Michael Kurland - Professor Moriarty Omnibus

"You misunderstand," Mrs. H said, leaning forward and waving a buttered muffin in Barnett's face. "He is not retreating, no indeed! The professor is working this time. I've been with him for a good many years, and I can tell. It's his smoking those cigarettes that makes the difference. When it's lethargy or lassitude, Mr. Barnett, he smokes a pipe. When it's work, it's those vile cigarettes. And then he's asking for specific books to be brought to him. When he's in one of his sulks and in seclusion from the world, he merely works his way alphabetically through the collections in the Grenville Library or the King's Library of the British Museum."

"So the professor's hard at work up there, pacing back and forth," Barnett said.

" 'At's right enough," Mummer Tolliver said from his perch in the large armchair at the head of the dining table, where he was gorging himself from the platter of fresh, hot muffins and the stoneware jug of marmalade. "And it's a fine thing to see. Not that you can see the process — the wheels turning, so to speak — it's the results! Professor Moriarty is in his room, thinking; and the world had better watch its step!"

Barnett poured some fresh cream into his coffee and stirred it with one of the delicate lace-pattern Queen Anne spoons from what Mrs. H insisted upon referring to as "the old service."

"What do you suppose he spends his time thinking about while he's pacing back and forth and puffing Turkish smoke?" he asked.

"Once it was about gravity," Mrs. H said. "About how it keeps all the stars and planets circling in their proper places. He was watching this asteroid through his telescope, what he calls a 'bit of rock flinging itself around the sun,' and it was just the slightest bit late in getting to where it was supposed to be. Well, the professor went up to his room and stayed there for weeks, pacing up and down and thinking about it. Other scientists might have just decided that their observations had been faulty, but not the professor! He wrote a paper on it when he came down that tells how all the parts of the universe relate to each other. Just from watching this tiny ball of rock out in space."

"The Dynamics of an Asteroid," Barnett said. "I've seen it."

"Another time he designed a safety gas mantle that would shut off the gas supply if the flame blew out. And then once he composed an epic poem in classical Greek in honor of a German archaeologist named Schliemann."

"Was it any good?" Barnett asked.

Mrs. H smiled. She carefully chewed and swallowed a bite of buttered muffin before replying, "It was Greek to me." Tolliver chortled. Barnett frowned.

"It's when 'e 'as a real problem that the professor, 'e goes off like this," Tolliver offered. "Why, I remember one time when 'e figured out 'ow to make a whole building disappear without a trace."

"Why would he want to do that?" Barnett asked.

"It were a bank," Tolliver explained.

"Ah!" Barnett said. "I wonder what sort of problem it is this time — a heavenly equation or an earthly conundrum."

"I think it's something what might be considered in the line of business," the Mummer offered. "That Indian gent, says 'is name is Singh, has been to see the professor two afternoons this week. He's the only bloke what the professor will see."

"Oh, yes," Barnett said. "The author of that strange note. What sort of fellow is he? Do you think he has a commission for Professor Moriarty?"

Mrs. H rose from her seat, sniffed, murmured, "I must get about my work now," and left the room.

"She doesn't like to hear about that sort of thing," Tolliver commented, pointing a silver spoon at Mrs. H's retreating back. "She likes to suppose as 'ow we is all living off wealth what we 'as inherited from deceased uncles. The fact that we occasionally break the law in pursuit of our 'ard-earned nickers is a consideration upon which Mrs. H don't like to dwell. A right proper lady, she is."

"There are those of us who don't like to be constantly reminded of our iniquities, Mummer," Barnett said. "No matter how righteous we may feel about our particular morality, and no matter how strong a logical case we can build up for our actions, if that morality or those actions differ too strongly from those in which we were reared to believe, the struggle to convince ourselves fully will never be completely won."

Tolliver looked up at Barnett with his head cocked to one side and his mouth opened, a pose that he firmly believed connoted awe. To Barnett it looked more as though the little man had just swallowed something that had unexpectedly turned out to be alive. "You talk pretty sometimes," the Mummer said. "Like the professor."

"Your speech has a certain fascination also, Mummer," Barnett said. "You have the strangest mixture of dialects and street cant that I've ever heard."

"That's 'cause of where I were brought up," the Mummer said. "Which were everywhere. My folks was traveling people, they was. Longest we ever stayed in one place, that I can remember, were about three months. And that were when my dad broke 'is arm. We missed the whole steeplechase circuit in the north of England that season."

"Your father wasn't a jockey, was he?" Barnett asked.

"Naow, course not. 'E worked the crowds, same as my mum. Real elegant-looking 'e were, too, when 'e were working. 'E were the best dip I ever saw. Didn't work with nobody, neither. Cleaned out the mark all by 'imself 'Lightfingered Harry Tolliver,' they called 'im."

"I see," Barnett said. "Then you were just carrying on the family tradition when you became a pickpocket."

"My dad taught me everything I know. 'E were better than what I ever been. 'Course 'e 'ad a natural advantage over me, being somewhat taller in stature."

"I should think being short would be more desirable. You can sort of melt into the crowd and disappear while the hue and cry is being raised."

"It don't work that way," Tolliver said. "Consider the respective sizes of the fox and the fox hunter."

"At first glance," Barnett said doubtfully, "that appears to make sense."

"Course it were great while I looked like a little innocent," Tolliver said. "Being pushed about in my pram, dipping into hip pockets as we passed the toffs. I mean, even if anyone had caught a glimpse o' the action, who would have believed it? I can hear it now: Lord Cecil turns to his neighbor and 'e says, "I say, Colonel, did you see that?'

" 'What?' asked the colonel.

" 'Sir Henry just 'ad 'is pocket picked!'

" 'By Jove!' says the colonel. 'What a rum show! And where's the blighter what did it?'

" 'There's the blighter, there,' says Lord Cecil, pointing into the pram.

" 'What, the little bloke with the sunbonnet what can't be more than three years old?' asks the colonel. And pretty soon, you see, the subject is changed by mutual agreement."

"You must have been a charming baby," Barnett said.

"I was," Tolliver agreed. "For years and years."

-

Barnett finished his coffee and then went upstairs to see Professor Moriarty before leaving the house. He was meeting Miss Cecily Perrine for luncheon at Hempelmayer's. He had a question to ask her that could make this one of the most important occasions of his life, but there were some details to be taken care of first.

Moriarty was up and dressed for the day, to Barnett's surprise. His tweed suit suggested a venture into the outside world, and probably in a direction away from the city. Moriarty described clothing as "mere costume," but nonetheless he was usually correctly attired. "One should always be in the right disguise," he had said. And since gentlemen did not wear tweeds to town, the professor was probably headed toward the country.

"I was just coming down," he told Barnett. "There is a lot of work to be done in a short time. I have spent many years assembling, from among London's criminal classes, a talented and able crew of assistants. What Sherlock Holmes calls my 'henchmen.' These are men and women who, had they been better born or been given any sort of chance in life, would be serving England proudly now as statesmen, soldiers, or artisans. But they have had no such chance, so instead they serve me. And here is the job that is going to require all the talents, all the skills, all the brains that I have so painstakingly assembled."