Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty

“You may call me Professor. More than that you do not need to know.” He glanced at the coach and the driver stepped down and opened the door. He gestured at the step and the big man hauled the woman up into the coach as if he was manhandling a puppy, for all that she kicked and struggled. The old man climbed in after them and placed his stick against her back, like a knife’s edge, and she went still and limp, dropping into one of the padded benches inside. He made another gesture as he sat across from her and the big man left them to climb on behind the coach. The door closed and latched behind him.

A moment later, they were being rattled over the cobbles. “Where are you taking me?” Her voice quavered, then steadied.

“So many questions, Mrs Norton. One might think that the answers would be useful to you in some way. You will not escape me, nor will I release you until you are no longer useful to me. Do I make myself clear?” His eyes were no longer rheumy and there was little that suggested extreme age in his bearing. Now, he seemed a man of just above middle years, intelligence and a certain ruthlessness written on his lean face and sharp features.

Irene Norton’s dark eyes narrowed a moment, apparently taking his measure, and she sat up straight, shedding all suggestion of an impoverished apprentice. “Why are you abducting me then, Professor? What is it that you want of me?” She studied him in a series of quick glances, taking in the coach as well as her companion, as far as he could determine.

The Professor sat back, putting his face in shadow and thus making his expression harder to read. “Mrs Norton, you have returned to London seeking someone, someone quite close to you. But you are concerned about encountering some individuals from your past, one being Sherlock Holmes and the other a member of a royal family from a foreign nation, hence your disguise. You received information, a note, I believe, informing you that news about the person you were seeking was to be obtained at the address you were looking at when I approached you.”

She shifted slightly in her seat but her face portrayed no astonishment that he had known these facts about her and her purpose in London. Instead, she tilted her face and looked at him sidelong. “How long have you been following me?”

“I had little need to follow you, Mrs Norton, as I knew that you would be unable to resist responding in person.” He glanced out the window before he looked back at her. “We are very nearly at our destination so I will speak plainly. You wish your husband returned unharmed, do you not, Mrs Norton?” This time, he had the satisfaction of seeing her expression shift, her lip tremble. She would do what he wanted now, without protest or argument.

He waited in silence for her to speak, to confirm what he already knew. Women broke so easily. Here was something that he shared with his erstwhile foe, Sherlock Holmes, that same casually voiced contempt for the weaker sex that broke through even Dr Watson’s carefully edited accounts from time to time in The Strand . But then, his erstwhile rival had held so many of his fellow beings in contempt that it had led to his downfall. The Professor blinked away a memory of fast-moving water pouring over sharp rocks.

“Yes.” Her voice was low and soft, yet sharp enough to cut through his memories and drag him back to the present. “Yes, I want my husband back, as unharmed as he was when you seized him. I want to leave England with him, to never return if necessary. You will have nothing to fear from giving him back to me and giving both of us our lives, Professor.” Her dark eyes brimmed with tears under her cap until she rubbed them away gracefully with one bent wrist.

“That remains to be seen, Mrs Norton. I will require you to renew an old acquaintance, as well as to perform in your former profession tomorrow evening. I trust that you can still sing. You will follow my instructions exactly or there will be consequences. Do you understand?”

She flinched a little at his words, or perhaps, his tone; her mind was not as quick as his, of course, but it was fast enough to grasp the implications of his words. She might have heard the rumors about Holmes’s death as they had spread like wildfire through the criminal underworld after Reichenbach. But there would be no need to abduct her husband to persuade her to confront the detective; she had crossed swords with him in the past and won. So she must realize that he was speaking of the new King of Bohemia.

But her tone sounded neither surprised nor apprehensive, despite what must be the state of her thoughts. “Yes, I can still sing. But why?”

He studied her from the shelter of the shadows and thought that he would have preferred tears, pleas, some open display of weakness that told him that she was in his power. Inwardly, he cursed Holmes for sowing the seeds of doubt, seeds that grew up despite the certainty of his own survival and the demise of the detective.

He had returned from Reichenbach to find his criminal empire in shreds and his closest henchman, Colonel Sebastian Moran, about to flee England as the false news of his own demise circulated. Now he would have to rebuild, and for that he needed tools like the woman who sat staring at him, unblinking despite the coach’s jostling. Yet, he would succeed and this time there would be no detective to attempt to stop him. He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a card, which he passed across the coach to his companion.

The coach creaked to a halt as he spoke again, “You will perform at that address tomorrow night at eight. Prepare yourself. Put on the dress and jewels that you will find in your room; this coach will arrive to take you to your destination at seven. You will receive instructions then. Speak to no one and make no attempt to escape in the meantime, Mrs Norton. Your disobedience would be most damaging to your husband.”

Her mouth twisted, as though she bit back a response or a refusal, but she said nothing and rose obediently when the coach door opened and she was handed out. She glanced back once, then away as she mounted the worn steps of the small hotel where the coach was stopped. As they drove away, the old man noted that she did not look back again.

Professor James Moriarty sat back on the coach cushions with a curl of his lip. It was by no means a smile, but it radiated a certain self-satisfied pleasure. At last, a plan was coming together. Once the opera singer obtained what he wanted from the King of Bohemia, he could access the funds that he needed from the King’s own treasury. Those would be sufficient to finance his recovery, to restore him as the Emperor of London’s underworld again.

As to what would happen after that to the opera singer and her husband or to the King of Bohemia himself, it was of little moment to him. They might continue to be of use to him, particularly Mrs Norton. He would enjoy making the woman who had outwitted Sherlock Holmes one of his tools. The coach rattled on through the fog as he lost himself in his thoughts.

It felt like only a few moments later that the coach stopped, its progress halted by some sort of traffic obstruction that he couldn’t see from where he sat. A sharp rap from his cane on the coach’s ceiling caused a panel to open behind the coachman’s seat. “Dray overturned, sir. Should I look for a way round or wait for ’em to clear it, sir?” He flinched a little as he spoke, as if fearing a blow, but stayed where he was, uncertainty on his features.

Professor Moriarty bit back a blistering oath. This was something outside his calculations, a variable where he had not expected one so soon after his recent success, and it filled him with a brief surge of uncertainty that surprised him. He regained his composure with an effort. Very well, then he would have to adapt. “Yes, find another route.” He checked his pocket watch. “I do not intend to be late for my next appointment.”