J. Campbell - Gaslight Arcanum - Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes

Simon Carne, a cracksman and swindler who insisted on wearing a fake humpback, put up his hand like a schoolboy.

“You have permission to speak,” said the Professor. It’s a wonder he didn’t fetch his mortar board, black gown and cane. They had been passed on to Mistress Strict, one of Mrs. Halifax’s young ladies; she took in overage pupils with a yen for the discipline of their school days.

“Item Three, sir,” said Carne. “The Falcon. Is that the Templar Falcon?”

“Indeed. A jewelled gold statuette, fashioned in 1530 by Turkish slaves in the Castle of St. Angelo on Malta. The Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem intended it to be bestowed on Carlos V of Spain. It was, as I’m sure you know, lost to pirates before it could be delivered.”

“Well, I’ve never heard of it,” said Fat Kaspar, a promising youth. His appetite for buns was as great as his appetite for crime, but he’d a smart mind and a beady eye for the fast profit.

“It has been sought by a long line of obsessed adventurers,” explained Carne. “And hasn’t been seen in fifty years.”

“So some say.”

“And you want it here within two days ?”

Moriarty was unflapped by the objection.

“If there’s no fog in the Channel, the Templar Falcon should join the collection by tomorrow morning. I have cabled our associate in Paris, the Grand Vampire, with details of the current location of this rara avis . It has been in hiding. A soulless brigand enamelled it like a common blackbird to conceal its value.”

“The Grand Vampire is stealing this prize, and giving it to you?”

I didn’t believe that either.

“Of course not. In point of fact, he won’t have to steal it. The Falcon lies neglected in Pére Duroc’s curiosity shop. The proprietor has little idea of the dusty treasure nestling in his unsaleable stock. We have a tight schedule, else I would send someone to purchase it for its asking price of fifteen francs. If any of you could be trusted with fifteen francs.”

A smattering of nervous laughter.

“I have offered the Grand Vampire fair exchange. I am giving him something he wants, as valuable to him as the Falcon is to us. I do not intend to tell you what that is.”

But — never fear — I’ll release the feline from the reticule. On our St. Helena excursion, Moriarty took the trouble to validate a rumor. As you know, Napoleon’s imperial bones were exhumed in 1840 and returned to France and — after twenty years of lying in a cardboard box as the frogs argued and raised subscriptions — interred in a hideous porphyry sarcophagus under the dome at Les Invalides. You can buy a ticket and gawp at it. However, as you don’t know, Napoleon isn’t inside. For a joke, the British gave France the remains of an anonymous, pox-ridden, undersized sailor. The Duke of Wellington didn’t stop laughing for a month. On the island, the Prof found the original unmarked grave, dug up what was left of the Corsican Crapper and stole Boney’s bonce. That relic was now on its way to Paris by special messenger, fated to become a drinking cup for the leader of France’s premier criminal gang. A bit of a conversation piece, I expect. Les Vamps run to that line of the dramatic the Frenchies call Grand-Guignol . It’s supposed to make their foes shiver in their beds, but is hard to take seriously. Grand Vampires don’t last long. There’s a whole cupboard full of drinking cups made out of their skulls.

“Moran, you’re au fait with the Jewel of Seven Stars, I believe?”

I admitted it. Just for a jolly, while idly considering the locations of the most valuable prizes in London, I’d cased Trelawny House in Kensington Palace Gardens and thought it fair-to-middling difficult. But, see above, my remarks on Famous Gems: Thorny Problem of Converting Same Into Anonymous Cash. Also, the place had a sour air. I’m not prey to superstition, but I know a likely ambush from a mile off. Trelawny House was one of those iffy locations — best kept away from. Might I now have to take the plunge and regret the fancy of planning capers one didn’t really wish to commit?

“The jewels of the Madonna are of less intrinsic interest,” continued Moriarty. “These gems — mediocre stones, poorly set, but valuable enough — bedecked a statue hoisted and paraded about Naples during religious festivals. I see I have your interest. A notion got put about that they were too sacred to steal. No one would dare inflict such insult on Mary — who, as a carpenter’s wife in Judea, was unlikely to have sported such ornament in her lifetime. As it happens, the real reason no one tried for the jewels was that the Camorra, the Neapolitan criminal fraternity, decreed they not be touched. Italian banditti who would sell their own mothers retain a superstitious regard for Mother Mary. They wash the blood off their hands and go to mass on Sunday to present pious countenances. However, as ever, someone would not listen. Gennaro, a blacksmith, stole the jewels to impress his girlfriend. They have been ‘in play’ ever since. Foolish Gennaro is long dead, but the Camorra haven’t got the booty back. At this moment, after a trans-European game of pass-the-parcel-with-corpses, the gems are hidden after the fashion of Poe’s purloined letter. One Giovanni Lombardo, a carpenter whose death notice appears in this morning’s papers, substituted them for the paste jewels in the prop store of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Signorina Bianca Castafiore, ‘the Milenese Nightingale’, rattles them nightly, with matinees Wednesday and Saturday, in the “jewel scene” from Gounod’s Faust . It is of scientific interest that the diva’s high notes are said to set off sympathetic vibrations which burst bottles and kill rats. I should be interested in observing such a phenomenon, which might have applications in our line of endeavour.”

“What about the eye-tyes?” asked Alf Bassick, a reliable fetch-and-carry man. “They’ve been a headache lately.”

“Ah, yes, the Neapolitans,” said the Professor. “The London address of the Camorra, as you know, is Beppo’s Ice Cream parlour in Old Compton Street. They present the aspect of comical buffoons but, by my estimation, the activities of their Soho Merchants’ Protective Society have cut into our income by seven and a half per cent.”

The S. M. P. S. was a band of Moustache Petes selling insurance policies to pub-keepers and restauranteurs. Don’t agree to cough up the weekly payments and your place of business has trouble with rowdy, window-breaking customers. Stop paying and you start smiling the Italian smile. That’s a deep cut in your throat, from ear to ear. It really does look like a red clown’s grin.

“Hitherto, the London Camorra have merely been an inconvenience. Now they know their blessed jewels are in the city, they will be more troublesome. It is a cardinal error to classify the Camorra as a criminal organization, an Italian equivalent to Les Vampires …”

Or us, he didn’t say. He liked to think of our firm as an academic exercise. Abstruse economics. Sub rosa mathematics.

“…at bottom, the Camorra — and their Sicilian and Calabrian equivalents, the Mafia and the ‘Ndrangheta — are a romantic, fanatic religious-nationalist movement, as remorseless and unreasonable as the priests of the Yellow God. They care not about dying, as individuals. This makes them exceedingly dangerous.”

He let that sink in.

“Don Rafaele Lupo-Ferrari, Chief of Chiefs of the Camorra, has vowed to return the jewels to the Madonna. He has taken an oath on the life of his own mother. He has personally followed the jewels across Europe and is presently in London. He paid a call on the late Signor Lombardo at his place of business yesterday. Measures must be taken to pluck the fruit before he can get his hands on it.”