Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

Both Andrew L. Drummond and Henry James had visited Holmes in the infirmary, and James was there when Drummond told the detective that Irene Adler was in a room on the floor above him. A room guarded 24-hours a day by two armed Columbian Guardsmen.

“How is she?” asked James. He had been sure she’d been lying dead up there on the promenade deck.

“The slug passed through her shoulder without breaking her collarbone or hitting any major artery,” said Drummond. “The lady is very lucky. One bone was nicked but she should heal quickly enough.”

“Is she going to face charges?” asked Holmes from his hospital bed.

“Absolutely,” said Drummond.

“Charges of what, exactly?” asked Holmes.

“Of . . . of . . . she was . . . of . . . God damn it!” said Drummond.

“Well, keep a good guard on her,” said Holmes. “She’s a dangerous woman.”

Henry James had decided that he was sailing on the United States from New York to Europe, probably to England but possibly all the way to Genoa from whence he could travel to Florence and then north to join his brother William’s family in Lucerne. Over James’s loud and sincere objections, the Lodges and the Camerons decided that they would go home by way of New York, dropping Harry off—perhaps actually seeing him off at the pier—and staying a week or so to allow the wives and Helen to do some serious shopping while the men had some serious conversations with their Wall Street friends and brokers.

In Buffalo, New York, they had a three-hour layover as a new engine was attached to their private train, and that gave everyone time for luncheon at a decent restaurant there and to stretch their legs.

James returned early and alone to the personal carriage, and one of the valets who helped him said, “There is a gentleman waiting in your compartment to see you, Mr. James.”

“What the devil is he doing in my compartment?” snapped James.

“He specifically asked to wait there, sir,” said the valet, his face crimson with shame. “He said that he knew you, sir. He said that it was vitally important for him to talk to you as soon as you returned, sir. I apologize if I did wrong by allowing him in your private compartment.”

James whisked that away with a movement of his hand, but he was not pleased. Not pleased at all.

James had stepped into his small but luxurious compartment and closed the door behind him before he realized that it was almost as dark as night in the room. Someone had pulled down both the lighter and darker shades over his compartment’s windows. It took James a second to see the man sitting in the easy chair—the chair in the corner near the lamp sconce, the chair James used for reading—and another second to register just who the man was.

Professor James Moriarty. The dim light showed the overhang of that luminous, deathly brow, the thin white lips, the cadaverous cheeks and white sticks of hair sticking out over his vulpine ears. The tongue kept darting in its reptilian manner over the dried lips. The nails on the long, white fingers were inches long, curved, and yellowed with age and evil.

“We meet at lassst, Mr. Henry Jamesss,” hissed Moriarty and stood up.

Lacking even his walking stick with which to fight, James flung open his compartment door when a too-familiar voice behind him said, “You’re not leaving so quickly, are you James?”

James spun around.

Moriarty flung up the shades until the compartment was flooded with light. Then he carefully plucked off his long, yellow fingernails, one by one. Then he removed all his teeth, changing the shape of his face. Next the tall man clawed at his own face, pulling off pieces of forehead, cheekbone, nose and chin and dropping the fragments on a towel set out for the purpose. The rest of the forehead and bald pate came off in one piece, but with unpleasant ripping sounds.

Henry James stood there and watched silently while Holmes used some sort of cream and tweezers to remove the rest of “Professor Moriarty’s” ears, face, chin, and neck. All the detritus piled up on the large towel atop James’s dresser.

“You don’t have anything to say about my greatest performance?” asked Holmes. He used James’s mirror to brush his hair back into place and then he put his broken right wrist back into the black sling.

“Why?” asked James.

Holmes grinned and rubbed his hands together while ignoring the sling. “My brother Mycroft and I have been building this evil genius, Professor Moriarty, for almost five years now, James. First it was just the rumor of him in Dr. Watson’s little fictions. Then actual appearances.”

“What about The Dynamics of an Asteroid ?” asked James. “It’s real. I’ve seen the book.”

“Very real,” said Holmes. “And mathematically accurate . . . or so they tell me. My brother Mycroft and his old tutor at Christ Church, the don Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, did the maths for ‘Professor Moriarty’s’ mathematical masterpiece.”

“And Moriarty’s presence at actual astrophysical conferences, as in Leipzig?” asked James.

“All unappreciated performances by yours truly,” laughed Holmes. “But years ago I discovered something very interesting—if one takes extra efforts to look repulsive, to smell repulsive, and to behave in a repulsive manner, other people take far less close notice of you.”

“Why?” asked James, his voice even more tired than before. “Why this elaborate play-acting?”

“As I said, more than five years of elaborate play-acting,” Holmes said softly, sitting on the arm of James’s reading chair. James crossed the compartment and sat on the bed. His face was expressionless. Outside, others were returning from their dining and excursions in Buffalo.

“Moriarty brought regular criminals into a true network of crime,” said Holmes. “As Moriarty, I guided them into masterpieces of criminal endeavor—half a million pounds in scrip from the Second Reserve Bank in London, over a million pounds in pure gold bullion from the Berne Gold Depository, hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Farmers’ Trust Bank in Kansas City, five hundred million lire from Rome’s Central . . .”

“All right, all right,” interrupted James. “So I’m sitting and talking to a felon. Someone who’s created successful criminal networks and robberies in America, England, and on the Continent for five years now. Why are you still free?”

“All the brilliant Moriarty triumphs were orchestrated through Mycroft and Whitehall, the local constabularies, and the local banks, depositories, whatever,” said Holmes. “The stolen scrip turned out to be the highest quality Her Majesty’s Government could counterfeit, and by tracking it we traced a diagram of more than a dozen criminal mobs in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, even Cambridge . . .”

“What about the gold?” said James.

“The criminals had their gold verified by experts,” said Holmes. “But Mycroft and his friends took no chances. We provided the experts.”

“What about the anarchists?” asked James. “Remember, I was at your Washington meeting of thugs and socialists.”

Holmes shook his head in what seemed to be admiration. “And I shall forever admire your courage and initiative in doing so,” said the detective. “I simply could not tell you about our plans when you shared this . . . vital information . . . with me.”

“Plans?”

“On May first, in twenty-three cities in nine nations, the police and authorities have rounded up criminals and anarchists pledged to destroy their societies.”

“And what will they be charged with?” asked James, putting only a fraction of the contempt he felt into the sarcasm in his tone. “Loitering as a group? Unseemly appearance in public?”