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

Speaking of heavenly bodies, my eyes went to the packet.

The seal was nice and red and heavy and official.

I remembered the line of Irene Adler’s throat, the trim of her calves under silk, the swell of…

No one had said anything about not examining the merchandise.

I listened out: Moriarty was whistling to his wasps, likely to be absorbed for hours; there was no tread on the stair and Mrs Halifax was ordered to keep all callers away. So, no chance of interruption.

I sat at the bureau, and turned up the gas lamp to illuminate the blotter.

With a deft bit of penknifery, I lifted the seal intact so it could be reattached with no one the wiser. My mouth was dry, as if I’d been in a hide for hours, watching a staked-out goat, awaiting the pad of a big cat. I poured a healthy snifter of brandy, an apt accompaniment to this pleasurable perusal.

With a warm pulse in my vitals, I slid the contents out of the packet.

It was like iced water tipped into my lap.

There were photographs. Views of Zenda Castle, with figures on the battlements. One wore a gauzy hat with a dead bird stuck to it, the other a comic opera uniform. Even at distance, I’d recognised the lovebirds. Irene Adler and Colonel Sapt.

‘Disgusting,’ I blurted.

A sheet of paper was slipped into the sheaf of photographs.

My Dear Col. Moran,

I knew you’d not be able to resist a peek at these ‘artistic studies’. Sorry for the disappointment.

For what it’s worth, you may keep all monies which can be raised from them. If b

---

l proves unprofitable, I suggest you license them to a manufacturer of postcards.

My very best to the Prof. I knew I could rely on him to toss a pebble in the pond, sending out ripples enough to make a maelstrom. An ordinary workman would just have secured the package and been done with it. Only a genius on the level of a Bonaparte could turn a simple task into the prompt for turmoil raised across a whole continent.

Please convey the thanks of another colonel. Being Chief of Secret Police in ‘one of the most peaceable, least-insurrection-blighted spots on the map’ was not a career with a future. The Elphbergs were intent on retiring him, but now — I fancy — he’ll be kept on with an increase in salary.

I expect you to retain the last figure for sentimental reasons, and I remain, dear Colonel Moran, very truly yours,

Irene Adler

I flipped through several more entirely innocent tourist photographs of picturesque Ruritania, until — at the bottom of the stack — I beheld the full face of the American Nightingale. In this final, studio-posed photograph she wore the low-cut bodice she’d affected on her visit to Conduit Street, somewhat loosened and lowered, though — dash it! — artistic fogging around the edges of the portrait prevented complete immodesty. Through the fog was scrawled her spidery autograph, ‘as ever, Irene’. Even thus frozen, she looked like the sort who would be much improved by a Basher Moran Special. I gulped the brandy, and chewed my moustache for a few moments, contemplating this turn of events.

Behind me, a door opened.

I swivelled in the chair. Moriarty looked at me, eyes shining — he had thought it through, and was unhappy. When the Professor was unhappy, other creatures — animals, children, even full-grown men — tended to learn of it in extreme and uncomfortable manners.

‘Moriarty,’ I began, ‘I’m afraid we’ve been stung.’

I held up Irene’s photograph.

He spat out a word.

And that was how a great shambles broke out in Belgravia, shaking the far-off kingdom of Ruritania, and how the worst plans of Professor Moriarty were exploited by a woman’s treachery. When he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always as that bitch.

I

Professor Moriarty excelled in two fields of human endeavour.

Mathematics, for one. Never was such a fellah as the Prof for chalking up sums. Or the rigmarole with more squiggles than numbers. Equations. Did ’em in his head, for fun… damn his eyes.

I would wager several pawn tickets held on the family silver that you lot have little or no interest in fractional calculus or imperfect logarithms. You’d all be best pleased if I yarned up the other field in which James Moriarty was top of the class.

Crime. Just the word gets you tingly, don’t it?

Well, tough titty… as the house captain who tried to roger me when I was a whelp at Eton used to say. Because this story is all about mathematics. I got my penknife to the house capt’s goolies, by the way. Preserved my maidenly virtue, as it were. Blighter is Bishop of Brichester these days. That’s beside the point: maths is the thing!

Get your thinking caps on, because I might put in some sums. Make you show your workings in the margin and write off for the answers. It will cost an extra 3d and a stamp just to find out if you’re as clever as you think you are. Probably, you ain’t. Most fellahs (including — I’m not ashamed to admit it — me) aren’t as clever as they think they are. Moriarty, though, was exactly that clever, a rare bird indeed. More dodos are around than blokes like that. According to Mr Darwin, that’s good joss [18] Joss: Luck. for the rest of us. Elsewise, we’d have long since been hunted to extinction by the inflated cranium people.

Drifting back to the subject in hand, Professor Moriarty was Number One Heap Big Chief in both his vocations. Which meant there was something he was even better at than complicated number problems or turning a dishonest profit — making enemies.

Over the years and around the world, I’ve run into some prize-winningly antagonistic coves. I recall several of that species of blood-soaked heathen who bridle under the yoke of Empire and declare war on ‘the entire White Christian Race’. Good luck to ’em. Pack off a regiment of curates and missionaries led by Bishop Bum-Banger to meet their savage hordes on the field of carnage and see if I care. In India, some sergeants wear armour beneath the tunic because no soldier serving under them can be trusted with a clear shot at their backs. I’ve also run into confidential police informants, which is to say: grasses. Peaching on one’s fellow crims to escape gaol is guaranteed to get you despised on both sides of the law. Fact is: no bastard born earned as many, as various, and as determined enemies as Moriarty.

First off, other crooks hated him. Get your regular magsman or ponce on the subject of Professor Jimmy Bleedin’ Moriarty, and you’ll expand the old vocabulary by obscenities in several argots. Just being a bigger thief than the rest of them was enough to get their goats. What made it worse was villains were often forced to throw in with him on capers, taking all the risk while he snaffled the lion’s share of the loot. If they complained, he had them killed. That was my job, by the by — so show some bloody respect or there’s a rope, a sack and a stretch of the Thames I could introduce you to. To hear them tell it, every cracksman in the land was just about to work out a foolproof plan to lift the jewels from Princess Alexandra’s knickers or riffle the strongboxes in the sub-basement of the Bank of England when Professor Moriarty happened by some fluke to think of it first. A few more tumblers of gin and their brilliant schemes would have been perfected — and they wouldn’t have to hand on most of the swag to some evil-eyed toff just for sitting at home and drawing diagrams. You might choose to believe these loquacious, larcenous fellahs. Me, I’ll come straight out and say they’re talking through a portion of their anatomy best employed passing wind or, in certain circumstances, concealing a robin’s egg diamond with a minimum of observable discomfort.