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

‘He must be put to the Question! The Falcon must be recovered!’ the man demanded fiercely.

I thumped back into my coffin, bumping my head on a stone pillow.

Margaret patted me on the chest. If the ring had a smell, it would have been in my nostrils.

I realised I’d just met Marshall Alaric Molina de Marnac, Grand Master of the Knights of St John. It should have come as no surprise these people knew each other. There were occult, Masonic ties between the Templars and Queen Tera’s orgiastic cult. Rivalries, too, but a lot in common. They would have friendly competitions, like the Oxford — Cambridge boat race or the Army — Navy rugby match but with more sacrificed virgins and obscene oblations. Though — even after an evening in the basement of Trelawny House — it was hard to credit that Margaret could preside over anything more chaotically perverted than the piss-up which follows the Army-Navy brawl.

De Marnac, a foreigner, spat.

‘I won’t tell you where the Falcon is,’ I swore — knowing that, realistically, I’d tell him before he got to the fingers of my right hand. I can stick more pain than most but I’ve tortured enough to know everyone talks in the end.

‘It’s on your Professor’s sideboard, silly,’ Miss Trelawny said. ‘All London knows. Among other trinkets, you also have the Green Eye of the Yellow God and the Jewels of the Madonna of Naples. Once Moriarty took to collecting, word got round.’

Again, I should have known that would happen.

My hostess made a fist and pressed her ring to my forehead.

‘I can’t think what goes on in that head of yours, Colonel,’ she said. ‘Did you really believe you could just wander in here and take the Jewel of Seven Stars? It’s the focus of aetheric forces which have enabled me to endure centuries in darkness and enter this shell to live anew. I was hardly likely to give it up.’

‘You all say that…’

She slapped me, lightly.

‘You are asking yourself why we’re having this conversation. Why are you not screaming in a tomb, using up precious air?’

I did my best to shrug.

‘While we were going through your clothes, an odd item came to light…’

I had French postcards in my wallet, but nothing likely to shock Queen Tera Redivivus. The two-shot pistol holstered in my sock, perhaps?

‘Why was this in your waistcoat lining?’

She held up a shiny black oval. The Borgia Pearl. I remembered Moriarty patting me, and thinking it an odd gesture. Now, I realised he had slipped me one of his Crown jewels. However, I had no idea why…

‘Swapsies?’ I suggested.

Would she have the thing set in another ring? Wearing the Jewel of Seven Stars and the Black Pearl of the Borgias would be asking for double trouble… I’d been collecting cursed items for two days, and what had I got for it? Mummification and the prospect of burial alive.

The Marshall made an iron fist and aimed at my face.

‘Steady on, old man,’ I said, ‘try not to lose your rag.’

Of course, that was calculated to inflame him further. I’d the measure of the Grand Master. Wrath was his presiding sin. He launched a punch. I shifted my head to the side of the sarcophagus. Metalled knuckles rammed the stone pillow. He swore in French and Spanish and bit his bluish beard.

‘You mustn’t let things get on top of you, chummy. Try whistling,’ I suggested.

This time, he put his hand flat on my chest and pressed down. That hurt. Quite a bit. I didn’t consider whistling.

‘You are a puzzle, Colonel,’ Margaret said. ‘I don’t suppose you would consider… an arrangement?’

She pouted, prettily. The snakes set off her face.

In disgust, de Marnac left me alone. He had disarranged my bandages and, as I’d hoped, torn through a few. If you loosen one, you loosen ’em all. My sister Augusta knitted me a cardigan for my twelfth birthday which suffered from the same flaw. A tiny dropped stitch and the whole thing unravelled. I made a play of breathing heavily, expanding and contracting my chest inside the bandages. I fancied I’d be able to get my arms loose.

’employment with me offers “benefits” I doubt you get from that dried-up maths tutor,’ Margaret said, trailing fingers over my face. ‘A desirable package is offered.’

Leaving Moriarty’s employ wasn’t as simple as she suggested. And, when working for him, I wasn’t likely to be transformed into an ass simply by a wink and a shimmy. I knew myself well enough to know this would not be the case if I became an attendant to Queen Tera. When there’s a woman in the crime, you always anticipate ‘benefits’ but get dirked in the arras. I speak from sorry experience, to whit: Irene ‘that bitch’ Adler, Mrs Sarah ‘the Black Widow of Lauder’ Stewart, Hagar ‘Thieving Pikey’ Stanley, et cetera, et cetera.

‘The Falcon, the Falcon,’ muttered the Marshall, obsessively. There was something about these objects. You set out to own them and they end up owning you. Tera Trelawny was a ring wearing a woman.

Above, outside, there was a crashing, and a drawn-out scream.

I hoped for Simon Carne leading an army of Moriarty’s hand-picked roughs in a well-armed, brilliantly conceived frontal assault, intent on my rescue. But the quality of the screams suggested otherwise. No matter what disguise Carne wore, he wasn’t that terrifying.

Margaret and de Marnac exchanged anxious looks. I managed to sit up, arms free under the bandages, and wasn’t instantly slapped down.

‘What is that?’ said the Grand Master.

A huge shape blocked the doorway. A huge shape topped with a porkpie hat. A knocked-over lamp underlit a jowly, pig-eyed face which seemed to have melted. Big fists opened and closed.

De Marnac drew a sword.

The Hoxton Creeper tottered into the cellar, eyes fixed on Margaret, but not for the reason most blokes stared at her. In her open palm glistened the Black Pearl.

‘Who are you?’ demanded de Marnac.

The Creeper whistled the ‘Barcarolle’ from Tales of Hoffman. He had a tune in his head, too. As he advanced, he loomed bigger. His shadow grew.

‘Here,’ said Miss Trelawny, ‘Grand Master, you’d better have this.’

She popped the pearl into the back of his tunic and it disappeared. He reached awkwardly for the back of his neck, but couldn’t trap it. He wriggled, as if a bug were burrowing under his armour.

The Creeper wheeled about and stared at the Knight of St John. He raised his arms.

Margaret’s black prizefighter, blood streaming from his broken face, came into the room and laid hold of the Creeper’s shoulder, only to be shrugged off and thrown against the wall.

All the while, I was unpicking my bandages. I rose from the coffin. Bereft of jewels, I was of no interest to anyone.

De Marnac slashed at the Creeper, who blocked with his arm. The blade bit into the giant’s knotted sinew like an axe in wood, then wouldn’t come free. The Creeper got a hold of the Grand Master and twisted him round. The crack of spine snapping was louder than the squeak of scream he managed before the angry lamps went out in his eyes.

Something small, like a marble, rolled from his armour onto the floor.

Miss Trelawny looked at the dropped pearl. It fascinated her as she fascinated me — a nigh-irresistible urge to seize. The Creeper, too, sighted the object of his fixation.

I saw where this was going. And rooted around for the scimitar, which was lying on the altar. I doubted it’d be any more use against the Creeper than the sword he prised out of his arm.

The Creeper bent down and tried to take the Borgia Pearl.

It had not occurred to me, but fingers thick as bananas were a handicap when it came to picking up something the size of a boiled sweet. The Creeper scrabbled, rolling the pearl this way and that, unable to get a grasp.