Michael Kurland: Professor Moriarty Omnibus

He ran down the Street of the Two Towers, closely pursued by six silent men in dirty brown burnooses. One of them had been following him since he left his hotel, and the six together had attacked him as he left the shop of a dealer in ancient brass instruments a few blocks away. He was deciding among the four most logical means of escape when two men in European dress, waving menacing weapons, raced to his aid. At first he thought they might be trying to cut him off, but they were clearly aiming for his pursuers and not for him. This altered the situation.

In an instant, he had stopped running and turned around to face his attackers, his feet firmly planted and his arms together and extended in the baritsu defense posture.

The Arab nearest him leaped, curved blade high in the air, and brought it down in an overhand arc aimed straight at his temple. With a deceptively easy-looking twist of his body he moved aside, grasped his assailant's knife-arm as he passed, and pinned it behind. The Arab made the mistake of trying to twist free, and he screamed with shock and pain as his shoulder joint pulled out of its socket.

Then Barnett and Sefton reached the scene. The lieutenant, using his swordstick like an épée, took two of the Arabs on in classical Italian style, his left hand raised languidly behind him. Barnett, swinging his stick freely in both hands, rushed at the others.

One of the attackers yelled out a few words in a guttural language, and his comrades broke off the fighting and raced away in as close to five different directions as they could manage in the narrow street. Lieutenant Sefton, who had downed one of the men with the first thrust of his blade, raced after another, yelling at him to stop and fight.

"Pah!" the tall man spat, straightening up and glaring after the retreating figures. "Amateurs! I am insulted."

"Excuse me?" Barnett said, trying to catch his breath.

Moriarty dusted himself off. "Thank you for your assistance," he said. "I seem to have lost my hat."

Lieutenant Sefton chased the retreating Arab to the corner before giving up. "Too big a head start," he lamented, returning to the square. He took the body of his swordstick back from Barnett and returned the blade to its scabbard. "Are you all right, sir?"

"Yes," Moriarty said. "Except for a slight rent in the jacket sleeve and the loss of my stick and my hat. I owe you gentlemen a great debt. Your assistance alleviated a troublesome situation."

"Glad to help," Barnett said briefly. He personally thought it might have been a bit more than "troublesome," but he held his tongue. Traditional British understatement, he decided.

"Couldn't allow a fellow Englishman to be molested by cutthroat Arabs without doing something," Lieutenant Sefton said. "My pleasure, I assure you. I am Lieutenant Auric Sefton, Royal Navy. My companion is Mr. Benjamin Barnett, an American."

Moriarty shook hands with both of them. "From the great city of New York, I perceive," he told Barnett. "Although most recently from Paris. And a journalist, if I am not mistaken."

"Why, that's quite right," Barnett said, looking with amazement at the tall man.

"Of course it is. I am Professor James Moriarty. I think we could all use a chance to catch our breath. Come, there's a small coffeeshop a few blocks from here. If you would care to accompany me, it would be my pleasure to offer you a cup of that thick brew which the Turk, in his wisdom, calls coffee."

"Why did those chaps attack you?" Sefton asked.

"I have no idea," Moriarty said. "Let us go to the coffeeshop, where I can sit down. I think I lead too sedentary an existence. My wind isn't what it should be. I promise I'll answer your questions there. Oh — one last thing…" Moriarty bent over the body of the downed attacker and gave it a perfunctory examination. "All right," he said, straightening up. "It is as I thought. Let us go."

-

The tables at the coffeeshop were arranged outside on the sidewalk, under a wide awning. Barnett and Sefton instinctively picked a table with a bench against the wall, where they could sit facing the street. Moriarty calmly sat facing them across the postage-stamp-sized table. "My usual preference is also the seat with the, ah, view," Moriarty told them, smiling grimly. "But with you two stalwart gentlemen guarding my rear, I feel confident that there will be no surprises. Is it to be shekerli or sade, gentlemen?"

"What's that?" Barnett asked.

"Sweet or bitter," Sefton explained. "The coffee."

"Oh," Barnett said. "Sweet. Very sweet."

The waiter was a short, wide man, sporting a great handlebar mustache and swathed in a white apron. He approached his European customers and performed an impressive dumb show to indicate that whatever language they spoke, he didn't. Moriarty spoke to him in Turkish, interrupting him in mid-gesture, and his face lit up. A minute later he was back at the table, making the coffee in the customary small brass pot over a charcoal burner.

"Your knowledge of the language is excellent," Lieutenant Sefton complimented Moriarty. "I have lived here for some time, and I don't speak it nearly so well. Have you been in Constantinople long?"

"On the contrary," said Moriarty. "I have been here for but three days. I leave tomorrow."

Lieutenant Sefton leaned forward. "And you haven't been here before?"

"Never."

"Then where did you learn Turkish?"

"I have developed a system for learning languages," Moriarty said. "I now speak nine. I confess that Turkish was something of a challenge for the system; I never expected to have to use it. When I learned that I had to go to Odessa on business, I couldn't resist arranging to spend a few days here in Constantinople, both to see the city and to practice my Turkish."

"Then you are a professor of languages?" Barnett asked.

Moriarty shook his head. "Using my system, the learning of languages is no great task for one of superior intellect," he said. "My degree is in mathematics. When I was younger I held the Chair of Mathematics at a small provincial university, but I am no longer so employed."

"You don't know who attacked you?" Lieutenant Sefton asked, getting back to the matter at hand. "We should probably report the ruffians to the authorities."

"I have no idea," Professor Moriarty said. "I came out of a shop and two of them attempted to propel me into an alley, where the others waited. I broke away. Aside from the fact that they were amateur assassins, and definitely not Arabs, I know nothing whatever about them."

"Why do you say they were not Arabs?" Lieutenant Sefton asked. "They looked like Arabs to me."

"Such was their intent, but there were a few small details they missed," Moriarty said. "One of them called to the others, and he did not speak Arabic. And the characteristic butternut color of their skin — was greasepaint."

"Greasepaint?"

"Yes." He pulled out his pocket handkerchief and displayed a dark brown stain across one corner. "The gentleman you left hors de combat was wearing this. I suspected it, so I ran the handkerchief across his chin."

Lieutenant Sefton took the handkerchief and examined the stain. "Curiouser and curiouser," he said. "So it was more than just an attempted robbery. It did seem to be quite a pack to be hounding one retired professor of mathematics."

"Yes," Moriarty said dryly. "I thought so myself."

"Tell me, Professor," Barnett said. "I don't want to seem to pry into your affairs, but you're not here, by any chance, to watch the sea trials, are you?"

"Sea trials?" Moriarty asked, sounding puzzled.

"The Garrett-Harris submersible boat," Barnett explained. "Day after tomorrow."

"No, gentlemen, I have nothing to do with the trials. I would find it fascinating to watch them, but I cannot stay. My business in Odessa calls me away tomorrow."