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

Pádraig ‘Pork’ Ó Méalóid, hooligan.

Patrick ‘Paddy Red’ Regan, second-storey bandit.

Leopold MacLiammóir, smooth-talker.

They did not think to wonder what special attributes qualified them for this particular caper. The Professor was in it, so there’d likely be a payout at the end of the day.

‘It’s no go, the bribery,’ I told them. ‘Lukens won’t play that game. So, it’s the contingency plan, lads. The coin’s in the desk, the desk’s in the basement office. I’ve left a window on the latch. When the smoke bomb goes off and the bluebottles run out of the building, slip in and riffle the place. Take anything else you want, but bring the Professor his item and you’ll remember this day well.’

Half a dozen nods.

‘Ye’ll not be regrettin’ this at all at all, Colonel, me darlin”,’ Leopold said. His brogue was so thick the others couldn’t make out what he was saying. He was an Austrian who liked to pretend he was an Irishman. After all, whoever heard of a Dubliner called Leopold? It’s possible he’d never even been to the ould sod at all.

Ó Méalóid pulled out a foot-long knotty club from a place of concealment and Regan slipped out his favourite stabbing knife. McHugh’s long fingers twitched. Shaughnessy handed around a flask of something distilled from stinging nettles. The little band of merry raiders wrapped checked scarves around the lower halves of their faces and pulled down their cap brims.

I left them and strolled back across the road. Pausing by the front door, I took out a silver case and extracted a cylinder approximately the size and shape of a cigar. I asked a uniformed police constable if he might have a lucifer about him, and a flame was kindly proffered. I lit the fuse of the cylinder and dropped it in the gutter. It fizzed alarmingly. Smoke was produced. Whistles shrilled.

My thieves charged across the road and poured through the open window.

And were immediately pounced on by the SIB Head-Knocking Society.

The smoke dispelled within a minute. I offered the helpful constable a real cigar he was happy to accept.

From offstage came the sounds of a severe kicking and battering, punctuated by cries and oaths. Eventually, this died down a little.

Inspector Lukens came out of the building and, without further word, dropped a tied handkerchief into my hand. He went back indoors, to fill in forms.

Six easy arrests. That was a currency the SIB dealt in. Six Irish crooks caught in the process of committing a stupid crime. As red-handed as they were redheaded.

This might shake your belief in honour among thieves, but I should mention that the micks were hand-picked for more than their criminal specialties and stated place of birth. All were of that breed of crook who don’t know when to lay off the mendacity… the sort who agree to steal on commission but think for themselves and withhold prizes they’ve been paid to secure. Dirty little birds who feather their own nests. Said nests would be on Dartmoor for the next few years. And serve ’em right.

It didn’t hurt that they were of the Irish persuasion. I doubt any one of them took an interest in politics, but the SIB would be happy to have six more heads to bounce off the walls or dunk in the ordure buckets.

You might say that I had done my patriotic duty in enabling such a swoop against enemies of the Queen. Only that wouldn’t wash. I’ve a trunkful medals awarded on the same basis. Mostly, I was murdering heathens for my own enjoyment.

I unwrapped the handkerchief and considered the Eye of Balor. It didn’t look much like an eye, or even a coin — just a lump of greenish metal I couldn’t tell was gold. In legend, Balor had a baleful, petrifying glance. On the battlefield, his comrades would peel back his mighty eyelids to turn his Medusan stare against the foe. Stories were confused as to whether this treasure was that eye or just named after it. Desmond Mountmain claimed it had been given to him during a faerie revel by King Brian of the Leprechauns. I suspected that the brand of pee-drinking lunacy practised by his sister ran in the family. It was said — mostly by the late Dynamite Des — that any who dared withhold the coin from a true Irish rebel would hear the howl of the banshee and suffer the wrath of the little people.

At that moment, an unearthly wail sounded out across the river. I bit through my cigar.

A passing excursion boat was overloaded with small, raucous creatures in sailor suits, flapping ribbons in the wind. The wail was a ship’s whistle. Not a banshee. The creatures were schoolgirls on an outing, pulling each other’s braids. Not followers of King Brian.

Ever since the tomato stall, I’d had my whiskers up. I was unused to that. This business was a test for even my nerves.

After a few moments, I carefully wrapped the coin again and passed it on to a small messenger — Filthy Fanny, not a bloody leprechaun — with orders to fetch it back to Conduit Street. Any temptation to run off with the precious item would be balanced by the vivid example of the six Irishmen. The professional urchin took off as if she had salt on her tail.

I summoned the not-for-hire cab I had arrived in.

‘The Royal Opera House,’ I told Chop, the Firm’s best driver. ‘And a shilling on top of the fare if we miss the first act.’

X

Some scorn opera as unrealistic. Large licentious ladies, posturing villains, concealed weapons, loud noises, suicides, thefts, betrayals, elongated ululations, explosions, goblets of poison and the curtain falling on a pile of corpses. Well, throw in a bag of tigers, and that’s my life. If I want treachery, bloodshed and screaming women, I can get enough at home, thank you very much.

I dislike opera because it’s Italian. The eye-tyes are the lowest breed of white man, a bargain-priced imitation of the French. All hair oil and smiling and back-stabbing and cowardice, left out in the sun too long.

This brouhaha of the Jewels of the Madonna of Naples was deeply Italian, and thoroughly operatic. The recitative was too convoluted to follow without music.

The gist: a succession of mugs across Europe got hold of the loot first lifted by Gennaro the Blacksmith, also known as Gennaro the Damned and Gennaro the Dead. The Camorra — a merciless, implacable brotherhood — was sworn to kill anyone who dared acquire the treasure, but no fool thought to return the loot and apologise. They all tried for a quick sale and a getaway, or thought to hide the valuables until ‘the heat died down’. Under the jewels’ spell, they forgot about the only institution ever to combine the adjectives ‘efficient’ and ‘Italian’. The Camorra carries feuds to the fifth generation; there’s little to no likelihood of anyone or their great-grandchildren profiting from Gennaro’s impetuous theft.

As mentioned, the latest idiot to acquire the Jewels was Giovanni Lombardo, a propmaker for the Royal Opera. He’d received the package from an equally addled cousin, who expired from strychnine poisoning at a Drury Lane pie stall a few hours later. Lombardo had been victim of a singular, fatal assault in his Islington carpenter’s shop. His head chanced to be trapped in a vice. Several holes were drilled in his brain-pan. A bloodied brace and bit was found in the nearby sawdust.

An editorial in the Harmsworth Press cited this crime as sorry proof of the deleterious effects of gory sensationalism paraded nightly in Italian on the stage, instead of daily in English in the newspapers as was right and proper. That Faust was sung in French didn’t trouble the commentator. Generally, the French are to be condemned for license and libertinism and the Italians for violence and cowardice. When foreigners copy each other’s vices, it confuses the English, so it’s best to ignore the facts and print the prejudice.