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

Then Moriarty laughed.

Pigeons fell dead three streets away. Hitherto-enthusiastic customers in Mrs Halifax’s rooms suddenly lost ardour at the worst possible moment. Vampire squid waved their tentacles. I quelled an urge to bring up my mutton lunch.

Frederick Nietzsche witters on about ‘how terrible is the laughter of the Übermensch’ — yes, I have read a book without pics of naked bints or big game! — and establishes there is blood and ice in the slightest chuckle of these superior beings. If Fathead Fritzi ever heard the laugh of Professor Moriarty, he would have shat blood, ice and sauerkraut into his German drawers.

‘Yes-s-s,’ he hissed. ‘Paper hats-s-s.’

IV

From the Diary of Sir Nevil Airey Stent.

September 2

Notices are in! My lecture — an unparalleled triumph! The Dynamics of an Asteroid — in the dustbin! Moriarty’s hash — settled for good! I may draw a thick black line through the most prominent name on the List.

Now — on to other things.

Remodelling of Flamsteed House continues. All say it’s not grand enough for my position. Workmen have been in all week, installing electric lamps in every room. In my position, we must have all the modern, scientific devices. Lady Caroline fears electricity will leak from the wiring and strike dead the servants with indoor lightning. I have explained to her why this is impossible, but my dear featherhead continues to worry and has ordered the staff to wear rubber-soled shoes. They squeak about the place like angry mice.

Similarly, the Observatory must expand, keep apace, draw ahead.

At ninety-four inches, our newly commissioned optical-reflecting telescope shall be the biggest in the world! The ’scopes at Birr Castle and the Lick Observatory will seem like tadpoles! I almost feel sorry for them. That’s two more off the List!

Kedgeree for breakfast, light lunch of squab and quail eggs, Dover sole and chipped potatoes for supper. Congress with Lady C. — twice! Must eat more fish.

Reviewing my life and achievements on this, my forty-fifth birthday, I concede myself well-satisfied.

All must admire me.

Looking to the planets and stars, I feel I am surveying my domain. My Queen has her Empire, but she has gifted me the skies for conquest.

Mars is winking at me, redly.

September 6: A curious happening.

Business took me to the lens-grinders’ in Seven Dials. Old Parsons’ work has been indifferent lately, and I made a personal visit to administer a metaphorical boot to the seat of his britches.

After the booting was done, I left Parsons’ shop and happened to notice the premises next door. Above a dingy window was a sign — ‘C. Cave, Naturalist and Dealer in Antiquities’. The goods on offer ran to dead birds, elephant tusks, shark maws, fossils and the like. I’d thought this site occupied by a bakery, but must be misremembering. Cave’s premises had plainly stood for years, gradually decaying and accumulating layers of dust and dirt.

My attention was drawn to the window by a red flash, which I perceived out of the corner of my eye. A stray shaft of light had reflected off an odd object — a mass of crystal worked into the shape of an egg and brilliantly polished. It might do for a paperweight if I were in need of such a thing, which I was not.

Then, I heard voices raised inside the emporium. One was known to me — that upstart Moriartian Ogilvy. Alone among the fraternity of astronomers, he has written in defence of The Dynamics of an Asteroid. His name was on the List.

I stepped back into the doorway of Parsons’, but kept my ears open. Og was haggling with an old man — presumably, C. Cave himself — over the crystal lump, for which the proprietor was asking a sum beyond his purse. An opportunity.

Casually, I wandered into the shop.

Cave, a bent little fellow with egg in his stringy beard and a tea cosy on his head, had the odd mannerism of wobbling his head from side to side like certain snakes. I thought for a moment that I knew him from somewhere, but must have been mistaken. He smelled worse than many of his antiquities. I say, that’s rather good — must save the line for my next refutation.

Og was going through his pockets, scraping together coins to up his offer.

Upon seeing me, Og said ‘Stent, how fortunate that it’s you,’ with undue familiarity as if we were the closest of friends. ‘Could you extend me a small loan?’

‘Five pounds,’ insisted Cave. ‘Not a penny less.’

Og sweated like an opium addict without funds for his next pipe. Most extraordinary thing. I hadn’t thought he had the imagination to be so desperate.

‘Of course, my dear fellow,’ I said. His face lifted, and his palm came out. ‘But first I must conclude my own business.

My good man, I should like to purchase that curious crystal in your window.’

Og looked as if he had been punched in the gut.

‘Five pounds,’ Cave said.

‘Stent, I say, you can’t… well, that is… I mean, dash it…’

‘Yes, Ogilvy, was there something?’

I drew out my wallet and handed over five pounds. Cave entered the sale in an ancient register, then fussed about extracting the object from the window.

I looked at Og. He tried unsuccessfully to cover fury and disappointment.

‘Now about that loan,’ I said, wallet still open.

‘Doesn’t matter now,’ he said — and left the shop, setting the bell above the door a-jangle.

Another name off the List!

Cave came back with the object, cradled in black velvet. It struck me that I need only say I’d changed my mind to reclaim my outlay. But Og might creep back and get the blessed thing after all. Couldn’t have that.

Cave held up the crystal and said something about ‘the inner light’. Strange phrase. He meant the refraction, of course, but a lecture on optics would have been out of place in this circumstance. No fee would be forthcoming, and it doesn’t do to cheapen the currency of scholarship by dishing out lectures gratis.

I took the thing away with me. Perhaps I can use it as a paperweight after all.

Roast boar with apricots at the Lord Mayor’s. Congress with Lady Caroline in the carriage on the way home. Top-hole!

September 7: An odd day.

Luncheon at Simpson’s in the Strand with Jedwood, my publisher. Cream of turbot, hock of ham, peppered pear. An acceptable Muscadet, porter, sherry. The Refutation pamphlet is shifting briskly, and J. is eager for more. Pity Moriarty hasn’t fired other literary clay pigeons I could blast. J. proposes a collection of Refutations and suggests I consider expanding the arena of combat, to launch my intellectual ballista against other so-called great minds of the age. J. is a dolt — he doesn’t understand the List, or that it is as important to choose the proper enemies as the proper friends. Nevertheless, I’m tempted. Tom Huxley, Darwin’s old bulldog, could do with having his ears boxed for a change. And I didn’t care for the way George Stokes hovered over Lady Caroline at the last Royal Society formal. Those Navier — Stokes equations have their tiny little cracks.

Most extraordinary thing. As J. and I were leaving the restaurant, a wild-haired, sunburned fellow accosted us in the street, gabbling ‘the Martians are coming, the Martians are coming!’ Ever since Schiaparelli put about that nonsense about canals, there has been debate about how one should address the notional inhabitants of the planet Mars. I am firmly of the belief that ‘Marsian’ is the only acceptable term. I took the trouble to correct the moonatic on this point, but he was in no condition to listen. He grabbed my lapels with greasy fingers and breathed gin in my face. He called me by name, which was discomforting. ‘Sir Nevil,’ he said, ‘keep watching the skies! Look to the Red Planet! Look into the crystal egg!’