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

Will he not be still? We are celebrating, after all. When this evening’s business is complete, he will have sufficient funds to fritter away on his habits, and I will possess an item I have coveted since I donned my professorial robes.

Nothing can go wrong. So, why does a centipede of ire crawl up my spine, each spiky leg plucking at a nerve? Every contingency has been planned for, but the details of the intricate plan set into motion this night nip at the heels of my contentment. It’s excruciating to place fate in the hands of others, but if my instructions are carried out precisely, they cannot fail. They will not fail!

It is early April, and the air still bears a chill that seeps around the windows into my lodgings. Too much warmth lures a man into a mental torpor, so I welcome the tendrils of cold occasionally caressing my neck above the collar of my dressing gown. Years of hunting in the wilds of India and Africa have inured Moran to harsh conditions and he is comfortable enough in his sporting tweeds. Yet I had the girl put on more coal and turn up the gas as this promises to be a long night.

His foot bounces in irritating jerks. The gaslight shines on the leaf of a rare flowering shrub clinging to his boot. There are only three Nepalese rhododendrons in London, and two of them are at Kew. Moran doesn’t strike me as a horticulturalist. He has been loitering outside a certain Georgian monstrosity despite being told to stay away. The match to light the flame of my temper has been struck.

Moran fidgets then slaps the page with the back of his hand like a knight brandishing his gauntlet. “Here he goes again. ‘The Adventure of the Gloria Scott’.”

“ The Strand ? You’ve only suffered from your own folly in purchasing it.” Rattling my own page, I turn a shoulder to him. If I’d watched his foot bounce in that uneven rhythm much longer, I would have fetched my walking stick and beaten it into stillness.

“You read the agony columns.”

There was simply no equating the two. He reads a popular periodical for entertainment. I read the agony columns because in our line of work it was important to understand the thinking process – if you can call it that! – of the ordinary Londoner. Long ago, I’d assumed I was raised by kindly, if slow-witted, aberrations and that I’d find my peers in the wider world. Sadly, I was mistaken. If Darwin had studied the population of this great city rather than finches, he never would have surmised that “fittest” described those who survived.

Moran leaps to his feet and paces past our chairs. The clutter that is so fashionable now in sitting rooms is esthetically displeasing to me. I detest flounces. My books share shelf space with specimens collected through the years and some oblique mementoes of my most stimulating capers, but there are no figur ines of shepherdesses and country lads on my mantel.

With decisive steps, Moran strides to the windows, pulls aside the curtains with two fingers, and watches the street. My lodgings are in the city. Mansions sit but a few minutes’ walk away, but so does a rookery. Hackneys, hansoms and country squires in town for the season alike stable their horses across the street at Hocking’s. The pageant of life passing on the street below presents every level of society. It is nothing remarkable to either of us. When you consult with criminals, you necessarily mix out of your own set. It’s helpful to live where the comings and goings of others arouse no curiosity from one’s neighbors.

After lowering the curtains, he takes a turn around the small room. My fingers tap against my knee. His walk ends at the mantel, which he lounges against. A semblance of calm is restored.

He laughs like a barking seal. It is an unexpected noise. My eyebrow rises but he chooses this moment to scrape the sole of his boot on the andiron. Before reluctantly closing the almanac in hand, I place a copy of the latest publication from Lloyd’s between the pages as one does to press a spring flower and hope that my train of thought will be similarly preserved. In truth, Moran doesn’t interrupt me. I’ve read the same chart of expected ship arrivals several times but cannot tell you what words were contained within it.

It is good that the sun has already set. Many people will not venture out again for the evening. In a city of two and a half million people, there’s always the random chance of someone seeing something, though. No. I can calculate the odds in my mind. It is a simple enough exercise. Most people don’t understand what they see. Tonight’s adventure will not attract attention. Even if one of those millions should happen to witness a wealthy young man in evening attire hurrying back to his chambers in a certain Ministry building, they won’t realize what they’re seeing. And even if doubt does niggle at their brain and keep them awake tonight, by morning they will either have forgotten, or it will be too late. No one will even be sure that a crime was committed. Nothing will be missing, and everything will be exactly where it should be – precisely where it was earlier in the day. The importance of that was made quite clear to our client. This affair, as precisely planned as watch works, will conclude without a trace of evidence. Of this, I am reasonably certain. Then why do I feel the need to take up the pacing that Moran has so recently abandoned?

With his hand on the mantel, Moran stares down at the fire. His shoulders hunch around his thoughts. “What would be the look on Holmes’s face if I ever wrote up your exploits?”

Moran authored two volumes recounting his hunting adventures that were a trifle too grandiose for my taste, but they excited an interest among the general public. He and Doctor Watson share that vice. It must be a malady army men suffer from. If the urge to write about me ever overtook him, I would be sorry to lose such a marksman.

“No doubt his bulldog Watson would bring it to his attention,” I say quietly.

Overwrought by his thoughts, he flings an arm out to point an accusing finger at his magazine. “That isn’t even a new case. He’s so desperate to keep Holmes in the public eye that he writes of a mystery many years past. Only old generals need to relive their glory days.”

“Hmm.”

It isn’t a remark designed to encourage further conversation. Moran isn’t the sort of man who talks, which is why we are comfortable in each other’s presence. Speaking, even more than pacing, gives away his state of mind. Mine also roils. Every detail is correct. The plan will succeed. We should be celebrating. Or, if he’s superstitious about such things, we should at least be quietly content.

Nothing will go wrong.

“Every detail,” he grumbles. “Are you sure?”

Tension worries my shoulders. “Meticulously checked.”

“There were many.”

He’s right. I hadn’t put together such a detailed lay in several years. I’d sat in my favorite chair at the Diogenes Club, where the silence – which I could not replicate in my own lodgings – and the general air of intellectual fortitude made it possible to break down the plan into its most basic components. Those, I’d assigned to various players. Chimney sweeps, a diplomat, maids, bankers – the sheer breadth of it had at first appalled me, but it excited me also, as few challenges could. Moran had asked me if I’d gone mad when I’d shared my vision with him.

Months, it took us to piece together. At times, success at even the small things had hinged on uncaring fate and we’d held our breaths until it was done. While we’d kept as much secret as we could, necessity made us risk exposure on two occasions. Even though the danger was long past, the memory of those nights still gnawed at my stomach. Most of the talent we’d hired were happy to do their part and take their coin no matter how trivial the pull seemed to be. Then there where those who could not stop asking why, who sensed there must be more to it. Those unfortunates found themselves at the fatal end of Moran’s barkers.