Professor Moriarty Omnibus

by Michael Kurland

The loading of the treasure was set to begin an hour before sunrise, which, according to Whitaker's Almanack, would occur at 5:42. And so at a little after four in the damp, chilly morning of the first Saturday in April, Barnett found himself dressing by candlelight so that he could go to watch large, heavily guarded boxes being loaded onto goods wagons in the predawn blackness for transport to London. And do his small part in seeing that they did not arrive.

  The reporters, sketch artists, and such of the idly curious as could drag themselves out of bed at such an hour were to be assembled on a three-tiered grandstand specially erected in the goods yard for the event. This would give them a splendid view of the proceedings and yet keep them out of the way. The real crowds would gather later in the morning, when the military guard was added and the treasure train prepared to leave.

  Barnett had wondered how they were going to move treasure from the ship to the goods wagons in the dark; even with the route marked with a line of lanterns, it would not seem a prudent procedure from the standpoint of security. And indeed, when he and Professor Moriarty arrived and took their seats in the front row of the grandstand, the brightest object around was the conductor's lantern, which was carried by the railway guard. There was no line of lanterns, and no apparent motion from what Barnett believed to be the direction of H.M.S. Hornblower, a quarter mile away at Stonehouse Basin. "Are we early?" he whispered to the guard, looking around at the ten or fifteen other people already in the stands.

  "No sir, you'm jest a'time," the guard told him in a broad north-counties accent. And as if merely waiting for his word, the entire goods yard was suddenly bathed in an intense white light.

  Barnett blinked, squinted, and shielded his eyes from the intense glare. "What on earth is that?" he asked no one in particular.

  "They appear to have four Drummond apparatuses mounted in towers," Moriarty said. "We are now bathed in a light as bright as the sun, if rather more limited in scope."

  "Drummond?" Barnett peered out from between his fingers. His eyes were starting to adjust now, and he could see slightly between his fingers as he shut off most of the light with his hands. The professor was right; except for the bizarre shadows cast by the four light sources, it could have been daylight within the limited area of the goods yard.

  "The light is generated by application of a flame of hydrogen gas burned in a stream of oxygen to a core of calcium oxide. You should be intimately familiar with the principle, fond as you are of attending the music halls."

  "Music halls?" Barnett asked.

  "Calcium oxide is perhaps better known as lime," Moriarty explained.

  "Limelight!"

  "Correct. The same light that illuminates your favorite singers, jugglers, and acrobats, done on a much larger scale. This sort of Drummond apparatus is usually found in lighthouses, where the beam can be seen from twenty miles away. The only difference is the shape of the mirrored reflector; parabolic in lighthouses, and, I would assume, conical here. It covers a much wider field, you see."

  "I see," Barnett said. And he was beginning to. He took his hands away from his face and looked around. "It's quite a shock, going from pitch-black to daylight in an instant. I'm not sure that the human eye was built to take that sort of transition."

  The grandstand was now filling up rapidly with the gentlemen of the press. The area before them, a loading platform with one of the specially prepared goods wagons pulled up before it, was curiously devoid of life and motion. It reminded Barnett of a stage setting in the moments before the curtain went up on the first act. Which, he realized, was probably a fair assessment. Lord East had arranged this show for the press, and he was going to see that they got their money's worth. For whatever motive, Lord East craved the public eye, and he had spent thirty years learning how to stay in it.

  A line of red-coated soldiers marched into the limelight from the left, the direction of the Hornblower, and the Lord East treasure. Leading them, astride three spirited chargers, were a colonel, a brigadier, and Lord East. It was, as it had been contrived to be, an inspiring sight.

  As the reporters fell silent at Lord East's approach, Moriarty leaned over to Barnett and whispered, "Ready?"

  "Yes," Barnett replied, feeling his heart beat faster.

  Moriarty nodded. "We have one thing to thank that mysterious murderer for," he commented.

  "We do? What's that?"

  "Were it not for him, Sherlock Holmes would even now be sitting behind us disguised as an itinerant colorman, breathing down our necks."

  "He did have three Scotland Yard men following you about," Barnett reminded Moriarty.

  "Yes, but we were able to divert them with little trouble. Holmes would have been much more difficult to get rid of. Even now he must be spending whatever time he can spare in wondering where I've got to. It is these small things that make life worth living."

  "You are a vindictive man, Professor," Barnett said.

  "Nonsense!" Moriarty whispered. "I would gladly be willing to relinquish the childish pleasure I get in thwarting him if he would give up following me about and spying on me. I think East is about to speak."

  "Welcome!" Lord East bellowed to the assemblage on the grandstand, maneuvering his horse in close to the railing. "I apologize for getting you all up at such a ridiculous hour to witness the loading, but we want to have a clear run to London during the daylight hours. I'm sure you can understand." As he spoke, his horse began walking around in a small circle. His lordship, trying to ignore this, gradually twisted around in his saddle until he was speaking over the animal's rump. Then, in a sudden fit of anger, he put his spurs to the animal to make it obey the reins. The horse responded by kicking up sharply with its hind feet, causing his lordship to lose his stirrups and almost fly head over rump to the earth below. He caught himself, barely, by grabbing onto the saddle with both hands, pulled himself up, and savagely yanked the horse around to face the group. "Military mount," he said in an annoyed undertone that carried across the field. "Always give the best of everything to the military!"

  The soldiers had now formed a double line leading from somewhere to the left of the limelit area to the loading platform. The shifting of the Lord East Collection from the battleship to the railway train was about to commence. "It should take a bit over two hours to transfer the entire collection into the ten goods wagons," Lord East explained, having regained control of his mouth. "But you must understand that this is, metaphorically speaking, only the tip of a vast iceberg. Hundreds and hundreds of man-hours have already gone into the preparations. Wafting the collection ashore and loading it onto the baggage carts which will bring it here was a process which began yesterday evening and was not completed until but a short time ago."

  " 'E don't want us to think it was easy," someone behind Barnett muttered.

  "Where is the official photographer?" Lord East fretted. "I wanted the whole process captured on glass plates. History is being made here!"

  The first baggage cart appeared, pushed between the twin rows of soldiers and onto the loading platform by an octet of workmen who, judging by their appearance and dress, must have been brought back from India by Lord East. It held twelve large statues of different ancient gods and goddesses of various Indian religions, deities that would have been very surprised to have ended up on the same small cart. The workmen rapidly and efficiently prised the statuary off the cart and into the goods wagon, tying the pieces into place with a complex of ropes and scaffolding.

  There was a pause in the loading now, and a certain amount of backtracking, while the official photographer bustled up and set up his apparatus to the side of the grandstand. Lord East and his entourage assumed a variety of poses that were supposed to suggest the earlier stages of the operation before continuing with the job.

  The next cart held what looked like a load of bricks. Lord East's audience broke into a subdued chattering at the sight of it, as the reporters tried to guess the history and purpose of the load. Some of the suggestions as to the uses
to which the bricks could be put were rather imaginative. "Sun-baked bricks," Lord East explained, "forming a lovely frieze that went around the wall of a four-thousand-year-old temple. Quite beautiful. A pair of hunters accosting a lion, I believe. The bricks were all numbered with Chinese chalk when we took it apart, but many of the numbers seem to have rubbed off during the journey. Or perhaps during the five years in storage. I hope we can reassemble it, nonetheless; it really was quite striking."

  Barnett's brief but essential part in Professor Moriarty's master plan for the acquisition of the Lord East Collection was to be enacted as the third treasure chest was being loaded. What he was to do was clear, and not overly difficult, given the known habits of his brother reporters. Why he was to do it was another matter. Moriarty was not communicative with his plans. It was enough for one to execute his part; one was not called upon to understand what he was doing, or why. Barnett gave a mental shrug as he prepared to move.

  The third wagon was loaded now, and sealed; the fourth was about to be rolled into its place before the platform. Lord East rode over to the loading platform to supervise as his most precious cargo was installed in its place.

  Barnett unostentatiously moved up one row in the grandstand and over toward the middle. His colleague Inglestone was sitting a few seats over from where Barnett now found himself, doing his best to ignore Barnett's existence. He must be still smarting from having to pay the bill the night before, Barnett decided. He would serve well as Barnett's unwitting ally.

  Barnett slid over along the bench and slapped Inglestone on the back. "How are you, friend?" he asked solicitously. "Sleep well?"

  "As well as could be expected, old man," Inglestone said frostily. "You owe me fourteen bob."

  "Do I?" Barnett leaned back, his elbows on the seat behind. He pitched his voice just loud enough so that the reporters in the seats surrounding could overhear. "Well then, I'll tell you what: I'll give you a chance to get even."

  "How's that?" Inglestone asked, sounding annoyed. "It wasn't a question of a wager, old man; this was cold, hard cash."

  "Ah, yes," Barnett said. "But there's wagers and there's wagers." He indicated the first treasure chest, now being loaded into the wagon. "I'll bet you five quid on the nose that there's nothing in that there box."

  Inglestone turned to stare at him. "What do you mean?" he asked. "The treasure chest?"

  "You've got it," Barnett said. "Five quid says that the so-called treasure chest is empty."

  "What are you saying, Barnett?" the columnist for the Evening Standard demanded, his mustache twitching.

  The first chest was now in place in the goods wagon, and the second was being brought up. "I say they're empty," Barnett said.

  "That's ridiculous!" the Morning Intelligencer-Whig declared. "Do you know what you're saying?"

  "Have you seen inside any of those chests?" Barnett demanded. "I'm saying there's a reason. I say they're empty!"

  Heinrich von Hertzog, British correspondent for the Berliner Tagenblatt, nodded his head sagely. "It could be," he said. "It makes sense."

  Barnett was glad to hear that, because the one thing that had worried him was that his accusation made no sense whatsoever, as far as he could tell. "Of course it does," he agreed.

  "What sort of sense?" Jameson of the Daily Telegraph demanded.

  "Lord East creates all this excitement, all this preparation, all this display, to draw attention to the treasure train," von Hertzog explained. "But the real treasure is sent otherwise. A clever man, Lord East."

  Barnett nodded. "I'll up it to ten quid," he said. "Any takers? Ten quid says those boxes are as empty as an editor's heart."

  "That's nonsense!" Inglestone said. "It certainly doesn't make any sense that I can see. Do you know what you're talking about, Barnett?"

  The second chest was now in place. "Ten quid says I do," Barnett said.

  "Come on, Barnett," Jameson said. "Don't try to make money on your friends. If you know something, spill it. Don't just sit there looking smug."

  The cart with the third chest on it was being pushed up onto the loading platform. "Easy enough to check," Barnett said. "Any takers? Ten quid; easy money."

  "How would you establish the contents of the chests?" von Hertzog asked.

  "Open one," Barnett said.

  "You're on!" Inglestone said, coming to a decision. "Ten pounds says that you're mistaken; that those chests are, indeed, full of the pieces in the Lord East Collection. But understand that this wager has nothing to do with the fourteen bob you owe me."

  "Fair enough," Barnett said. "You can deduct it from my winnings. Well, shall we go find out? His lordship can't object to a reasonable request to open one of the chests. We'll all promise not to touch; won't we, boys?"

  Now that the suggestion had been advanced, the reporters were unable to leave it alone. It became imperative to them to discover whether a possibility that none of them had even considered five minutes ago, that was unlikely in the extreme, that was actually none of their business, was true. In a body they left the grandstand and advanced toward the loading dock, the treasure chest, the goods wagon, and Lord East.

  The four plainclothes policemen who were guarding the grandstand moved to stop the cluster of them as they advanced. "Gentlemen, gentlemen, please!" one of them cried, opening his arms wide, as if to encircle the group himself. " 'Ere now, what's this?" a second barked, running around to the front of the group. The other two also raced around to the front to place themselves uncertainly between the reporters and the platform.

  Lord East heard the disturbance and turned to see the cluster of correspondents advancing on him. For a second he looked nonplussed, but then he gathered himself and guided his horse over to the group, placing himself and his horse between the reporters and the platform. "You gentlemen were requested to remain on the grandstand," he said sternly. "You must realize that we cannot compromise our security arrangements, even to oblige the press. Please return immediately whence you came."

  The third chest was now inside the goods wagon, placed carefully on its supporting frame, and the Indian carters were emerging from the wagon as the fourth chest was pulled up in its cart. "If you don't mind, my lord," Barnett called up to him, "we'd like to see inside that box."

  "Box?" Lord East looked uncertain for a moment. "You mean the treasure chest, sir?"

  "Yes, my lord," Higgins, of the Pall Mall Gazette, called. "There seems to be some doubt as to whether the treasure is actually in the chests, or whether this is merely a ruse."

  "A ruse, gentlemen?" Lord East looked shocked. He had just been accused of doing something un-British.

  "The suggestion is, my lord," Inglestone said, "ridiculous as it sounds, that you have spirited the treasure away by some alternate means, while encouraging us to believe that it is still in those chests. Thus supposedly foiling possible criminal attempts upon the collection."

  Lord East considered for a second. "And just why should I do that?" he asked. "The treasure is quite safe where it is. Certainly safer than any other place I could put it. I do not like these devious methods you speak of, nor do I resort to them. They are unnecessary."

  "Then, my lord, the treasure is, indeed, in the chests?" Inglestone asked, looking inordinately pleased. "You affirm that?"

  "There is my seal," Lord East said, pointing with his riding crop to the lid of the fourth chest, now being inserted into the goods wagon. He indicated the strip of ribbon that went across the lid's opening, sealed above and below. "It has not been broken."

  "You will permit us to check?" von Hertzog asked.

  "I most certainly will not!" Lord East said sharply. He waved the chest on into the wagon. "Gentlemen, this is outrageous! How dare you question me! The chest will be opened at the Royal Albert Museum, in the presence of a representative of her imperial majesty, and not a jot before. Please return to your seats."

  The reporters, muttering uncertainly, returned to the grandstand. Barnett watched as Lord East
checked the inside of the goods wagon and then ordered it closed and sealed from the outside.

  Barnett's part of the job, whatever it had accomplished, was done. Now there was nothing to do but wait for the train that would take Moriarty to Hampermire Station and himself through to London. How the little act he had just put on would further the cause, he didn't know, and at the moment he didn't care. Somewhere in London, Cecily Perrine had disappeared; somewhere in London she was at this very moment. In what state she was, Barnett did not care to speculate. How he would find her, he had no idea. But if she was still alive, find her he would.

  The sun was coming up, and the area outside the limelight was just beginning to be visible. Moriarty and Barnett left the grandstand and returned to the hotel. There was a telegram waiting for Moriarty when they arrived. He opened it and read it in a second. "Nothing," he said. "Sorry, Barnett. No trace of the lady yet."

  "I'll find her," Barnett said.

  "Of course you will," Moriarty told him.

  TWENTY — ALWAYS DARKEST

  I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

  The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars

  Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

  Rayless, and pathless, and the icy Earth

  Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

  Morn came and went — and came, and brought no day…

  — George Gordon, Lord Byron

  Cecily Perrine awoke. Slowly, dimly, her awareness returned, and she was amazed to realize that she had been asleep. She had no idea how long she had slept; there was no way to mark the passage of time in her pitch-black surroundings. She rose from the ticking full of dank straw that was her mattress on the cold stone floor, and felt her way around the smooth stone walls. She did not know what she hoped to find, and in any case her groping fingers encountered nothing but damp stone. The cell she was in was approximately six feet square, and higher than her fingers could reach with her arms fully extended. It contained the straw-filled ticking, a chamber pot, and Cecily. The door in the corner of one wall was no more than a foot wide and four feet high, and held neither a peephole nor a doorknob.