Barnett approached the woman on the porch directly across the street from number seven. "Excuse me," he said.
She looked up, her broad face expressionless. "Aye?"
"Could you tell me if there's anyone living across the street? That building there," he pointed.
"Couldn'a say," she said.
"Well, have you seen anyone going in or out, in the past week, say?"
"Couldn'a say."
"I see," Barnett said. "Thank you so much for your help."
He crossed the street and stood in front of number seven. Then it occurred to him. The perfect approach. And it was so obvious that he was ashamed for not having thought of it immediately. Old Mr. Starkey had told him about the musical box, and he wanted to see it with an eye toward making Pyotre Azimof an offer. He knew Pyotre wouldn't sell, but surely he couldn't resist showing the musical box off to an interested collector.
Barnett mounted the stairs and knocked on the door. After some seconds, it was opened, and a burly man in rough nautical garb stared out at him.
"Good afternoon," Barnett said. "Does Mr. Pyotre Azimof live here?"
The man silently stepped aside, and Barnett walked in. "Would you tell him someone would like to see him about his musical box?" he said.
The door slammed and Barnett was grabbed from behind. A rag with sweet-smelling fluid on it was held over his mouth and nose.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Barnett," a soft, guttural voice said from further inside. "It is a shame that your friend, Professor Moriarty, did not accompany you. But you will have to suffice."
The room tilted and spun. Bright lights whirled around in Barnett's head, to be quickly replaced by harsh blackness. He struggled like a man submerged in quicksand, without really knowing what he was doing. Then nothing.
NINETEEN — THE BIG BANG
And the night shall be filled with music.
— Longfellow
Barnett woke up slowly. A syncopated pounding thrummed across his temples, and a profound nausea replaced any other sensation. For a long time nothing else mattered. And then he was very sick.
Hands reached for him and held him up. A white basin appeared under his head, and he retched into it for what seemed several lifetimes. Then nothing more came up, and the retching changed to gasping, and the pounding of his racing heart overrode the pounding of his head. Slowly, very slowly, his heart calmed and his breathing slowed.
His eyes began to focus.
Guttural instructions were shouted, and more hands pulled Barnett to his feet. A bucket of cold water was brought and dumped over his head, then another, and a third.
Barnett shook his head and opened his eyes. Slowly the room and the people in it came into focus: the thin man with the crooked nose holding the bucket and grinning; the heavy man who had let him into the house; a man in a black suit sitting in the corner, his face hidden under a black cotton mask; a man with wire-rimmed glasses who looked like a cobbler or tailor talking softly to a man with a small mustache, who looked like a radical student even to the two books under his arm. None of them appeared interested in Barnett, except for the man with the bucket and the man behind the cotton mask.
The man behind the mask barked out a new set of instructions, and the man with the crooked nose put down the bucket and yanked Barnett over to a wooden chair. He pushed Barnett down and tied him quickly and expertly to the chair, his hands behind the back and one leg lashed to each of the chair's front legs. Barnett was too weak and sick even to protest out loud, much less resist the man who bound him.
The man behind the mask came over to glare down at Barnett. His eyes were hard behind the two thin slits. "We meet again," he said.
"Huh?" Barnett said weakly, still not sure what was happening. "What'sat?"
"The last time, I struck you over the head with a brass monkey. One of that English lieutenant's treasured possessions, no doubt. 'Hear no evil,' or some such conceit."
Barnett shook his head to clear his foggy vision and the pounding at his temples. "So you're the guy," he said thickly.
"I do apologize for your present condition," the masked man said solicitously. "I assure you you'll be all right in a few minutes. A pad saturated in chloric ether was applied over your nose and mouth to render you unconscious as you entered the house. But instead of collapsing, you fought like a madman, which resulted in your absorbing much more of the vapor than is good for you. It's your own fault, really."
"I fought?" Barnett remembered none of it.
"Those bruises on your arms were not gratuitous," the masked man said. "Nobody kicked you while you were down, Mr. Barnett."
"I don't remember," Barnett said. The fog around his brain was lifting and full awareness of his present position was creeping in to replace it. Barnett was not feeling too pleased with himself.
"It doesn't matter," the masked man said. "No one here holds a grudge against you. We are the ultimately rational men. We do what we must, and we allow ourselves neither remorse nor pleasure at our actions."
"That's very—sensible," Barnett said, twisting at his wrists to test the rope that bound them. There was no give, no slack, and no stretch in the rope. He relaxed.
"I am glad you feel that way," said the man behind the mask. "Then you will understand that what we are about to do is not out of malice but merely political necessity."
"What are you going to do?" Barnett asked. The headache was slowly lifting, but he could feel the pain in his bruised muscles now, and the soggy chill of his clothing, soaked from the buckets of water dumped over his head.
"It will be a glorious event!" the masked man said enthusiastically. "It will make the great sluggish mass of the British people aware of anarchy. It will be a new height. It will kill you, as you Americans so aptly put it."
"You mean that literally, I suppose," Barnett said.
"Oh, quite," the man behind the mask assured him. "We were hoping to get Professor Moriarty himself, but I'm afraid you will have to do. You and the girl."
"This was all a setup," Barnett said.
"When that gentleman over there," the masked man said, indicating the man with the slight mustache, "—let us call him—no, let him remain nameless—when that gentleman over there reported to me that he had lost his cap and that a pledge ticket was in the band, I at first castigated him severely. Then I realized that with proper management the pledge ticket would lead Professor Moriarty, or Sherlock Holmes—I had really hoped for one of the two—into my trap. It has at least produced you. I suppose it is too much to hope that the professor is going to attempt a rescue. I would like the chance to show him that I learn from my misjudgments."
"Any minute now," Barnett said.
The man behind the mask made a sound that was supposed to represent a laugh. "No, no," he said. "You have come here on your own. That is clear." He struck a thoughtful pose. "But you do have information of interest to me. How much Moriarty knows. What his source of information is. What his intentions are. You could tell me this."
It was Barnett's turn to laugh. "In return for what?"
"Your freedom."
Barnett laughed again. "How can you convince me that you will set me free once I've told you what you want to know?"
The man behind the mask thought this over. "My word, I suppose, isn't good enough?"
"Your word!" Barnett felt slightly hysterical. "Why, you've got all these poor fellows believing that you're on their side! You—"
The masked man slapped Barnett across the face, and then again, and again. Slow, deliberate slaps, delivered with all the man's force. "That is enough!" he said sharply. "You will not malign these brave men with your talk. Shortly you will no longer talk at all! You two— take him to the upper room! We must complete our preparations here."
The two men picked Barnett up, chair and all, one in front and one behind. They carried him up a flight of stairs and deposited him in a rear bedroom. Then they left, closing the door behind them.
-
"
Hello!"
It was a girl's voice, and it came from behind him. Barnett tried to look around, but couldn't turn his head far enough. So he hopped the chair by jerking his body and applying torque to it, until he had turned enough to see. There was a young girl tied, spread-eagled, to the bed behind him.
"My God!" Barnett said.
"If you don't mind my asking," the girl said, "who are you?" Her voice was quite normal, and well-modulated, but there was panic in her eyes.
"My name is Benjamin Barnett. And you must be the Duke of Ipswich's daughter, Lady Catherine."
"Yes," she said. "Were you looking for me? Is anybody looking for me? What are they going to do with us, do you know?"
"Your abduction is not general knowledge," Barnett said, "but there are men—some very good men—out looking for you. What have they done to you? Why are you tied up like that?"
"I haven't been mistreated—beyond having been brought here in the first place, I mean. They've kept me locked up in a small room. They feed me twice a day. Usually bread, cheese, and wine. Once, for two days, they had hot food brought from somewhere. I tried leaving a message under the plate, assuming the service would be returned to whatever restaurant it came from. I heard nothing about it, but the next day I was back on bread, cheese, and wine. Then, a couple of hours ago, they dragged me in here and tied me like this. I have no idea what they intend to do. Do you? I've been imagining all sorts of horrid things."
"I'd rather not try to guess," Barnett said.
"A man with a great black mask over his face came in and stared down at me for a long time. Then he said that I was about to go down in the history of the struggle against bourgeois imperialist oppression, and I should be grateful to him. Then he laughed and stomped out of the room. What was he talking about?"
"I think I'm beginning to get the idea," Barnett said.
"Why are you here?" she asked. "Did they abduct you, too?"
"Sort of. Only I came and knocked on the door and practically invited them to."
The girl twisted on the bed. "These ropes are cutting into my wrists," she said. "I don't think this is very funny. My poor father must be worried to death about me. He gets positively furious if I go anywhere alone, as though I were still quite a baby. You're an American, aren't you?"
"Quite right," Barnett said. "Is it that obvious?"
"I like Americans," she said. "What are they going to do to us? They're not going to let us go, are they? I mean, ever."
"I don't know what their plans are," Barnett said, trying to sound cheerful, "but don't lose hope. We'll get out of here somehow."
"I've been here for weeks. You just arrived. I hope you have something in mind, Mr. Barnett, to get us out of here. Because the Lord knows I've tried everything I could think of. And I wasn't even tied up. But now I'm tied up, and they put you in here. And you're tied up, and I don't even know you, and we can't even move, so how can we possibly ever get out of here?" And she turned her face away and sobbed quietly into the pillow.
"I'm sorry," Barnett called softly. "Really, I'm sorry if I upset you. I was trying to cheer you up."
She turned back. "How can you possibly cheer me up?" she demanded.
Barnett considered. "I can wiggle my ears and imitate a rabbit," he said. "If my hands were untied I could do wonderful shadow pictures."
"Shadow pictures of what?"
"Hands."
"Oh." She sniffed and then giggled. "Can you really do a rabbit?"
Barnett wiggled his ears and twitched his nose and turned his head in little, rabbitty motions.
"That's very nice," the girl said, smiling. "What do you do, Mr. Barnett, when you're not tied up?"
"I am a journalist."
"How did you get here?"
"I knocked on the front door, and here I am."
"Oh, dear," the girl said, twisting her head on the pillow. "My nose itches." She tried to twist around far enough to scratch her nose against the pillowcase, but the ropes holding her arms were too tight. After fighting her bonds futilely for a minute, she gave up and burst into tears.
"Listen," Barnett said, "it's going to be okay."
"No," she said. "No, it isn't. I can't even scratch my own nose. It's horrible. And those people—they're going to kill us! They've kept me here for six weeks, cooped up in that little room. And now they're going to kill me. It isn't fair! And you, too."
Barnett didn't know what to say. He couldn't argue against it without her thinking him feebleminded, and he couldn't agree to it without depressing her even more.
-
Further speech was rendered pointless when the man behind the mask came into the room. "Greetings," he said.
"What do you want with me?" the girl sobbed.
"Patience, woman," the man said. "In five minutes it will be seven o'clock."
"Thank you," Barnett said sarcastically. "I had been wondering."
The man behind the mask gestured behind him and the man with wire-rim glasses came in carrying the musical box that had lured Barnett to that house. "This is somehow fitting," the man with the mask said. "I hope, Mr. Barnett, that you enjoy classical music, and that you don't mind the rather tinny sound of the musical box."
"Why?" Barnett asked.
"Because it will be the last thing you hear on this earth," the man told him.
The other man placed the musical box on a table and, taking a large brace-and-bit from his belt, drilled a hole in the floor by that table.
"What's happening?" Barnett demanded.
"I think you should know," the man behind the mask told him. "In the room directly below this one there are several hundred pounds of explosive. Much more than we need, actually, but we can't cart it away with us anyway."
The bit went through the flooring and the man with the glasses knelt down and peered through the hole.
"The explosives," the man behind the mask said, warming to his subject, "are tightly packed around a central core in such a fashion as to direct the main force of the explosion up, rather than out. With any luck we shouldn't demolish more than two or three buildings on either side of this one."
The man with the wire-rim glasses said something in a guttural foreign language and left the room. The man behind the mask snapped something at him in the same language as he went, and then pulled out his pocket-watch and shook his head in annoyance.
"A problem there, Trepoff?" Barnett asked.
The man behind the mask looked up at him. "No man may say that name and live," he said. "Which, in your case, is not the most powerful threat I can imagine."
A muffled shout sounded from the room below, and Trepoff walked over to the drilled hole and thumped his cane on the floor by the hole. "They have to drill a hole in the ceiling below to line up with the one in this floor," he told Barnett. "Although why they couldn't have thought of that before ... This is liable to put us off schedule."
"There are incompetents in every line of work," Barnett told him. "Even in yours."
Trepoff turned to him. "A shame you won't be able to write this up in your best humorous style, Mr. Barnett," he said. "A companion piece to your miraculous escape from the Turkish prison."
"You are going to kill us!" the girl cried, twisting in her bonds to face Trepoff. "Why? What have I ever done to you?"
"You were born," Trepoff said. "Think of it this way, woman: your death is to be useful in a great cause. How many people go through their entire dull, drab lives and die meaningless deaths without ever having been useful to anything beyond themselves? But you, mademoiselle—" There was an impatient rapping from below, and Trepoff broke off to bend down and grasp two wires that had appeared in the newly drilled hole. He pulled the wires up through the hole and attached them to two brass screws that had recently been screwed into the wood of the musical box.
"You are about to participate in a great experiment," Trepoff said. "When I start the musical box, the little pianist on top will turn to his piano and play sixteen tunes, each one prec
isely three minutes and forty-five seconds long. Thus, in exactly one hour he will be finished, the machine will turn itself off, and the pianist will once again turn away from the piano. In doing so, he will complete an electrical connection between these two wires, and a current will pass from the galvanic batteries in the room below through a voltaic arc apparatus inserted into a tube of compressed guncotton. This will serve to detonate the explosive mass. At that moment the two of you will cease to exist. Have you any last words?"
"It does seem a shame, Mr. Trepoff," Barnett said, "to destroy that beautiful musical box."
The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus Page 21