The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus

by Michael Kurland

  —John Dryden

  The tall, thickset man in the gray frock coat walked slowly between the double row of headstones. He looked neither to the left nor the right, but stared at something ahead of him that the older man who walked beside him could not see. They stopped at a newly turned grave, not yet covered with sod, and the tall man crouched and placed his hands flat on the bare earth.

  "This is it," he said, turning his vacant eyes on his companion. "This is where she lies."

  "I'll take care of it, right enough," the old man said, squinting at the ground to note the number on the painted board that marked the place where the headstone would be. "Like she was my own daughter. My word."

  "Flowers?"

  "Ivery day. My word."

  "She likes flowers." The tall man rose and turned to his companion. "I'll meet you at the gate," he said.

  The old man stared at him for a second, and then said "A' course," and walked away.

  The frock-coated man turned back to the bare earth. "I am here," he said.

  The day was somber and the fog was dense. What light there was gladly fled before the encroaching dusk.

  "I have discovered another one for you," he whispered. "Another death for your death. Another throat for the blade. It doesn't help. God knows it doesn't help. God knows—" The man's face contorted. "God!—God!" He fell to his knees, his hands twin tight-fisted balls before his eyes. "Someday I'll stand before the God who made what befell you part of His immortal plan; and then—and then—"

  He stood up and slowly willed his fists to open. Semicircles of blood had formed where his nails had dug into his palms. "But until then, the men," he whispered, "the godlike men. One by one they shall fall like reeds before the avenging wind. And I am the wind."

  He held out his hand and there was a bouquet of flowers between his fingers, which he placed gently down on the moist earth. Beside the bouquet he laid a small gold amulet with an intricate design. "Here is another," he said. "From the last one. The last murderer. The last to die before the wind. This is the sign by which we know them, you and I. The mark of Cain. The hell-mark of the damned."

  Standing again, he brushed off his trousers. "I love you, Annie," he murmured to the bare earth. "I do not do this for you; I know you would not ask it, the killing. I do not do it for me; I have always been a gentle man, and it does not ease me. I do not like the blood, the moment of fear. But it is all I can do. I cannot stop myself. I have become the wind, and they shall all die."

  He turned and slowly walked away.

  ONE — NIGHT AND FOG

  There was a Door to which I found no Key; There was a Veil past which I could not see.

  — Edward Fitzgerald

  Throughout much of March in the year 1887 the city of London was covered by a thick, almost tangible fog that swept in from the North Sea. It chilled the flesh, dampened the spirit, and oppressed the soul. It all but obscured the sun by day, and by night it occluded the stars, the moon, the streetlamps, and the minds of men. Things were done in that fog, in the night, that were better left undone.

  In the early morning hours of Tuesday, the eighth of March, the fog blanketed the city; a moist discomforter that swallowed light and muffled sound. Police Constable William Alberts walked his rounds with a steady, measured stride, insulated from the enveloping fog by his thick blue greatcoat and the Majesty of the Law. The staccato echo of his footsteps sounded sharp and loud in the empty street as he turned off Kensington Gore into Regent's Gate and paced stolidly past the line of stately mansions.

  P.C. Alberts paused and cocked his head. Somewhere in the fog ahead of him there was—what?—a sort of gliding, scurrying sound that he could not identify. The sound, perhaps, of someone trying to move silently through the night but betrayed by a loose paving stone.

  He waited for the noise to be repeated, turning to face where he thought it had come from and straining his eyes to pierce the black, fog-shrouded night.

  There! Farther over now—was that it again? A muted sound; could someone be trying to sneak past him in the dark? A scurrying sound; could it be rats? There were rats even in Regent's Gate. Even the mansions of the nobility had the occasional rats' nest in the cellar. P.C. Alberts shuddered. He was not fond of rats.

  But there—another sound! Footsteps this time, good honest British footsteps pattering around the Kensington Gore corner and approaching the spot where Constable Alberts stood.

  A portly man appeared out of the fog, his MacFarlane buttoned securely up to his chin and a dark-gray bowler pulled down to his eyes. A hand-knitted gray scarf obscured much of the remainder of his face, leaving visible only wide-set brown eyes and a hint of what was probably a large nose. For a second the man looked startled to see P.C. Alberts standing there, then he nodded as he recognized the uniform. "Evening, Constable."

  "Evening, sir." Alberts touched the tip of his forefinger to the brim of his helmet. "A bit late, isn't it, sir?"

  "It is that," the man agreed, pausing to peer up at Alberts's face. "I don't recollect you, Constable. New on this beat, are you?"

  "I am, sir," Alberts admitted. "P.C. Alberts, sir. Do you live around here, sir?"

  "I do, Constable; in point of fact, I do." The man pointed a pudgy finger into the fog. "Yonder lies my master's demesne. I am Lemming, the butler at Walbine House."

  "Ah!" Alberts said, feeling that he should reply to this revelation. They walked silently together for a few steps.

  "I have family in Islington," Lemming volunteered. "Been visiting for the day. Beastly hour to be getting back."

  "It is that, sir," Alberts agreed.

  "Missed my bus," Lemming explained. "Had to take a number twenty-seven down Marylebone Road and then walk from just this side of Paddington Station. I tell you, Constable, Hyde Park is not sufficiently lighted at night. Especially in this everlasting fog. I am, I will freely admit, a man of nervous disposition. I nearly jumped out of my skin two or three times while crossing the park; startled by something no more dangerous, I would imagine, than a squirrel."

  They reached the entrance to Walbine House: a stout oaken door shielded by a wrought-iron gate. "At any rate I have arrived home before his lordship," Lemming said, producing a keychain from beneath his MacFarlane and applying a stubby, circular key to the incongruously new lock in the ancient gate.

  "His lordship?" P.C. Alberts asked.

  Lemming swung open the gate. "The Right Honorable the Lord Walbine," he said. He lifted the keychain up to his face and flipped through the keys, trying to locate the front-door key in the dim light of the small gas lamp that hung to the left of the massive oak door.

  "I served his father until he died two years ago, and now I serve his lordship."

  "Ah!" Alberts said, wondering how the stout butler knew that his new lordship was still absent from Walbine House.

  "Goodnight then, Constable," Lemming said, opening the great door as little as possible and pushing himself through the crack.

  "Goodnight," Alberts said to the rapidly closing door. He waited until he heard the lock turned from the inside, and then resumed his measured stride along Regent's Gate. It was deathly quiet now; no more scurrying, no fancied noises, only the slight rustle of the wind through the distant trees and the echo of his own footsteps bouncing off the brick facades of the Georgian mansions that faced each other across the wide street.

  At Cromwell Road, Constable Alberts paused under the street-lamp for a moment and peered thoughtfully around. He had the unwelcome sensation that he was being watched. By whom he could not tell, but the feeling persisted, an eerie, tingling sensation at the back of his neck. He turned and started back down the dark, fog-shrouded pavement.

  From some distance away on Cromwell Road came the clattering noises of an approaching carriage, which grew steadily louder until, some twenty seconds later, a four-wheeler careened around the corner into Regent's Gate. The cab sped along the street, the horse encouraged by an occasional flick of the jarvey's whip. Ent
irely too fast, Alberts noted critically.

  Halfway down Regent's Gate, opposite Walbine House, the jarvey pulled his horse to a stop. From where Alberts stood he could make out the form of a top-hatted man in evening dress emerging from the four-wheeler and tossing a coin up to the jarvey. The Right Honorable the Lord Walbine had obviously just returned home for the night. Lemming, Alberts thought, had been right.

  The four-wheeler pulled away and rattled on down the street as his lordship let himself into Walbine House. All was quiet again P.C. Alberts resumed his beat, the tread of his footsteps once more the only sound to be heard along the tree-lined street. He kept to a steady methodical pace as he headed toward Kensington Gore.

  It took P.C. Alberts almost ten minutes to make the circuit along Kensington Gore, back up Queen's Gate, and then across Cromwell Road to the Regent's Gate corner. As he turned onto Regent's Gate again, from somewhere ahead of him there came a sudden cacophony of slamming doors and running feet. The faint gleam of a lantern wavered back and forth across the street. It caught Alberts in its dim beam. "Constable!" came an urgent whisper that carried clearly across the length of the street. "Constable Alberts! Come quickly!"

  Alberts quickened his stride without quite breaking into a run. "Here I am," he called. "What's the trouble, now?"

  The butler, Lemming, was standing in the middle of the street in his shirtsleeves, his eyes wide, breathing like a man who has just been chased by ghosts. An older woman with a coat misbuttoned over a hastily donned housedress peered from behind him.

  "Please," Lemming said, "would you come inside with us?"

  "If I am needed," Alberts said, taking a firmer grasp of his nightstick. "What seems to be the trouble?"

  "It's 'is lordship," the old woman said. " 'E just come in, and now 'e won't answer 'is door."

  "His lordship arrived home a short while ago," Lemming explained, "and immediately retired to his room. Mrs. Beddoes was to bring him his nightly glass of toddy, as usual."

  " 'E rang for it," Mrs. Beddoes assured Alberts, "as 'e always does."

  "But the bedroom door was locked when she arrived on the landing," Lemming said.

  "And 'e don't answer 'is knock," Mrs. Beddoes finished, nodding her head back and forth like a pigeon.

  "I'm afraid there's been an accident," Lemming said.

  "Are you certain his lordship is in his bedroom?" Alberts asked, staring up at the one lighted window on the second story of the great house.

  "The door is secured from the inside," Lemming said. "I'd appreciate having you take a look, Constable. Come this way, please."

  P.C. Alberts followed Lemming up an ornate marble staircase and down a corridor on the second floor to his lordship's bedroom door. Which was locked. Alberts knocked on the polished dark wood of the door panel and called out. There was no response.

  "Has his lordship ever done this before?" Alberts asked.

  "His lordship has been known to secure the door on occasion," Lemming answered. "But he has previously always responded to a knock, even if it was only to yell, 'Go away!' "

  P.C. Alberts thought for a second. "We'd best break it in," he decided. "Lord Walbine may require assistance."

  Lemming sighed, the relief at having someone else make the decision evident in his face. "Very good, Constable. If you say so."

  The two men applied their shoulders to the door in a series of blows. On the fourth, the wood around the lock splintered. On the sixth it gave, and the door swung inward.

  Alberts entered the room first. It was a large bedroom, dominated by a canopy bed. The Right Honorable the Lord Walbine, twelfth baron of that name, was lying quietly in the center of that bed in a fresh pool of his own blood. Sometime within the past ten minutes his throat had been neatly sliced from clavicle to clavicle.

  TWO — THE MORNING

  Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.

  —Sherlock Holmes

  Benjamin Barnett opened his Morning Herald, folded it in half, and propped it against the toast rack. "There's been another one," he said, peering down at the closely printed column as he cracked his first soft-boiled egg.

  "Eh?" Professor James Moriarty looked up from his breakfast. "Another what?"

  "Murder," Barnett said. "Another 'mysterious killing among the gentry,' " he read with evident satisfaction.

  "Don't look so pleased," Moriarty said. "It might lead one to suspect that you had done it yourself."

  " 'The third outrage in as many weeks,' according to the Herald" Barnett said, tapping the headline with his egg spoon. "The police are baffled."

  "If we are to believe the newspapers," Moriarty remarked, "the police are always baffled. Except when inspector Gregson expects an early arrest.' Sometimes the police are 'baffled' and 'expect an early arrest' in the same paragraph. I can only wish that you journalists had a wider selection of descriptive phrases to choose from. It would certainly add an element of suspense to newspaper reading that is now grievously lacking."

  "There's enough suspense in this story to keep even you happy," Barnett said. "A police constable broke down the victim's bedroom door, which was locked from the inside, to find him lying on his bed in a pool of his own blood, with his throat so deeply cut that the head was almost severed and the blood still flowing from the gaping wound in his neck. How's that for suspense?"

  Moriarty sighed and shook his head. Taking off his pince-nez glasses to polish them with his linen napkin, he focused his water-gray eyes myopically on Barnett across the table. "Actually it's quite distressing," he said.

  "How's that, Professor?"

  Moriarty held up the thick paperbound volume that rested beside his plate. "This came in the first post this morning," he said. "It is the quarterly journal of the British Astro-Physical Society. There is more of mystery and suspense in these twelve-score pages than in ten years' worth of the Morning Herald."

  "That may be, Professor," Barnett said, "but your average newspaper reader is not interested in what's happening on Mars, but in what's happening in Chelsea. He'd rather have a mysterious murder than a mysterious nebulosity any time."

  "You are probably right," Moriarty said, laying the journal aside and replacing his pince-nez glasses on the bridge of his nose. "There is, nonetheless, some small comfort, some slight gleam of hope for the future of the human race that can be derived from current scientific theory. I read my journals and they comfort me."

  "What sort of comfort, Professor?" Barnett asked, feeling that he had lost the thread of the conversation.

  "I find solace in the theories expounded by Professor Herschel, among others, concerning nebulae," Moriarty said, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the large silver samovar which squatted at one end of the table. "They would suggest that the universe is larger by several orders of magnitude than previously imagined."

  "This comforts you?"

  "Yes. It indicates that mankind, confined as it is to this small planet in a random corner of the universe, is of no real importance or relevance whatsoever."

  Barnett put his spoon carefully down on the side of his plate. He knew that Moriarty indulged in these misanthropic diatribes at least partly to annoy him, but at the same time he had never seen any sign that the professor was not totally serious about what he said. "I don't suppose you'd care to do a piece for my news service on that general theme, Professor?" Barnett asked.

  "Bah!" Moriarty replied.

  "I could probably get a couple of hundred American newspapers to carry the piece."

  "The prospect of having my words read eagerly over the jam pot in Chicago is, I must confess, one that holds no particular charm for me," Moriarty said. "Having my phrases mouthed in San Francisco, or my ideas hotly debated in Des Moines, has equally little appeal. No, I'm afraid, my dear Mr. Barnett, that your offer will not entice me into a journalistic career."

  "I'm sorry about that, Professor," Barnett said. "The world lost a great essayist when you chose to devote yourself to a life
of, ah, science."

  Professor Moriarty looked at Barnett suspiciously. "When I plucked you from a Turkish prison almost two years ago," he said, "you were as devoid of sarcasm as you were embedded with grime. I no longer detect any grime."

  "Touché, Professor." Barnett smiled and poured himself a cup of coffee.

  -

  Benjamin Barnett had first met Professor James Moriarty in Constantinople almost two years before, at a moment when the professor was being chased down the Street of the Two Towers by a band of assassins in dirty brown burnooses. Barnett and a friend came to the professor's aid, for which he thanked them profusely, although he regarded the assault as a minor annoyance from which he could have extricated himself quite easily without assistance. Which, Barnett came to admit when he got to know the professor better, was most probably true.