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

Even cutting a prize into smaller stones doesn’t cover the trail. Clots who loot temples are too bedazzled by the booty to take elementary precautions. Changing the name on your passport doesn’t help. If you’re the bloke with the Fang of Azathoth on your watch chain or the Tears of Tabanga decorating your tart’s décolletage, you can expect fanatics with strangling cords to show up sooner or later. Want to steal from a church? Have the lead off the roof of St Custard’s down the road. I can more or less guarantee the Archbishop of Canterbury won’t send implacable curates after you with scimitars clenched between their teeth.

Ahem, so, to return to the case in hand. Since the tale has been set down by another (one J. Milton Hayes — ever heard of anything else by him?), I’ll copy it longhand. Hell, that’s too much trouble. I’ll shoplift a Big Book of Dramatic and Comic Recitations for All Occasions from WH Smith & Sons and paste in a torn-out page. I’ll be careful not to use ‘Christmas Day in the Workhouse’, ‘The Face on the Bar-Room Floor’ or ‘The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck (His Name Was Albert Trollocks)’ by mistake. Among the set who stay away from music halls and pride themselves on ‘making their own entertainment’, every fool and his cousin gets up at the drop of a hat to launch into ‘The Ballad of Mad Carew’. You’ve probably suffered Mr Hayes’ effulgence many times on long, agonising evenings, but bear with me. I’ll append footnotes to sweeten the deal.

There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,

There’s a little marble cross below the town;

There’s a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,

And the yellow god forever gazes down.

He was known as ‘Mad Carew’ by the subs at Khatmandu,

He was hotter than they felt inclined to tell;

But for all his foolish pranks*, he was worshipped in the ranks,

And the Colonel’s daughter§ smiled on him as well.

e. g.: setting light to the bhishti’s turban, putting firecrackers in the padre’s thunderbox… oh how we all laughed! — S.M.

§

Amaryllis Framington, by name. Fat and squinty, but white women are in short supply in Nepal and you land the fish you can get. — S.M.

He had loved her all along, with a passion of the strong,

The fact that she loved him was plain to all.

She was nearly twenty-one* and arrangements had begun

To celebrate her birthday with a ball.

forty if she was a day. — S.M.

He wrote* to ask what present she would like from Mad Carew;

They met next day as he dismissed a squad;

And jestingly she told him then that nothing else would do

But the green eye of the little yellow god§.

since they were at the same hill station, why didn’t he just ask her? Even sherpas have better things to do than be forever carrying letters between folks who live practically next door to each other. — S.M.

§

that’s colonel’s daughters for you, covetous and stupid, God bless ’em. — S.M.

On the night before the dance, Mad Carew seemed in a trance*.

And they chaffed him as they puffed at their cigars;

But for once he failed to smile, and he sat alone awhile,

Then went out into the night beneath the stars.

kif, probably. It’s not just the natives who smoke it. Bloody boring, a posting in Nepal. — S.M.

He returned before the dawn, with his shirt and tunic torn,

And a gash across his temple dripping red;

He was patched up right away, and he slept through all the day*,

And the Colonel’s daughter watched beside his bed.

lazy malingering tosser. — S.M.

He woke at last and asked if they could send his tunic through;

She brought it, and he thanked her with a nod;

He bade her search the pocket saying ‘That’s from Mad Carew’,

And she found the little green eye of the god*.

if you saw this coming, you are not alone. — S.M.

She upbraided poor Carew in the way that women do*,

Though both her eyes were strangely hot and wet;

But she wouldn’t take the stone§ and Mad Carew was left alone

With the jewel that he’d chanced his life to get.

here’s gratitude for you: the flaming cretin gets himself half-killed to fetch her a birthday present and she throws a sulk. — S.M.

§

which shows she wasn’t entirely addle-witted, old Amaryllis. — S.M.

When the ball was at its height, on that still and tropic night,

She thought of him* and hurried to his room;

As she crossed the barrack square she could hear the dreamy air

Of a waltz tune softly stealing thro’ the gloom.§

the least she could do, all things considered. Note that M.C. being stabbed didn’t stop her having her bally party. — S.M.

§

poetic license at its most mendacious. You imagine an orchestra conducted by Strauss himself and lilting, melodic strains wafting across the parade ground. The musical capabilities of the average hill station run to a corporal with a heat-warped fiddle, a boy with a Jew’s harp and a Welshman cashiered from his colliery choir for gross indecency (and singing flat). The repertoire runs to ditties like ‘Come Into the Garden, Maud (and Get the Poking You’ve Been Asking For All Evening)’ and ‘I Dreamt I Dwelled in Marble Halls (and Found Myself Fondling Prince Albert’s Balls)’. — S.M.

His door was open wide*, with silver moonlight shining through;

The place was wet and slipp’ry where she trod;

An ugly knife lay buried in the heart of Mad Carew§,

’Twas the vengeance of the little yellow god.

where were the guards? I’d bloody have ’em up on a charge for letting yak-bothering clod-stabbers through the lines. — S.M.

§

how much worse than being stabbed with a pretty knife, eh? — S.M.

There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,*

There’s a little marble cross below the town;

There’s a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,

And the yellow god forever gazes down§.

yes, J. Milton skimps on his poetical efforts by putting the first verse back in again. When Uncle Bertie or the bank manager’s sister read it aloud, they tend to do it jocular the first time, emphasising that rumty-tumty-tum metre, then pour on the drama for the reprise, drawing it out with exaggerated face pulling to convey the broken heartedness and a crack-of-doom hollow rumble for that final, ominous line. I blame Rudyard Kipling. — S.M.

§

Have you noticed the ambiguity about the idol? Is it only one eyed because M.C. has filched the other, or regularly configured like Polyphemus and now has its single eye back? Well, Mr Hayes was fudging because he plain didn’t know. To set the record straight, this was always a Cyclopean idol. And the poet didn’t hear the end of the story. — S.M.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking — if Mad Carew’s emerald-pinching escapade led to a twit-tended grave north of Khatmandu, how did he fetch up un-stabbed in our London consulting room, presenting a sickly countenance? Ah-hah, then read on…

IV

‘I took the eye from the idol,’ Carew admitted. ‘I don’t care what you’ve heard about why I did it. That doesn’t matter. I took it. And I didn’t give it away. I can’t give it away, because it comes back. I’ve tried. It’s mine, by right of… well, conquest. Do you understand, Professor?’

Moriarty nodded. If he understood, that was more than I did.