done the prig for the bonuses alone, but that business put twenty thou in the coffers. You’d never believe who paid for that forced bye-election. My only regret was that I couldn’t mount an honourable head on the wall. I contented myself with draping the ribbon on some antlers and keeping intimate trophies from the ladies of the deceased’s household in a private drawer alongside like items.
It was a new year, a new decade: 1891. Life was fine. Crime was paying.
Then, early in January, Professor Moriarty asked me to accompany him to the Xeniades Club to meet with his brother, Colonel Moriarty.
Are you familiar with that breed of novel heroine who prefaces a chapter of awful experiences with ‘had I but known...’? Well, had I but bloody known, I’d have stayed in bed with or without a tweeny foot warmer. But I didn’t and got up. Cheerful as a goose-throttler the week before Christmas, I put on my hat, picked up my cane, and toodled along to Jermyn Street and Colonel Moriarty’s club.
A few words on the Xeniades Club – what a horrible place! I’m a member of the Anglo-Indian and the Tankerville myself, though I tend to let niceties like paying annual fees slide for the odd decade. As a cardplayer, yarn-spinner, hero of the Empire, big-game hunting bore (I admit it) and devotee of manly pursuits, I’ve been in and out of every gent’s club in London, from the Athaneum and the Beefsteak through the Troy Club and Boodle’s to the Club of the Damned and the Mausoleum Club (pronounced Mouse-o-layum, if you ever get the invite). I’m also known at exclusive gathering places catering to fellows who are most decidedly not gentlemen but can afford to pay for their pleasures and the privilege of having those who provide them keep quiet afterwards.
The Xeniades Club was founded by whining bounders who’d been blackballed at any number of established London clubs and decided that at least one should have no barriers at all to membership. You can imagine the shower that let in: grubby-fingered tradesmen, monomaniacs and cranks of every persuasion; plain-speaking provincial aldermen; foreigners, even. Furthermore, the Xeniades encouraged ‘lively debate’, and was thus one of the noisiest big rooms I have ever been in... not excluding the mess hall at Sing Sing Prison during a riot in which twelve inmates and three guards were killed, or the auditorium of the Paris Opéra after a chandelier fell on the audience during (what else?) that bloody jewel song from Faust.
If I were in the habit of thinking things through, I’d have made these deductions: the Xeniades was for blighters so objectionable no other club would have them. Colonel James Moriarty was a member. Colonel James Moriarty. What kind of colonel can’t even get into the Army and Navy, which is open to any serving officer on full or half pay? Any soldier who can rise to the rank of colonel – which is, admittedly, where they leave you when they tumble to what sort of a rotter or loon you are behind the medal ribbons and, yes, I am speaking for experience – ought to have distinguished himself in some manner which would at least get him into Stoats and Weasels.
No, Colonel James was in the Xeniades.
At least, we didn’t have our awkward introductions in the Loud Room but rather in a draughty, underused annexe I gathered was called the Cold Room.
The Professor was vague as to which regiment his brother was a colonel in, but had let on that the fellow was still serving. Somehow – and, again, I of
all people should have known better – that made me imagine a younger, straighter-spined, suntanned version of the James Moriarty I knew. More hair on his head and a set of fierce whiskers, in full uniform, bristling with martial fervour. I envisioned a cruel, canny Moriarty brain applied to devastating pre-emptive strikes against the foe (always best to get your reprisals in first, I say).
Instead, the Colonel was a sallow, slouching fellow with a sunken chest, the ill-cared-for clothes of a clerk who no longer has hopes of advancement, a perpetual cold which required odd poultices and compresses which afforded no appreciable benefit, and a little square of moustache like a patch he’d missed with his cutthroat three days ago. He was seven years younger than the Professor, but seemed nearer death.
From one whiff of him, I knew he’d never set foot on a battlefield. Asked what army line he was in, he bluntly said ‘supplies’ and left it at that. I assumed he was less a soldier than a wholesale orderer and deliverer of boots, tins of bully and those greased cartridges which make Indians mutinous. Again, I leapfrogged to a conclusion. Throughout this whole affair, I did that. I wish I could say I learned my lesson, but plainly I didn’t.
So, minimal pleasantries aside, to the point: ‘It’s James, James.’
‘My youngest brother is a stationmaster in the west of England, Moran,’ the Professor stated.
‘Fal Vale Junction, in Cornwall,’ said the Colonel.
‘Where he can’t do any harm,’ said the Professor.
‘So you say, James.’
‘I do say, James.’
At that, the Professor’s head began its familiar oscillation. Unnervingly, the Colonel began to sway his head from side to side in mirror of his brother. It was a family habit! The two bobbed heads like Peruvian llamas working up to a spitting contest. My hands convulsed in a kind of terror. Was this a tussle of fraternal wills or some species of communication beyond other mortals? The brothers kept it up for several minutes.
I wondered if it was possible to get a drink in this place.
At length, they quit playing silly beggars.
‘Through my influence,’ the Colonel said, ‘James has secured his present position...’
‘He owes you his station, you mean,’ I interjected.
‘As I said... Colonel Moran, was that one of those, what are they called, jokes?... I have gone to no little trouble to put James where he is. I gather he is not satisfied, which will scarcely come as a surprise to you.’
‘James is seldom satisfied,’ the Professor said, addressing me as an aside.
I shrugged, unsure what was required.
‘James will attempt to rope you in, James,’ the Colonel said. ‘He has ever tried to play us off, one against the other. You remember when he was expelled from Greyfriars?’
‘An incident not one of us is liable to forget.’
‘Indeed not. This time, I insist you stay out of it. No good can come of your involvement. James is hysterical and unreliable, again.’
‘In that case, I wonder you troubled to use your influence in your brother’s cause, Colonel,’ I said.
The question of how a supply officer could ‘influence’ a railway company appointment did occur to me.
‘Blood is thicker than vinegar, Colonel,’ the Colonel said.
‘True true,’ I assented, like a pious idiot.
‘James will approach you, James,’ the Colonel continued, fixing eyes on his brother. ‘You will ignore him. All will benefit. Have I made myself clear?’
‘Admirably, James.’
‘Good. Now, James, f--k off back to your blackboard.’
The Colonel turned and walked back into the noisy room. I gathered, with some astonishment, that we were dismissed.
My face burned. Professor Moriarty stood there, expression unchanged.
‘Moriarty, does your brother... your brother, the Colonel... have any idea of your real business?’
The Professor cocked his head to one side, smiling unpleasantly.
‘James is not the most perceptive of us.’
Moriarty was sensitive about defiance and discourtesy. The last man to tell him in so many words to f--k off was a cracksman who came across some jewels in a safe he was rifling for documents we had paid him to obtain, and foolishly decided no tithe was owed on them. After a week in our thick-walled basement, what was left of the poor sod was grateful to be tossed into the Thames.
‘If you want me to kill him, I’ll do it for nothing. As a favour, Moriarty. To repay your years of, ah, friendship. Bare hands?’
The Professor considered it.
‘No, Moran. It’s not yet time. And this matter is not ended.’
‘Well, any time you want it done, it’s done. You can count on me.’
‘I have often said that, Moran.’
That was news to me. He laid a cold hand on my shoulder. From him, this was almost a singular gesture. Recalling that the last time he unbent so, he palmed the cursed Black Pearl off on me, I instinctively patted my pockets. If the Professor noticed, he was too lost in his own thoughts to pass comment.
I fancied he was in a melancholy humour.
Family reunions will do that to you.
II
When we returned to Conduit Street, a telegram awaited. From the third James Moriarty. The Professor read the wire, and passed it to me.
JAMES – FAL VALE TERRORISED BY GIANT WORM! – COME AT ONCE – JAMES.
I gave him back the telegram.
‘A giant worm?’ the Professor said. ‘What, pray, does James expect me to do about it?’
I considered the matter.
‘Tricky proposition, giant worms,’ I said. ‘Hard to know which gun to pack. Or which end to shoot. A good, sharp kris is your best tool. You have to chop the devil into slices rather than segments, or they all wriggle off separately and you’ve got a pack of little crawlers to deal with rather than the one outsize specimen.’
I knew what I was talking about. I’ve come across six-foot worms, mouths ringed with shark teeth, in South Africa. They looklike pale, boneless pythons and can eat through solid rock, let alone a man’s chest. You tend to mistake them for a thick rope or a draught-excluder, until you see a swallowing ripple run along their length or discern the disgusting brownish-pink core at the centre of the creamish translucent tube.
‘James doesn’t mean worm in that sense, Moran.’
‘Is there another?’
‘Archaic English, sometimes ourm. A synonym for dragon. The notion that such fantastic creatures breathe fire is associated with the English worm dragon rather than the Chinese lizard dragon.’
That was a different challenge.
‘I’ve never stalked dragon, but I fancy an elephant gun would suffice.’
I was not entirely serious. I mean, I’ve heard of the kuripuri of the Amazon – degenerate survivors from the prehistoric age of reptiles – and I’ve shot the head off a Komodo dragon, which is merely an overgrown iguana and poor sport. If you’ve paid attention, you’ll know I’ve tangled with several mythical species. Red Shuck and his pack turned out to be just dyed wolves, but the taxonomists were still out on the mi-go I’d run across in Nepal and Soho. Still, I wasn’t prepared to swallow a worm unknown to science in Cornwall. Moriarty’s head bobbed, though, so I knew there’d be trouble in it.
After furious oscillation, Moriarty crumpled his brother’s telegram and tossed it into the fire. It went up with a puff, like a stage magician’s flash paper.
‘More urgent matters must be attended to, Moran,’ the Professor declared, turning away from the fire. He touched fingertips to his pinpricked globe and gave it an idle spin. ‘Soon, we must consider seriously the obstacles presented to our continental expansion by the entrenched interests of our colleagues in France and Germany.’
I’d known this was coming.
In Paris, a new Grand Vampire held office. He had displaced his predecessor after the Affair of the Six Maledictions – in which Les Vampires had been involved,
not very happily. Having been forced (by us) into unprofitable battle with the Knights Templar, the Frenchies had cause to feel they’d not been dealt fairly. Reprisals were expected.
In Berlin, an ambitious pup was slavishly imitating the Moriarty Method by assembling his own criminal cartel. More adept at disguising his person than the Professor, this upstart seldom showed his real face. On our books, the kraut-eating swine was marked for an eventual seeing-to because one of his favoured impostures – a shock-haired, stooped alienist with mesmeric eyes – was an impudent caricature of the man whose act he had blatantly stolen. He even guyed Moriarty’s side-to-side head wobble, which ticked off the Prof more than the arrant plagiarism of his Loughborough Diamond Coup in the Dusseldorf Marzipan Stone Substitution.
It wasn’t just restlessness, a jaded need to expand an empire, which compelled Moriarty into border skirmishes with his continental rivals. In his mettle, he needed to be the best – which is to say, worst – in his field.
The Firm would go to war!
Not soon enough, said I. For I wasn’t content to be content, to grow plump and pampered in a London rut – no matter how many blushing twins were thrown into the pot – when there were savage lands to be conquered, and desperate campaigns to be waged. The hunter’s blood stirred and would not be quieted. View halloo, and into the fray...
Then, a railway messenger arrived. The lad was startled to be greeted on our doorstep by Tessie the Two-Ton Taff, in peignoir and straining stays. Mrs Halifax was off with one of her filles de joie, selling a healthy ‘inconvenience’ to thin-blooded, childless Americans, so the Great Lay of Llandudno was serving in Mrs H.’s stead for the day. The Welsh girl took the messenger by his ear and hauled him up to our reception room, where he presented a sealed envelope to the Professor. Having taken a shine to the railway lad, Tess then dragged him into the kitchens for what she referred to as ‘a nice dollop of dripping’. I doubt the boy ever reported back to his office, though I don’t credit the rumour spread by envious, bonier girls that Tess ate him.