Michael Kurland - Professor Moriarty Omnibus

But the other masked men in the halls and rooms of this hellish club saw no difference between Moriarty, or Barnett, and themselves. And, Barnett was surprised to note, without seeing their faces he could detect no difference between them and other men. He wasn't sure what sort of difference he expected to see, but once he got used to seeing a mask instead of a face, these Hellfire men bore no stigmata visible to Barnett. In their dress and bearing they would not have looked out of place strutting down the halls of the Bagatelle, the Carlton, or the Diogenes. Perhaps on other evenings they did just that.

The rooms off the short entrance hall were dedicated to games of chance. There were three small rooms, fitted out for baccarat, whist, and vingt-et-un; and a large room with two roulette wheels and a piquet table. The action was spirited at these tables, and the stakes were high. The games were supervised by a pair of stewards in severe black garments, wearing identical papier-mâché masks modeled to look like smiling faces, painted porcelain white, with black eyebrows and a pencil-thin black mustache. The dealers and croupiers were all attractive women in their twenties; their colorful dress and easy manner placed them as belonging to that segment of society which the French called the demimonde, the English having no polite term for it.

It was a bizarre scene that Barnett found himself wandering through; masked men and scarlet women playing at card games with a savage intensity under the actinic glare of the multiple gas fixtures that were scattered about the walls like perverted gargoyles. There was another game going on too, a subtler game played with nudges and winks and nods and indirect conversation, and blushes and giggles from the demimondaines. This was also being played with a fierce intensity, although Barnett could not, from what he overheard, clearly discern the rules, rewards, or penalties. The game, superficially sexual in content, had the flavor of evil and decay. Barnett noted a cynical hardness around the eyes of the women, and he thought he detected in some of their eyes the glitter of fear.

"What do you think?" he whispered to Moriarty, as the two of them stood in an isolated corner of the large room near the piquet table.

Moriarty looked at him for a long moment, as though debating which of the many ways to answer that question he would choose. "I think we are on the periphery of evil," he said. "We must proceed inward, toward the center. Prepare yourself for scenes that will not please you, and try not to give yourself away by reacting prematurely to whatever you see. Blend in with your surroundings, as distasteful as that may be."

Barnett looked around. "If I have to play, I'll play," he said. "I have had practice. Which way, do you suppose, is the center?"

"I have been watching," Moriarty said, "and as far as I can determine, the door in the opposite corner of this room would seem to be the portal to the netherworld of infinite and infernal delights. It leads to a corridor, and the corridor leads to — what, I wonder? I have seen several of the masked gentlemen go through it, but none of the, ah, ladies. Are you ready?"

"I hope so," Barnett whispered.

"Stiff upper lip!" Moriarty said. "Or, at least, act as though your upper lip is as stiff as an Englishman is supposed to keep his upper lip. You are going now into the sanctum sanctorum of this blessed club, the delights of which are the reason you pay the Master Incarnate his twenty guineas a month."

"I suspect I shall get more than my money's worth," Barnett murmured. "Lead on, Professor."

-

He was among them now. They smiled and laughed and played at their devilish games; and he smiled and laughed under his mask, and played well his own game. He took out his watch, a gift from the Burgermeister of F ü rth after a successful escape from the ancient dungeons beneath the Rathaus: it was now quarter past ten. In one hundred and five minutes all games would cease. Midnight, the witching hour. He laughed again, aloud, but nobody noticed.

-

The house was divided into four sections, which like the levels of heil in Dante's Inferno, were separated according to the sins favored by the inhabitants. Each level of greater sin was accessible at only one place, through the level of lesser sin. Moriarty and Barnett progressed from Level One, Gambling and Lechery; then to Level Two, Various Exotic Perversions with Willing — or Persuadable — Women. The room they entered, large, effusively ornate, and yet subtly tawdry, resembled nothing so much as the parlor in an expensive brothel. Which was certainly deliberate, and was in no way inaccurate.

Barnett ran his gaze over the flocked red plush wallpaper; the deeply cushioned chairs and couches, done in matching fabric; the elaborate and tasteless candelabrum, decorated with flowers and cherubim and remarkably voluptuous female angels; and the equally voluptuous ladies lounging on the couches, garbed in imaginative dishabille. "Aside from these idiotic masks," Barnett whispered, "this could be any one of fifty clubs in London, all catering to the same 'sporting' population."

"Nemo repente fuit turpissimus," Moriarty murmured. "I find Juvenal quotable at the most unusual times."

"How's that?" Barnett asked quietly.

Moriarty shook his head slightly in mock annoyance. "Your American schools just don't believe in a classical education," he commented. "No wonder your English prose is so flat and unmellifluous; you are all innocent of Latin."

"Discuss my educational deficiencies some other time, Professor," Barnett requested firmly. "What did you say?"

"Roughly, 'No one ever mastered the heights of vice at the first try.' These chaps have to start somewhere, after all."

Suddenly a scream sounded from one of the nearby rooms — a high-pitched cry of unendurable agony. Barnett jerked his head around, seeking the source of the sound, but none of the others in the parlor reacted at all, except for a few of the women, who twitched nervously.

Barnett clutched at Moriarty's sleeve. "What was that?" he demanded.

"Casual, Mr. Barnett," Moriarty whispered intently. "Remain casual. This sort of thing must happen all the time. Remember the part you are playing. You are well used to such sounds. Indeed, it is why you are here."

Barnett stiffened his back and lifted his head into a parody of nonchalance. "What is it exactly that happens all the time," he asked, "which causes girls to scream in distant rooms?"

Moriarty leaned casually against a patch of flocked wallpaper. "You really don't want to know," he said. "Suffice it to say that other people's ideas of sexual pleasure may be far removed from your own."

"You mean — but why would they put up with it? The women, I mean?"

"These ladies are all imported from elsewhere for service in this house. This is a practice that is common in London houses of this sort, although these people take more advantage of it than others might. They serve for about two months, which is probably the length of time that the house stays in any one location, and then are sent back whence they came with a sum of money in hand. If necessary, as it frequently is, their, ah, wounds are first tended to in a hospital far from here, where the causes behind their injuries are overlooked by mutual agreement."

"Horrible!" Barnett said. "Much worse than any stories I've heard about the brothels in France."

"Your studies in depravity did not descend deep enough," Moriarty commented. "There are many similar places in Paris, as indeed in Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Warsaw, and every other European capital. With the possible exception of Rome — the Italians don't seem to be as prone to institutionalize their violence. As to what happens in such houses in the Osmanli Empire and the Arab world, they make our friends here look like dilettantes."