One moment, a very solid dead man is holding me down and making a beeline for my throat; the next, the back of him is up in flames. His eyes popped wide open and his head shot up. He howled and jumped to his feet, spinning around in circles. He clawed at the flames, but his jacket and shirt went up fast — the fire burning away what hair was left on his head. He looked at the old man for help. The old buzzard only took another drag on his cigarette and watched him burn.
Landau continued to spin, screaming as the room filled with black smoke. I fought the urge to puke as his flesh burned. Then, the old man toppled him with the tip of his cane and the flaming husk that was Landau fell, writhed and went still. “Use one of those sheets to put him out, there’s a good fellow.”
I whipped a sheet from one of the armchairs and beat what was left of Landau with it. His corpse smoldered and stayed down.
“Thank you for creating a diversion,” the old man said. “Come along. I suspect we’ll finish all this in the lower regions.”
I hunted around for my gun and put it back in my shoulder holster. Then I took the flashlight from the old man and led the way through the dining room and into the kitchen. The basement stairs were there, beside an old servant’s door. I reached into the darkness and hit the switch. Dim light came from below.
“There may not be more of those things,” the old man said. “Things like that poor devil Landau. But, of course, I could be wrong.” He gestured towards the stairs. “After you.”
The first step creaked loudly. I was down two or three stairs before the old man had even made it down the first. Something scurried in the dark corners and I caught sight of rats running for cover. “More of his friends,” the old man said. “He has a marked taste for vermin. He’s down here, I’m sure of it. Do be careful. He can control rats, you know.”
“Control rats?”
“Though I wouldn’t worry. He’s hardly had time to gather too many of them. Still, you never know. Maybe we’ll need your revolver after all.”
The stairs curved round and, halfway down, I saw the main portion of the basement for the first time. It was filled with boxes … fifty coffin-sized boxes of simple, unvarnished wood. Romanian words were stenciled in black paint on most of them. I hurried down and into the room, now a deep ocean of pine.
One box leaned upright in a corner, separate from the others. This, too, was stenciled with Romanian words, but it also had some weird oval marking on the lid, like a family crest. The crest featured a castle and four bats. I thought of what the old man said outside and wondered again what the hell was going on.
The old man caught up behind me. “That would be his. Odd question of etiquette, isn’t it? I wonder if one just knocks, like a Sunday visitor? Of course, he may not be home.” He hobbled over to the box and smartly rapped on the lid with his cane. “Come along, come along. The game is afoot and it’s getting late.”
The box … moved. Something was inside and shifted its weight. Then … things happened too quickly for me to fully grasp it.
First, the box lid exploded outward, shooting across the room. Then a wave of fetid air washed over us and I moved back a step. I could hear roaring in my ears, and, suddenly, rats squealed all around me. I looked around my feet and then in the corners of the basement, but didn’t see anything. And when I focused my attention back on the box, he was stepping out.
He was tall, very tall. I top about six feet, and he towered over me. He was dressed all in black from head to foot, and the high gloss of his boots caught the gleam of the light. His face was long, fierce and cadaverous. He had thick white hair brushed back over a high forehead. His face was aquiline, with a large nose. His bushy eyebrows met over the bridge of his nose, and his top lip was invisible under a large, gray moustache. Sharp, animalistic teeth protruded onto his bottom lip. Then I caught his eyes.
They were red, and burned like coals. Like Landau, he looked more animal than man.
He flexed his hands and I heard his knuckles crack. His fingers were tipped with long, pointed nails, and his palms were hairy. He raised his right hand, gesturing first to me, then he turned to the old man. His eyes locked on him, and the fires there burned brighter.
The old man bowed slightly, steadying himself on his cane. “Count,” he said. “Journeys end in lovers meeting, as they say in the old play. I am happy to see that your flair for the dramatic has not deserted you.”
“You!” he hissed. He had a heavy Romanian accent, like the bad guy in a spy picture. His voice was deep and seemed to echo, like he was speaking from a tunnel. “You’re still alive!”
“Surely longevity is nothing to surprise you. It is indeed disagreeable to find you here, in the United States. The California climate has nothing to recommend it. What do you want here?”
The red eyes turned to me. “Who is he?”
“Fresh blood, if you’ll pardon the expression,” the old man answered. “Now, I believe I asked a question of you.”
The man in black turned away from me. “I’ve come to help.”
The old man blinked, surprised. “I beg your pardon?”
The man in black took a step closer. “I escaped from Europe as soon as I could. I could not stand idly by while that maniac destroyed the country I had lived and died for. But the forces of darkness are sometimes too much, even for the Prince of Darkness Himself. So, I have come to offer my services to the Allies.”
“And what would those services be?” the old man asked.
“An army. An army of my kind, led by me, their king! We would be invincible. With sword and mace we would sweep over the Continent and take back what was once ours. We could form an alliance, your kind and mine, the warm and the cold. It would be sweet, yes? The blood would run in the gutters and the world would be safe again, yes, safe for the strong and for those willing to sacrifice. The time has come … to fight back with claw and fang!”
The old man was silent as he thought. “How many like you are there in the United States?”
“I am not a butcher,” the man in black said, “despite what the Dutch doctor and the others claimed. I took Landau because I had to. You … put him at permanent rest?”
“Yes.” Then the old man turned to me. “Mad as a hatter, you know. Is it your experience, too, that once you get them talking, it’s obvious that they are insane? Oh, forgive me, Count. You’d expect greater respect for a royal personage from one raised under Victoria, I’m sure, but the world is changing rapidly. Too rapidly, I think, for the likes of you to find any place in it. I’m afraid that your little American adventure must end here.”
I didn’t wait for instructions. I rammed my shoulder into the man in black and he staggered into his upright box, both of them thundering to the floor. Then I pivoted, grabbed a corner of a whole stack of coffin-shaped boxes and pitched them onto him.
“What the devil are you doing?” the old man asked, his voice high.
“Trying to stay alive.” Landau had taken six of my bullets, whatever he was. And the man in black had turned Landau into that thing, so I was dangerously outclassed. I’d have to keep him off balance if I was going to find a way to take him out.
But he didn’t stay down long. The was a cracking sound, and I saw the man in black chopping his way out of the boxes with the edge of his hand. The hard wood cracked apart like toothpicks.
“Perhaps it’s time you shot him, too?” the old man said.
The man in black had just made it to his feet when I pulled my gun and emptied it into him. Unlike Landau, he wasn’t knocked back at impact. Instead, he just stood there, glaring at me.
“Now hit him with something else,” the old man suggested.
Some of the boxes that landed on him were now badly splintered. I grabbed a loose board and held it like a baseball bat. The man in black inched closer and I smacked him hard on the side of the head. He didn’t even wince. I reared back and brought the wood down again, but he stopped it in midair with one hand and held it tight. Then he pulled it
closer to him and I dragged along with it. We were torso to torso, and I could see his red lips grin wolfishly when I was close. There was a loud squeak, and the wooden club pulped as he crushed it in his fingers.
The other hand wrapped around my tie. He pulled down and I fell to my knees before him. He pushed my head to the side, exposing my neck. I heard him growl like a punk in a stag film. I thought of what Landau had become and struggled with everything I had, but I couldn’t pull away. I pulled at his arm, screaming.
Then, a horrible, swishing noise, and I was drenched with a vile smelling filth. The man in black fell to his knees opposite me … but his head was missing. The top of his old fashioned black suit was drenched in blood, and great gouts of it spurted from the horrible, gaping hole that topped his shoulders. Then the body fell back, still gushing red muck.
I put my hands on the floor to keep steady, and that’s when I saw his head lying about three feet away from his body. The red eyes were open with a look of surprise. Then I looked up. The old man was wiping blood from a sword with a long, lavender handkerchief. He then tossed the handkerchief aside and lowered the sword back into the heavy black walking stick that concealed it. “Useful thing,” he said. “Very handy in Whitechapel back in ’88. Now there was a madman. I say, are you well enough to fetch that can of petrol from the car? This all must be burned, you know, both the bodies and the boxes. Then we’ll call the fire brigade before it gets too out of hand. I don’t want to repeat all the trouble I had in San Francisco in ‘06. Don’t see why I was blamed for all that, but there you are. Need a hand up?”
The Red Planet League
The Red Planet League
by Kim Newman
(Being a reprint from the Reminiscences of Col. Sebastian Moran, Late of the 1st Bengalore Pioneers)
As my many devoted readers — hullo mater, gout still playing up, eh what? — know, Professor Moriarty excelled in two fields of human endeavour.
Mathematics, for one. Never was there such a fellah as the Prof for chalking up sums, or the rigmarole with more squiggles than numbers. Equations. Did ‘em in his head, for fun … damn his eyes.
Neverthehowsoever, your humble narrator — Colonel Sebastian ‘Basher’ Moran, to whit: me — would wager several pawn tickets held on the family silver that you lot have little or no interest in fractional calculus or imperfect logarithms. You’d all be best pleased if I yarned up the other field in which James Moriarty was top of the class.
Crime. Just the word gets you tingly, don’t it?
Well, tough titty … as the house-captain who tried to roger me when I was a whelp at Eton used to say, because this story is all about mathematics. I got my pen-knife to the house-capt’s goolies, by the way. Preserved my maidenly virtue, as it were. Blighter is Bishop of Brichester these days. Wouldn’t care to be a boy soprano in his choir. That’s beside the point: maths is the thing!
Get your thinking caps on, because I might put in some sums. Make you show your workings in the margin and write off for the answers. It will cost an extra 3d and a stamp just to find out if you’re as clever as you think you are. Probably, you ain’t. Most fellahs (including — I’m not ashamed to admit it — me) aren’t as clever as they think they are. Moriarty, though, was exactly that clever, a rara avis indeed. More dodos are around than blokes like that. According to Mr. Darwin, that’s good joss for the rest of us. Elsewise, we’d have long since been hunted to extinction by the inflated cranium people.
Drifting back to the subject in hand, Professor Moriarty was Number One Heap Big Chief in both his vocations. Which meant there was something he was even better at than complicated number problems or turning a dishonest profit — making enemies.
Over the years and around the world, I’ve run into some prize-winningly antagonistic coves. I recall several of that species of blood-soaked heathen who bridle under the yoke of Empire and declare war on ‘the entire White Christian Race’. Good luck to ‘em. Pack off a regiment of curates and missionaries led by Bishop Bum-Banger to meet their savage hordes on the field of carnage, and see if I care. In India, some sergeants wear armor beneath the tunic because no soldier serving under them can be trusted with a clear shot at their backs. I’ve also run into confidential police informants, which is to say: grasses. Peaching on one’s fellow crims to escape gaol is guaranteed to get you despised on both sides of the law. Fact is: no bastard born earned as many, as various, and as determined enemies as Moriarty.
First off, other crooks hated him. Get your regular magsman or ponce on the subject of Professor Jimmy Bleedin’ Moriarty, and you’ll expand the old vocabulary by obscenities in several argots. Just being a bigger thief than the rest of them was enough to get their goats. What made it worse was villains were often forced to throw in with him on capers, taking all the risk while he snaffled the lion’s share of the loot. If they complained, he had them killed. That was my job, by the bye — so show some bloody respect or there’s a rope, a sack and a stretch of the Thames I could introduce you to. To hear them tell it, every cracksman in the land was just about to work out a fool-proof plan to lift the jewels from Princess Alexandra’s knickers or rifle the strong-boxes in the sub-basement of the Bank of England when Professor Moriarty happened by some fluke to think of it first. A few more tumblers of gin and their brilliant schemes would have been perfected — and they wouldn’t have to hand on most of the swag to some evil-eyed toff just for sitting at home and drawing diagrams. You might choose to believe these loquacious, larcenous fellahs. Me, I’ll come straight out and say they’re talking through a portion of their anatomy best employed passing wind or, in certain circumstances, concealing a robin’s egg diamond with a minimum of observable discomfort.
Then there were coppers. Moriarty made sure most of them had no earthly notion who he might be, so they didn’t hate him quite as personally as anyone who ever met him — but they sure as spitting hated the idea of him. By now, you’ve heard the twaddle … vast spider squatting in the centre of an enormous web of vice and villainy … Napoleon of Crime … Nero of Naughtiness… Thucydides of Theft, et cetera, et cetera. Detectives of all stripe loathed the unseen King of Krooks, and blubbed to their mummies whenever they had to flounder around after one of his coups. Scotland Yard baffled again, as if that were news. Hah!
One man above all hated Professor Moriarty, and was hated by him.
Throughout his dual career — imagine serpents representing maths and crookery, twining together like a wicked caduceus — the Prof was locked in deadly struggle for supremacy — nay, for survival — with a human creature he saw as his arch-enemy, his eternal opposite, his nemesis.
Sir Nevil Airey Stent.
I don’t know how it started. Stent and Moriarty were at each other’s throats well before I became Number Two Heap Big-ish Chief in the Consortium of Crime. Whenever the Stent issue was raised, Moriarty turned purple and hissed — and was in no condition to elucidate further. I do know they first met as master and pupil: Moriarty supervised young Nevil when the lad was cramming for an exam. Maybe the Prof scorned the promising mathematician’s first quadratic equation in front of the class. Maybe Stent gave him an apple with a worm in it. Upshot is: daggers drawn, eyes a-blaze, lifelong enmity.
Since this record might be of some academic interest, here are a few facts and dates I’ve looked up in back numbers of the Times.
1863 — boyish Nevil Stent, former pupil of James Moriarty, rocks the world of astronomy with his paper Diffractive Properties of an Object-Glass with Circular Aperture. Not a good title, to my mind — which runs more to the likes of Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas or My Nine Nights in a Harem (both, as it happens, written by me — good luck finding the latter: most of the run was burned by order of the crown court and the few extant volumes tend to be found in the collection of the judge who made the ruling).
1869 — Stent appointed to the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge University, succeeding brain-boxes like Isaac Newton, Thomas Turton and
Charles Babbage. Look ‘em up — all gems, so I’m told. If said Chair were a literal piece of furniture, it would be hand-carved by Chippendale and covered in a three-inch layer of gold flake. The Lucasian Professorship comes complete with loads of wonga, a free house, all the bowing and scraping students you can eat and high tea with the dean’s sister every Thursday. Stent barely warms the Lucasian with his bottom before skipping on to occupy an even more exalted seat, the Plumian Chair of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy. It’s only officially a Chair — everyone in Cambridge calls it the Plumian Throne.
1872 — the book-length expansion of Diffractive Properties lands Stent the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. This is like the V. C. of science. Wear that little ribbon and lesser astronomers swallow their chalk with envy when you walk by.
1873 — Stent publishes again! On an Inequality of Long Period in the Motions of the Earth and Venus so radically revises the Solar Tables set out a generation earlier by Jean Baptiste Delambre that the Delambre Formulae are tossed into the bin and replaced by the Stent Formulae. J-B is dead, or Moriarty would have to queue up behind him for the job of Nev’s arch-enemy, methinks.
1878 — Stent knighted by Her Majesty, Queen Victoria — who couldn’t even count her own children, let alone calculate an indice of diffraction — and is therefore universally hailed the greatest astronomical mathematician of the age. Rivals choke on their abacus beads. Naturally, Sir Nevil is also appointed Astronomer Royal and allowed to play with all the toys and telescopes in the land. Gets first pick of which bits of the sky to look at. Can name any cosmic bodies he discovers after his cats. The AR position comes with Flamsteed House, an imposing official residence — Greenwich Observatory is tacked onto it, rather like a big garden shed. Lesser mortals have to throw themselves on the ground before Sir Nevil Airey Stent if they want to take so much as a shufti at the man in the moon.
Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes Page 28