Professor Moriarty: The Hound Of The D’urbervilles (29 page)

A small annoying dog should take the edge off this hunter’s bloodlust. The prey would be all the sweeter because it was the pet of a small annoying boy. I’ve a trick cane which slips out six inches of honed Sheffield steel at a twist of the knob. The perfect tool for the task. The trick was to stroll by casually and perform a
coup de grâce
in the busy street market without anyone noticing. In Spain, where they appreciate such artistry, I’d be awarded both ears and the tail. In London, there’d be less outrage if I killed the boy.

I swanned into the market and made a play of considering cauliflowers and cabbages – though drat me if I know the difference – while idly twirling the old cane, using it to point at plump veggies at the back of the stalls, then waving it airily to indicate said items didn’t come up to snuff under closer scrutiny. The pup was there, nipping at passing skirts and swallowing titbits fed it by patrons with a high tolerance for noisome canines. The boy, who kept a tomato stall, was doting and vigilant, his practiced eye out for pilferers. A challenge! Much more than the fat, complacent PC on duty.

For twenty minutes, I stalked the pup. I became as sensible of the cries and bustle of the market as of the jungle.

Which is how I knew they were there.

Little brown men. Not tanned hop pickers from Kent. Natives of far shores.

I didn’t exactly see them. But you don’t. Oh, maybe you glimpse a stretch of brown wrist between cuff and glove, then turn to see only white faces. You think you catch a few words in Himalayan dialect amid costermongers’ cries.

At some point in any tiger hunt, you wonder if the tiger is hunting you – and you’re usually right.

I approached the doggie,
en fin.
I
raised the stick to the level where its tip would brush over the pup’s skull. My grip shifted to allow the one-handed twist which would send steel through canine brain.

From a heap of tomatoes, red eyes glared. I looked again, blinking, and they were gone. But there were altogether too many tomatoes. Too ripe, with a redness approaching that of blood.

The moment had passed. The pup was alive.

I rued that penny. Though not strictly the present possessor of the Green Eye of the Yellow God, I had financed the transfer from Carew to Moriarty. I was implicated in its purchase.

The curse extended to me.

I hurried towards Oxford Street.

The pup knew not how narrow its escape had been. I only left the market – where it would have been easy for someone to get close and slip his own blade through my waistcoat – because I was allowed to. The bill wasn’t yet due.

Eyes were on me.

I used the cane, but only to skewer an apple from a stall and walk off without paying. Not one of my more impressive crimes.

Hastening back to our rooms by a roundabout route, I forced myself not to break into a run. I didn’t see a yeti in every shadow, but that’s not how it works. They let you know there is a yeti in a shadow, and you have to waste worry on every shadow. Invariably, you can’t keep up the vigilance. Then, the first shadow you don’t treat as if it had a yeti in it is the one the yeti comes out of. Damn strain on the nerves, even mine – which, as many will attest, are constituted of steel cable suitable for suspension bridges.

Only when I turned into Conduit Street, and spotted the familiar figure of Runty Reg – the beggar who kept lookout, and would signal on his penny whistle if anyone official or hostile approached our door – did I stop sweating. I flicked him a copper, which he made disappear.

I returned to our consulting room, calm as you like and pooh-poohing earlier imaginings. Professor Moriarty was addressing a small congregation of all-too-familiar villains. The Green Eye shone in plain sight on the sideboard. Had he summoned the most light-fingered bleeders in London on the assumption one would half-inch the thing and take the consequences?

‘Kind of you to join us, Moran,’ he said, coldly. ‘I have decided we shall assemble a collection of Crown jewels. This emerald is but the first item. You might call this gem matchless, but I believe I can match it.’

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out something the size of a rifle ball, which he held up between thumb and forefinger. It glistened, darkly. He laid it down beside the Green Eye.

The Black Pearl of the Borgias.

Before Moriarty, the last person unwise enough to own the Black Pearl was Nicholas Savvides, an East End dealer in dubious valuables. Well known among collectors of such trinkets, he was as crooked as they come – even before the Hoxton Creeper twisted him about at the waist. When the police found Savvy Nick, his bellybutton and his arse crack made an exclamation mark. His eyes were popped too, but he was dead enough not to mind being blind and about-face.

The peculiar thing was that the Creeper didn’t want the pearl for himself. He was the rummest of customers, a criminal lunatic who suffered from a glandular gigantism. Its chief symptoms were gorilla shoulders and a face like a pulled toffee. He lumbered about in a vile porkpie hat and an old overcoat which strained at the seams, killing people who possessed the Borgia Pearl, only to bestow the hard-luck piece on a succession of ‘French’ actresses. These delights could be counted on to dispose of the thing to a mug pawnbroker, and set their disappointed beau to spine twisting again. He’d been through most of the cancan chorus at the Tivoli, but – as they say – who hasn’t?

The Creeper had been caught, tried and hanged by whatever neck he possessed, and walked away from the gallows whistling Offenbach. To my knowledge, he’d been shot by the police, several jewel thieves and a well-known fence. Bullets didn’t take. Once, he’d been blown up with gelignite. No joy there. Something to do with thick bones.

I had no idea Moriarty had the Black Pearl. Since his arse was still in its usual place, I supposed the Creeper hadn’t either. Until now. If the prize were openly displayed, the Creeper would find out. He lived rough, down by the docks. Eating rats and – worse – drinking Thames water. Some said he was psychically attuned to his favoured bauble. Even if that was rot, he had his sources. He would follow the trail to Conduit Street. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about with the vengeance of the little yellow god.

Moriarty’s audience consisted of an even dozen of the continent’s premier thieves. Not the ones you’ve heard of – the cricketing ponce or the frog popinjays. Not the gents who steal for a laugh and to thumb their noses at titled aunties, but the serious, unambitious drudges who get the job done. Low, cunning types we’d dealt with before, who would do their bit for a share of the purse and not peach if they got nobbled. When we wanted things stolen, these were the men – and two women – we called in.

‘I have made “a shopping list”,’ announced the Professor. ‘Four more choice items to add lustre to the collection. It is my intention that these valuables be secured within the next two days.’

A covered blackboard – relic of his pedagogical days – stood by his desk. Like a magician, Moriarty pulled away the cloth. He had written his list clearly, in chalk:

      
1.  The Green Eye of the Yellow God

      
2.  The Black Pearl of the Borgias

      
3.  The Falcon of the Knights of St John

      
4.  The Jewels of the Madonna of Naples

      
5.  The Jewel of Seven Stars

      
6.  The Eye of Balor

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,’ the Professor said. 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,’ Carne said. ‘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 the Fifth 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,’ Fat Kaspar said A promising youth: his appetite for puddings was as great as his appetite for crime, but he’d a smart mind and a beady eye for fast profit.

‘It’s been sought by a long line of adventurers,’ explained Carne. ‘And not been seen in fifty years.’

‘So some say.’

‘You want it here
within two days?’

Moriarty was unruffled by the objection.

‘If there’s no fog on the Channel, the Templar Falcon should join the collection by tomorrow morning. I have cabled the Grand Vampire in Paris 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?’ Carne said.

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. 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 rumour. 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
Les Vampires,
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. Supposed to make their foes shiver in their beds, but 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 had heard of item five. It was an Egyptian ruby with sparkling flaws in the pattern of the constellation of the plough, set in a golden scarab ring, dug out of a Witch Queen’s Tomb. Most of the archaeologists involved had died of Nile fever or Cairo clap. The sensation press wrote these ailments up as ‘the curse of the Pharaohs’. I knew the bauble to be in London, property of one Margaret Trelawny – daughter of a deceased tomb robber.
^[7]

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. 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 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 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 present pious countenances at mass on Sunday. 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.
^[8]
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,’ the Professor said. ‘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.’