by Kim Newman
V
Hentzau offered round a hip flask, but his sardonic smirk did not inspire confidence in the gesture. With an ‘oh well, more fool you’ shrug, Rupert took a healthy draught, opened his mouth to show brandy sloshing about inside, gulped and pantomimed satisfaction. He opened his mouth again to show he hadn’t shammed the swallow. The performance put off even those – like yours truly – who could have done with a stiff one. He might have dosed himself daily with minute portions of, say, arsenic, to build up tolerance. Such tricks have been known. Only Madame Sara took him up, taking a dainty swig. She’d probably rendered herself immune to every poison known to nature or science in the course of perfecting her ‘beauty treatments’.
The Daughter of the Dragon made no attempt to share her packet of nuts with anyone but the marmoset. Quartz didn’t hand out his cigars, though he had a fat case in his inside pocket. This prompted Raffles, who was puffing on a Sullivan, to show off his famous manners by passing round his cigarette case. I say his case – it had the crest of the Duke of Shires on it. That bitch, Irma and Hentzau accepted fags, and in no time at all the tomb smelled like a crematory. The snob thief waited for his Sullivans to come back – robbers always expect other people to steal from them, I know I do. Lupin didn’t take a cigarette, but did hold on to the case for a moment, jokingly making a pretence of slipping it absent-mindedly into his coat pocket before handing it over. Raffles didn’t look as though he found that funny.
So much for the social aspect of the gathering.
‘We are the greatest criminal minds of the nineteenth century,’ began Moriarty. Knowing we were in for a lecture, I settled my behind on a stack of Thoroughgood coffins. ‘And yet, like the century, our days are numbered...’
No one voiced outrage. Closed-mouth crowd, of course. Deep thinkers, on the whole, disinclined to bluster until they’d heard the whole story. Still, I’d have expected an indignant yelp or two of ‘I didn’t come all this way from Kensington... or Pago Pago... or Berlin... to be insulted’.
‘Really, we draw to the end of a golden age in our field of endeavour. Who has there been to oppose us, but ourselves? No police force constituted thus far has been more than a momentary inconvenience to our businesses, easy to thwart and easier to suborn. Not since Jonathan Wild has anyone at our level been brought to a court of law, let alone convicted and hanged. We have had an easy time of it – but it will not last. Already, some dilettantes have set about making war on us. Men – and a few women – of intellect, wealth, resource and character who have set themselves against us, not because they are supposed to, but because they must. We all know the species of law breaker who steals or murders or violates because he has not the strength of mind to resist the urge...’
The barest flicker of a glance at the Hoxton Creeper made his point.
‘Such impulses exist also in those who will be our enemies. They have a perverse instinct, a compulsion if you will, to bring us down. Plainly put, they do not like what we do and are not prepared to let us continue without hindrance. At present, it’s an easy matter to be rid of a stray honest prosecutor or police inspector. There are more than a sufficiency of our sort of public officials to thwart the efforts of such freaks. But, make no mistake, we see the dawn of a new era. Crime fighting is about to change. What will happen when civilised countries opt to devote as much to their police forces as to their armed forces? The sort of cool hand who once sought glory and fame fighting the foreign foe or discovering the source of the Nile will set out to become not a soldier or an explorer but a detective. Modern science will be turned against us. The detective of the future will be a thinking machine, as cold and effective as any of us. They will have capabilities to match, or better, our own. Let me give you an example...’
The Professor held up his hand, fingers splayed.
‘The lines and whorls on your fingertips are unique to you. Touch any surface with your naked hand and you leave traces more distinctive than a signature. All of us, wherever we go, leave these calling cards. As yet, this fact is unknown to all but a few. Within twenty years, it will put an end to your kind of crime, Raffles. In terms you understand, rain will stop play. Could you open a safe while wearing gloves, or trouble to wipe clean every object touched in the process of breaking and entering a house? Even if you could, could Mr Manders? Fingerprints on windows, strongboxes, weapons... even human skin... will send to gaol or the gallows three-quarters of the professional criminals currently active – and all of the amateurs.’
That put the cricketer in his place. He wouldn’t have looked half so startled if bowled out for a duck by a schoolboy.
‘I have heard of zese fingerprints,’ the Grand Vampire said. He had a high-pitched voice, and hissed through those teeth. ‘A Frenchman ’as pestered ze Surété about using zem to identify ze criminalss. Also, ze beumps on a man’s ’ead. Even ze shapess of earss.’
‘I’m not prone to sticking my ears against anything in the course of a crack,’ said Raffles.
‘Except safes, old boy,’ put in his friend. ‘Sometimes you do, to listen to the tumblers. Leave a perfect impression of the lugholes, I’ll be bound, eh what? If jolly old Mackenzie of the Yard had a cast of your ear, he’d nab you in no time, don’t you think?’
‘Shut up, Bunny,’ Raffles said, irritated. I’ve known clever crooks undone by devotion to imbecile girlfriends. Raffles and Manders showed it was the same story among bumboys.
‘Phrenology – the bumps on a man’s head, as you say – has its place, too,’ Moriarty said. ‘Dr Mabuse, you can change many things about your appearance, but the shape of your skull, even under crepe and wax, will be apparent. The squama occipitalis is distinctive and unmistakable. I would know you...’
The two stared at each other a moment.
‘And I would know you,’ responded the German, exaggeratedly bobbing his head. I’ve seen fighting cocks look at each other like that, just before the squawking, pecking, clawing and killing flurry. I was put in mind of the Moriarty family reunion I’d attended.
Good Lord, could Mabuse be some long-lost Moriarty bastard! If not the Professor’s, then the Colonel’s? No, such twists only happen in three-volume novels. Besides, well, really...!
‘I have considered fingerprints too,’ Dr Nikola said, breaking the moment. ‘Such things will first take hold in Europe and America, but will reach my quarter of the world in time. I agree we must pay attention to developments in detection, must not underestimate the scientific method. Moreover, we must not ignore the quality I think you do not fully appreciate, Moriarty. Idealism. Altruism. To label such things a mere compulsion is to simplify dangerously. Heroism is not susceptible to mathematics. It is not a condition to be cured, like a fever. Like all faiths, it is mysterious and strong. I daresay we shall have to get used to it. If we do not understand, appreciate and admire idealism, we shall lose.’
Hentzau got his cynical snort in before I did. Like me, he could show off a chestful of medals, mentions in dispatches and fancy write-ups in the press. We’ve both been called heroes by our nations and adoring multitudes, but we couldn’t scrape up a jot of idealism between us. What we had wasn’t heroism, but daring. Not the same thing, though it’s an easy mistake. In the army and the bush, I’d sneered at heroes – mostly at their wakes – but I’d moderated my opinion at about the time Jim Lassiter put a gun to the back of my head. That gun-fighter had something. Diggory Venn, too, dash his red skin and stout heart. Even the real Carnacki was a different breed. Men like that were out there, and would always be tough nuts for men like Bloody Basher and gallant Rupert.
Moriarty just looked blank at Nikola’s speech. Quartz was bored and impatient. The Lord of Strange Deaths was inscrutable, as if that were a novelty. Countess Cagliostro was counting her pearls. If you’ve heard anything about the later careers of all these individuals, you’ll know they should have paid more attention to the little dark chap who warned against heroes. All of our masterminds had a Jim Lassiter – or n
earest offer – in their future. Not everyone in the circle got tossed off a waterfall, but we all got bloody noses. Some of us went to prison.
‘Heroism is an attractive quality,’ Irene said, mischievously.
‘Everyone can be bought, sister,’ Quartz snarled. ‘Or intimidated. Or dropped in the East River in a sack. Cut into an idealist and you find they bleed and die like all undermen.’
‘I disagree, Mr Quartz,’ Nikola said, warmed to the subject and pointedly not recognising the Yank’s academic qualification. ‘Idealism exists, as surely as terror, greed and lust. We deny it at our peril.’
‘Are you a tiny bit of an idealist yourself, Doc?’ Irene asked.
The minx was flirting with Nikola, who was – under the manners, clothes and intellect – still at bottom just a native. I squeezed my umbrella handle involuntarily, filling the ferrule with poison.
‘Not at all, Miss Adler,’ he responded. ‘I am a pragmatist, in search of enlightenment. I am not a romantic.’
That was a cup of cold water in her flirty face. Was Nikola one of Raffles’ lot? Didn’t seem likely. Exquisites, in my experience, tend to be randy sods, not ‘thinking machines’. In the end, the cracksman who stayed three steps ahead of Mackenzie of the Yard while burglarising the best houses in London had to flee to South Africa and get himself shot in one of those coming wars to avoid ending up jugged on charges of sodomy like Oscar Wilde. Those who sat at the top table, like the Prof and the Lord of Strange Deaths, seemed practically sexless. No one ever mentioned the mother of the Daughter of the Dragon. Would Mabuse’s need to emulate Moriarty extend to sawing off his own pecker? It was put about that Alraune, his present consort, was grown in a petri dish from mandrake root and protoplasm. That was one scientific way forward for the breed, though it takes a lot of the fun out of it to my thinking.
‘At the highest level of our calling,’ went on Moriarty, back to his memorised lecture notes, ‘most of us are scientists, even if we call it alchemy or vivisection or pursuing the secrets of the ancients...’
Sage nods from doctors, professors, sorceresses and quacks. The Lord of Strange Deaths got his degree from Edinburgh University, and both Moriarty and Nikola were pukka qualified brains. However, like Nikola, I was sure Jack Quartz had got his doctorate by collecting coupons from fudge tins and posting them off, with a dollar handling fee, to an outfit in Oklahoma who sent back the fancy sheepskin he had framed in his laboratory.
‘Unencumbered by morality, unhindered by Dr Nikola’s bugbear idealism, science has shown us the way,’ Moriarty continued. ‘Advances in warfare, medicine, engineering, transport, communications and economics have all contributed to the modernisation of crime. We have built upon the achievements of our predecessors. Where once a Dr Syn, a Dick Turpin or a Blackbeard had smuggling rings, outlaw bands or pirate ships, we have armies, businesses and fleets. My Lord of Strange Deaths, you are more truly an emperor than your ancestors who styled themselves as such. Dr Quartz, your operations extend from the Canadian Northwoods to Tierra del Fuego, an entire hemisphere. Monsieur le Vampire, wherever French is spoken, half of every louis d’or stolen passes into the coffers of your group. I am not flattering any of you. We could do better. The nations of Europe have carved up Africa, but – aside from the Si-Fan’s presence in Palestine and the Queen Tera Cult’s limited operation in Cairo – an entire continent is not represented here. As yet, sub-Saharan Africa has produced no one like us. That will come – ten years hence, should we gather again, there will be a black face among us.’
...and it’d be my job to shoot him, I didn’t add.
‘Like the other empires of the world, we do not always rub along. Countess, you have murdered two previous Grand Vampires that I am aware of. Dr Nikola, you oppose the interests of the Si-Fan in Northern India...’
‘...and you did me dirt in Panama, Prof,’ Quartz said. ‘Don’t think I didn’t know about that!’
‘You sent me Jasper Stoke-d’Urberville,’ Moriarty countered, coldly. ‘I have not convened this meeting to hash over old scores.’
Margaret Trelawny gave a slow handclap, flesh against alabaster. She was less chatty since she retreated behind the mask.
‘Good job too,’ Irene said. ‘Or we’d all need coffins.’
‘Thank you, Miss Adler...’
‘I heard you’d another term of endearment for me, Prof...’
She winked, and a string in the old vulture’s cheek went tight.
‘To move on,’ Moriarty insisted, ‘many thinkers believe the old powers of the world are marching towards a cataclysmic conflict which will bring ruination to established order and further only the cause of revolution.’
It surprised me that Professor Moriarty was quoting from Colonel Moriarty’s copybook. As we knew from the Kallinikos affair, the Department of Supplies was busy preparing for the coming wars.
‘We too risk such a world war.’
‘Some of us might welcome it,’ Dr Mabuse said. He even did Moriarty’s voice. ‘It is the way of empires to fall, and leave ruins.’
‘...and new outfits take over,’ Quartz said.
‘This is of no concern to my father,’ the Daughter of the Dragon suddenly piped up. ‘In the East, the Si-Fan is eternal.’
A snort came from behind Margaret Trelawny’s mask.
‘Ladies, ladies...’ I put in. ‘Play nice.’
It struck me that I’d never heard the Lord of Strange Deaths actually called ‘the Dragon’. That was another of those questions no one asked. He discouraged even trivial curiosity.
‘None of us have reached our present position without struggle,’ Moriarty said. ‘You know how Miss Trelawny came to be in her present position. She and I – and several other factions not represented here – had differences of opinion about how the business of crime might be conducted, particularly in London. Les Vampires, also, were involved, at one remove, in that battle. Alone of those who stood against me then, Miss Trelawny has made treaty, and been willing to adjust her methods to serve under me as regents of crown colonies serve under queens or emperors. She has seen the advantage. She is, for all the set-dressing, a reasonable woman.’
That was news to me. Which stung. Mad Margaret might be happy to throw in with the Firm if it meant she could return unhindered to her high old pharaonic life of blackmail and extortion in Kensington. But I would bet tuppence to a silver tiara she was less happy that the fellow who had chopped off her favourite hand was walking about unpunished. Moriarty must have offered her something while negotiating the ‘treaty’ which brought her into the fold. If that secret clause turned out to be my head on a dinner salver, I’d be steamed about it – especially if she was lining up the bloody Creeper to take my job.
While in the mood to brag about his status as Fagin to a band of grown-up pickpockets, Moriarty declared, ‘Madame Sara and Mr Raffles, among many others who have profitable endeavours in Great Britain, may also attest to the benefit they derive from operating under my umbrella.’
‘You’ve never offered little me a position under the bumbershoot, Prof...’ Irene said.
‘I can think of several,’ I put in.
‘Ah-hah, the organ-grinder’s monkey can speak,’ she said. ‘How’re your wounds, Basher Boy? Still sore? So, Jim, why haven’t you come to me to make a treaty as you did with Queenie here? My fizzog didn’t get burned off, so I might be even more disposed to take a proposition seriously.’
‘You are not to be trusted, Miss Adler,’ the Professor said.
‘And you are?’ she snapped back.
For an instant, I thought Moriarty would throttle her there and then. His fingers opened and closed, as if he were wringing the necks of invisible chickens. His head stopped moving, and he stared fire at the Jersey nightingale. She did something pretty with a handkerchief and smiled sweetly. Hentzau’s fingers drifted to the pommel of his dress sword – Ruritanian funeral gear runs to full honours and a sabre – and I saw why Irene had brought the lad along. Ou
r Miss Adler had got about the world a bit since we’d met, not exactly leaving satisfied customers in every port. I’d guess most of the men present – and all of the women – wouldn’t mind leaving her locked inside one of the handy Thoroughgood coffins. Since infatuation is passing, even without poison or picked pockets, her present protection wouldn’t last. In six months, or six minutes, Rupert would knock along with prevailing opinion and join the queue of frustrated former partners who’d like to sheath steel in whatever that bitch had in place of a human heart. Just now, however, he was favoured in her eye and befuddled enough to put his sharp sword at her disposal. Could I slip inside his guard with a thrust from a poisoned brolly? In confined space, best not to chance it.
Moriarty, with a force of will greater than mine, answered Irene politely.
‘None of us is to be trusted, Miss Adler. At the risk of stating the obvious, we are criminals. To the world, we are villains.’
‘My father does not accept that Western definition,’ said the Daughter of the Dragon.
‘“To the world”,’ I said. Not to me. Not among ourselves. I hope that, here, in this tomb, we can be honest at least with each other. For, if we are not, then we shall fail and fall. We must find common cause.’
‘With you as chairman of the board, of course,’ Quartz said.
‘I have no interest in such a position. Only the insecure would need a title. I do not suggest we become one combine. Such would be unwieldy, and as prone to internal rifts and failings as, say, the British Empire. I merely suggest we divide the world, not simply according to geography and politics, but race and creed. We shall have a commonwealth of criminal empires. To have hope of victory, ultimately of survival, in a world where the police aren’t corruptible fools, we must be more than robber barons. Make no mistake, the world has always been against us. For an age, we have thrived because the world was divided between those who were afraid of us and those who didn’t believe in us. We cannot rely on that situation persisting much longer. We will stay in our shadows. We cannot operate openly, no matter how much some of us might like the limelight, Count Rupert. Name a famous criminal, and you’ll name someone who got caught. Light will be shone at us, but we shall have to remain invisible. Quartz, if you wish to be, as you say, Chairman of the Board, be my guest. You have my vote. If such a chair existed, I should not care to sit in it. To the Übermenschen of the law, the holder of such an office would be a challenge. And knights errant can’t resist a challenge.’