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

‘Of course,’ Stent continued, ‘we sometimes have our doubts about “the scientific press”. More sense can be found in Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday.’ [19] Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday (1884–1916). A weekly comic newspaper built around the popular comic strip character of Ally Sloper, created by Charles Henry Ross and Marie DuVal.

A tide of tittering ran through the audience. Stent raised his eyebrows, and shook the book in humorous fashion, as if hoping something would fall out. Chuckles ensued. Stent tried to read the book upside down. Something which might be diagnosed as a guffaw erupted from an elderly party near us. Moriarty turned to aim a bone-freezing glare at the old gent — but was thwarted by his disguise. He wore opaque black spectacles and held a white cane in order to pass himself off as a blind scholar from Trinity College, Dublin.

Stent slammed the book down on the lectern.

‘No, my friends, it will not do,’ he said. ‘Being beyond understanding is of no use to anyone. Astronomy will never progress from simple stargazing if we allow it to be dominated by such… and I don’t hesitate to use the term… piffling tripe as Professor Moriarty’s pound and a half of waste paper. It would be better titled The Dynamics of a Haemorrhoid, for its contents are piles of nonsense. This copy was taken by me this afternoon from the library of the Greenwich Observatory. As you know, this is the greatest collection of publications and papers in the field. It is open to the finest scholars and minds on the planet. Let us examine this Dynamics of an Asteroid, and see what secrets it has to tell…’

Stent picked up the book again and began to leaf through it. He showed the title page. ‘A first, and indeed only, edition!’ Then, he turned to the opening chapter, and drew his finger down the two-columned text, turned the page, and did the same, then turned the page and…

‘Aha,’ he exclaimed. ‘After twenty pages, we find that the next leaf is uncut. As are all remaining leaves. What can we deduce from that? This book has been in the library for six years. I have a list of academics, students and astronomers who have taken it out. Seventy-two names. Many I see before me this evening. It seems no one has managed to read beyond the first twenty pages of this masterwork. Because I am not averse to suffering for my field, I have read the book, cover to cover, 652 pages. I venture to say I am the only man in the room who can claim such a Herculean achievement. Is there any comrade here, to whom I can extend my condolences, with whom I can share my sufferings? In short, has anyone else managed to finish The Dynamics of an Asteroid? Hands up, don’t be shy. There are worse things to admit to.’

The handle of the Professor’s cane snapped. He’d been gripping it with both knotted fists. The sound was like a gunshot.

‘So you have joined us, James,’ Stent said. ‘I rather thought you might.’

A sibilance escaped Moriarty’s colourless lips.

‘We shall have need of you later,’ Stent said, producing a long thin knife — which he proceeded slip into the book, cutting at last its virgin leaves. ‘You can take off those ridiculous smoked glasses. Though, if you have suffered some onset of blindness which has not been reported in the press, it would explain a great deal. Gentlemen of the Royal Society of Astronomers, it is my contention that no man who has ever looked through a telescope with sighted eyes would ever be able to make the following statement, which I quote from the third paragraph of page one of The Dynamics of an Asteroid… ’

Stent proceeded to dissect the book, wielding words like a scalpel, and flicking blood in Professor Moriarty’s face. It was a merciless, good-humoured assassination. Entertaining asides raised healthy laughter throughout the evening.

The sums were well above my head, but I snickered once or twice at the amusing way Stent couched his refutations. I should have kept a stonier face: the next day, Moriarty had Mrs Halifax despatch Véronique, my second favourite French dollymop, to Alaska as a mail-order bride. Fifi, my first choice, was too good an earner to waste, but I’d learned a lesson.

At every point, Stent invited a response from Moriarty. None came. The Professor sat in silence as his theorems were shredded, his calculations unpicked, his conclusions burst like balloons.

Sir Nevil Airey Stent had no idea that the Professor’s interests extended beyond equations. Blithely, the Astronomer Royal continued his lecture. Though I knew only too well what the clot was getting into, I could scarcely blame him for digging his own grave in public.

No one would have believed, in the next-to-last years of the nineteenth century, that his lecture was being watched keenly and closely by an intelligence greater than his own; that as he blathered on and on he was scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a berk with a microscope might scrutinise the tiny wriggly bugs that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency, Stent read from his little sheaf of notes, serene in the assurance that he was royalty among astronomers.

Yet, across the gulf of the lecture hall, a mind that was to Stent’s as his was to those of the beasts that perish, an intellect vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded the podium with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew his plans against him.

‘In brief, sirs,’ Stent said, wrapping things up, ‘this asteroid is off its course. Heavenly bodies being what they are, this cannot be allowed. Stars are inexorable. The laws of attraction, gravity, propulsion and decay are immutable. An asteroid does not behave in the manner our colleague alleges it does. This august body will fall prey to… to men from Mars, with three legs, eyes the size of saucers and paper party hats… before the asteroid will deviate one whit from the course I have charted. I would wager five pounds that Professor Moriarty can say no different. James?’

The pause stretched on. Moriarty said nothing. It was summer, but I felt a chill. So did the rest of the audience.

The silence was broken by Markham, the adenoidal twit who had introduced Sir Nevil. He stood up and called for a round of thunderous applause, then announced that the gist of the speech was now available as a pamphlet at the cost of 6d. There was a rush for the stall outside the lecture room, where a brisk trade was done.

Moriarty remained in his seat as the room emptied.

‘James,’ Stent said cheerfully from the podium as he gathered his notes, ‘it’s pleasant to see you in such evident health. There’s actually some colour in your cheeks. I bid you a respectful good night.’

The Professor nodded to his nemesis. Stent left by a rear door.

Moriarty didn’t move from his chair. I wondered if he even could.

Stent had set out to murder Moriarty the Mathematician. He didn’t suspect his victim had another self. An unmurdered, unmerciful enemy.

‘Moran,’ he said, at last, ‘tomorrow, you will call on The Lord of Strange Deaths in Limehouse. [20] I could use this footnote to reveal the identity of the holder of this title — or at least the name he most commonly used — but Dame Philomela assures me that, even after a 120 years, this would not be advisable: ‘You’d be risking a lot more than getting your pussy’s ear clipped!’ The Lord is out of the country, but Singapore Charlie will act for him. You remember the Si-Fan [21] The Si-Fan: A Chinese criminal-political faction, active throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. were able to import the swamp adder we supplied for Dr Grimesby Roylott [22] See: John Watson and Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Speckled Band’, The Strand Magazine, 1892. . I wish to place an order for a dozen vampyroteuthis infernalis. That is not yet an officially recognised genus of coleoidea, but specimens come on the exotica market from time to time.’