The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus

by Michael Kurland

  The other monk took two small phials from inside his robes and handed one of them to Barnett. "This is a vegetable oil," he said. "Apply it to all parts of your beard and rub it in. This will facilitate the shaving of your face."

  Barnett carefully and thoroughly anointed his three weeks of stubble with the oil while the monk stropped the razor on a small piece of leather sewn to his sleeve. Then he tested the blade on the back of his hand, nodded approval, and approached Barnett. "Move not your face," he warned.

  Barnett held his face motionless while the monk artfully applied the razor. The other monk crouched on the floor and unstoppered his second phial. "Hold still your feet," he said.

  "What are you doing?" Barnett demanded, trying to peer down his nose without moving his face.

  "Applying oil of vitriol to the link connecting your foot to this chain," the monk told him. "It will take a few minutes. Hold still!"

  Barnett kept completely still, from face to feet, and let the two monks work on him. When the one had finished shaving him he took a rag and spread grease over Barnett's face. "Darken your skin," he said. "Remove prison whiteness."

  Two minutes later, Barnett, in brown robes, his face deeply concealed by the cowl, his feet in worn monk's sandals thoughtfully provided by his escorts, walked out of his cell. For another ten minutes, the group continued through the prison, chanting and praying and shriving. Then, the circle completed, they arrived back at the East Gate and paid the head tax to the Captain of the Guard, carefully counting out each gold medjidié into the palm of his hand.

  "In Simon's name we bless you," the speaking-monk said.

  "Come back soon," the guard captain replied, transferring the gold to a leather purse.

  "Next Shrove Friday," the monk said. "You have my word."

  SEVEN — 64 RUSSELL SQUARE

  To trust is good; not to trust is better.

  — Verdi

  Barnett arrived at 64 Russell Square rolled inside a 600-year-old Kharvan rug. He was unrolled in the butler's pantry by the two men who had brought him, working under the direction of a tall woman in a severe black dress. "Very good," she told the men as Barnett unfolded from the rug. "Now take it into the front parlor. Mr. Maws will tell you what to do with it."

  Barnett stood up and did a couple of knee-bends to get the blood circulating in his legs again. "Hello," he said.

  The woman extended a slender hand. "I am Mrs. H," she said. "Professor Moriarty's housekeeper. You are Mr. Benjamin Barnett."

  "That's right," Barnett said, taking the hand.

  "You'll be wanting a bath. Come with me." She led him up two flights of stairs. "This will be your room," she said, opening a door in the hall to the left of the landing. "The bath is across the way. Fresh linens on the bed and towels on the washstand. There's hot water. I'll have a bath drawn for you while you get out of those garments. Leave them outside the door and I'll see that they're disposed of."

  Barnett looked down at the filthy laborer's garb the monks had supplied him with before he left Constantinople. It had not gained anything in cleanliness in the weeks he had been crossing Europe. "But Mrs. H," he said, "I have nothing else to wear."

  "Your clothing," she told him, "is in that wardrobe and in this chest of drawers."

  Barnett pulled open the top drawer of the chest. Inside were a row of starched white shirts. A brief inspection convinced him that they were his own, from his Paris flat. "How did these get here?" he demanded.

  "Express," she said. "I'll see to your bath." And with a satisfied nod, she turned and left.

  Barnett closed the door and happily stripped off the rags he was wearing. His red velvet dressing-gown was on a hook in the wardrobe, and he gratefully enveloped himself in it. This Professor Moriarty, he reflected, seemed to be a gentleman not only of extraordinary capabilities but of immense attention to detail. Barnett only now noticed that there, on the dressing table, across from the bureau, was the silver comb and brush set that had been his sole inheritance from his father. By the door rested the three sticks and two umbrellas that had been in his umbrella stand. The framed portrait of his mother that had been on his writing-desk now sat on the night table by the solid four-poster bed. There was an envelope on the dressing table next to the brushes with BARNETT printed on it in block letters. Inside was a second envelope—which he recognized. The tape marks still crossed it where it had been fastened to the underside of the third drawer down in the armoire of his Paris flat. And inside that were still the five hundred-franc notes that served as his emergency money supply.

  Barnett dropped the envelope back on the dressing table and thoughtfully crossed the hall to the bathroom. A maid—a black-haired girl who couldn't have been over sixteen—was pouring the last of a pail of hot water into the large scoopback porcelain tub. She tittered when she saw Barnett and backed out of the small room. Barnett stared after her. Are red velvet dressing-gowns a bit too advanced for staid old London, he wondered, or is she one of those girls who titters at everything? He'd have to find out. It wouldn't do to have an outrageous dressing-gown. Shutting and bolting the door, the force of a habit from long years of living in rooming houses, he hung up the offending garment and eased himself slowly into the steaming hot water.

  An hour later, scrubbed, clean-shaven, and immaculately dressed for the first time in over a month, Barnett was taken by Mrs. H to see Professor Moriarty. "He's in his basement laboratory," she told him, leading the way. "We do not disturb him there unless it is important, but I have instructions concerning you."

  "What sort of instructions, Mrs. H?" he asked.

  "As soon as you're presentable," Mrs. H told him, "I'm to bring you in."

  "You know," Barnett said, following behind her as she opened the door to a narrow staircase on the main floor, "it feels very awkward calling you 'Mrs. H.' I feel as though I'm taking undue familiarity."

  "It's what I'm called," she said.

  "What sort of a name is that—just the initial?" Barnett asked. "Short," she replied.

  After two turns in the narrow stairs they crossed a door that led onto a landing overlooking a large, cement-floored basement room which had been turned into a modern laboratory. Low wooden tables were spread in a circle about the room, leaving the central area bare. On one table, a series of retorts and gathering-tubes were clamped in place over small Bunsen lamps. On another, a complex arrangement of lenses and mirrors was fastened to a revolvable wooden stand ready to twist into motion at the turn of a crank. The cabinets along the walls were furnished with every conceivable sort of chemical and physical apparatus that Barnett was familiar with, and many that he was not.

  "Do not distract him," Mrs. H instructed Barnett in a whisper, nodding at the tall figure of Professor Moriarty sitting stooped over a large journal at a writing table in the corner. "Wait here until he speaks to you. He dislikes having his train of thought interrupted, particularly when he is in the laboratory." Nodding again, she went back upstairs, leaving Barnett on the landing.

  After a while Moriarty looked up from his writing. Then he stoppered the inkwell and put down the pen. "You look a good deal better than the last time I saw you," he told Barnett. "Welcome to London. Welcome to my household. I trust you had an acceptable trip."

  "Not very," Barnett said, going down the last few steps and crossing the room to Moriarty's desk. "I was smuggled across the Bohemian border in a caravan of wagons loaded with fresh-clipped wool being taken to be combed and washed. The smell was indescribable."

  "It kept away the border guards," Moriarty said.

  "I was carted across Rumelia with four other people in a pox-wagon," Barnett said.

  "Nobody tried to stop you," Moriarty commented.

  "From Bosnia through Austria we became a traveling team of acrobats. I couldn't tumble, so I caught the others and held them up. My shoulders and my legs still ache."

  "Nobody ever looks at the low man," Moriarty said.

  "In Italy we finally caught the train," Ba
rnett said. "It was a fourth-class local. Have you ever traveled fourth class from Trieste to Milan?"

  "You would have attracted attention in first class with your clothing," Moriarty said. "And you would have attracted more attention trying to buy other clothing."

  "In Milan we became part of a circus and spent a couple of weeks reaching Paris. I cleaned the animal cages in the menagerie."

  "It sounds like an enriching experience," Moriarty said.

  "And they wouldn't let me go to my apartment in Paris."

  "Does it strike you as brilliant for an escaped felon, wanted for murder, to stroll over to his apartment to collect his clothes?" Moriarty took a small notebook from his pocket and consulted its pages. "In Rumelia you picked a fight with the wagon driver," he said, "a fact that I find incomprehensible, since you had no language in common. On the train outside of Milan a farm woman accused you of stealing a chicken, and you argued with her until the conductor was called."

  "I didn't steal her chicken," Barnett said. "It squeezed through the wicker cage and flapped its way out of the carriage. It's a wonder she didn't lose the other six."

  "And as I pointed out, in Paris you had to be restrained from going to your apartment to get a change of clothes."

  "You should have told me that you were having all my things brought here," Barnett said. "How did you manage to get by the concierge?"

  "I had a letter from you," Moriarty said dryly, "authorizing my agent to remove your belongings. You paid her an extra month's rent in lieu of notice."

  "I did?" Barnett said. "I see." He looked around for a chair. "May I sit?"

  "Of course," Moriarty said. "There is a stool under that table. Pull it over."

  Barnett retrieved the long-legged work stool which was lying on its side, set it up, and straddled it a few feet from Moriarty's desk. "You were having me watched as I crossed Europe," he said.

  "The three who accompanied you are in my employ, as you should have surmised," Moriarty said. "They conceived it to be part of their function to send me a report on your behavior. Actually, there are many favorable points in the report. I would like to have seen the way you smiled and mumbled inanely at that Austrian border guard until he gave up and let you through. And you acquitted yourself quite well in dealing with the conductor on that Italian train, although you should have arranged things so that he was never called."

  "That woman called me a thief," Barnett protested.

  "There is no magic in epithets," Moriarty said. "You don't have to ward off their effects by disputing them."

  "I suppose you're right," Barnett said, grudgingly. "Still, it grates."

  Moriarty returned the notebook to his pocket. "I am satisfied that, if induced to exercise discretion, you would be a competent and useful assistant to me. Are you ready to discuss the terms of your employment?"

  "I'd like to know what the job is," Barnett said. "I have gathered over the past few weeks that you are no ordinary professor. What is this consulting business of yours?"

  "First we must have an understanding. All else is open to discussion, save this one thing only: you must never divulge anything that you learn while in my employ—not about me, my associates, my activities, my comings and goings, my possessions, my household, nor indeed anything at all related to your employment. This ban does not terminate when and if your employment terminates, but is to continue throughout the remainder of your life. And beyond."

  "Beyond?"

  "Words outlive people. You must not keep a diary or write an autobiography or memoir that in any way touches upon the time you spend with my organization."

  "That's quite a ban," Barnett said.

  "Can you keep it?"

  "I reckon so."

  "Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with any of my activities, whether you find them in opposition to your religion or ethics or even morally repugnant to you?"

  Barnett gave a low whistle. "That is quite a ban!" he said.

  "Can you keep it? Can you give me your unqualified word?"

  "What if I say no?"

  "I dislike indulging in idle supposition, Mr. Barnett. Say either yes or no, and we shall continue the discussion on that basis."

  "Well, about these, ah, morally repugnant acts—if I find any of your activities to be offensive to me, am I obliged to engage in them myself?"

  "Certainly not, by no means. It would not be to my interest to employ a man for a job he finds offensive."

  "Well, with that understanding I guess I can keep my mouth shut about your doings. And I confess that with this preamble you've got me mighty curious as to just what these doings might be."

  Professor Moriarty slipped a pair of pince-nez glasses onto his nose and peered through them at Barnett. "You swear to keep your silence?" he asked.

  "Cross my heart, Professor," Barnett said, with a wide smile.

  "There is less humor in this than you think," Moriarty said, "for I shall hold you to that oath. So think on it seriously and give me a serious answer."

  Barnett raised his hand. "You have my word, Professor Moriarty, that I shall never speak of your affairs to anyone. I swear this on the memory of my mother, which I hold sacred. And if that's not good enough for you, I can't offer anything better."

  "That completely satisfies me. As you become privy to my affairs, you will see why I require such an affirmation from all my associates. And you will also see how seriously I regard it." He took a pocket-watch from his waistcoat pocket and snapped it open. "We shall regard your employment as commencing now," he said. "It is five past two in the afternoon of Tuesday, May fifth, 1885."

  "Is it?" Barnett asked. "I had quite lost track of the days."

  "On the hour of two P.M. on May fourth, 1887—which will be, I believe, a Wednesday—you are quits with me. Until then you are in my employ at an annual salary of—let me see—how much were your New York City employers paying you?"

  "Ten dollars a week," Barnett said. "They discourage anyone from thinking of his employment on an annual basis."

  "I shall make it five pounds a week," Moriarty said, "if that is satisfactory."

  "Satisfactory?" Barnett laughed. "Why, that's well over twice as much. I'll say it's satisfactory!"

  "And then, of course, there's your room," Moriarty said. "Since it is at my request that you'll be living in this house, I can't very well charge you rent. So you may consider your room and such meals as you eat here as complimentary. And incidentally, I think you'll find Mrs. Randall a more than adequate cook."

  "Then you want me to keep that room?"

  "Is it satisfactory?" Moriarty inquired. "If so, I would have you keep it."

  "Exactly what is my position to be in your organization?" Barnett asked. "And exactly what sort of organization do you have?"

  "I solve problems," Moriarty told him. "I am a consultant, taking on my clients' problems for a fee. Some of them are purely cerebral, and I solve those by sitting in my study, or working in my laboratory, or taking a long walk through London; I find walking very stimulating to the mental processes. But other problems require deductive or inductive reasoning from facts, from evidence; and that evidence must be assembled. And each glittering fact must be tested, like a gold sovereign, to see if it rings true."

  "I see," Barnett said.

  Moriarty smiled, "By which you mean you do not see. But you soon will, you soon will." He removed his pince-nez glasses, cleaned them with a piece of flannel from his desk, and then replaced them firmly on his nose. "Your hours are to be those required to accomplish your assignment, when you have one," he continued. "In recompense, when you have no assignment you are free to do as you like whatever the time of day. We have not allowed the concept of 'office hours' to infiltrate our little domain."

  "That's agreeable," Barnett said. "I much prefer that scheme, as a matter of fact. Do you have anything for me now?"

  "Anything for you ..." Moriarty rubbed his chin with his left hand. "I think you'd better use the first few d
ays to get acquainted with my household and my organization. If you need anything, ask Mrs. H, the housekeeper, or Mr. Maws, the butler. I shall arrange to have someone show you around the rest of the organization and introduce you to those whom you should know or who should know you."

  "Very good, Professor. And I haven't as yet had a chance to thank you for rescuing me from that Turkish jail. I have no doubt that you saved my life."

  "I think we shall both benefit from your, ah, timely release," Moriarty said. He offered Barnett his hand, which was firmly taken. "Welcome to my employ, Mr. Barnett," he said.

  "I trust you don't have to go quite so far afield for all your employees, Professor."