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

A pair of constables, on their regular beat, took a look at the assembled factions, about-turned and strolled away rapidly.

‘I suppose we can only die once,’ I said. ‘I’ll fetch out the rifle with telescope sights. I can put half a dozen bastards down before they take cover. Starting with Temperance Ty, I think…’

‘You will do no such thing, Moran.’

The Professor had something up his sleeve.

The doorbell rang. I adjusted the spyglass to see which fanatic was calling. It was only Alf Bassick, with a large carpet bag, back from Rotherhithe.

I pulled a lever which — by a system of pulleys and electric currents — unlocked our front door. Moriarty had designed the system himself. Wood panelling over sheet steel, our entrance was more impregnable than the vaults of Box Brothers. Even the dynamite boyos would have trouble shifting it.

Bassick didn’t immediately come upstairs.

Moriarty told me to go down and determine the cause of the delay.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I saw Bassick was stretched out on our hall mat with a Nepalese dagger stuck between his shoulders. If we’d sent Carne on Bassick’s errand, he might have come through it — that fake hump at least protected his back. It was after midnight. The besieging forces were bolder.

I turned Bassick over and ignored his gasped last words — blather about his mother or money or the moon — to get the bag. Whatever Moriarty had sent him for, death was no excuse for failure.

Returning upstairs, I didn’t need to tell the Prof what had happened. I assumed he’d taken it into account in his squiggle charts.

Moriarty opened Bassick’s bag and took out six identical caskets. He lined up the boxes on his desk and flipped each of their lids open. Inside, each container was custom-made to contain a different treasure, with apertures ranging from a bird-shaped hole for the Templar Falcon to a tiny recess for the Borgia Pearl. Every Jewel of the Madonna had a nook. The Professor fit his acquisitions into their boxes and shut the lids.

‘There should be keys,’ he said.

I rooted about in the carpet bag and found a ring of six keys. Moriarty took a single key and locked all the boxes with it. He shuffled the boxes around on the table.

‘Moran, pick any two of these up.’

They weighed the same.

‘Shake them.’

They rattled the same.

‘In addition to their respective jewels, each box has a cavity holding loose weights,’ the Professor explained. ‘Any would balance a scale exactly with any other. They sound alike. They look alike. Tell me, Moran, could an object-worshipper differentiate between them?’

‘If they can, they’re sharper pencils than me.’

‘Is it possible some may be supernaturally attuned to the contents? They’ll be able to pick out their own hearts’ desires through magic?’

‘If you say so.’

‘I say not, Moran. I say not.’

I tapped a knuckle on a box. It was not just wood.

‘A steel core, like our front door, Moran,’ Moriarty said. ‘The boxes will take considerable breaking.’

I still didn’t know what he was up to.

He put the boxes back in the carpet bag. And pulled on his ulster and tall hat. He regarded himself slyly in the mirror, checking his appearance but also catching his own clever eye. Odd that someone so unprepossessing should be a monster of vanity, but life is full of surprises.

‘We shall go outside… and surrender our collection. But, remember, only one box to each customer.’

‘What’s to stop us being killed six ways as soon as we open the door?’

‘Confidence, Moran. Confidence.’

Terrifyingly, that made sense. I stiffened, distributed three pistols about my person, and prepared to put on an almighty front.

XV

Professor Moriarty opened wide our front door and held up his right hand.

It seemed everyone was too astonished to kill him.

He walked down our front steps, casual if a little too pleased with himself. I followed, my thumb-cocked six-shot Gibbs in one hand, a Holland & Holland fowling piece tucked under my other arm. If this was where I died, I’d take a bag of the heathen down with me.

Moriarty signalled for the interested parties to advance. When they moved en masse, he shook his head and held up his forefinger. Only one of each faction was to come forward. There was snarling and spitting, but terms were accepted.

Tyrone Mountmain, chewing a lit cigar. That meant he had dynamite sticks about him, with short fuses.

Don Rafaele Corbucci held back, and sent my old girlfriend. Malilella spat at my boots and I noticed inappropriately that she was damned attractive. Shame she was a bloody Catholic.

A Templar Knight unknown to me crossed himself and advanced.

Margaret Trelawny let the Hoxton Creeper help her down from her carriage. She was more modestly dressed than on the occasion of our last meeting, but her veil was pinned to the snaky headdress. She looked no fonder of me than the stiletto sister.

They stood on the pavement, wary of each other, warier of us.

‘One more, I think,’ Moriarty said.

A heap of rags by the rubbish bins stirred. A brown, lean beggar crept forth. He had a shaved head and a green dot in the centre of his forehead. The high priest of the little yellow god.

‘You each wish something which is in our possession,’ Moriarty said.

Mountmain swore and his cigar-end glowed. Malilella flicked out her favourite blade. Margaret Trelawny flipped back her veil with her alabaster hand — she must have been practising — and glared hatred.

‘I intend to make full restitution…’

‘Ye’ll still die ye turncoat bastard,’ Mountmain declared.

‘That may be. I do not ask payment for the items you believe you have a right to. Nothing but a few moments’ truce, so Moran and I might return to our rooms and set our affairs in order. After that, we shall be at your disposal.’

I held up the sack like Father Christmas. The boxes rattled.

Six sets of eyes lit up. I wondered again if the fanatics could sense which box held which desired, accursed object.

Don Rafaele gave the nod, accepting terms, binding the others to his decision. That made him the biggest crook in the assembled masses, if only the second biggest on the street.

‘Moran, do the honours of restitution.’

I was at sea. How was I to know which box went to which customer?

‘Do you await a telegram from the Queen, perchance?’ Moriarty said.

He was enjoying himself immensely. I wanted to kill him as badly as anyone else.

Without fuss, I took out a box.

‘Ladies first,’ I said, and shoved it at Margaret Trelawny. She tried to take it with the hand whose fingers wouldn’t close and it nearly fell, but then caught it with her remaining hand and clutched it to her ample chest.

‘And you, big fellah,’ I said, delivering a box to the Creeper. He considered it as an ape might consider a carriage clock.

‘Malilella, grazie.’ Giving her a prize.

‘The gentleman from Nepal,’ I addressed the little brown priest.

‘Worthy Knight,’ I said to the Templar.

‘And you, Tyrone. Fresh from the pot at the end of the rainbow.’

Mountmain took his box.

Recipients examined their gifts and thought about trying to get into them. Suspecting trickery, not unreasonably, Tyrone handed his box to a follower and told him to open it with a cudgel.

Moriarty took a step backwards. I did too.

Eyes were on us again. I shot out a streetlamp as a diversion, and we whipped inside. The door slammed shut. A Templar sword thudded against it, splitting wood and scratching steel.

From the hall, we heard the commotion outside.