Death by Gaslight

by Michael Kurland

  But he had his Judas goats, those he knew who would unknowingly be spared so that they could lead him to those he sought.

  He quickened his step. It would not do to reach the Allegro after the evening performance had let out. The Allegro always ran a trifle late, trying to cram in fourteen turns where most houses were satisfied with twelve. But it served him well these nights. This Judas goat liked pretty girls, and the Allegro had a line of pretty girls. This Judas goat had a box at the Allegro, the closest box to the stage.

  He stopped across the street from the Allegro, out of the actinic glare that curved around the theater entrance from the bright gaslights embedded in the ornate marquee overhead. From this shadowed position he could see all who left the theater through the lobby, without himself being seen. If necessary he could reach the cab stand in a few strides, if he had to give chase.

  Five minutes passed, and then ten, as he stood in his dark corner, muffled by the creeping fog. And then the lobby of the Allegro began to fill, and the patrons of such of the arts as were represented by the evening’s entertainments prepared to go home. Or elsewhere.

  There he was—there! The dried-up little man with the German mustache, the latest baron of an ancient line, the evil man who joined with other men to practice pain, the Judas goat. The little man made no move toward the line of cabs; perhaps tonight he had come in his own carriage. And, indeed, there he was now, pushing his way through the throng, coming out to the curb and looking off down the street, stamping his feet with impatience because his carriage was not already there waiting for him.

  And here came the private carriages, turning the corner in a line, fresh from some coop in the next block where the drivers waited until a page boy from the theater raced over to tell them the show was letting out.

  The third one, the dull-black brougham with the red tracery, belonged to the little baron with the German mustache. The man who had become the wind stepped off the curb and approached the brougham from the far side, keeping out of sight of the driver, and straining his ears to hear what the Judas goat said.

  “Wait here, Hackamore,” the Judas goat told his driver. “I will have a charming young companion joining me in a few moments, then we will be going on to Brennen’s for a late supper.”

  The listener who had become the wind slapped his fist into his open palm. So! The baron had an assignation with one of the show girls; there could be no other explanation. Another poor innocent was about to be drawn into his web. And if the baron was going on to a late supper at Brennen’s, he would not be visiting his other friends this evening, and so he would be of little use as a Judas goat.

  The baron’s plans would have to be disarranged.

  He went down the narrow alley to the stage entrance of the Allegro, where a pride of young gallants in evening dress were trying to talk their way past the stage doorman. “Evening, Tinker,” he said, pushing past the young men to the gate.

  “Ev’nin', Perfessor,” the stage doorman said, releasing the catch for him. “Good to see yer again. You comin’ back to us?”

  “It could happen,” he said. “You can never tell what’s going to happen in this life. But for now, just a little visit.”

  He went up the circular iron staircase to the dressing rooms and knocked on the door to the girls’ chorus. “One of you ladies supposed to meet a skinny gent with a walrus mustache out front?” he called.

  The door opened and an attractive slender girl in a rose dressing robe came out. She had long brown hair which curled about her oval face in tight ringlets. “I am,” she said. “Tell him I’ll only be a couple of minutes more, please.”

  She must be fairly new to the chorus at the Allegro, he thought. He had never seen her before. He would have remembered. Annie had had hair like that. “I’m not from the baron, dear,” he told her. “I’ve come to give you a warning.”

  “What?” The girl put her hands on her hips and glared up at him. “Listen, mister. I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care. But I want to tell you something. What I do is my own business, and I don’t need no lessons in propriety, or any of the other social graces! So you can just get your bluenose out of here!”

  “No, no, you misunderstand,” he said, blocking her attempt to close the door. “Believe me, I have no interest in your actions, young lady, proper or improper. Do as you like with whom you like for all of me. It is your health and your career that concern me.”

  She stopped trying to close the door and looked up into his face. “That’s what the baron told me,” she said. “He’s interested in my career. What’s your interest?”

  “I don’t want to see you get into serious trouble,” he said.

  “What sort of trouble?”

  “The wrong sort,” he told her, improvising carefully. “The baron’s wife has detectives following him.”

  “Detectives!”

  “That’s right. And she is determined to make trouble for him. She won’t care about what happens to you in the process. If they catch you with him, it would ruin your career before it’s rightly begun.”

  “Say, what’s your interest in this?”

  “Nothing,” he told her. “I don’t want to see you hurt. You remind me of my own daughter.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Listen, I didn’t know he was married, mister. Honest, I didn’t.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “He certainly wouldn’t have told you.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Don’t go with him. Not tonight or ever, if you want to be safe.”

  “I won’t,” she said, looking sad. Perhaps it was the thought of all the fine dinners she would miss.

  “You should warn the other girls,” he said.

  “I will.”

  “Write him a note. He’s waiting out front.”

  “What should I say?”

  “Tell him one of your chums is sick and you have to stay and take care of her. Have the page boy deliver it to him outside.”

  “All right, mister. Listen, I don’t know who you are, but I suppose I should thank you.”

  “It is my pleasure, I assure you, miss,” he told her. “Write that note now!”

  “I will.”

  He tipped his hat and left her, whistling softly to himself. Once back outside he went around to the front, where the Judas goat was waiting by his carriage, impatiently tapping his feet and glaring at his pocket watch.

  He crossed the street and stood by the small rank of hansom cabs that were left after most of the throng had already departed.

  Here came the page boy now, looking about him for the man the chorus girl had described. He stared at the little baron for a moment, doubtfully, and then decided that it must be he.

  He approached the baron and offered the note. The baron took it, and then glared at the boy, who was still standing alongside him waiting for a tip. The boy touched his cap and ran off.

  Sweet little Judas goat, thought the man who had become the wind.

  The little baron peered at the note, holding it close to his face. Then he stepped under the marquee to try to find enough light to read it. He stared at it intently for a minute, then, with a savage curse, he crumpled the paper into a little ball and threw it into the gutter.

  The man watched his Judas goat stamp over to the black brougham, obviously quivering with rage to the roots of his mustache. The baron cursed out his driver and climbed up into the carriage, viciously slamming the door behind him.

  The man who had become the wind approached the first hansom in line. “You see that brougham?” he asked the cabby. “I want you to follow it.”

  “What for, mate?” the cabby demanded, as the man climbed aboard.

  “For an extra crown over your fare. A half-sovereign if you don’t lose it!”

  “A half-sovereign?” the cabby exclaimed. “Right on, mate, you’ve got it!”

  The driver of the brougham flicked his reins, and the Judas goat started off down the dark street. Close behind him follo
wed an avenging wind.

  EIGHT

  THE HOUNDS

  If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.

  THOMAS DE QUINCEY

  The itinerant street artist, a shabby, crumpled man with a hodgepodge of broken colored chalks, chalk rubble, and chalk dust in an ancient cap by his side, knelt to his work on the pavement at the Russell Square corner of the British Museum, a short distance away from where the guidebook hawkers were plying their dubious wares before the museum’s great marble facade. Quickly, and with a deft, sure hand, the street artist sketched a row of pictures on the pavement squares in front of him. His subjects were taken from the great city that surrounded him and was his life. The Crystal Palace appeared in the first square, set in the trees and with a line of carriages along the drive in the foreground. The Houses of Parliament as seen from over Westminster Bridge were the next subject, with one lone tugboat passing on the Thames. Then the west front of Westminster Abbey appeared, and a parade of well-dressed gentlemen and ladies were quickly chalked in, marching in a stately fashion, two by two, toward the great doors.

  A stocky man in a well-worn bowler hat who was lounging by the Russell Square corner came over to stare down appreciatively at the colorful chalkings. “Quite nice, that,” he said. “Quite nice, indeed. Here you are!” And he tossed a twopenny bit into the artist’s cap.

  “Thank ’ee, gov’nor; thank ’ee indeed. Very good of your worship to say so,” the artist said, sitting back on his heels. He tossed his chalks back in the cap and stared down at his work. “Is the professor in or out?” he demanded in an undertone.

  “What?” The man started backward in surprise, seeming to almost choke for a second.

  “Don’t be so obvious, my man,” the artist said. “Keep looking down at the pavement and answer my question, if you can.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the stocky man said indignantly.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” the artist said. “You are a CID detective named Gordon. I am Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Well, I’ll be a—” Detective Gordon said, staring down at the grimy artist.

  “Quite! Now, is the professor in or out?”

  “He went out in his carriage about an hour ago. Macy and Stevens followed behind.”

  “First time out today?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And last night?”

  “In at four in the afternoon, and not out again until an hour ago.”

  “I expected no less.”

  “How’s that, sir?”

  Holmes stood up and stretched, stamping some of the stiffness out of his legs. “The body of Sir Geoffrey Cruikstaff, the Minister of Colonial Affairs for her majesty’s government, was found this morning,” he told the detective. “He was murdered in his study at some time between two and four in the morning, as closely as the autopsy surgeon can tell. It would be too much to expect that Moriarty was abroad and without an alibi to cover the time. And this time, damn him, the police are his alibi.”

  “Sir Geoffrey Cruikstaff?” Detective Gordon asked. “Why, sir, that is incredible!”

  “I agree,” Holmes said dryly.

  “Why, Sir Geoffrey was under a twenty-four-hour guard. He claimed to have received death threats from some oriental secret society.”

  “That is correct,” said Holmes. “At least his residence was under guard. Sir Geoffrey reserved the right to move about unwatched and unguarded outside his house. Which was, perhaps, foolish. He exercised that right last night, coming home no less than two hours before his death. Nevertheless, it was at home and not outside that he was killed. At the time of his death there were four constables outside the house and two CID plainclothesmen inside the house. And still he was found lying across his desk with his throat cut.”

  Gordon shook his head. “I had that duty myself a fortnight ago,” he said. “Spent the night in his front hall for almost two weeks. And to tell you the truth, sir, I never took them death threats seriously. None of us did. Inspector Gregson just had us there because of Sir Geoffrey’s position, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Done in by an oriental secret society. What do you know?”

  “It wasn’t any oriental secret society,” Holmes snapped. “It was the same hand that killed Lord Walbine, and Venn, and Darby, and Stanhope. It was an occidental hand. And, unless I miss my guess, whoever supplied the hand, it was Professor James Moriarty who supplied the brain.”

  “I can’t speak to that, sir,” Gordon said, “but I can speak to his location. The professor was in his house all night, and didn’t go back out until an hour ago.”

  “That is when you saw him go out, at any rate,” Holmes remarked. “Moriarty is a downy bird, and if he didn’t want you to see him going out, why then he would go out without your seeing him.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” Detective Gordon said with the apologetic air of one who has interrupted his superiors once too often with information they didn’t wish to hear. “It ain’t just that we didn’t see him go out. We actually, so to speak, saw him at home.”

  “You saw him at home?”

  “Yessir. At least, until about one in the morning when the interior lights was turned off in the house.”

  “I see,” Holmes said. “That’s good to know.”

  “Clears him of suspicion, does it, sir?”

  “On the contrary,” Holmes said. “It makes me more suspicious than ever. Far more suspicious. Exactly what do you mean when you say you saw him?”

  “We did, sir. Just that. At his window.”

  “I see. Which window was that?”

  “Ground floor, Mr. Holmes. Facing Russell Square. To the right of the door.”

  “The study window?”

  “If you say so, Mr. Holmes. Never having been inside the house, I couldn’t rightly say. What we could see from outside looked like it might be a study.”

  “What, exactly, did you see? His shadow on the blinds?”

  “No, sir. The blinds were drawn aside. We could see right into the room.”

  “Strange,” Holmes said. “And tell me, just what did you observe in the room?”

  “We saw the professor. He was sitting behind a desk, or some such. I wouldn’t swear it was a desk because of the angle, you know.”

  “And what was he doing?”

  “He seemed to be looking at something. We couldn’t see what.”

  “Looking at something? Something on his desk?”

  “Not exactly, Mr. Holmes. Something off to one side. There was a part of the room that was not visible from the window, and he was looking over in that direction. Something on the wall, perhaps. Or something in the air.”

  “In the air?”

  “Well, you know, sir. Held up by somebody.”

  “There was someone else in there with him?”

  “Not that we could see, sir. Mr. Barnett came into the room several times, but he didn’t stay.”

  “But there might have been someone else?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Professor Moriarty was looking at something that might have been on the wall or been held up by this possible person whom you could not see. He was staring at this object, whatever it was, the whole time?”

  “Well, it may not have been the same thing the whole time,” Detective Gordon said. “He would shift his gaze from time to time, as though he were looking at one thing, you know, and then at another.”

  Holmes stuffed his chalk-filled cap into one of the side pockets of his bulky jacket. “There is something unnatural-sounding in your description,” he said. “I wish I had been present to see for myself.”

  “How do you mean, Mr. Holmes?”

  “I’m not sure. Moriarty was sitting at his desk, looking at first one thing and then another.”

  “That’s right.
”

  “For a long time?”

  “From nine in the evening until about one or so.”

  “He didn’t leave the study at all in this time?”

  “I wouldn’t swear to that, sir. But if he did, then it weren’t for more than a few minutes. Say ten at most.”

  “What a strange image,” Holmes said. “Moriarty was in his study with the drapes open, sitting behind his desk and looking at something on the wall or in the air in front of him. And he did this for four hours.”

  “When you put it that way, Mr. Holmes, it does sound strange. But at the time it looked perfectly natural.”

  “I am sure it did,” Holmes said.

  “Well,” Detective Gordon said, “here he comes now, so if you have any questions, you can ask him yourself.”

  Holmes dropped to his knees instantly as Moriarty’s carriage came into sight down Montague Place. “I prefer to watch without being watched,” he told Gordon, pulling the chalk-filled cap out of his pocket and starting on another picture.

  Detective Gordon drifted away to lounge on the museum steps, and Holmes began an enthusiastic rendition of St. Paul’s Cathedral in pink chalk as Moriarty’s four-wheeler passed in front of the British Museum and pulled to a stop at 64 Russell Square. A hansom cab loaded down by two large men in black bowlers who were doing their best to look invisible pulled off into Montague Street right before Moriarty’s carriage stopped.

  The carriage door opened, and the hulking figure of the professor emerged, his black greatcoat buttoned up to the neck. Holmes stared at the familiar figure. It was Moriarty, all right; there was no mistaking the massive forehead under that top hat, the slightly bulging eyes, the beak of a nose. But there was something wrong; something Holmes couldn’t put a name to. Moriarty moved up the steps to his front door with a rapid walk, taking curiously short steps. The door opened as he reached it, and he disappeared inside.