Michael Kurland - Professor Moriarty Omnibus

"Listen!" Cecily yelled, anger at this man, so smug behind his silly mask, outweighing her fear. "You—"

The harlequin turned to the man in black. "Is it time, Plantagenet?" he asked.

The man in black nodded.

The harlequin smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. "Take her!" he commanded.

"Now, look—" Cecily said.

The man called Plantagenet wrapped his right arm around her body, pinning her arms to her side. She tried to fight, but was unable to move in his iron grip. His left hand came up to her face, and there was a sweet-smelling rag in it.

"No!" she cried…

TWENTY-ONE — INSIDE OUT

In the still air the music lies unheard;

In the rough marble beauty lies unseen;

To wake the music and the beauty needs

The master's touch, the sculptor's chisel keen.

— Horatius Bonar

After an uneventful journey through some of England's most beautiful countryside, Lord East's treasure train arrived in London shortly after four o'clock, Saturday afternoon, and came to rest at a specially designated siding in Hampton Court. It remained there, sealed and surrounded with its military escort, until two o'clock next afternoon, Sunday, when her imperial majesty's personal representative, the stern and splendidly choleric Duke of Denver, eighty years old and ramrod-stiff in the saddle, trotted officially over to accept delivery of the Lord East Collection, as an indefinite loan, in her majesty's name.

The seals on each of the special goods wagons were now broken, and the great doors rolled aside, one at a time. The contents of the first three wagons — statuary, pillars, walls, friezes, and great stone urns — had passed the trip in fine condition. The fourth wagon, holding the five great treasure chests, appeared to be as it was when it was sealed. With a flourish, Lord East himself opened the first chest—

—which was empty.

In a haste approaching frenzy, the lids of the other four chests were pried off, revealing the impossible: each chest contained nothing but air, and dust, and one small seed pearl which was found wedged in a crack on the bottom of the third chest.

All the color drained out of Lord East's face, and, were it not for the instant aid of his two faithful Indian companions, he would have fainted dead away on the wagon floor. "It's impossible!" he screamed to the Duke of Denver, as his aides helped him over the side of the wagon and down to the ground. "I tell you, the thing's manifestly impossible! They cant be gone!"

The Duke of Denver wheeled in his saddle and turned to his escort, the Captain Commander of the Household Guard. "Get me Sherlock Holmes!" he ordered.

-

Benjamin Barnett did not return to the Russell Square house until late Sunday night, having spent every moment since he arrived back in London on Saturday afternoon doing his best to find out what had happened to Cecily Perrine. As far as he could discover, she had left the Hope mansion slightly after two o'clock the morning of Thursday, the thirty-first of March, and then disappeared off the face of the earth. He could seem to get no further.

When he entered the house, Professor Moriarty was in his study, reading a late-edition Evening Standard. "Ah!" Moriarty said, waving him into the room. "The wanderer returns. You look exhausted. Have you eaten? Take a glass of sherry."

"No, thank you," Barnett said, dropping onto the leather couch and pulling off his shoes. "I haven't sat down in, it must be, twenty-four hours. I confess, I don't have much energy left."

"Not surprising," Moriarty said. "You have been quite busy, although it has been the purposeless busy-ness of a headless chicken. You scurry here, you scurry there, you accomplish nothing."

"You've been having me followed!" Barnett accused.

"Nonsense!" Moriarty responded. "But most of the places you've been, most of the people you've spoken to, are being covered by my agents, who are just about ubiquitous at the moment. I told you I'd have five hundred people on the street. In addition to the minions usually in my employ in such cases, every member of Twist's Beggar's Guild is now keeping his eyes open for Miss Cecily Perrine. I have offered a hundred pounds reward for any word. More would be counterproductive."

"That's very nice of you," Barnett said. "But what good will it do? How would they know her if they see her?"

"Mr. Doyle, the sketch artist, was kind enough to do a portrait from memory, which I have had reproduced on a small letterpress."

Moriarty lifted a piece of paper from his desk and, with a flip of his wrist, skimmed it across the room to Barnett. "A good likeness, I think."

Barnett stared at the picture on the four-by-five-inch card. "Amazingly good," he agreed, trying to ignore the lump that rose in his throat. "They should certainly recognize her if they see her, with the aid of this. But supposing they don't?"

"Always possible," Moriarty said. "I have taken certain other steps which might lead to Miss Perrine. I don't want to raise false hopes—"

"What are they?" Barnett demanded. "Please tell me what you're doing."

Moriarty shook his head. "They may lead to nothing," he said. "But then, if so I will think of something else. Perhaps some slender shred of information, some slight indication, will come in; that's all I need, a slender thread. I have been known to accomplish wonders with a slender thread."

Barnett stared morosely at Moriarty, and then shook his head. "I know you're trying to cheer me up," he said. "And don't think I'm not grateful. I am. I've never known you to go to such trouble before over someone else's problem; and I know you probably consider it weak of me to be so emotional about it—"

"Not to have emotions is to be less than human, Mr. Barnett," Moriarty said. "The trick we British learn is not to display them. Perhaps I have learned that trick better than most. But you are not British. And your emotions are entirely understandable. You should not, however, allow them to cloud your reason, which will be of much greater use in actually recovering Miss Perrine."

"She may already be dead," Barnett said, speaking aloud for the first time what had been preying on his mind for the past day and a half.

"I doubt it," Moriarty said. "If whoever abducted her wished her dead, he would have merely killed her. It is, after all, so much less trouble."

"Perhaps—" Barnett paused. "A fate worse than death…"

"Don't torture yourself, Mr. Barnett," Moriarty said. "Besides, despite the Romantic writers, there is no fate worse than death. Any pain, indignation, or horror that Miss Perrine may experience at the hands of her abductors will fade away with time — and love. Death, Mr. Barnett, will not fade away."

Barnett sat up. "I suppose you're right, Professor," he said. "It's doing nothing — at least, nothing useful — that's driving me crazy. If there were only something I could do!"

"Get a good night's sleep," Moriarty said. "Get your mind off this thing, at least as much as possible. I promise you that tomorrow you will start useful activity."

Barnett stood up and stretched. "Your word's good with me, Professor," he said. "I guess it has to be. I'll do my best. Tonight I sleep. Tomorrow I follow your instructions. If the blisters on my feet allow me to walk at all."

"Have Mrs. H give you a basin in which to soak your feet," Moriarty said. "She has some sort of concoction that works wonders on abused feet."

"I'll do that," Barnett said. He pointed to the Evening Standard that Moriarty was holding. "I read about the great mystery," he added. "Two tons of precious jewelry disappears from a locked goods wagon. The mystery sensation of the age. I was part of it, Professor, and I confess that I have no idea of how you managed it."