Moriarty

by Anthony Horowitz

  ‘On the contrary, I am immersed.’

  ‘Well, let me just say that my work was found to be more than satisfactory and that, over the years, I rose up within the ranks. I will mention that I returned to Boston and that I was reunited with my father, although he never completely forgave me. He died a few years ago, leaving his practice to my brother and a small sum to me. It has proved useful for, although I am not complaining, I have never been highly paid.’

  ‘The enforcement of the law has never been particularly well remunerated in any country, to my knowledge,’ Jones returned. ‘I might add that criminality pays more. However, you must forgive me. I interrupt.’

  ‘I have investigated fraud, murder, counterfeiting, bank robberies and missing persons – all of which are prevalent in New York. I cannot say that I have used the same methods, the same extraordinary intelligence that you demonstrated to me this morning. I am dogged in my approach. I am fastidious. I may read a hundred witness statements before I find the two conflicting remarks that will lead me to the truth. And it is this, more than anything, which has led me frequently to success and brought me to the attention of my superiors. Let me tell you, however, of one investigation that was entrusted to me in the spring of 1889. Although I didn’t know it at the time, it was this more than anything that was eventually to bring me here.

  ‘We had a client, a man called William Orton, the president of Western Union. He had come to us because his company’s lines had been intercepted and a series of completely false and damaging messages were being sent to the New York stock market with devastating results. Several large companies had been brought to the very edge of bankruptcy, and investors found themselves with losses stretching into the millions. The chairman of a mining company in Colorado, receiving one of these wires, went up to his bedroom and shot himself. Orton thought it must be the work of an extremely malevolent and cold-hearted practical joker. It took me three months and an endless series of interviews to discover the truth. It was, in fact, a remarkable and completely original form of embezzlement. A consortium of brokers, working out of Wall Street, were buying up the stocks of the companies that had been affected – acquiring them, of course, at rock-bottom prices. In this way, they were making a fortune. The operation required nerve, imagination, cunning and the bringing together of a great many criminal talents. At Pinkerton’s, we knew at once that we had never encountered anything quite like it. Eventually, we arrested the gang – but the leader, the man who had initiated the whole enterprise, slipped through our fingers. His name was Clarence Devereux.

  ‘You have to understand that America is a young country and as such it is still, in many respects, uncivilised. I was actually shocked by the lawlessness that I found all around me when I first arrived in New York, although I suppose I might have expected it. How else could a company like the Pinkerton Detective Agency have become so successful if it wasn’t needed? The tenement where I lived was surrounded by brothels, gaming places and saloons where the criminal classes congregated and boasted quite openly about their exploits. I’ve already mentioned forgers, counterfeiters and bank robbers. To those I might have added the countless footpads who made it dangerous to venture out at night and the pickpockets who committed their crimes quite brazenly in the day.

  ‘There were criminals everywhere. A thousand thieves; two thousand prostitutes. But – and this, you might say, was the saving grace – they were disparate and disorganised, nearly always acting alone. Of course, there were exceptions. Jim Dunlap and Bob Scott headed an organisation that became known as The Ring and which stole three million dollars, an amazing sum, from banks across the country. Other gangs – the Dead Rabbits and the Bowery Boys – came and went. There were the Plug Uglies over in Baltimore. I read all the files. But Clarence Devereux was the first man to see the advantages of a comprehensive criminal network with its own code of practice and a fully worked-out chain of command. We first heard of him at the time of the Western Union business, but by then he had already established himself as the most brilliant and most successful criminal of his generation.’

  ‘And this man is the reason you are here?’ Jones enquired. ‘He is the author of the letter sent to the late Professor Moriarty?’

  ‘I believe so, yes.’

  ‘Please, continue.’

  I had not even tasted the soup in front of me. Jones was still watching me intently. It was a strange meal, two foreigners in a Swiss restaurant, neither of them eating a thing. I wondered how much time had passed since I had begun my tale. Outside, the night seemed darker than ever and the flames were crackling, leaping at the chimney.

  ‘By now I had been promoted to the role of General Operative,’ I continued, ‘and Robert Pinkerton made me personally responsible for Devereux’s arrest. I was given a special team – three investigators, a cashier, a secretary, two stenographers and an office boy – and together we became known as the Midnight Watch, a reference to the long hours we kept. Our office, tucked away in the basement, was jammed with correspondence and not an inch of our four walls was visible beneath the veritable rogues’ gallery that we had pinned into place. Reports from Chicago, Washington and Philadelphia were sent to us and slowly, methodically, we worked our way through hundreds of pages. It was an exhausting business but by the beginning of this year, a face had begun to take shape … well, not so much a face, a presence.’

  ‘Clarence Devereux.’

  ‘I cannot even be certain that that is his real name. He has never been seen. No illustration or photograph of him exists. It is said that he is about forty years of age; that he came to America from Europe, from a well-to-do family; that he is charming, highly cultivated and philanthropic. Yes, I see you start. But I know for a fact that he has given substantial sums of money to the New York Foundling Hospital and to the Home for the Friendless. He has endowed a scholarship at Harvard University and he was one of the founding subscribers of the Metropolitan Opera.

  ‘And yet at the same time, I tell you, there is no more evil influence in the whole of America. Clarence Devereux is a criminal like no other, utterly ruthless, as much feared by the villains who work for him as by the victims whose lives he has ruined. There is no form of depravity, no vice that is below him. Indeed, he takes such pleasure in the organisation and execution of his various schemes that we have been led to believe that he commits his crimes as much to amuse himself as to benefit from any profits they might bring. After all, he has already made his fortune. He is a showman, a ringmaster who brings misery to everyone he touches, leaving his bloody fingerprints everywhere he goes.

  ‘I have studied him. I have pursued him. He represents everything that I loathe and find most vile and to bring an end to his activities would be the crowning moment of my career. And yet he remains out of my reach. Sometimes I feel that he knows my every move; that he is toying with me. Clarence Devereux is very careful about the way he operates, hiding behind his false identity. Never once will he expose himself or put himself in any danger. He will plan a crime – a bank robbery, a burglary, a murder; work out the details, recruit the gang, take the spoils – but he himself will not come close. He remains invisible. He has, however, one trait that may one day help me identify him. It is said that he has a strange psychological condition called agoraphobia – which is to say, a morbid fear of open spaces. He remains indoors and travels only in a covered carriage.

  ‘There is something else. As we continued our work, we were able to track down three men who knew his true identity and who almost certainly worked for him: his closest lieutenants and bodyguards. They formed a satellite around him, all three of them vicious criminals in their own right. Two of them are brothers – Edgar and Leland Mortlake. The third started life as a smatter-hauler, which is what we call a handkerchief thief, but soon graduated to safe-cracking and grand larceny. His name is Scotchy Lavelle.’

  ‘Can you not arrest them?’

  ‘We have arrested them – many times. They are all three of them gr
aduates of Sing Sing and the Tombs but in recent years they have been careful to keep their hands clean. They pretend to be respectable businessmen now and there is no evidence to prove otherwise. Arresting them again would do no good. The police have questioned them repeatedly but there is nothing in this world that would make them talk. They represent the new breed of gangster, the one that we at Pinkerton’s most fear. They are no longer afraid of the law. They think themselves above it.’

  ‘Have you met them?’

  ‘I have observed all three of them from a distance and from behind a wire mesh. I always thought it best that we should remain unacquainted. If Devereux can keep his face a secret from me, it seems only fair to repay the compliment.’ Mrs Steiler walked past and placed another log on the fire although her restaurant was already sweltering. I waited until she had left us and then finished my account. ‘For two years we investigated Clarence Devereux with little success, but then, just a few months ago, we had a breakthrough. One of my investigators was a young man called Jonathan Pilgrim.’

  ‘I know that name too,’ Jones muttered.

  ‘He was only in his twenties when I first met him and in his enthusiasm and basic decency he reminded me of myself at his age. He was a remarkable fellow who’d come to us from the west. A fine cello player and a baseball player too. I once saw him pitch at Bloomingdale Park. When he was nineteen, he trailed a horse herd a thousand miles across the Texas plains and he’d had experience of ranches, mines – he’d even spent time working the riverboats. He joined the team in New York and, working on his own, managed to get close to Leland Mortlake. Let’s just say that the older of the two brothers had always enjoyed the company of a handsome boy and with his straw-coloured hair and bright blue eyes, JP was very handsome indeed. He became Mortlake’s secretary and travelling companion. The two of them dined together. They visited the theatre and the opera and hung out at the saloons. Well, in January, Mortlake announced that he was moving to London and he invited JP to go with him.

  ‘It was a brilliant opportunity. We had an agent right inside the gang and although Jonathan never came face to face with Devereux – how much easier it would have made our task if he had! – he did have access to much of Mortlake’s correspondence. Although it placed him in the greatest personal danger, he eavesdropped on conversations, kept an eye on everyone who came and went and made extensive notes on the workings of the gang. I used to meet with him secretly on the third Sunday of every month at the Haymarket, a dance hall on Thirtieth Street. He would report everything that he had learned to me.

  ‘From him, I gathered that although Clarence Devereux exerted almost total control over the American underworld, it still was not enough. He was turning his attention to England. He had been in communication with a certain Professor James Moriarty, exploring the possibility of what might be termed a transatlantic alliance. Can you imagine it, Inspector Jones? A criminal fraternity whose tentacles would extend all the way from the west coast of California to the heart of Europe! A worldwide confederation. The coming together of two evil geniuses.’

  ‘You knew of Moriarty?’

  ‘By name and by reputation, most certainly. Although it is unfortunately true that Scotland Yard is not always co-operative in its dealings with Pinkerton’s, we still have our contacts within the New York police – and for that matter with the Rijkswacht and the Sûreté. We had always been afraid that one day Moriarty might head west but it now appeared that the exact opposite had occurred.

  ‘Scotchy Lavelle, Leland Mortlake and Edgar Mortlake had all set themselves up in London by the start of the New Year. Jonathan had gone with them and, a few weeks later, he sent us a telegraph to the effect that Clarence Devereux had also joined them. It was exactly what we had been waiting for. There are not so many forty-year-old wealthy Americans in London. His psychological condition, if true, could also help to identify him. At once, the Midnight Watch drew together the passenger lists of every steamship that had made the crossing from America to England in the past month and although it was a huge task – there were hundreds of names – we still thought it possible to narrow them down. Unless Clarence Devereux had somehow found a way to fly, he must be among them and to find him we worked night and day.

  ‘While this was continuing, we received a second telegraph from Jonathan Pilgrim informing us that he had personally delivered a letter to Moriarty, arranging a meeting between him and Devereux. Yes! Our agent had actually met Moriarty. The two of them talked. But the very next day, before he could tell us exactly what had taken place, tragedy struck: Jonathan must have been discovered by the gang. Perhaps that last telegraph was the undoing of him. At any event, he was brutally killed.’

  ‘He was tied up and shot. I remember the report.’

  ‘Yes, Inspector – this was not so much a murder as an execution. It is how New York gangs frequently deal with informers.’

  ‘Even so, you followed him across the Atlantic.’

  ‘I still believed it would be easier to find Devereux in London than it was in New York and it also occurred to me that if I could pinpoint this meeting between Devereux and Moriarty, why, it would be two birds with one stone: the arrest of the two greatest criminals on the planet at one fell swoop.

  ‘So you can imagine my dismay when I disembarked from my vessel, stepping on English soil for the first time, only to see the newspaper headlines … Moriarty believed dead. That was May seventh. My immediate thought was to come here to Meiringen, a village I had never heard of in a country I had never visited. Why? Because of the letter; if Moriarty still had it with him, it might lead me to Devereux. It even occurred to me that Devereux might be here and that his presence might be connected in some way to what had occurred at the Reichenbach Falls. At any event, there was nothing to be gained by kicking my heels in Southampton. I took the first train to Paris and then down to Switzerland and I was attempting to prise some sort of co-operation from the Swiss police – without much success – this morning when you and I met.’

  I fell silent. It was too late now to attack my soup, which had cooled in the long telling of my tale. I took instead a sip of wine, which tasted sweet and heavy on my lips. Inspector Jones had listened to my long discourse as if the two of us had been alone in the room. I knew that he had absorbed every detail, that he had missed nothing and would – if called upon – be able to set down almost everything I had said. And yet it was not without effort. I had already marked him as the sort of man who sets the very highest standards for himself but who achieves them only through perseverance and fortitude. It was as if he were at war with himself.

  ‘Your informant, Jonathan Pilgrim; do you know where he was staying?’

  ‘He had rooms at a club – the Bostonian. I believe it is in a part of London called Mayfair. If he had one weakness as an agent, it is that he was independently minded. He told us very little and will, I am sure, have left nothing behind.’

  ‘What of the others? The Mortlake brothers and Lavelle?’

  ‘As far as I know, they are still in London.’

  ‘You know them. You know what they look like. Can you not use them to reach Devereux?’

  ‘They are too careful. If they ever meet, it is in secret and behind locked doors. They communicate only through telegrams and secret codes.’

  Jones considered what I had told him. I watched the flames devouring the logs in the fireplace and waited for him to speak. ‘Your story is of the greatest interest,’ he said at length. ‘And I would see no reason not to offer you my assistance. However, it may already be too late.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Now that Moriarty is dead, why should this man, Clarence Devereux, wish to remain in London?’

  ‘Because it may be an opportunity for him; Devereux was suggesting some sort of partnership. With Moriarty gone, everything can be his alone. He can inherit Moriarty’s entire organisation.’

  Jones sniffed at that. ‘We had arrested pretty much the entire gang before Pr
ofessor Moriarty reached Meiringen,’ he remarked. ‘And Sherlock Holmes himself had left an envelope containing the identities and the addresses of many of his associates. Clarence Devereux may have come to England in search of a business partner but he will have already discovered that his journey was in vain. The same, I fear, may be true for you.’

  ‘The note that we found in Moriarty’s pocket – you said it would shed some light on the affair.’

  ‘And so it does.’

  ‘You have solved it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then tell me, for Heaven’s sake! Moriarty may be finished but Clarence Devereux most certainly is not and if there is anything you or I can do to rid the world of this evil creature, we must not hesitate.’

  Jones had finished his soup. He moved his plate aside, clearing a space, then took out the sheet of paper, unfolded it and laid it in front of me. It seemed to me that the restaurant had suddenly become quieter. The candles were throwing dark, nimble shadows across the tables. The animal heads craned towards us as if trying to listen in.

  Once again I read the extract with its jumble of capital and small letters.

  ‘It makes no sense to you?’ Jones enquired.

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘Then let me explain.’

  FOUR

  The Letter

  HoLmES WaS CeRtAiNLY NOt A DIFFiCulT mAn to LiVe WItH. He wAs QuIeT iN HiS WAYs and his hABiTS wErE REgulAr. iT wAs RARE fOR HIm To BE up AfTeR TEN at nighT aND hE hAD INVariABLY breAKfasteD AND GoNE OUT BeFOrE i RoSe in The morNINg. SOMEtImEs He SPeNt hiS DAy At ThE ChEmiCaL lABoRatORY, SoMeTimes IN THE dIsSeCting ROoms And oCcAsionaLly iN lOnG WALKs whICH ApPeAREd TO taKE HIM INtO THE LOwEsT PORTioNs OF thE CITy. nothINg COuld exCEeD HiS ENErgY WHeN tHE wORkING FiT WAs upOn HiM.

  ‘Do you really believe,’ I said, ‘that there is some sort of secret message contained on this page?’