Chidlow frowned. ‘What about the gramophone itself? Is there something about it that might provide a clue?’
Holmes shook his head. ‘Moriarty himself clearly said: “this recording is all you will need in order to find my manuscript. I mean that literally – you need consider nothing else in this chapel but the phonograph you see revolving in front of you”. I think, under the circumstances, we have to take the professor at his word.’
We stood there silently for a while, as the last few criminals drifted away. Eventually, we were alone in the chapel with the gramophone, the phonograph, the table and Moriarty’s agent. He looked at us, his face still impassive, then nodded towards the gramophone – enquiring, I suppose, whether we needed it any more. Holmes shook his head, and the man busied himself with slipping the phonograph into a cardboard sleeve, then lifting it and the gramophone off the table and carrying them away.
‘We can talk now,’ Holmes said. ‘Everyone else has left – either disappointed that the professor wasn’t being any clearer or because they think they have detected his hidden message and are currently following whatever clues they think they spotted and everyone else missed.’ He paused, smiling. ‘I can guarantee that none of them have spotted the real clue.’
Chidlow stared at Holmes with something close to awe in his eyes. ‘You did hear something! What was it?’
‘Did you remark upon the fact that the professor made reference to this very place?’ Holmes asked.
Chidlow frowned. ‘I believe he did mention it. You used the phrase just now.’
‘He said,’ I recalled, ‘ “you need consider nothing else in this chapel but the phonograph you see revolving in front of you”.’
‘No, he said “church”, not “chapel”,’ Chidlow corrected me.
‘I am fairly sure he said “chapel”,’ I countered.
‘In fact,’ Holmes interrupted, ‘he said both.’
Chidlow and I stared at one another. ‘How is that possible?’ the Home Office man asked.
‘I memorised the entire recitation the first time it was played,’ Holmes replied. ‘Moriarty clearly said “chapel” then. On the subsequent fifteen repeats, he said “chapel” eight times and “church” seven times.’
‘But …’ My brain was turning over and over in confusion. ‘But there was only one recording!’
‘Not so,’ Holmes explained triumphantly. ‘The phonograph contains not one spiral groove into which the professor’s words have been encoded by means of vibration, but two, each running alongside the other. Whether the stylus falls into the first groove or the second one when Moriarty’s man places it on the shellac is up to chance. Each groove contains the same message with one crucial difference – in one he uses the word “chapel” and in the other he uses the word “church”.’
‘He told us,’ I whispered. ‘He actually told us. He said: “Solving this mystery will require more than a single-track approach”. He was right! We needed both tracks!’
Chidlow nodded thoughtfully. ‘That has to be significant,’ he mused. ‘Chapel and church – but what could it mean? Is his manuscript here, in the building – close by for us to find?’
‘Certainly not,’ Holmes said. ‘Take those two words and ignore the rest of the message. “Chapel” and “church”. Ignore the common letters – this gives us the apparently meaningless “apel” and “urch”. Now remember Moriarty’s fondness for anagrams, as demonstrated in yesterday’s newspaper. Swap around the initial vowels and we get “uple” and “arch”. Rearrange “uple” and we get “Lupe”, which is an administrative region in the centre of France.’ He smiled. ‘Being of French descent on my mother’s side, I recognised it instantly. I would suggest that if you travel to the small region of Lupe you will find a decorative arch, commemorating the Great War perhaps, or as the entrance to some public building. Professor Moriarty’s legacy will be there, buried at the base of the arch like the treasure at the end of a rainbow!’
‘Incredible!’ Chidlow breathed. ‘Mister Holmes, you are a marvel – a true marvel. I must arrange travel immediately. Are you gentlemen happy to make your own way home if I leave you here? Be assured, you have provided your government with a great service.’
‘You must go, of course,’ Holmes said, patting the Home Office man on the shoulder. ‘Send us a telegram when you have found the professor’s manuscript, and the list of potential blackmail subjects.’
‘I will!’ he called back over his shoulder as he sprinted down the aisle.
I shook my head. ‘Holmes, you continue to amaze me, even now.’
He smiled. ‘There will be no telegram,’ he said, as we heard the door at the front of the chapel slam.
‘You don’t think he will find the manuscript?’
‘Oh, I am quite sure he will find it. The problem is that his name isn’t Arthur Chidlow, and he does not work for the Home Office.’ He cocked his head to one side and raised his voice. ‘Does he, Professor?’
The Professor’s agent stepped out of the shadows. The smoked glass of his round spectacles made his eyes look like two dark holes in his face. He reached up and removed them. Underneath, his eyes were a watery and faded blue, and they seemed to have dark rings all the way around them. Abruptly, he pulled the hair from his head, revealing it to be a wig covering a bald, liver-spotted pate. He reached behind his head with both hands and pulled forwards. His entire face seemed to sag as he peeled it off. Underneath were the lined features and querulous expression of a man I had seen several times before in my life. Professor James Moriarty.
I could feel my heart beating rapidly in my chest, and the stone floor of the chapel seemed to lurch under my feet. I took several deep breaths to calm myself down. At my age, shock is something that should be avoided whenever possible.
‘His true name is Jon Paulson,’ Moriarty said in the same dryas-dust voice that I had recently heard on the phonograph. He placed the wig and the mask – made from some kind of guttapercha, I suspected – on the table where the gramophone had been. ‘He is, perhaps, the closest I have to a rival in the criminal fraternity. Unlike his rivals, he is a clear thinker, able to plan and execute the most complex of operations. There are numerous fake paintings hanging in galleries around the world in place of those he has stolen, and I would also recommend that the Bank of England checks all of the gold bars in its vaults for purity. Some of them are merely lead covered with a thin gold film. I presume it was his shoelaces that gave him away?’
‘That,’ Holmes said calmly, as if discussing the weather, ‘and the knot in his tie.’
Moriarty gazed at Holmes in curiosity. ‘What gave me away, Mister Holmes?’
‘Your neck seemed older than your face,’ Holmes replied. ‘That, and the slight but noticeable extra muscular development of your neck muscles due to that habitual nervous tic you have exhibited for so long.’
Moriarty nodded. ‘It is now under control, thanks to recent developments in pharmaceutical products. I should have worn a neck prosthesis, as well as the mask.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Ironic, is it not, that you have spent so many years made up to resemble various older people, whereas it is left to me to disguise myself as someone younger?’
My brain was slow to catch up with the apparently casual conversation that the two of them were having. ‘So Arthur Chidlow wasn’t Arthur Chidlow at all, but a career criminal named Jon Paulson?’ I shook my head. ‘And he retained Holmes’s services to help solve the final mystery of your legacy, which turned out not to be your legacy at all? But why go through this elaborate charade?’
‘Mister Holmes?’ Moriarty murmured, raising an eyebrow.
‘The professor was simply eliminating his closest competition.’ He raised his own bushy eyebrow at the professor. ‘What will he find, Professor?’
‘A bomb, I presume?’ I muttered.
Moriarty shook his head. ‘I abhor the kind of casual violence that the criminals such as the ones gathered here today exhibit. No, the manuscript is
there, as promised. The problem that Mr Paulson will find is that the crimes so meticulously described have several major flaws in them. If he tries to replicate them then he will fail, catastrophically and embarrassingly.’
‘If he is as intelligent as you say, he may spot the flaws,’ I pointed out.
‘That would be a distinct possibility if the pages of the manuscript had not been coated with a chemical that I have distilled from ergot fungus. It will render him … highly suggestible and subject to strange hallucinations. He will believe what he reads without question.’ He smiled – a stricture of the mouth that had no humour in it, and made him look momentarily like a venomous snake. ‘If he does try to “adjust” my instructions whilst under the influence of the ergot derivative then I will be intrigued to see how close to surrealism crime can get.’
‘And the blackmail information,’ Holmes asked. ‘Completely false, I presume?’
‘Indeed. It should prove most entertaining if he tries to make use of it.’
I glanced from Holmes to Moriarty and then back again. ‘Surely,’ I started, ‘we should …’
‘We should what?’ Holmes asked. ‘Stop one criminal from rushing off to find a fake manuscript left as a trick by another criminal? Why is that something we should concern ourselves with? Arrest either of these criminals for breaking a law? Which laws have either of them broken to our knowledge? Somehow raise concerns that the professor here has faked his own death? The newspaper announcement was not a legal notification and, besides, it mentioned a name belonging to no real human being, as far as we know.’ He laughed abruptly. ‘Well played, Professor. Well played indeed.’
‘Believe it or not, your praise means a great deal to me, Mister Holmes. Thank you.’ His head moved slowly left and right: a nervous habit now, I presume, rather than an actual physical problem. ‘You and I are living fossils, Mister Holmes, like the horseshoe crab. The world has evolved around us, leaving us behind, stranded on the beach of time. I have spent the last few years regretting this, and I have decided – reluctantly – to do something about it. I am coming out of retirement, Mister Holmes. Thanks to the pharmaceutical industry I expect I have a good few years left in me, as have you. I give you fair warning that I am planning something that will rock this nation to its very foundations. Stop me if you dare, Mister Holmes. Stop me if you can.’
Holmes gazed at the professor for a long moment, then turned to me. He seemed to be standing straighter, and his face, although still lined and old, was alive with fierce intelligence.
‘Professor,’ he said firmly, ‘it will be my pleasure.’
Quid Pro Quo
Ashley R. Lister
December 1867
“You summoned me, Professor Moriarty?”
Moriarty glanced up from his paperwork and shook his head. His features were sharp and angular. He was youthful, barely out of his twenties, but his hair was already the grey of a pending thunderstorm. He could have appeared austere and menacing if not for the brightness of his genial smile. The flash of his teeth shone with obvious good humour and kind, inoffensive mirth.
“Professor?” Moriarty laughed. “Goodness, no. I’m likely the Moriarty you’re looking for. It’s not a common name around these parts. But I’m not a professor. I’m only a humble reader. I haven’t been offered the chair yet.”
He encouraged his visitor to enter the room and motioned for him to sit on the other side of his cluttered desk. There was still snow dusting the shoulders of the visitor’s woollen jacket. His uncapped head glistened with melting snowflakes, which perspired down his brow and over his cheeks.
“Please,” Moriarty insisted. “Make yourself comfortable. The weather is very festive today, isn’t it?”
“Thank you, Professor.”
Like many of the academic offices in the university, Moriarty’s quarters were cramped to the point of claustrophobia. The shelved walls were overflowing with books. The desk was littered with pens, pencils, correspondence, papers, opened and unopened tomes, and piles and piles of marked and unmarked assignments. A copy of that month’s Lancet lay open on the page with Lister’s article about the benefits of his “antiseptic surgical method”. Beside that was a copy of that morning’s Times, headlined with the words CLERKENWELL OUTRAGE.
Moriarty tapped the largest bundle of papers on his desk and said, “Unless my treatise on the binomial theory meets with unprecedented success, I’m likely to remain a humble reader here for a long while.”
His guest, settling into the discomfort of the office’s only other seat, said nothing.
Moriarty found a black leather-bound notebook on his desk and began to leaf through the bright-white pages. The size and shape of the book suggested it might be a diary or a journal. Lettered in gold on the front were the words “quid pro quo”. Chasing his finger down one neatly written journal entry, Moriarty’s lips moved as he read through his day’s scheduled appointments. Eventually, he looked up from the book with a grin.
“It’s Gordon, isn’t it?”
Gordon nodded.
“Thank you for taking the time to come up here, Gordon. I understand you have a lot of important assignments to complete before the university closes for the Christmas holidays so it’s very much appreciated.”
“Why did you want to see me?”
“Good,” Moriarty laughed. “You’re direct. I like that. It suggests a focused mind.”
Gordon said nothing. He waited expectantly.
Moriarty picked up the leather-bound notebook and waved it importantly in the air as though it explained everything. “Professor Bell asked me to read through one of your papers. He believes you’ve been cheating.”
The light in the office was good. It was lit by a large window to the east and the morning sun washed the room with stark wintery warmth. Snow on the sills and ledges added to the brightness, making every detail in Moriarty’s quarters superbly lit.
The sunlight illuminated Gordon’s face.
After Moriarty mentioned the accusation of cheating, Gordon’s pale cheeks blushed with the faintest hint of pink. His lips remained closed. His mouth was an inscrutable line, neither smiling nor frowning. Purposefully, he said nothing.
“This is a serious allegation,” Moriarty went on. His tone was etched with concern. “You’re in your final year, Gordon. It has to be said, your results on the whole have been unremarkable so far. But, up to this point, they’ve always been deemed honest. This accusation could prove ruinous for you.”
Gordon remained silent and motionless.
Moriarty watched the young man intently.
“You’ll note that I said ‘the accusation could prove ruinous’,” he went on. “With a scandal like this the accusation doesn’t have to be true. Accusations alone are often enough to devastate a fledgling career.” He pointed at the newspaper headline: clerkenwell outrage – a dozen dead, one hundred injured. “If they’re left unchecked, accusations can have that sort of impact,” he said darkly.
Gordon met his gaze. His lips didn’t move.
“What do you have to say for yourself, Gordon?”
Gordon straightened in his chair. He rolled his broad shoulders and squared his jaw. “I don’t suppose it matters what I have to say for myself,” he began carefully. “If Professor Bell asked you to read through my paper, the only thing that matters is what you think. Do you think I’ve been cheating?”
Moriarty laughed again. It was a cheery sound and his tone seemed genuine.
“I wouldn’t want to play cards with you, Gordon,” he decided. “I’d wager you’ve won a fair share of bluffs in your day, haven’t you?”
Gordon didn’t answer.
The silence that stretched between them bordered on being interminable.
Moriarty reached for pen, ink and paper. He placed them on the blotter and began to write a missive. As he wrote in a fussily neat hand, he read the words aloud.
“Dear Professor Bell,” he began.
Gordon’s eyes
narrowed.
“At your request I have carefully examined the academic paper you suspected of being plagiarised.”
Moriarty glanced up from the note and studied his visitor.
Gordon tapped his shoe lightly on the floor. He could have been trying to dislodge snow from the tread, Moriarty thought. But, from the student’s posture, it seemed obvious that the toe of his boot was now pointing towards the office door. Even if Gordon was unaware of the fact, Moriarty thought, the young man appeared to be planning an escape route.
“I can understand why you had suspicions about this piece.” Moriarty continued to read the words aloud as he wrote them. “After having read some of the other works you feared had been copied, I also noted that there were some strong similarities in their structure, lexical choice and derivative conclusions.”
Gordon’s lips had tightened to a puckered scowl.
Wrinkles of concentration creased his otherwise smooth brow.
His hands were curled into fists.
Despite what he’d said before, Moriarty suspected, if Gordon really was a poker player, he should be well advised to limit his gambling to low stakes games. The blush was now more than a faint suggestion of pink. It was difficult to tell where the melting snow ended and Gordon’s nervous perspiration began.
“However,” Moriarty continued.
He paused long enough to write the word.
“I am comfortable confirming that, in my opinion, this is all original work. The student appears to have worked hard on this paper. His efforts, whilst wholly conventional and lacking in imagination, are all his own endeavours. I trust his labours will be acknowledged appropriately without further recourse to unfounded accusation.”
Moriarty added his signature to the letter. Gordon watched him fold it three times and seal it with wax before sitting back in his chair.
“Why did you do that?”
“You really are very direct,” Moriarty mused. “I do admire that quality. It shows a discipline of thought that so many lack.” He pointed at the open Lancet article on his desk and said, “That’s the same level of disciplined thought as Doctor Lister has shown in using carbolic acid to treat infection during surgical procedures. If only more of us could be like that great man.”
The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty Page 39