by Kim Newman
On a slight incline towards the bridge which wasn’t shut, we gained speed and pressed against the other carriages.
I looked into the shadow man’s angry eyes. ‘Now, chummy,’ I said, ‘do you still want to be an engine driver when you grow up?’
I slightly relaxed the pressure on the pistol, without taking it away.
For a moment, I thought I’d misjudged the man. Plenty would die rather than give in. Some players see mate in two moves and kick over the board. I’ve never found out if I’m that sort myself, but rather think I am. If I’d been the one who knew how to drive the train, I’d have laughed at me and double-dared me to shoot my head off.
This was a more calculating person.
Someone more like the Professor. Cold-blooded, but practical.
Without saying anything, he rose and turned to the controls. A charge had built up in the batteries. I saw dynamos and what-nots whizzing. Acid bubbled in tanks. My impression was that all he had to do was engage this engine – whatever that meant – and we would be away.
The Kallinikos came out of the deep cutting and, miraculously, held to the rails as they took a gentle curve down a hillside towards the Ross Gorge. The other head smashed through a white wooden pole which hung across the line as a warning that the swing bridge was open.
‘Toot-toot,’ I said, darkly.
The shadow man threw a lever. A whistle did sound – not steam, but some indicator that the engine was working. Our wheels screamed as they were forced to turn the other way.
The rest of the train parted from us.
Through the open door which had lead into the previous carriage, now separated from our engine, I saw the rails leading to the edge of the precipice. Our lights showed what awaited us. Below was the River Ross. Not a raging, foaming torrent but a placid waterway. Ahead, useless, was the middle-section of the bridge, turned sideways on its pillar in the middle of the river.
The gap widened, but we were still travelling the wrong way.
If I shot the ringer now, it wouldn’t make any difference. On balance, I decided I’d rather what happened to me happened to him, too.
The front engine breasted the edge, dragging its carriages – which twisted, flame-nozzles pointing upwards – into the air. The Kallinikos was going at such speed I thought briefly that it might leap the gap, but the bridge-section was in the way. The worm’s head smashed against the pillar, and the whole contraption fell into the Ross with a scream of metal...
...there was an explosion, which left spots in my eyes for months. All the Greek Fire in the belly of the worm went up at once. A patch spread across the water like a floating island of flame.
I assumed we were going to fall into that.
But we slowed. The rails complained.
The brothers Moriarty held fast to canvas straps.
Through the open door, I could count the number of sleepers between us and the edge.
Then, there were half as many...
Then, none. Our wheels, I fancy, touched the lip of the gorge as we slowed to a stop. We all lurched, and Stationmaster Moriarty fell towards the door. Neither of his brothers tried to haul him back, but he got hold of the folding isinglass and didn’t tumble into the burning river.
The engine still ran. The wheels got traction.
And we changed direction, drawing away from the drop.
The sleepers appeared again. The gorge receded. Without the rest of the train as an anchor, we got up speed quickly. We were back in the cutting, rolling towards Fal Vale.
With another gun-prod, I persuaded our reluctant pilot to moderate our speed. A fatal crash now would be beyond irony.
‘How about a toot of the whistle,’ I suggested.
He made no comment.
‘Next stop, Fal Vale Junction,’ I said, light-headed. ‘All change yurr...’ [2]
IX
The surviving head of the Kallinikos rolled into the station. I took care to watch the pilot as he threw the brakes and prodded him as he turned off the engine. A series of switches had to be thrown in sequence. The drone of the dynamos died.
Colonel Moriarty was trying to issue orders again. No one listened. Most of the folk who would have snapped to when he told them had gone into the river with the tail of his wonderful war-worm. The Department of Supplies wasn’t an easy, safe commission any more. In the Colonel’s coming wars, even file-clerk and engine-maintenance soldiers would be asked to pay the butcher’s bill.
At Fal Vale, the fighting was over.
There was some precariousness in getting out of the engine. There was no side door, just an egress to the rest of the train... so, the Moriarty brothers had to clamber down onto the rail bed and then make their way up onto the platform. They could have walked to the far end of the station, and taken the gentle slope up, but Young James pulled himself up to the platform, tearing his uniform at the knees, to show how limber he was. After that, his older brothers grimly followed suit, despite aged bones, tight waistcoats and a seeming unsuitability for such physical action. The Colonel grunted, went red in the face as he lifted his feet off the rails, and had to be pulled up by Stationmaster Moriarty and Berkins. He lost some buttons, and the last vestiges of his commanding manner.
Both brothers stuck out hands to assist the venerable Professor, but Moriarty couldn’t resist letting a card he rarely showed fall out into the open.
After taking a step or two back, the Professor rushed forward, and swarmed out of the rail bed up onto the platform with the agility of a young monkey. He might give the impression of being like a dry stick, with bent shoulders and fragile bones. In fact, he had a wiry, cultivated strength and physical aptitude which – on several occasions – proved a fatal surprise to people who thought he’d be easy pickings in a straight-up punching match. He had some Eastern tricks – nobody knows more about dirty fighting than the Chinese, who’ve made a religion out of pokes, kicks and gouges which would get you barred in disgrace from a British boxing ring – and held by a peculiar diet involving melon seeds and carrot shavings. You couldn’t get me to eat that if it bestowed eternal youth and added six inches to your prick.
I shoved the shadow man out of the train, revolver aimed steadily at the back of his head, and – taking no chances – escorted him to the end of the platform and up the slope. I’ve nothing to prove and if there’s an easy way to be had, I’ll have it. We rejoined the rest of the party by the waiting room.
Berkins – not entirely the yokel I’d taken him for – had Oberstein, Lucas and Sabin tied to the points wheel. The Frenchman had been shot in the shoulder, making him a lopsided match for the German I’d shot in the knee. Lucas had been lightly tortured in a friendly, no-particular-information-required sort of way. They made a sorry lot of minions, and didn’t meet the angry gaze of our un-humbled but bested master spy.
I hoped we could settle the matter of the ringer’s true identity before dawn. I was prepared to peel off his faces, one by one, with a razor.
Berkins took over with rope, and knotted him to his fellows.
The war of the wildcats had to be counted a draw. Ilse von Hoffmannsthal was in the wind, but Sophy Kratides wasn’t dead. The Greek fury, bodice interestingly in shreds, swore revenge against the German valkyrie.
As returning hero, it struck me that a kiss and a cuddle might be in order. Coming through battles alive always makes a body frisky. Yes, a healthy bounce on handy upholstery would see out the night nicely. However, one glimpse of Sophy’s dark face, augmented by a cut along the jawbone, made me think better of the fancy. No one wants to barely escape a train crash and capture a dangerous spy, then get struck in the vitals by a hot-tempered foreign wench. When she found out what had happened to her countryman Lampros, she’d be well off me... even without the detail, which I was keeping to myself, that I’d done for him.
‘There are few railways in South Africa,’ Professor Moriarty said.
I didn’t know where that came from, but the Colonel did.
/> ‘The Boers have no fight in them, James. They’re well down the list. France or Germany, or France and Germany. Then, the Americans.’
The Professor said nothing more. I took his point – a war train was no use unless your enemy obligingly built rails straight into the heart of his territory and then didn’t mine them when hostilities started. Even Greek Fire, if its secret could be recovered, wasn’t suited to a ruck with scattered intransigents who knew the lay of their land. The Kallinikos might have been named the White Elephant for all the good it really was.
My sort of soldier would be killing foreigners for the Queen for the foreseeable. The Department of Supplies would have to lump it. The last whisper I heard was that they were sponsoring mechanical wings which kill every dolt who straps them on and jumps off a cliff.
‘James,’ the Colonel said, ‘what is your association with Colonel Moran? I have made enquiries. He has a, shall we say, somewhat mixed reputation.’
I knew what that meant. Ask anyone who knew me in the army and you’ll hear the same things about Basher. Tiger in the field, bounder in the mess. A good man to have your back, but a bad one to show your back to. Trust him with a fight, but not your sister, your wallet or a deck of cards.
Stationmaster Moriarty waited for the Professor’s answer, too. ‘Moran is my associate, James. I employ him.’
‘For what? Wiping off the blackboard and collecting exercise books?’
‘My business is numbers, James. You know that. Numbers and equations. You do not understand them. You never have. A fault in Supplies, I would have thought. Value is calculated in numbers. And chance. Morality does not come into it. That’s the purity of mathematics. Nothing clouds the issue. Not religion, not politics, not sentiment. I have applied my methods to a well-established field of human endeavour. In this, I use Moran and men and women like him.’
He turned to the Greek hellcat.
‘Miss Kratides, take my card. As bodyguard to a man who no longer has need of one, you are without a position. A place could be found for someone with your skills in my business. One day, James, you will work it out. You will see the solution.’
The Colonel was none the wiser. Young James was laughing.
‘James,’ he said, ‘well spoken... and might I say that it’s time I... ah, that I was given your card?’
The Professor looked his youngest brother square in the face, then inclined his head in turn to the truncated wreck of the Kallinikos and the tied-up collection of sorry spies. He gazed up to dark skies, already tainted by the seeping red of dawn. He lifted his shoulders, indicating the mess of the world in general and this worm business in particular.
‘No, James. I have no place for you.’
‘Not sentiment,’ he’d said. ‘Not family,’ he’d meant.
Stationmaster Moriarty, least stony faced of the brothers, gulped as if he’d been slapped. I doubt if Colonel Moriarty was much impressed with his showing this night either. The Firm would not take him on and the Department of Supplies would have little further use for him. The GS&W Railway Company wouldn’t be too happy with his record, either. Someone would have to take the blame for the flaming crash at the swing bridge.
‘The Lizard to Newquay stopping train will be here in ten minutes, Moran,’ Moriarty said, tapping his watch chain. ‘We can change at Truro and be in London by midday.’
To the Stationmaster, the Professor said, ‘James, you will issue travel documents for Colonel Moran and myself. You will also have Berkins refund the monies extorted from us to board your Special.’
To the Colonel, the Professor said, ‘James, you will wish to remain here until your superiors arrive to have a report from you about this incident and take these gentlemen in hand. You will want to keep my involvement sub rosa.’
Neither of the Professor’s brothers were happy, but both did as they were told.
Now, Moriarty turned to the shadow man – who had patiently followed all this.
‘We have not met before, but you have been aware of me as long as I have been aware of you,’ the Professor addressed the spy master. ‘Your associates believe your intent was to deliver the secrets of the Kallinikos to a foreign power, simply for money.’
‘Not money, Professor.’ He smiled, thinly. ‘Numbers.’
Moriarty nodded.
‘You think yourself my mirror, I see. Well, then, numbers, if you will. You have traded secrets before, I know. You have stolen them simply to prove they can be stolen and sold them back to their original owners. But that is not your real interest, your passion. Which is for the game, the gamble. Now, you have crossed my path. I foresee a wearisome inevitability to future relations. I might tell you that you have learned your lesson, that you should from henceforth take care not to incommode me. I know you would take this as a challenge, and set out to inconvenience me. I shall, of course, counter your every move, and retaliate, hampering your larger plans. Neither of us will prevail, immediately. Our businesses will suffer in this, the true coming war. The situation will become impossible. There can be only one outcome.’
‘Agreed.’
‘Then you will withdraw?’
‘I agree there can only be one outcome,’ the ringer said. ‘I imagine we disagree about what it might be.’
‘Moran,’ the Professor said. ‘Kill him.’
I brought up my gun.
The Colonel began a protest.
I pulled back the hammer.
The shadow man remained calm. I’ve seen that before.
Again, I felt a knife at my throat. Again, my gun was taken. Again, Sophy.
Ah, Sophy, Sophy, Sophy.
‘This man is a prisoner, James,’ the Colonel said, with icy relish. ‘The property of the Department of Supplies.’
The Professor’s head oscillated. He was grinding his teeth.
Now, Colonel Moriarty – a punctured gasbag, filling out again – thought he was higher up the pole, and relaxed, confident in Sophy’s blade. Stationmaster Moriarty – still sulking at the rejection, swinging back to cling to his other brother – backed him up, and made show of checking the prisoner’s bonds.
‘You will not keep such a property,’ the Professor said.
I remembered the gun bound to Major Upshall’s hand. Someone as good with knots as that wouldn’t stay tied up long.
The shadow man’s face – if it was his own – flickered with amusement.
‘Catch your train, Professor Moriarty. We shall continue this match in due course. You will know where to find me.’
The Lizard to Newquay was puffing down the line. A whistle shrilled.
The Professor looked at the ringer, then at his brothers. No trace of expression all round.
Sophy gave me back my gun. I’d no doubt she’d kill me if I tried to use it. I still hoped she’d call on us in Conduit Street.
Berkins came up with tickets and a refund on our original fare.
No one said goodbye, so I did, cheerfully. It was a split decision as to whose expression was the most angry, miserable or murderous.
Moriarty and I boarded the train.
X
At Truro, we secured a first-class compartment on the Penzance to Paddington. Moriarty gave off such deadly emanations that – though the train was busy – no one dared to join us.
The Professor hadn’t spoken since Fal Vale.
I beetled off to the dining carriage and had a large breakfast. I winked and twirled my moustache at three ripe, giggling country girls going up to the city for a day trip. The way I felt after the night’s work, I could have ruined the lot of them before they had to catch their return train. Then, some hale fellows joined them and they giggled much more, pointing at me from behind tiny hands. I realised I was still soot-blackened, and repaired to the lavatory to scrub my face. The dirt came off, but the bruises were still there, and the cut to my throat. I also had a scratch in my side where I’d been stabbed. I felt ridiculously old.
I ordered a pot of coffee from the stew
ard and went back to the compartment.
The Professor consented to drink. He was chewing over the night’s events.
There was the question of the ringer’s true identity, but that would keep. Instead, I asked the thing that had nagged at me ever since the meeting with Colonel Moriarty at Xeniades Club.
‘Moriarty,’ I said. ‘Why did your parents give their three sons the same name? Why are you all James?’
‘It was our father’s name. He wished to pass it on.’
‘To all of you?’
‘To a son who pleased him. It is my understanding that, upon my birth, he was pleased. In the nursery, as I began to show aptitude... with sums... he continued to be pleased. My mother also, I believe, though she never said as much. She never said much of anything, I recall. Father would review each week with me and declare himself pleased. Then, when I reached the age of six, he found himself less pleased. Then, not pleased at all. I went over my sums again and could find no error in my workings. So I reasoned that the failing was not in me, but in Father. I did not tell him as much, for I knew he would not see it that way.
‘Then, when I was seven, my brother was born. My brother James. Father was pleased with James. From the day of my brother’s birth, I believe my father spoke not one word to me. I was fed and clothed and schooled, but in the house, I was a ghost. My brother did not know who I was, but eventually gathered he would not be punished if he visited trifling nuisances and afflictions on me. Father was still pleased with James. In the nursery, and for some while after, he continued to be. My brother was James. He would not believe that was my name too. He only truly realised who I was, what my name was, when our brother was born. Our brother James. I was fourteen and James was seven. He lost the name too.
‘Young James was the only James. We were ghosts separately, James and I. Not together. That was not possible after what had passed between us when I was the only ghost. Young James was the James and Father was pleased with him. In the nursery, and afterward... He never became a ghost, and – as you can tell – lacks firmness of character, if not craft and cunning. Had Father and Mother not been lost at sea, they might have had another child, another James. That might have been the making of Young James.’