Michael Kurland - Professor Moriarty Omnibus

"That's all very well, Mr. Holmes," Lestrade said. "But you can't prove a word of it. We found someone murdered in an empty house, and you muttered, 'Moriarty!' But it wasn't. A girl was kidnapped, and you would have had us clap the professor in irons. But it was some Russian did it, not the professor at all. Now, the professor may be everything you say he is and more, but I, for one, am getting extremely tired of apologizing to him. If you can't get him convicted of a crime, Mr. Holmes, if you can't even get him held on suspicion, then don't it make good sense to just leave him be?"

Holmes folded up the map and moved over to the window seat, where he stared out at the bleak Devonshire countryside. "I cannot," he said. "As I am his nemesis, so he is my passion, the focus of my energies. Without Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes is merely a detective." He raised his right hand and balled it into a fist. "But mark this: without Sherlock Holmes to dog his steps, to intercept his secret communications, to apprehend his henchmen, to deduce his intentions and thus to foil his plans, Professor James Moriarty would by now control the largest criminal empire the world has ever seen. He would make the infamous Jonathan Wild look like a bumbling amateur!"

"So you say, Mr. Holmes. So you have been saying for the past seven years. And yet the fact is that if you were to say the same aloud in any public place, Professor Moriarty would have an action of slander against you. And if your friend Dr. Watson were to write one word defamatory of Professor Moriarty in any of the accounts of your cases that he has been writing for the magazines, he could be held for libel."

"No fear of that, Lestrade," Holmes said. "I have requested the good doctor not to so much as mention Moriarty in any of his little cautionary tales during my lifetime, unless it is to record his immediate sojourn, at her majesty's pleasure, in some penal institution."

"Well, let us hope that this is the time," Lestrade said. "When you were acting on your own, so to speak, as an unofficial detective, running about dogging the professor's footprints was your affair. But now you are acting with official sanction, and that brings Scotland Yard into it. The Home Secretary is not going to be pleased if a distinguished scientist brings an action against the Yard for false arrest or harassment."

"It was the Home Secretary who brought me into the case," Holmes reminded Lestrade. "He cannot hold the Yard culpable for my actions."

"Home Secretaries have very selective memories," Lestrade said. "If you succeed in apprehending the killer, he will be very pleased with himself for having appointed you. And the press and the House will hear, in detail, how clever he was. If you fail, he will certainly vocally reprimand the commissioners for their laxness in this important matter."

"A policeman's lot," Holmes quoted, "is not an 'appy one."

"That is so, Mr. Holmes," Lestrade agreed. "And it ain't the felons which make it so, but the sanctimonious bloody politicians."

"Very insightful, Inspector," Holmes said.

"Thank you, Mr. Holmes," Lestrade replied. "You learn a few things in twelve years on the force."

The sun was still above the horizon when the special pulled into Mossback Station. The local constable, who had been alerted by telegraph, had managed to assemble three open wagons to transport Holmes, Lestrade, and the fifteen plainclothes constables from the Yard. The wagons, ancient vehicles that had certainly conformed to some standard pattern of design at one time, had, over decades of hard use and random repair, taken on unique characters. They sat on the road outside the station like a trio of rustic old drunks, clearly willing to do whatever was required of them, but doubtful as to whether they could negotiate the first bump under any sort of load.

The three horses were obviously great-grandmothers, and any member of the R.S.P.C.A. who had happened by and seen them hitched up to wagons would certainly have called the nearest policeman.

The nearest policeman, a thickset village constable named Wiggs, stood proudly next to the drooping head of the forward horse. " 'Taint often we gets a call to cooperate with Scotland Yard out here," he told Lestrade, "but we're right pleased to do our bit."

"What is this?" Holmes asked, encompassing horses and wagons with a wave of his hand.

"Wot does yer mean, sir?" Wiggs asked, pulling his shoulders back and glaring at Holmes. "Transportation fer fifteen ter twenty officers, that's wot we was asked ter pervide, and that's wot we has pervided. 'Taint easy roundin' up transportation fer twenty officers at a moment's notice, like that."

"That's all right," Lestrade said. "You have done very well. I'm sure Mr. Holmes meant no offense."

"Mr. Holmes?" Wiggs asked. "Mr. Sherlock Holmes?"

Holmes acknowledged the fact.

"Well, I am truly proud ter make yer acquaintance, Mr. Holmes. I have read yer monograph on identifying cigarette ash."

For the first time in Lestrade's memory, Holmes looked astonished. "You have?"

Constable Wiggs nodded. " 'Twas in the circulatin' library of the Southern Counties Constabulary. Not many people smoke cigars er cigarettes out here; mostly they smoke a pipe er chew. But if a criminous offense is ever committed hereabouts by a geezer wot is puffin' on a Trichinopoly cigar, why, I'll have him cold."

Holmes glared suspiciously at Wiggs, but the constable did not seem to notice. He shifted his glare to Lestrade for a moment, and then turned back to Wiggs. "I am sure you will, Constable," he said. "We had best mount these, ah, wagons, and proceed. The sun is about to dip behind the western hills."

"How far to Sigerson Manor?" Lestrade asked Wiggs.

"No more 'n three miles," Wiggs told him. "Off that way. Is that where yer headed?"

"That's right," Lestrade replied. "Anything of interest happening out there to your knowledge?"

"Aye. Strange and wonderful things indeed. They is constructin' an aerostat, the professor and them people wot lives out there with him."

"A what?"

"An aerostat. Like a balloon. These modrun times wot we live in are truly times of progress and invention. They been fillin' it with hydrogen all day wot they makes themselves."

"A balloon!" Holmes exclaimed. "Come, Lestrade, load your men aboard these wagons. We must get out there quickly."

"Very well, Mr. Holmes," Lestrade said. He turned and, with a crisp series of commands, divided his men among the three wagons.

Holmes clambered up into the forward wagon next to Constable Wiggs, who gathered the reins and prodded the ancient mare into motion. "Where is this aerostat?" Holmes asked. "In the lower field, I suppose. Or the east lawn, past the formal part, where it slopes away to the drive in front of the house? I understand that Moriarty has built an observatory. Where is that? I would have placed it on the old stone foundation for the granary."

"Yer must be right familiar with ther property, Mr. Holmes," Wiggs said. "Have yer been out this way before?"

"Not for many years," Holmes said.

"Well," Wiggs told him, "ther observatory is where ther ruined granary was, like yer said. And ther aerostat is bein' filled on ther lawn in front of ther manor house. A great many of ther young people from ther area have gone over ter watch ther event."

"Do you hear that, Lestrade?" Holmes demanded, bending over to speak to the inspector, who was sitting in the wagon with his back to the driver's seat. "What nerve, what consummate nerve that man has."

"I fear that I don't follow that," Lestrade said.

"Why, man, he's making his getaway!"

"By balloon? I can't see it, Mr. Holmes. Where would he go?"

"France. He must know we have men on the lookout for him at the channel ports, so the clever devil is going to float right over their heads! Once he reaches Dieppe, the whole of the Continent is open to him."