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

The smoke was getting thick and the carpet was on fire.

I saw an empty bucket lying by the grate. The water had been used earlier to douse the fire. That was my fault.

Lassiter chewed his moustache. That was his ‘tell’, the sign he was about to ‘go off’.

‘I’m goin’ out the front door,’ he said.

‘You’ll be killed for sure,’ Jane pleaded.

‘Yup. Maybe I can take enough of ’em with me so’s you and Little Fay can get away clean. You’re a rich woman, Jane. Buy this man, and men like him, and keep buyin’ them. Ring yourself with guns and detectives. The Danites will run dry afore the gold.’

I peeked into the road again. The groaning neighbour was doubled over on the pavement, but the dead Danite had been dragged off.

Fire was coming from at least two points. Just harrying, not trying to hit anyone.

There was someone on the roof. We could tell by the creaking ceiling.

Lassiter filled his guns. He had two Colts with fancy-dan handles. He ought to have had holsters to draw from, but would have to carry them both. Twelve shots. Maybe seven men. He’d get hit several times, no matter how good he was. I might even be able to put a couple in his spine as he strode manfully down the path of The Laurels and claim it was a fumble-fingered accident.

He was an idiot. If it’d been me, I’d have picked up Jane and tossed her, in a froth of skirts, through the window. She was the one they wanted, heiress to the Withersteen property. At the very least, she’d be a tethered goat to draw the big game into range.

I was cold and clear and clever again. The Professor would have been proud.

‘They can’t afford to kill the women,’ I said. ‘That’s why they didn’t throw dynamite. They want someone alive to inherit, someone they can rob through Mormon marriage.’

Lassiter nodded. He didn’t see how that helped.

‘Stop thinking of Jane and Rache as your family,’ I said. ‘Start thinking of them as hostages.’

If he didn’t take umbrage and shoot me, we might have a chance.

VIII

‘We’re coming out,’ I announced. ‘Hold your fire.’

Rache giggled. I held the baggage round the waist, gun in her ear, and stood in the doorway.

To the girl, it was a game. She had Missy Surprise hugged to her chest.

Lassiter and Jane were more serious, but desperate enough to try.

They had objected that the Danites would never believe their man would harm his beloved wife and daughter. I told them to stop thinking like their upright, moral, tiresome selves and put themselves in the mind-skins of devious, murderous, greedy blighters. Of course they’d believe it — they’d do the same thing with their own wives or daughters. Unspoken but obvious was that I would too.

Indeed, here I was — ready to spread a pretty little idiot’s brains on the road.

It’d be a shame, but I’ve done worse things.

I took a step out into the garden. No one killed me, so I took another step down the path.

Lassiter and Jane came after me, backwards. The Danite perched on the roof wouldn’t have a shot that didn’t go through the woman.

Hooded men came out of the shadows. Five of them, carrying guns. All their weaponry was kitted out oddly. The barrels were as long again as they ought to be, and swelled into thick, ceramic Swiss-roll shapes. Silencers. I’d heard of the things, but never seen them. Cut down the accuracy, I gathered. The cat couldn’t hear you firing, but you’d probably miss. I’d rather use one of Moriarty’s airguns than a ridiculous contraption like that.

‘Parley,’ I said.

The leader of the band nodded, silly hood-point flopping.

The funny thing was that the hood was useless as disguise. Most masks are. You remember faces first of all, but people are a lot more than their eyes and noses — hands and legs and stomachs and the way they stand or hold a gun or light a cigar.

I was facing Elder Enoch J. Drebber.

I assumed our agreement was voided.

‘You don’t want these lovely ladies harmed,’ I said.

‘I only need one,’ Drebber responded, raising his gun.

At this range, he could plug Rache in the breast and the shot would plough through her and me, killing us both.

‘Rache not like mans,’ she said. ‘Rache poo on you!’

Drebber’s eyes widened in his hood-holes. Rache held up Missy Surprise, and angled the rag-doll, her fingers working the hard metal inside the soft toy.

Lassiter’s second gun went off and Missy Surprise’s head flew apart.

The Danite on Drebber’s right fell dead.

‘You’re next,’ I told Drebber.

I was sure she’d been aiming at him in the first place, but he wasn’t to know that.

The man on the roof decided it was time to take his shot. His finger had probably been itching all evening. I’ve had trouble with fools like that on safari, so keen on not coming home without having cleaned the barrel, they need to fire an elephant gun at the regimental water bearer just so they could say they’ve killed something.

Lassiter was quicker than a Bhishti, and not struggling with a ridiculously overweighted yard-and-a-half of rifle.

The keen rifleman tumbled dead into the flowery bower around the front door.

Seven, minus three. Four.

‘Drop the ironmongery, Elder,’ I ordered.

Rache blew a loud raspberry.

Drebber was shaking. He nodded, and guns fell onto the road.

‘All of them,’ I said.

Hands went to belts and inside pockets and boots and special compartments and a variety of hold-out single-shots and throwing knives rattled down as well.

‘Now, take your dead folks and scarper.’

The four surviving Danites did as they were told. The fellow in the bower was a sixteen-stone lump of his many wives’ cooking and it took two to lift him.

They had a carriage down the road, and it trundled off.

Not a bad night’s work, I thought. Providing it was over.

Rache was dancing around, and I thought it a good idea to relieve Missy Surprise of her.45 calibre insides. I gave the doll back and the girl loved it none the less for not having a head.

Jane was looking at me with something like rapt gratitude. Usually a good moment to make a proposition. I doubted my currency with Jim Lassiter stood as high as that.

‘Colonel Arbuthnot, what can we ever do to repay you?’

‘You can die,’ said a voice I recognised. ‘Yes, die.’

IX

I was fuming.

Moriarty didn’t deign to explain, but I had caught up on it.

Of course, he knew the Danites would try to save the fee and go for the kills on their own.

Of course, he had mentioned the Laurence address deliberately, to prompt fast action.

Of course, he had followed me and watched my travails all evening long, not intervening until the danger was over.

Of course, he had found a way to profit.

He strolled up the street, head bobbing. He was dressed all in black, for the night-time. He also had a carriage parked nearby, with Chop, his Chinese coachman, perched up on the box. He enquired solicitously after the neighbour, who was still making a performance of being slightly shot. Somehow, the man got the notion he had been saved by my intervention from a conspiracy of high-ranking Masons who wanted him dead over some imagined slight. It would be a risky proposition to complain officially about such well-connected villains since they owned the police. He bustled inside and drew his curtains, hoping to hide from inescapable doom under his coverlets.

Then Moriarty applied himself to the murders.

I was not privy to the arrangements the Professor made with Lassiter and Jane. I had to be in the still-smoky parlour, while Rache — excited to be up long past her bedtime — banged at the gutshot piano while singing more verses of her butterfly song.