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

‘And what will you really be spending your little windfall on?’ I asked.

‘I’ve been going to the penny lectures at Morley College on Thursday evenings, Dr Watson.’

I had heard of this new venture. The lectures were given by some of the most eminent scientists and philosophers of the day and were open to the public. I had sometimes thought of going myself.

Mrs Hudson went on. ‘Now I can afford to do an extension course in German at the University of London so that I can read Mr Marx’s Das Kapital in the original.’

It is one of the very few times that I’ve seen Holmes lost for words.

After Mrs Hudson had left the room, we were both silent for a few moments.

Holmes sighed. ‘My aunt is right. I fail to take the female point of view sufficiently into account. But I ask you, Watson, how can one ever get the measure of them? It is a hopeless task.’

For me, one question still remained. I followed Mrs Hudson down to the kitchen and asked how she had come to think of the Foundling Hospital.

‘Oh, no, Dr Watson, you can’t think that I … ‘ She sighed. ‘Though if I had, I wouldn’t have been the first poor girl newly arrived in London … but no, when I was first in service, I knew a parlour maid … I went with her when she took her baby to the Foundling Hospital. She was one of the lucky ones. She married a good man, who let her go and get her baby back.’

One final note must be added. I fear that Holmes’s conjectures about the fate of Rufus Armstrong were correct. When he left the Grand Midland Hotel that night, it was as if he’d vanished off the face of the earth. He has not been seen from that day to this. Arthur inherited the whole business when he came of age and has proved worthy of his distinguished father.

The Foundling Hospital was established by philanthropic sea captain, Thomas Coram, in 1739. Residential provision ceased in 1954, but it continues its work for young people as the Thomas Coram Foundation. The Foundling Museum in Bloomsbury tells the story of the Hospital, the first UK children’s charity.

The Diogenes and the Tankerville clubs occupy premises a mere seventy yards apart, yet concealed behind their doors are worlds as divergent as Mayfair and Madagascar. The sound of a raised voice in the silent sanctuary of the Diogenes would startle a listener as much as a volley of gunfire. By way of contrast, the bustle and argument indigenous to the Tankerville calls to mind Charing Cross Station at six o’clock on a Friday evening. When, one chilly April afternoon in 1889, a sturdily built visitor to the Tankerville proclaimed in loud and forceful tones his disdain for Colonel Sebastian Moran, nobody paid the slightest attention, except for myself and Professor Moriarty.

“How dare you, sir!” the man thundered. “Place this city out of bounds to me, would you? I never heard of such impertinence!”

The other three men were unaware that their conversation had an interested witness. This was as well. My life would have been in the gravest peril had they known that I was eavesdropping. I had taken up my station, in a tall, high-backed, and thankfully capacious William and Mary armchair, some twenty minutes before Moran ushered his guests into the Reading Room. This is the smallest and least frequented of the public areas in the Tankerville. Members seeking to take advantage of the facilities offered by that institution have more pressing concerns than literature, although the club library caters generously for those with recondite tastes. My chair was separated from the three confederates by an untenanted chess table, and a small desk at which an elderly member who, having discarded his ear trumpet, was poring over an exotic calfskin-bound book, privately published in Marseilles. Occasionally, he emitted peculiar yelps of pleasure at the more extravagant illustrations.

Intelligence had reached me indicating that Moran had summoned a senior associate to an urgent meeting at the Tankerville. The agenda was unknown, but believed to be of the utmost gravity. I deemed it essential that we should learn something of whatever fresh devilry was contemplated by the Professor’s henchman. Of my two most trusted lieutenants, however, one was recovering from his injuries after being set upon by a gang of Moriarty’s thugs in the Old Kent Road, while the other’s face was already familiar to Moran from a previous skirmish in Berlin. With the utmost reluctance, I concluded there was no choice but to take the exceptional step of involving myself directly in the matter.

The organisation that I shall, for the purpose of this narrative, identify simply as the Office had procured the recruitment of two of its agents to the staff of the Tankerville. One man, T, who served as a porter, had made sure that I was furnished with a forged membership card, while his colleague, J, supplied an occasional glass of brandy in the capacity of waiter. The Reading Room was reputed to be Moran’s favourite haunt, and the location where he liked to issue instructions to his acolytes. What we had failed to anticipate was that the Professor would also attend the meeting. Nothing could more clearly confirm the seriousness of their business, since despite the intimacy of their relations, it was unheard of for Moriarty and the Colonel to be seen in public together.

“How I amuse myself in private is none of your business.” The man’s accent suggested a curious mixture of influences. Having made a small study of the subject, I concluded that he was a native of Liverpool (the south of the city, rather than the north, in my opinion) but one who had travelled far and wide. I even detected a faint twang redolent of old Virginia. “And that, sir, is an end of the matter.”

Prior to my arrival, J had effected subtle adjustments to the positioning of the furniture, so that I was able, by craning my neck, to benefit from a view of much of the room in an ornately framed mirror without myself being observed. In the reflection, I saw Moran take a single pace towards his guest. Advancing years had not diminished the Colonel’s formidable physical presence, and he resembled a ferocious tiger – of the kind he had bagged so many times in India – about to pounce. Any ordinary man would have quailed at the malevolence in those penetrating blue eyes, but his companions were no ordinary men.

Moriarty did no more than allow his eyelids to flicker, yet it was enough to halt the Colonel in his tracks. When he spoke, the Professor’s voice was clear, yet pitched low enough for it to be difficult for me to hear.

“Gentlemen, please. Such a display of rancour is unseemly. You must appreciate, my dear fellow, that the Colonel is simply anxious for your own well-being.”

“You … authorised this command?” The man appeared taken aback. He thrust a hand into the pocket of his jacket, drawing out a small pillbox. With legerdemain of a kind born only of long practice, he extracted two tablets, and swallowed them whole.

“Indeed, my dear fellow. I count myself not merely as a colleague, but a friend. I am motivated solely by a desire to ensure that you come to no harm. So far, you have enjoyed considerable good fortune, but I fear that will not last for ever. Better quit the game now, while you remain ahead of the pack.”

An expression of uncertainty disrupted the other man’s wellfed features. I diagnosed a swaggering and aggressive personality, to which any hint of doubt was inimical. Yet the way in which he tugged at his heavy moustache suggested indecision. His sudden change of mood was easy to comprehend, for the silky menace lurking behind Moriarty’s suave protestations of goodwill was a thousand times more alarming than a crude threat of violence. I did not wonder that he phrased his reply with a humility conspicuously absent from his contemptuous riposte to Colonel Moran.