by Kim Newman
The convention is that drowning makes your life flash past your eyes... now, at this surprise party, my life flashing past my eyes made me feel as if I were drowning. Blowing out candles had taken more out of me than it should. I lit a Joy’s cigarette. No Sullivans in my case – they’re for ponces, poofs and parvenus. I filled my lungs with smoke, which ought to have made me feel better, but didn’t [8].
So, fifty years and still alive. Half a century, not out – though I did feel knocked for a six. Three-quarters of the lads I was at school with were bones on battlefields, rotten in fever pits or stuffed under marble in Kingstead. Most of those who were alive had white hair, if they’d kept it... false teeth... and grandchildren. I suppose I have grandchildren. If you run into a scamp in Kathmandu or Amritsar or Zula who looks a quarter like me, a quarter like some dusky tart and a half like an unknown personage, then kick his or her arse before he or she robs you or rooks you. The Basher blood will run true.
Almost as an afterthought, I did the sums. Born 1840. Mrs H. was wrong. I was past fifty-one. F--k me for a French tart, that was older than Old Sir Augustus got to be!
The cake was sawed into chunks. Moriarty didn’t trouble to conceal his impatience with this social occasion. It was my birthday, but Mrs Halifax followed the chain of command and offered the Prof a slice of cake first. Brusquely, he turned it down. The attentions of the girls who were there – Fifi was ‘busy,’ with some damned subaltern due to ship out for parts East in the morning who wanted to be up all night before departure – were welcome, but palled as quickly as the cake. Corks popped – I didn’t think to scrabble in the corners for them, and check for hypodermic needle punctures – and champagne was poured. The fizz was passed around. I couldn’t taste mine.
I looked at Sophy, my most promising recent acquaintance. She avoided my gaze. I fancied that passing this milestone made me of less interest to her in my cranky old age than I might have been in my roaring forties. I watched her drink champagne and talk with Lotus Lei. The girls warmed to their subject, trading the whereabouts of spots in a man’s body where a long needle or a stiletto can slide in unnoticed then produce the most excruciating pain.
As a birthday treat, I wondered if I could ask for that bloody subaltern to be hauled up here in his drawers, then turned over to the Greek and the Celestial as a sort of dressmaker’s dummy. They could stick needles into his balls for an hour or two. After that, I might relax by punching him in the face until it looked like meat. Then, on the morrow, it might be amusing if the young terrier’s cronies came to see him aboard the ship, which was supposed to bear him off to the Empire to make his name and fortune, and he didn’t make an appearance until the anchor was pulled up with him tied to it upside down.
‘Moran, get to it and open that, would you? Before we all die of old age.’
Moriarty reminded me of the parcel. His birthday present to me, I realised.
I had my penknife to the string before it occurred to me there might be a trick. It would be just like the Prof to test out some new explosive device – a bomb, sent through the mail! – on whoever happened to be handy, i.e. me. That would make way for Sophy the Knives to take my berth.
There was a bit of a hush, and folks – chewing their cake like cows chew the cud – gathered around to see what I found inside the wrapping paper.
It was a locked wooden case. Varnished cherrywood. Moriarty handed me a key. The custom-made lock had a left-hand turn – you’d be surprised how many people don’t even try to twist the key the ‘wrong’ way before giving up – and lifted the lid. Nestled in velvet recesses were the components of a device which distantly resembled a gun. Barrel and breech were conventional, but the stock was swollen to accommodate a rubber lung. Also included were a pump-handle and some lengths of rubber tube.
Sophy was interested, but it was too manly a contraption to enthral the other girls. They drifted away. A bell tinkled, and Mrs Halifax sent Polly and the Ranee to take care of gentlemen callers. Party or no, there was a business to run.
‘I had Von Herder make this,’ Moriarty explained. ‘It is an air rifle.’
‘I know, Moriarty,’ I said. ‘The shadow man on the Kallinikos had a toy pop-pistol like it.’
‘That was a Straubenzee, an inferior piece. For precision, the Von Herder will match your Gibbs, Moran. It is silent, has no recoil and fires revolver shells. Imagine... a man falls dead with a soft-nosed pistol ball in his head. He can’t have killed himself, for he has no gun in his hand. He is alone in a room or in an open space. No one is within pistol range. How can this be? The murderer is half a mile away, in a place of concealment. Who then shall take the blame? What a puzzle that will be, Moran. A challenge to the scientific detective, I should say.’
Of course, it would be me up a tree pumping like a loon to get the thing ready for a second shot. The Von Herder was for someone reasonably sure he’d shoot true the first time. Fair enough, I’m known for clean kills. I’ve almost always brought down the cat or the elephant or the barrister with a clean shot. But there are always circumstances. At long range, the wind plays tricks. Too many animals have a habit of resting still long enough for you to line up sights, then making sudden movements for no good reason except to avoid being shot in the head.
I assembled the air rifle, which fit together as neatly as a child’s model ship. On another birthday I recollected – my ninth or tenth – I was given a model ship, though I’d asked for a real gun. In a pet, I launched the ship in the ornamental ponds of the khanum’s palace at Mazandaran, and bombarded it with pebbles until it sank with all hands. I thought I was alone in the courtyard, but something made me turn round and I saw a raised trapdoor which had been concealed in a mosaic. A ghost poked his skull face up through it. Now, I realise it was just a white man with no nose and lips, but then I was convinced it was a genuine spook. Even at that age, I knew terrible deeds were done beneath the palace. It was then, with those fried-egg eyes staring and the exposed teeth snarling, I realised a curious thing about myself: I was brave. The ghost did not frighten me. I was excited, yet calm. Annoyed, but purposeful. Time slowed and I was its master. I still had some pebbles, and pitched one at the apparition, plonking him straight on the bony bonce. The trapdoor dropped shut and that was the last of my ghost [9]. The women of the palace said no such spirit walked here, and Mama told me to shut up about it – though Augusta and Christabelle were agog for details, the more hair-raising the better – lest our quixotic hostess be offended and urge her suggestible son to trade agreements with the wicked Tsar instead of our good Queen.
All these birthdays on, it was the model ship again. I still didn’t have a real gun, no matter how deadly this puff-rifle might be. Moriarty missed the point. The bang! Herons startled from the reeds! The echo, resounding in my ears! The animal keeling over, dropped and dead before the sound has died down. The pull of the bolt and the ting of the ejected cartridge case! All part of the moment of a perfect shot. Lost with the limp phut of this toy. A telescope sight was also included in the box. I looked through it, sighting on Moriarty’s globe. Before using the air rifle, I’d want to fire it in. I had confidence in Von Herder’s sensitive fingers when it came to mechanical parts, but knew better than to trust a blind engineer with optical jiggery-pokery, even if he did get his lenses ground in Venice.
I held the assembled airgun – it was light – and got the feel of it. It would do, I suppose. It would have its bag. Tradesmen and club bores and Australians and rats and detectives. Not tigers. Not wolves. Not sporting men. Not even natives. This was a tool for a job. No pleasure in it at all, really.
The company looked at me. Mrs Halifax said, ‘Aren’t you going to thank the Professor?’
Moriarty looked sour and turned away.
Something was called for, something needed to be said. No words came.
‘I shall be in with my wasps,’ he announced, and abandoned the party for his private study, the windowless room.
The champagne ran
out, but there was beer and gin and Scotch. Purbright got squiffy and attempted to sing ‘The Boy I Love is Up in the Gallery’ in imitation of Marie Lloyd. Two-Ton Tessie, a fervent admirer of Miss Lloyd, sat on him to shut him up.
I disassembled my present and fit the parts back into the case. Sophy Kratides cast a sceptical eye over it.
‘I prefer knife. For to get up close. To see eyes,’ she said.
Those tiger eyes came back to me. I thought of telling Sophy about it. I had never mentioned how that moment stayed with me to anyone. There had never been anyone to whom I could mention it. I didn’t. It might have made me seem, I don’t know, weak.
‘How old are you, Sophy?’ I asked.
I know, I know... you never ask a lady her age, but it was my party and I had privileges and, lady though she was, Sophy Kratides was foreign and they have other standards.
‘Twenty-seven,’ she said. Her eyes were clear.
It was important to me, in that moment, that she was more than half my age. If only technically.
Of all the women in the room, Sophy was the one who wouldn’t want paying. I know, I know... I’ve said it before: you always end up paying, and with tarts at least you know that beforehand and can be cheerful about it. Sometimes you need the illusion of a thing freely given.
I claimed a birthday kiss. But we fit together wrong.
Another moment passed. Throttler Parker set his Jew’s harp twanging – he’s a virtuoso on the noise-making nuisance, so I’m told by experts – and Mistress Strict hauled Polly about in a regimented foxtrot.
Sophy, kindly if wet-lipped and moustache-scratched, asked me if I’d care to, but I’ve had too many evenings end with women smashing crockery to be tempted by Greek dancing. She was taken away by Simon Carne, nimble and limber despite his fake hunchback.
A while later, I left the party to avail myself of the lavatory on the first-floor landing. I was steady on the stairs, though I’d a lot of drink in me. It’s a Bangalore Pioneer point of pride to be ready for inspection (indeed, for battle), no matter how much firewater was downed in the mess. On my way back, I lingered at the door of Fifi’s boudoir. I heard the rattle of a bedstead and her famous screeches of abandon – louder, I fancied, than ever – all to a rhythmic pulse. The subaltern gasped as if the life were being yanked out of him.
I should have wrenched the door open, dragged the young pup off the girl, tossed him into a corner, and told him to sit quietly and take notes as I demonstrated the Basher Moran Special. I’d make Fifi scream, all right. Scream like the Mountmain banshee having her toenails pulled out. I’d rattle the bedstead till it flew apart, and we were rutting on springs.
I should have.
Instead, I succumbed on the stairs. I sat down for a moment’s rest, and fell asleep. I woke hugging the airgun case like a hard pillow. For some reason, I’d taken Moriarty’s present with me from party to pissoir. Well past midnight, the house was quiet except for someone sobbing in a distant room. It wasn’t my birthday any more.
VIII
After several dozen gins, Mrs Halifax finally cornered Throttler with a demand the little man put his Jew’s harp skill to lower purpose. The next morning, the Madame was indisposed, so Polly brought in breakfast. When bending over to polish the silver and ‘surprised’ by a caller who fancied himself Master of the House, Poll was frolicsome and saucy. Obliged to do actual drudge work, she was sour-tempered and tended to clatter.
I wasn’t fresh as a daisy. I could hardly look at my kedgeree. Moriarty, emerged refreshed from his wasp den, set to decapitating boiled eggs as he looked over a sheaf of telegrams. Some were strings of numbers. His plans proceeded well, I gathered. If thwarted, he’d be in a mood to torture his eggs before topping them. His oscillation was almost cheerful. He cut his toast into soldiers, for dipping in yolks.
The air rifle was on the table, locked in its case.
I was still astonished the Professor had thought to get me a birthday present, even if it was a tool I’d be expected to use in his service. I supposed I should show gratitude, or even interest.
‘The Von Herder, Moriarty... is it to be used in your pre-emptive strikes?’
His head stopped moving and he looked at me queerly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘To dash down the heroes before they set out on their quests. I assume you’ve a list of coconuts for the shy. Which budding genius of detection will first present a target for a silent potshot?’
Moriarty laid down a half-eaten soldier. He had yolk on his lips.
‘Moran, you should know better.’
‘You’ve lost me,’ I said, perplexed. ‘Your lecture to your peers, about the threats we face...’
‘Real enough and we’ll deal with them in time, but what I said in the tomb was mostly yarning. A distraction from the true purpose of the gathering.’
Even for Moriarty, this was rum.
‘You mean you do not propose “a commonwealth of criminal empires?”
‘Of course not. Can you imagine such a thing operating for more than a week? Would you care to be in business with Jack Quartz? The man’s insane, for one thing. An habitual, compulsive betrayer. They all are. Things we might do for expedience, they do out of habit. The Lord of Strange Deaths despises the white races and would always seek primacy. To that Chinaman, you and I and General Gordon and Queen Victoria are all the same barbarian breed. Les Vampires are French, no more need be said of them. Any arrangement such as I seemed to propose would lead to internecine wars and ruin us more swiftly than a dozen police forces acting in concert.’
“‘Seemed to propose”?’
‘A diversion, Moran. A serious enough proposition to be listened to for a short while. None of our guests will have considered it past nightfall. Even the Creeper. No, that was not the purpose of the summit I convened. I had to be sure one man would attend. An invitation to him alone would have been too obvious a trap. His flaw is vanity, you know. He wanted to look me in the face again and feel he had the measure of me... but, even more than that, he wants to be of our party, on a level with Professor Moriarty and Dr Nikola and the Countess Cagliostro. He does not lack ambition.’
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘Mabuse, of course. Dr Mabuse, or whatever else he may call himself. He likes “the Great Unknown”. The man without a real face. The master of disguise. The fake fake Carnacki. The shadow man of the Kallinikos.’
‘Dr Mabuse was the ringer?’
Moriarty clapped, once. ‘Enlightenment dawns. Yes, Moran. Dr Mabuse was the master spy who tried to steal the secret of Greek Fire. Oh, he’s had me marked for some while, observing at a distance, learning my methods. He was in the audience at Stent’s Red Planet League lecture. The droll student who shouted, “I say, Stent, is that the sick squid you owe me?” In the business of the Bensington Rejuvenator, he was one of the researchers in Cologne who falsified the experimental logs. Then, he assumed the guise of a London rough called “Frog Junkin”, and was even – at two or three removes – on our payrolls for a month, doing odd jobs in the East End. The Frog stood lookout when Parker garrotted the Reverend John Jago during the Spitalfields Anti-Vice Crusade. After that, he became a Neapolitan for a year, in the Camorra under Don Rafaele Corbucci. He was at the Battle of the Six Maledictions, and pretended to die with a Templar sword through him. All the while, he has been maintaining multiple lives in Berlin – as an alienist, a financier, a rabble-rouser, a rabbi, a washerwoman, a card shark, a policeman. Plagiarising my methods, he has built up his own gang. I do not know where his mania comes from, for mania it is. He wishes to steal everything from me. He wants to be me.’
My jaw was slack, and I dribbled tea.
Why on earth would anyone want to be Moriarty? Of all the people to idolise, to envy, to imitate... Professor James Moriarty! I honestly think the Grand Vampire got more enjoyment out of his calling, and his life expectancy could be calculated in months. Moriarty was what he was because his nature g
ave him no other option. He had grown crooked from stony ground, leeching what water he could from deep roots. To set out to become such a solitary monster was beyond understanding.
This kraut plainly couldn’t bear to be whoever he originally was. Else, why try on all the other faces? Great impersonators are all the same. Simon Carne and Paul Finglemore were just as cracked – ditchwater dull as themselves, but alive when they could hide under crepe hair, wax noses and trick corsets. Even that bitch dressed up for character parts and flung herself about to put clear blue ocean between Miss Irene Adler, international adventuress, and Mrs Irene Norton, New Jersey bourgeoise.
‘Surely, if the picklehead’s barmy, he’s liable to wake up one morning frothing at the mouth claiming he’s transformed into a giant beetle. You know what these disguise wallahs are like, Moriarty. It’s a short hop, skip and hysterical fit from padded cheeks to padded cell. No need to worry about competition from inside the madhouse.’