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

Moriarty’s head oscillated. Dan’l, alarmed, gripped Gertie as if he were worried the Prof was about to turn into a snake as old Venic turned into Red Shuck. I knew the Prof’s habits — he was calculating…

‘I am currently much involved,’ he announced. ‘Several crimes require my presence in London…’

This was news to me.

‘…you will soon read of the Barrie-McTrostle disinheritance… the Clapham Gas House atrocities… and the Winklesworth & Company stock malfeasance…’

He was making this rot up, but Stoke’s eyes goggled — imagining vast feats of inconceivable criminality. Moriarty was not above puffing up his feats by reference to imaginary crimes. Usually, he was deceiving someone about something and had a long game in mind, so I played along.

‘There’s the abduction of the Ranee of Ranchipur, too,’ I put in.

The ‘Ranee of Ranchipur’ was the professional name of Molly Duff, one of Mrs Halifax’s girls. She stained herself brown to pass as a Hindu princess.

Moriarty nodded sagely. ‘Yes, an exacting proposition. The Ranee is to be taken from under the Rajah’s nose and sold to a Scottish peer during her birthday party. That will require my personal attention.’

Stoke’s wonderment was tinctured with dismay as he saw his own knotty problem sliding down the agenda and out of the door.

‘However,’ said the Professor, ‘in this instance, I can with full confidence entrust your dog to my associate, Colonel Moran. He is known far and wide as the greatest hunter of the age. If an animal draws breath, he’s killed it.’

The old chest fairly swelled with pride, though I knew the Prof was stroking the client while palming the job off on me.

‘I know all about keeping natives under the lash,’ I said. ‘I doubt those of Wessex differ much from the heathens I ran into out East.’

‘Moran will run down to Trantridge with you…’

‘…bringing along my guns, what?’

‘…suitably armed to bring down any Wessex Wolf. He will take stock of your situation, then act expeditiously to effect a satisfactory outcome.’

Stoke had the temerity to baulk at this.

‘I’ve set a pile of money on the table, Professor… I was hoping for the boss of this outfit, not the top hand.’

‘Mr Stoke-d’Urberville, when it comes to tramping through mud and muck after ferocious beasts, the Colonel has far more experience than I. Moran will set down observations and send me regular communiqués about his progress…’

This again was news to me, and not entirely welcome.

‘A portion of my brain will be fully occupied with Red Shuck. Even if I am removed from the scene of your travails. If you are beset by a mysterious “do-gooder”, he or she will be thwarted. On that, you have the word of Professor James Moriarty.’

Which, as far as it went, was impressive. If Moriarty promised to cut your throat or assault your sister and get away with it, you could be assured he’d follow through. Otherwise, his word was worth about as much as my promissory notes to tailors or cabbage-men… but Jasper Stoke, tyrant and villain though he might be, set much by hollow wordage from so distinguished a gent.

V

I packed guns for a trip west.

Impertinent reviewers of my Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas made waggish remarks about the Moran propensity for ‘droning at length’ about guns. I still hold those seventy-eight pages, with practical footnotes, on the rifle ‘Prometheus’ a worthwhile addition to the literature and essential to the understanding of later, more immediately exciting chapters. Discerning readers have given testimonials as to the fascinating, educational and profoundly important nature of these outpourings from my pen — which not a few rank higher than anything from Dickens or Shelley.

‘Prometheus’, custom-made by George Gibbs of Bristol, is sadly lost. Having served me better than any woman I’ve ever paid for, the rifle suffered tragically when pressed into service as a crutch as I hobbled out of an East African jungle on a broken leg. I laid the gun to rest in a grave with the three bearers who deserted me. I don’t officially record those sammies, because close-up executions spat from an abused and spoiled weapon can’t be set beside the true shots of the gun’s great days. But they constituted the final bag. Had ‘Prometheus’ survived beyond publication of Heavy Game, I might have added a literary lion or two to its tally. Luckily, the Eton coachwhip was to hand when opportunity came to answer my critics.

If you’ve a fancy to hang the antlers of a Grand Duke in your lodge, you might need a recoilless pistol which looks like a pair of opera glasses and doesn’t make a noise louder than a round of applause. Then, Blind Herder’s your man. Still, if Red Shuck was actual game, I needed a game rifle. Gibbs & Co. remained my preferred supplier. I’d not named a gun since ‘Prometheus’, but I’d a rack to choose from. Elephant, lion, tiger, bear, native and witness widows across the Empire could attest to their reliability. I took three rifles, including one calibrated for shots of up to three-quarters of a mile with an optical contraption for sighting purposes. My Webley had finally succumbed when I was forced to use its barrel as a jemmy and its handle as a hammer to extricate myself from the oubliette of Arnsworth Castle. So, I needed a side arm. Officially, Gibbs does not make a revolver — but, as a service to a valued customer, they furnished me a superbly crafted, teak-handled specimen superior to the job lots of shooting iron turned out by Yankee bodgers like Samuel Colt.

It was arranged that, three days after our first consultation, I would meet Jasper Stoke at Paddington Station and we would chuff-chuff west. Before leaving, I conferred with Moriarty in the windowless study where he experimented. He was not busy with other crimes, imaginary or genuine. He was dissecting a violin. An Amati of Cremona, if that means anything. He had secured it at auction for a fabulous sum — solely, I believe, to keep it from a rival bidder for whom he had a particular dislike. With dressmakers’ scissors and a surgeon’s scalpel, he anatomised his fiddle, snipping strings, sundering joins. Perhaps the Prof hoped to find out where the tunes came from.

Looking up from his labours, Moriarty saw me dressed for the country and raised a bony finger to signal I shouldn’t leave just yet.

He pushed away from his workbench, rolling his chair on castors across uncarpeted floor towards a cabinet of many drawers. The Professor boasted that this contained a thousand unique methods of murder — though, when someone was to be got rid of, he usually left the mamba venom envelope gum and asphyxiating orchids to his oriental peer, relying instead on tried-and-true British bludgeoning or my own marksmanship. He pulled a drawer marked ‘58’ and took out a small cardboard box.

‘It’s not a spider, is it, Moriarty? You know my opinion on arachnids!’

The Professor opened the box, which was full of apparently ordinary bullets. Moriarty plucked a rimmed.455 pistol cartridge. They make them by the thousand. But instead of dull lead, its nose gleamed sterling silver.

I whistled and commented, ‘Pricey.’

‘Indeed,’ Moriarty said. ‘Material is costly and manufacture complicated. But you lecture often on the importance of using the proper loads. The literature would have it that supernatural game such as Red Shuck requires a silver bullet. I shall want a precise account of every shot fired. Any rounds not discharged are to be returned when this matter is settled.’

I slipped the box into my pocket.

‘Moriarty, do you give any weight to the notion that there’s a ghost or goblin behind this business? Our client plainly doesn’t…’