Kim Newman - Professor Moriarty The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

‘Noise-some, ain’t it? You’ll be hearin’ that fer days.’

It wasn’t the bang — I’ve heard enough bangs in my time — it was the smell, the discharged gun smell. It cleared my head.

The noose at my throat cut deep.

I had heard — in the prefects’ common room at Eton, not any of the bordellos or dives I’ve frequented since those horrible days — that being hanged, if only for a few seconds, elicits a peculiar physiological reaction in the human male. Connoisseurs reckon this a powerful erotic, on a par with the ministrations of the most expert houri. I was now, embarrassingly, in a position to confirm sixth-form legend.

A gasp from the woman suggested the near-excruciating bulge in my fly was externally evident.

‘Why, you low, disgustin’ snake,’ said Lassiter. ‘In the presence of a lady, to make such a…’

Words failed him. I was in no position to explain this unsought, involuntary response.

Arbuthnot, captain of the second eleven, now active in a movement for the suppression of licentious music hall performance, maintained this throttling business was more pleasurable if the self-strangulator dressed as a ballerina and sucked a boiled sweet dipped in absinthe.

I could not help but wish Arbuthnot were here now to test his theory, instead of me.

‘Jim, Jim, what are we to do?’ the woman said. ‘They know where we are. I told you they’d never give up. Not after Surprise Valley.’

Her voice, shrill and desperate, was sweet to me. I knew from the quality of Lassiter’s silence that his wife’s whining was no help to him.

I began to see the advantages of my situation.

I had been through the red rage and fear of peril and come to the cold calm clearing.

‘At present, Mr and Mrs Lassiter,’ I began in somewhat strangulated voice, giving them their true names, ‘you are pursued only by foreign cranks whose authority will never be recognised by British law. If your story were known, popular sympathy would be with you and the Danites further frustrated. Those I represent would make sure of that.’

‘Who do you represent, Algy?’

That was the question I’d never answer, not if he shot all the legs off the table and let me kick. Even if I died, Moriarty would use spiritualist mediums to lay hands on my ectoplasm and double my sufferings.

‘If I step off this table, your circumstances will change,’ I said. ‘You will be murderers, low and cowardly killers of a hero of the British Empire…’

Never hurts to mention the old war record.

‘Under whatever names you take, you will be hunted by Scotland Yard, the most formidable police force in the world…’

Well, formidable in the size of the seats of their blue serge trousers…

‘All hands will be against you.’

I shut up and let them stew.

‘He’s right, Jim. We can’t just kill him.’

‘He drew first,’ Lassiter said.

‘This isn’t Amber Springs.’

I imagined the climate was somewhat more congenial in Amber Springs, wherever that might be. The community’s relative lack of policemen, judges, lawyers, gaolers, court reporters and engravers for the Police Gazette — which in other circumstances would have given it the edge over Streatham in my book — was suddenly not a point in its favour.

Even with my ringing ears, I heard the click. Lassiter cocked his gun.

He walked around the table, so he could at least shoot me to my face. It was still dark, so I couldn’t get much of a look at him.

‘Jim,’ protested Jane-Helen.

There was a flash of fire. For an instant, Lassiter’s fiercely moustached face lit orange.

The table was out from under me, and the noose dragged at my Adam’s apple.

I expected the wave of pain to come in my chest.

Instead, I fell to the floor, with the chandelier, the rope-coil and quite a bit of plaster on top of me. I was choking, but not fatally. Which, under the circumstances, was all I could ask for.

A tutu and a sweetie would not have made me feel more alive.

Lassiter kicked me in the side, the low dog. Then the woman held him back.

That futile boot was encouraging. The fast gun was losing his rag.

Gaslight came up. Hands disentangled me from the brass fixtures and the noose, then brushed plaster out of my hair and off my face.

I looked up, blinking, at a very pink angel.

‘Wuvvwy mans,’ said the glassy-eyed girl, ‘Rache want to keep um.’

VI

Though still tied — indeed, with my ankles bound as well — I was far more comfortable than I had been.

I was propped up on a divan in the parlour of The Laurels. Rache — the former Little Fay — was playing with my hair, chattering about her new pet. She must have been fifteen or sixteen, but acted like a six- or seven-year-old. I remembered to smile as she cooed in my ears. Children can turn suddenly, and I had an idea this child-minded girl could be as deadly as her foster father if prodded into a tantrum.

She introduced me to her doll, Missy Surprise. This was a long-legged, homemade, one-armed ragdoll with most of her yellow wool hair chewed off. She got her name because there was a hiding place in her tummy, where Rache kept her ‘pweciousnesses’ — cigar-tubes full of sweets.

The ‘Laurences’ were still undecided about what to do with me.

It’s all very well being a gunslinger, but skills that serve in the Wild West — or the jungle, come to that — need to be modified in Streatham. At least, that was the case if you were a fair-play fathead like Jim Lassiter.

These were truly good, put-upon people. That made them weak.

Rache kissed my ear, wetly.

‘Stop that, darling,’ said her mother.

Rache stuck out her lower lip and narrowed her brows.

‘Don’t be a silly, Rache.’

‘Rache not a silly,’ she said, knotting little fists. ‘Rache smart, ’oo knows it.’

Jane-Helen melted, and pulled the girl away from me, hugging her.

‘Not so tighty-tight,’ protested Rache.

Lassiter sat across the room, gun in hand, glowering.

Earlier, he had been forced to tell a deputation of concerned neighbours that Rache had dropped a lot of crockery. No one could possibly mistake gunshots for smashing plates, but they’d retreated. Blaming the girl had put her in a sulk for a moment, and inclined her even more to take my part.

This blossoming idiot was heiress to a fabulous gold mine.

‘We could offer him money,’ Jane-Helen said, as if I weren’t in the room.

‘He won’t take money,’ Lassiter said, glumly and — I might add — without consulting me for an opinion.

‘You, sir, Algy…’ began the woman.

‘Arbuthnot,’ I said, ‘Colonel Algernon Arbuthnot, Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers…’

A right rabble, that lot. All their war wounds were in the bum, from running away.

‘Hero of Maiwand and Kandahar…’

I’d have claimed Crécy and Waterloo if I thought they’d swallow it.

‘Victoria Cross.’

‘’Toria Ross,’ echoed Rache, delighted.

‘Colonel Arbuthnot, what is your connection with the Danite Band?’

‘Madam, I am a detective. Our agency has been on the tracks of these villains for some months, with regards to their many crimes…’

She looked, hopeful, at Lassiter. She wanted to believe the rot, but he knew better.

‘…when we were alerted to the presence in London of dangerous Danites, well off their usual patch as you’ll agree, we made a connection. Of course, we knew you were here under an alias. We had no reason to bother you, but the movements of incognito Americans — possessed of fabulous riches, but content to live in genteel anonymity — are noticed, you know. If we could find you, so could they. We’ve had men on you round the clock for two weeks…’