Michael Kurland - Professor Moriarty Omnibus

"Perhaps your associate saw a partly submerged tree trunk," Holmes suggested.

"I say!" Watson called from the bow. "Look!" he pointed to a rocket trail streaking into the sky about them. As they watched, it burst into a shower of green sparks cascading over their heads.

"Green," Moriarty said. "West."

"Perhaps it merely signifies the start of the evening display," Holmes suggested sourly.

"No," Moriarty said. "Barnett is sending the best information he can with but four colors as a language. Captain, turn this craft due west."

"As you say," Captain Coster said, swinging the ship around.

Moriarty climbed up to the top of the cabin and stared about him, examining the positions of the ships in the bay. Then he jumped down. "Of course!" he said, snapping his fingers.

"What?" Holmes demanded.

"The submersible is circling the Victoria and Albert from the west," Moriarty said. "Trepoff wants to have nothing between himself and the Solent channel after he makes his shot. Barnett must have estimated that we couldn't catch up with him in direct pursuit, so he sent us around this way." He turned to the captain. "Cut in closer to the Victoria and Albert," he directed.

"Those Navy steam cutters surrounding her will stop us," Coster said.

"We'll take that chance."

"We'll be cutting across the finish line in front of the yachts. The commodore won't like it."

"We'll live with that too," Moriarty said. "Cut it close, there. And open up that engine!"

Captain Coster yelled instructions to his one-man crew, who was down below stoking the boiler, and the Water Witch, engine racing, moving in to cut across the side of the Victoria and Albert. Two Navy cutters came to life and sprung out to intercept her. The nearer one was alongside in a minute, just as the Water Witch came parallel to the side of the Royal Yacht. A skinny young man in a full-dress uniform with the thin, curled stripe of a sub-lieutenant on his sleeve was leaning out from the prow of the cutter, his gold sword flapping against his leg. "Ahoy there!" he yelled, cupping his hands against the wind, "Heave to, you men!" Captain Coster shrugged and started to comply.

"There!" Watson suddenly yelled. "There it is! I can see it. Off to the left there!"

Moriarty peered out and saw the barely visible submersible, a menacing cigar-shaped shadow beneath the waters. Suddenly, a streak of white foam detached from the bow in an upward arc and sped toward the Victoria and Albert; a Whitehead torpedo with a two-hundred-pound nitrocellulose warhead creating its destiny, racing to meet the monarch of one-third of the world's people.

"It's now running on the surface!" Moriarty yelled. "Quick, kick that engine in and get off this boat!" He grabbed the wheel and spun it around, as Coster, who had shut down the throttle, slapped it full open again.

"Here, you!" the sub-lieutenant yelled, "where the deuce do you think you're going? Stop or we'll fire!"

"Holmes, Watson, get off this boat!" Moriarty yelled, swinging the Water Witch onto a path that would intercept the Whitehead torpedo. "Captain Coster, jump!"

Holmes swung himself over the aft rail. "Leap for it, Watson," he yelled, before cutting the water with a clean dive toward the Navy cutter. Watson spun his bowler toward the horizon and joined Holmes in the water. The ship's one crewman appeared from somewhere below and leaped overboard.

"My boat man!" Captain Coster screamed, trying to grab the wheel from Moriarty. The professor picked him up by the front of his pea jacket. "Victoria will buy you a new one," he said savagely, and with seemingly superhuman strength he lifted Coster high and threw him over the stern rail.

Moriarty made a final adjustment in the course of the boat, lashed the wheel in position, and then raced back to the stern rail. Making one last check on the closing trajectories of the boat and the torpedo, he decided that the Water Witch would intersect a full ten yards before the torpedo reached the Victoria and Albert. Then he stripped off his jacket and dove, a long, flat dive, into the bay.

He was in the water no more than a few seconds when the Whitehead torpedo punched into the Water Witch. It drove through the scantling on the port side, all the way through the boat, and out the starboard side before it exploded. A great geyser shot up, cresting a hundred feet in the air, and fell back across the bow of the Victoria and Albert, causing the big yacht to rock ponderously in place. A moment later the concussion wave reached Moriarty, throwing him out of the water and putting a deep trough under him when he fell back down. Then the water closed over him and he had to struggle hard to reach the surface before his lungs gave out.

The Water Witch took on water rapidly, settling by the bow. The deck was already awash, and only the small cabin was clear of the sea. Then the stern lifted clear of the water and the bow plunged. It stood frozen in that position for a long moment before sliding, bow first, to the bottom.

A moment later the Navy cutter reached Moriarty, and two seamen pulled him from the water. Holmes, Watson, Captain Coster, and his crewman were already on board. Holmes was deep in discussion with the young sub-lieutenant.

"Oh, my God," Watson suddenly screamed, pointing across the water to the Royal Yacht. There, etched by the rays of the Western sun, the clear wake of a second Whitehead torpedo could be seen cleaving a path toward the bow of the Victoria and Albert.

One of the guarding Navy steam cutters, now on the lookout, raced to intercept it. For a moment it seemed as though the cutter would be too late, but then, scant feet from the bow of the Royal Yacht, it crossed the line of the torpedo. The sailors on the cutter scattered, jumping overboard in every direction; but the young officer at its helm stayed motionless behind the wheel, calmly steering the craft into the torpedo.

And then the cutter was gone, and an exploding cloud of white water marked where it had been. A second later the crump of the explosion reached them, rocking and shaking their boat. Then the cloud of water fell back, obscuring the Victoria and Albert for a moment and drenching its decks. A large concussion wave spread out from where the launch had been, and the Royal Yacht bobbed up and down like a rowboat for a few seconds. Of the cutter and the young officer, there was no sign.

The sub-lieutenant, his face white, turned to Moriarty. "Mr.

Holmes has been telling me what this is all about, Professor Moriarty," he said. "I am Lieutenant Simms. How can I help?"

"Find that damned submersible," Moriarty said.

"Has it any more Whitehead torpedoes?"

"I think that's the lot," Holmes said.

"It can't fire more without surfacing at any rate," Moriarty said. "I'd like to get him before he has a chance to reload."

"You think he's going to try?"

"No. I think he's going to leave as expeditiously as possible. He — look there!"

A red starburst lit the sky above them. "North," Moriarty said. "Barnett is still on the job. Trepoff has decided not to run the Solent."

Another red burst spread its crystal light, followed by a white ball of fire.

"North-northeast," Moriarty said. "Have you a compass?"

"Don't need one," the officer said. "It would be, let's see…" He looked around and sighted along his arm. "Just that way."

"Right back toward Miro's tethered aerostats," Moriarty said. "Trepoff may have a land vehicle concealed somewhere about. We must try to beat him to the shore."

Lieutenant Simms leaned over to a brass speaking-tube by the wheel and blew into it. "Engine crew!"

"Aye, sir?" came a thin voice out of it.