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

Any rate, assassinating dogs was not generally in our line. On occasion, we had adversely affected the health of certain horses. If there were more lucre in fixing dog fights, we’d have applied similar methods to the odd pit bull. But there isn’t and we hadn’t. In Russia, I’d hunted wolves with a Tartar war-bow — but that was sport, not business.

I doubted Jasper Stoke-d’Urberville was bothered by a neighbour’s yapping pooch in darkest Trantridge. If that were the case, Dan’l could settle its hash. I’d already noted Gertie’s suitability for puppy braining. With Dan’l’s weight behind her, I dare say the stick could fell a prehistoric mastodon.

But our prospective client had brought his doggie problem to us.

‘I am prepared to pay five thousand pounds,’ Stoke said, ‘for a pelt.’

Even at today’s shocking prices, not a sum to be sniffed at, sneezed on or otherwise nasally rejected.

‘Mr Stoke-d’Urberville,’ said the Professor, rolling the name around like a sheik savouring a sheep’s eyeball before popping it between his back teeth, ‘whose recommendation brought you to our door?’

‘I’ve had doings with Doctor Quartz of New York…’

The Professor flicked his fingers. Stoke knew enough to shut up.

Some said Jack Quartz, vivisectionist and educator, was to the Americas what Moriarty was to Britain. [29] See Frederic Van Renssaelaer Dey, ‘3,000 Miles by Freight; or, The Mystery of a Piano Box’, The Nick Carter Library, 1891. You were well advised not to suggest the equivalence in either’s earshot. I knew Quartz was still smarting over Moriarty’s Surprise Valley Gold Mine coup, a foot set in his sphere of influence — though its fabulous output had run dry after a few months, leaving the Firm on the scout for prospects like Stoke-d’Urberville. Moriarty expressed concern that Yankee tentacles were feeling about the globe. Quartz had supposedly secret treaties with the Unione Corse and the Camorra in Southern Europe and Dr Nikola and the Si-Fan in Asia. Outwardly, Moriarty and Quartz maintained courteous, professional relations: each would refer petitioners departing for foreign shores to the other.

The Lord of Strange Deaths could sit at their table, should that mandarin deign to dine with beaky barbarians. The Grand Vampire, chief of Paris’ Les Vampires, might have been admitted to the sewing circle, but no holder of that title had lived long enough in the office to take a hand in this Great Game.

Bet you didn’t know the world was cut up like that.

‘I am aware of Quartz,’ conceded the Professor. ‘Outline your situation, omitting no relevant detail.’

Stoke sat in the client’s chair. He lit a cheroot and took his ease.

‘I’ll give you the straight of it, Professor,’ he began. ‘A year back, I reached an unwelcome conclusion. I was about to be run out of Tombstone, Arizona. That’s a silver town. Previously, I made money in silver. Not digging it out of dirt, digging it out of miners. I operated saloons, gambling hells, rooming houses, some French girls. The real earner is baths. For the privilege of staying in business, everyone in Tombstone tithes to a brood of badged-up robbers. The Earps. Every damn brother holds some office. Federal marshal, town sheriff, tax collector. All want paying. Town has a shrinking economy. Mines are flooded. Silver’s petering out. So the Earps saw no reason to let me retain the remainder of my income. They were set on discussing matters at a particular corral where financial disputes are oft-times settled with long rifles. I saw no profit in war, but the alternative was unprepossessing at best. Then, as providence has it, word came via telegraph. An estate is mine for the taking in a country where constables’ hands might be out for pay-off but don’t have Buntline Specials in them. I gathered my top boys and set out to stake my claim.’

‘I got powerful sick on the boat,’ put in Dan’l. ‘Puked like to fill the wide ocean deep.’

Stoke shrugged.

‘My spread is the Trantridge Estate, in Wessex. Uncle Si, who used to be called “Simon Screw-the-marks”, bought it after a lifetime of squeezing pennies from widows. He didn’t live long enough to enjoy his spread, but Auntie hung in there. On her deathbed for thirty years, by my reckoning. When she finally kicked the bucket, it turned out I’m the only living relative. I inherit the entirety of her holdings. The land, the village, a forest, a church, flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, fields of whatever muck they grow. Even a saloon. A pub they call it. The Old Red Dog. As Master of Trantridge, I own people… peasants, serfs, yokels. Slaves.’

In school, they say Wilberforce abolished slavery in the Empire and Lincoln freed the blacks in the Civil War. Abolition sounds impressive, doesn’t it? It bears repeating that all the acts and decrees and petitions — plus the maintenance of an anti-slaving fleet off West Africa — didn’t make slavery go away. Busybodies just made slavery illegal and, therefore, much, much more profitable. Pass a law against any endeavour and the honest merchants drop it. So who do you think takes over? Yes, criminals. There are laws against murder, theft or blackmail, but no windy politician or curate gets up and takes a bow for abolishing ’ em. I’ve knocked about and seen plenty of human flesh bought, sold and put to work. The child purchased outright for six shillings in Piccadilly is as much a slave as any native on a block for ten dirham in Marrakech.

‘Auntie kept a light rein on Trantridge,’ continued Stoke. ‘She never got over losing her sight, much less the cluster-hump with cousin Alec’s murdering whore. A manager, Braham Derby, oversees rents, tributes and whatnot. This goof-off let the tenants misremember their situation, settle into a life of unearned ease and comfort. They’re on d’Urberville property. All they keep from their labours is the gift of the master. Id est, me. With the old lady planted, the situation is in flux.

‘On the trip over, while Dan’l was a-heaving, I read up German books on “economic models”. Having just lost one business, I’m not about to be beggared again. Trantridge isn’t like a silver town: big money for a few years, tailing out to nothing when the seam is exhausted, with the added drawback of thieving Earps. It’s more akin to the big Texas cattle outfits or the old Southern cotton plantations: potentially big money forever, if the peons are ridden hard. The “economic model” can work, so long as malcontents are dealt with smartly.

‘English landlords have sweated the paddies for generations. If the fighting Irish can be ground under by milksops, Wessexers ought to be a pushover, right? Hang a few, burn out a couple of hovels, cut some fences and they’ll get an understanding. Then, I sit back and enjoy the life of a country gent. Buy a seat in parliament and a box at Toneborough Race Track.’

Stoke sat back and took a puff. I wondered when the dog would come into it. ‘Economic models’ are all very well, but if you put a dog at the beginning, there had damn well better be barking before act two.

‘First priority is to explain to my tenants — as much my property as the sheep, chickens and crops — that I intend to exercise full rights. I had Derby, kept on in strictly advisory capacity, call a meeting at the Village Hall and make sure every man-jack turns up. So, this hubbub of smock-frock, fringe-beard straw-suckers sat on hard benches, wishing they were in the Red Dog. I kept ’em waiting a few hours.

‘At last, I strode in. Place went hush. You could hear the tinkling of my silver spurs. My boys were stationed at strategic points, coat-tails folded back to show iron on their hips. In German economics, you learn to impose your will on a workforce through theatrical devices. Trantridgers have never seen the like of these hombres. Lazy-Eye Jack has been in a range war or two, Nakszynski the Albino once ate a Canadian mounted policeman’s liver and Dan’l here fills a room without hardly trying.