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

And, though Jacques had run after her and tried to call her back, she had tossed her curls dismissively at him, tarring him with Herriman’s brush, and haughtily announced that, as they were unwilling to assist, she would find her father herself and “make a damn sight better job of it than you two buffoons!”

And that had been nine long months ago, and yet he still could not get the vision of her out of his head, and now here she was, being herded with a gaggle of trafficked girls in a mountain retreat run by the Moriarty Corporation right bang in the middle of nowhere and without recourse to any form of assistance whatsoever.

Except him, of course.

The black-clad rocketeer led them up a series of shabby staircases and concealed servants’ passageways, the metal segs of their leather boots clattering like horseshoes on the worn stone slabs, before they emerged into a darkened hallway on the upper floor of the hotel where the carpets were so thick underfoot that they were all suddenly muted, as if they had never existed.

A golden harp stood by the door, its faded frame reverberating to an old Rhineland melody, though no player plucked at its strings, and the high red-flock-covered walls, hung with rich impasto oils of naked girls, gleamed voluptuously in the soft light of pink-glass-shaded electric lamps.

Oh hell, it’s a robot bar, Rosie whispered to herself, looking at the neat row of white-jacketed waiters behind the rich ox-blood and black lacquered counter, their waxen faces locked in a rictus grin of servility as hidden hydraulics powered the shiny alloy arms beneath their jackets in an obscene parody of human movement, the silver cocktail shakers in their hands gyrating like burlesque dancers in the mellow ruby-coloured light.

This means that whatever takes place in here will not be witnessed by the waiting staff, Rosie thought quickly, as the woman in black closed the room doors behind them. But we’ve been permitted to enter, so does that mean we’re not expected to leave?

He had scaled the winding stairways silently behind the girls, creeping into the warm womb-like glow of the plush robot saloon before the rocketeer barred the tall double doors and encased everyone inside the hermetically sealed chamber with an embalmer’s fluid grace. And, unlike the outer halls with their clattering black marble floors, the cavernous dimly lit room was carpeted with soft Aubusson rugs that muffled his movements, giving him a welcome stealth, as he hugged the wall and stood like a statueperformer in a dark niche opposite a wall of panoramic windows, which gazed out at the splendour of a frozen Alpine night.

There were four men ostensibly lounging in leather armchairs in the room, though Jacques could detect a keen coiled-spring tension to their spines. The air around them was redolent with the scent of their ignored Cuban cigars, which even now smouldered in the chromium ashtrays, lazy trails of scented smoke spiralling loosely into the warm shadows above them. Three he did not recognise, erect and moustachioed military types identified by their uniforms as high-ranking Prussians, but the fourth was a face he knew only too well from the stacks of dog-eared daguerreotypes in Herriman’s many filing cabinets back in Shoreditch.

Moriarty.

She was aware of his presence, his spoor, even before she saw him across that dimly lit room and her blood ran cold. Though she had long suspected that he was the brains behind this operation, it was still a jolt to finally see him here, in the flesh, as it were, and not in the grainy line engravings she had saved so laboriously from the pages of the Police Gazette . And yet his cruel eyes seemed oddly fascinating under the heavy cadaverous brows, his face a death mask in alabaster, as he surveyed the girls brought before him as a tame hawk surveys the mice it will decimate for its master’s amusement.

And yet it doesn’t fit at all , Jacques thought to himself, as he watched the haughty rocketeer parade the four girls for the men’s inspection. Pimping is a small-time racket, even when performed on a national scale. Why would the Napoleon of Crime even bother with it, let alone personally inspect the merchandise? And why just semipubescent girls from the East End? And why did none of them ever surface in the frequent police raids on the brothels of Paris or Berlin?

And, as if in answer, the Professor began to speak in a low measured voice, as though he addressed an audience of imbeciles who required every nuance of his meaning explained.

“Gentlemen,” he began, ignoring the girls and the blackbooted rocketeer. “Gentlemen, may I demonstrate my ultimate fighting machines, who will be ready to obtain the European victory you so hunger for in but two short months’ time. No patriotism-driven country lads easily scattered by a machine gun’s fury or money-driven mercenaries easily bought by a rival’s superior gold, these highly advanced soldiers of the future are undefeatable and completely incorruptible—”

“But, Professor, these are mere girls!” one of the generals interrupted with a derisive laugh, and would have said more had not Moriarty silenced him with a look that spoke volumes.

“Indeed,” he replied, his hawk’s eyes like steel ball bearings. “But observe tonight the miracle that is even now being performed upon hundreds upon hundreds of new infantrymen in our robotics workshops here in the catacombs so far below us. Commander?”

The rocketeer nodded, clicked her heels and pulled one of the girls roughly to the front of the assembled males. She ripped open the girl’s bodice in a shower of black buttons like some Grand Guignol lecher, the girl’s little breasts white and vulnerable in this strangely inhospitable room, with its row of grinning robots mixing drinks for non-existent guests and a pale bloodless moon illuminating the snow-capped peaks of the mountain ranges beyond the thick plate glass of the tall windows on the north face of the bar.

“Convert her,” Moriarty said quietly, and, before Jacques’ horrified eyes, the rocketeer swiftly produced a small rapier-like piece of platinum with a tropical scarab of iridescent electrodes at its head and plunged it straight into the heart of the girl, who immediately fell limp at her feet like a marionette whose strings have been unexpectedly and maliciously cut.

Again the generals protested, called out that this was mere murder, not warfare, until the Professor clapped his hands and the “dead” girl arose, her eyes now as white as Iona pebbles, her face expressionless.

“Now, gentlemen,” he said in his same emotionless tone, though now finally permitting something resembling a satisfied smile to transform the lower half his austere features, though his steely eyes remained cold. “Allow me to demonstrate. Commander. Open a window if you please. Soldier, advance, to the window, excellent, at ease. Now … jump!”

And, without hesitation, the girl plunged out and was lost in the blackness of the frozen ravine below.

“Our robotics scientists have carried out endless experiments on paupers of all ages and sexes, and have found that girls at the peak of adolescent desire but yet still physically pure respond best to the chemicals we coat our control stakes with,” Moriarty was explaining to the dumbfounded generals who stood gaping like fish in a fairground hawker’s array of coloured bowls, their minds already reeling with the possibilities of an army of expendables who would obey their every command without question and walk unhesitatingly through hails of bullets to achieve their appointed prize.