Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes

by Campbell, Jeff; Prepolec, Charles

  Cast your glims over that little lot, and consider the picture of Sir Nevil in the rotogravure. Tall, fair-haired, eyes like a romantic poet, strong arms from working an alt-azimuth mount, winning little boy smile. Mrs. Sir Nevil is the former Caroline Broughton-Fitzhume, second daughter of the Earl of Stoke Poges, reckoned among the beauties of the age. Tell me you don’t hate the swot right off the bat.

  Now … imagine how you’d feel about Stent if you were a skull-faced, reptile-necked, balding astronomical-mathematical genius ten years older than the Golden Youth of Greenwich Observatory. Though recognized as a serious brain, your career has scarcely stretched beyond being ousted from an indifferent, non-Plumian chair — no more than a stool, they say — at a provincial university few proper dons would toss a mortar-board at. If you aren’t grinding your teeth with loathing, you probably lost them years ago.

  Stent. It’s even a horrible name, isn’t it?

  All the Dictionary of National Biography business I found out later. When Professor Moriarty, tense as a coiled cobra and twice as venomous, slithered into the reception room of the digs we shared in Conduit Street brandishing a copy of The Observatory — trade journal for astronomers, don’t you know — I’d have been proud to say I had never heard of the flash nob who was giving that evening’s lecture to the Royal Astronomical Society in Burlington House.

  My understanding was that my flat-mate and I were due to attend an exclusive sporting event in Wapping. Contestants billed as ‘Miss Lilian Russell’ and ‘Miss Ellen Terri’ in the hope punters might take them for their near look-alikes Lillian Russell and Ellen Terry, were to face off, stripped to drawers and corsets, and Indian-wrestle in an arena knee-deep in custard. My ten bob was on Ellen to shove Lilian’s face into the yellow three falls out of four. I was scarcely best-pleased to be informed that our seats at this cultural event would go unclaimed. We would be skulking — in disguise, yet — at the back of the room while Sir Nevil Stent delivered his latest crowd-pleasing lecture.

  His title: The Dynamics of an Asteroid: A Comprehensive Refutation.

  “Has it not been said that The Dynamics of an Asteroid ‘ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics there is no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it’?”

  Sir Nevil Stent smiled and held up a thick volume.

  I was familiar with the blasted book. At least a dozen presentation copies were stuffed into the shelves in our study. It was the Professor’s magnum opus, the sum total of his knowledge of and contribution to the Whole Art of Mathematical Astronomy. In rare moments of feeling, Moriarty was wont to claim he was prouder of these six hundred and fifty-two pages (with no illustrations, diagrams or tables) than of the Macao-Golukhin Forgery, the Bradford Beneficent Fund Swindle or the Featherstone Tiara Theft.

  “Of course,” continued Stent, “we sometimes have our doubts about ‘the scientific press’. More sense can be found in Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday.”

  A tide of tittering ran through the audience. Stent raised his eyebrows, and shook the book in humorous fashion, as if hoping something would fall out. Chuckles ensued. Stent tried to read the book upside-down. Something which might be diagnosed as a guffaw erupted from an elderly party near us. Moriarty turned to aim a bone-freezing glare at the old gent — but was thwarted by his disguise. He wore opaque black spectacles and held a white cane in order to pass himself off as a blind scholar from Trinity College, Dublin.

  Stent slammed the book down on the lectern.

  “No, my friends, it will not do,” he said. “Being beyond understanding is of no use to anyone. Astronomy will never progress from simple star-gazing if we allow it to be dominated by such … and I don’t hesitate to use the term … piffling tripe as Professor Moriarty’s pound and a half of waste paper. This copy of the book was taken by me this afternoon from the library of the Greenwich Observatory. As you know, this is the greatest collection of publications and papers in the field. It is open to the finest scholars and minds on the planet. Let us examine this Dynamics of an Asteroid, and see what secrets it has to tell…”

  Stent picked up the book again and began to leaf through it. He showed the title page. “A first, and indeed only, edition!” Then, he turned to the opening chapter, and drew his finger down the two-columned text, turned the page, and did the same, then turned the page and…

  “Aha,” he exclaimed. “After only three pages of actual text, we find that the next leaf is uncut. As are all remaining leaves. What can we deduce from that? This book has been in the library for six years. I have a list of academics, students and astronomers who have taken it out. Seventy-two names. Many I see before me this evening. It seems no one has managed to read beyond the first three pages of this masterwork. Because I am not averse to suffering for my field, I have read the book, cover to cover. Six hundred and fifty two pages. I venture to say I am the only man in the room who can claim such a Herculean achievement. Is there any comrade here, to whom I can extend my condolences, with whom I can share my sufferings? In short, has anyone else managed to finish The Dynamics of an Asteroid? Hands up, don’t be shy. There are worse things to admit to.”

  The handle of the Professor’s cane snapped. He’d been gripping it with both knotted fists. The sound was like a gun-shot.

  “So you have joined us, James,” said Stent. “I rather thought you might.”

  A sibilance escaped Moriarty’s colorless lips.

  “We shall have need of you later,” said Stent, producing a long thin knife — which he proceeded to slip into the book, cutting at last its virgin leaves.

  “You can take off those ridiculous smoked glasses,” said Stent. “Though, if you have suffered some onset of blindness which has not been reported in the press, it would explain a great deal. Gentlemen of the Royal Society of Astronomers, it is my contention that no man who has ever looked through a telescope with sighted eyes would ever be able to make the following statement, which I quote from the third paragraph of page one of The Dynamics of an Asteroid…”

  Stent proceeded to dissect the book, wielding words like a scalpel, and flicking blood in Professor Moriarty’s face. It was a merciless, good-humored assassination. Entertaining asides raised healthy laughter throughout the evening.

  The sums were well above my head, but I snickered once or twice at the amusing way Stent couched his refutations. I should have kept a stonier face: the next day, Moriarty had Mrs. Halifax, who kept brothel under our rooms, despatch Fifi, my favorite French dollymop, to Alaska as a mail-order bride.

  At every point, Stent invited a response from Moriarty. None came. The Professor sat in silence as his theorems were shredded, his calculations unpicked, his conclusions burst like balloons.

  It occurred to me that Sir Nevil Airey Stent had no idea that the Professor’s interests extended beyond equations.

  Blithely, the Astronomer Royal continued his lecture. Though I knew only too well what the clot was getting into, I could scarcely blame him for digging his own grave in public.

  No one would have believed, in the next-to-last years of the 19th Century, that his lecture was being watched keenly and closely by an intelligence greater than his own; that as he blathered on and on he was scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a berk with a microscope might scrutinise the tiny wriggly bugs that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency, Stent read from his little sheaf of notes, serene in the assurance that he was royalty among astronomers.

  Yet, across the gulf of the lecture hall, a mind that was to Stent’s as his was to those of the beasts that perish, an intellect vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded the podium with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew his plans against him.

  “In brief, sirs,” said Stent, wrapping things up, “this asteroid is off its course. Heavenly bodies being what they are, this cannot be allowed. Stars are inexorable. The laws of attraction, gravity, propulsion and decay are immutable. An asteroid does not behave in the manner our
friend Moriarty alleges that it does. This august body will fall prey to … to men from Mars, with three legs, eyes the size of saucers and paper party hats … before the asteroid will deviate one whit from the course I have charted. I would wager five pounds that Professor Moriarty can say no different. James?”

  The pause stretched on. Moriarty said nothing. It was summer, but I felt a chill. So did the rest of the audience.

  The silence was broken by Markham, the adenoidal twit who had introduced Sir Nevil. He stood up and called for a round of thunderous applause, then announced that the gist of the speech was now available as a pamphlet at the cost of 6d. There was a rush for the stall outside the lecture room, where a brisk trade was done.

  Moriarty remained in his seat as the room emptied.

  “James,” Stent said cheerfully from the podium as he gathered his notes, “it’s pleasant to see you in such evident health. There’s actually some color in your cheeks. I bid you a respectful good night.”

  The Professor nodded to his nemesis. Stent left by a rear door.

  Moriarty didn’t move from his chair. I wondered if he even could.

  Stent had set out to murder Moriarty the Mathematician. He didn’t suspect his victim had another self. An unmurdered, unmerciful enemy.

  “Moran,” he said, at last, “tomorrow, you will call on The Lord of Strange Deaths in Limehouse. The Lord is out of the country, but Singapore Charlie will act for him. You remember the Si-Fan were able to import the swamp adder we supplied for Dr. Grimseby Roylott. I wish to place an order for a dozen vampyroteuthis infernalis. That is not yet an officially recognized genus of coleoidea, but specimens come on the exotica market from time to time.”

  “Vampyro-whatsit?”

  “Vampyroteuthis infernalis. Hellish vampire squid. Often mistaken for an octopus. Don’t let Singapore Charlie palm you off with anything else. They are difficult to keep alive above their spawning depth. Pressurized brass containers will be necessary. Von Herder can manufacture them, reversing the principle of the Maracot Bell. Use the funds from the Hanway Street jeweller’s, then dip into the reserve. Expense is immaterial. I must have my vampyroteuthis infernalis.”

  I pictured what a hellish vampire squid might be. And foresaw unpleasant experiences for Sir Nevil.

  “Now,” said the Professor, consulting his watch, “there is just time to catch the last falls. Would you be interested in making haste for Wapping?”

  “Rath-er!”

  The next few weeks were busy.

  Moriarty dropped several criminal projects, and devoted himself entirely to Stent. He summoned minions — familiar fellahs from previous exploits, like Italian Joe from the Old Compton Street café poisonings, and new faces nervous at being plucked from obscurity by the greatest criminal mind of the age. ‘P. C. Purbright’, a rozzer kicked off the force for not sharing his bribe-takings, was one such small fish. A misleadingly strapping, ferocious-looking bloke and something of a fairy mary, P. C. P. specialized in dressing up in his old uniform and standing look-out for first-floor men. He had a sideline as a human punching bag, accepting a fee from frustrated criminals (and even respectable folk) who relished the prospect of giving a policeman a taste of his own truncheon. If you paid extra, he’d turn up while you were out with your darby girl and pretend to make an arrest — you could beat him off easily and impress the little lady with your fightin’ spirit. Guaranteed a tumble, I’m told. He came out of the Professor’s study with wide eyes, roped into whatever bad business we were about.

  I was sent out to make contact with reliable tradesmen, all more impressed by the color of Moriarty’s gelt than the peculiarity of his requests. Paul A. Robert, a pioneer of praxinoscopists, was paid to prepare materials in his studio in Brighton. According to his ledgers, he was to provide ‘speculative scientific educational illustrations’ in the form of ‘rapidly-serialized photograph cells from nature and contrivance’. Von Herder, the blind German engineer, bought himself a week-end cottage in the Bavarian Alps with his earnings from the pressurized squid-tanks and something called a burnished copper parabolic mirror. Singapore Charlie, acting for a mad chink who had cornered the market in importing venomous flora and fauna, was delighted to lay his hands — not literally, of course — on as many squid as we could use.

  The pets were delivered promptly by Chinese laundrymen straining to lift heavy wicker hampers. Under the linens were Herder Bells, which looked like big brass barrels with stout glass view-panels and pressure gauges. A mark on the gauge showed what the correct reading should be, and a foot-pump was supplied to maintain the cozy deep-sea foot-poundage the average h. v. s. needs for comfort. If this process was neglected, they blew up like balloons. Snacks could be slipped to the cephalopods through a funnel affair with graduated locks. The Professor favored live mice, though they presumably weren’t usually on the vampyroteuthis menu.

  Mrs. Halifax supplied a trembling housemaid — rather, a practiced harlot who dressed up as a trembling housemaid — to see to the feeding and pumping. Pouting Poll said she’d service the entire crew of a Lascar freighter down to the cabin boy’s monkey rather than look at the ungodly vermin, so hatches were battened over the spheres’ windows at feeding time. Not wanting to follow ma belle Fifi to Frozen Knackers, Alaska, Polly did her duty without excessive whining. The Prof spotted the doxy, and promised her a promotion to ‘undercover operative’ — which the poor tart hadn’t the wit to be further terrified by.

  The squid were quite repulsive enough for me, but Moriarty decided their pale purplish cream hides weren’t to his liking and introduced drops of scarlet dye into their water. This turned them into flaming red horrors. The Professor, cock-a-hoop with the fiends, spent hours peering into their windows, watching them turn inside-out or waggle their tentacles like angry floor-mops.

  Remember I said other crooks hated Moriarty? This was one of the reasons. When he was on a thinking jag, he couldn’t be bothered with anything else. Business as usual went out the window. While the Professor was tending his squid, John Clay, the noted gold-lifter (another old Etonian, as it happens), popped round to Conduit Street to lay out a tasty earner involving the City and Suburban Bank. He wanted to rope in the Professor’s services as consulting criminal and have him take a look-see at his proposed scam, spot any trapfalls which might lead him into police custody and suggest any improvements that would circumvent said unhappy outcome.

  For this, no more than five minutes’ work, the firm of Moriarty, Moran & Company, could expect a healthy tithe in gold bullion. The Professor said he was too busy. I had some thoughts about that, but kept my mouth shut. I’d no desire to wake up with a palpitating hellish vampire squid on the next pillow. Clay went off in a huff, shouting that he’d pull the blag on his lonesome and we’d not see a farthing. “Even without your dashed Professor, I shall get away clean, with thirty thousand napoleons! I shall laugh at the law, and crow over Moriarty!”

  You know how the City and Suburban crack worked out. Clay is now sewing mailbags, demonstrating the finest needle-work in all Her Majesty’s prisons. A flash, smug thief, he’d been an asset on several occasions. We’d never have got the Rajah’s Rubies without him. If Moriarty kept this up, we wouldn’t have an organization left.

  One caller the Professor did deign to receive was a shifty-eyed walloper named George Ogilvy. I took him straight off for a back-alley chiv-man, but he turned out to be another bally telescope tosser. First thing he did was whip out a well-worn copy of The Dynamics of an Asteroid (with all its leaves cut) and beg Moriarty for a personal inscription. I think the thing the Professor did with his mouth at that was his stab at a smile. Trust me, you’d rather a vampyroteuthis infernalis clacked its beak — buccal orifice, properly — at you than see those thin lips part a crack to give a glimpse of teeth.

  Moriarty got Ogilvy on the subject of Stent, and the astronomer poured forth a tirade. Seems the Prof wasn’t the only member of the We Hate N. A. Stent Society. I drifted off during the sev
enth paragraph of bile, but — near as I can recollect — Ogilvy felt passages of On an Inequality of Long Period owed a jot to his own observations, and that credit for same had been perfidiously withheld. It was becoming apparent that mathematician-astronomers, as a breed, were more treacherous, determined and murder-minded than the wounded tigers, Thuggee stranglers, card-sharps and frisky husband-poisoners who formed my usual circle of acquaintance.

  Ogilvy happily signed up as the first recruit for the Red Planet League and left, happily clutching his now-sacred Dynamics.

  I ventured a question. “I say, Moriarty, what is the Red Planet League?”

  His head oscillated, a familiar mannerism when he was pondering something dreadful. He looked out of our window, up into the pinkish-brown evening sky over London.

  “The League is a manufacturer of paper hats,” he said. “Suitable apparel for our friends from beyond the vast chasm of interplanetary space.”

  Then Moriarty laughed.

  Pigeons fell dead three streets away. Hitherto-enthusiastic customers in Mrs. Halifax’s rooms suddenly lost ardor at the worst possible moment. Vampire squid waved their tentacles. I quelled an urge to bring up my mutton lunch.

  Frederick Nietzsche witters on about ‘how terrible is the laughter of the übermensch’ — yes, I have read a book without pics of naked bints or big game! — and establishes there is blood and ice in the slightest chuckle of these superior beings. If Fathead Fred ever heard the laugh of Professor Moriarty, he would have shat blood, ice and sauerkraut into his German drawers.

  “Yes-s-s,” he hissed. “Paper hats-s-s.”

  From the Diary of Sir Nevil Airey Stent.