Professor Moriarty: The Hound Of The D’urbervilles (3 page)

Still, mustn’t hold a grudge, what? Sods, the lot of them. And that’s just the whites. As for the natives... well, let’s not get started on them, shall we? We’d be here ’til next Tuesday.

For me, a long sea cruise is normally an opportunity. There are always bored fellow passengers and underworked officers knocking around with fat notecases in their luggage. It’s most satisfying to sit on deck playing solitaire until some booby suggests a few rounds of cards and, why just to make it
spicier,
perhaps some trifling, sixpence-a-trick element of wager. Give me two months on any ocean in the world, and I can fleece everyone aboard from the captain’s lady to the bosun’s second-best bumboy, and leave each mark convinced that the ship is a nest of utter cheats with only Basher as the other honest hand in the game.

Usually, I embark
sans sou
and stroll down the gangplank at the destination, pockets a-jingle with the accumulated fortune of my fellow voyagers. I get a warm feeling from ambling through the docks, listening to clots explaining to the eager sorts who’ve turned up to greet them that, sadly, the moolah which would have saved the guano-grubbing business or bought the Bibles for the mission or paid for the wedding has gone astray on the high seas. This time, tragic to report, I was off sick, practically in quarantine. My nimble fingers were away from the pasteboards, employed mostly in scratching around the bandages while trying hard not to scratch the bandages themselves.

So, the upshot: Basher in London, out of funds. And the word was abroad. I was politely informed by a chinless receptionist at Claridge’s that my usual suite of rooms was engaged and that, unfortunately, no alternative was available, this being a busy wet February and all. If I hadn’t pawned my horsewhip, it would have got some use. If there’s any breed I despise more than natives, it’s people who work in bloody hotels. Thieves, the lot of them, or, what’s worse, sneaks and snitches. They talk among themselves, so it was no use trotting down the street and trying somewhere else.

I was on the point of wondering if I shouldn’t risk the Bagatelle Club, where, frankly, you’re not playing with amateurs. There’s the peril of wasting a whole evening shuffling and betting with other sharps who a) can’t be rooked so easily and b) are liable to be as cash-poor as oneself. Otherwise, it was a matter of beetling up and down Piccadilly all afternoon in the hope of spotting a ten-bob note in the gutter, or – if it came to it – dragging Farmer Giles into a sidestreet, splitting his head and lifting his poke. A comedown after Kali’s Kitten, but needs must...

‘It’s “Basher” Moran, isn’t it?’ drawled someone, prompting me to raise my sights from the gutter. ‘Still shooting anything that draws breath?’

‘Archibald Stamford, Esquire. Still practising auntie’s signature?’

I remembered Archie from some police cells in Islington. All charges dropped and apologies made, in my case. Being ‘mentioned in despatches’ carries weight with beaks, certainly more than the word of a tradesman in a celluloid collar you clean with India rubber. Six months jug for the fumbling forger, though. He’d been pinched trying to make a withdrawal from a relative’s bank account.

If clothes were anything to go by, Stamford had risen in his profession. Tiepin and cane, dove-grey morning coat, curly brimmed topper, and good boots. His whole manner, with that patronising hale-fellow-snooks-to-you tone, suggested he was in funds – which made him my long-lost friend.

The Criterion was handy, so I suggested we repair to the bar for drinks. The question of who paid for them would be settled when Archie was fuddleheaded from several whiskies. I fed him that shut-out-of-my-usual-suite line and considered a hard-luck story trading on my status as hero of the Jowaki Campaign – though I doubted an inky-fingered felon would put much stock in far-flung tales of imperial daring.

Stamford’s eyes shone, in a manner which reminded me unpleasantly of my late feline dancing partner. He sucked on his teeth, torn between saying something and keeping mum. It was a manner I would soon come to recognise as common to those in the employ of my soon-to-be benefactor.

‘As it happens, Bash old chap, I know a billet that might suit you. Comfortable rooms in Conduit Street, above Mrs Halifax’s establishment. You know Mrs H.?’

‘Used to keep a knocking-shop in Stepney? Arm-wrestler’s biceps and an eight-inch tongue?’

‘That’s the one. She’s West End now. Part of a combine, you might say. A thriving firm.’

‘What she sells is always in demand.’

‘True, but it’s not just the whoring. There’s other business. A man of vision, you might say, has done some thinking. About my line of trade, and Mrs Halifax’s, and, as it were, yours.’

I was about at the end of my rope with Archie. He was talking in a familiar, insinuating, creeping-round-behind-you-with-a-cosh manner I didn’t like. Implying that I was a tradesman did little for my ruddy temper. I was strongly tempted to give him one of my speciality thumps, which involves a neat little screw of my big fat regimental ring into the old eyeball, and see how his dove-grey coat looked with dirty great blobs of snotty blood down the front. After that, a quick fist into his waistcoat would leave him gasping, and give me the chance to fetch away his watch and chain, plus any cash he had on him. Of course, I’d check the spelling of ‘Bank of England’ on the notes before spending them. I could make it look like a difference of opinion between gentlemen. And no worries about it coming back to me. Stamford wouldn’t squeal to the peelers. If he wanted to pursue the matter I could always give him a second helping.

‘I wouldn’t,’ he said, as if he could read my mind.

That was a dash of Himalayan melt water to the face.

Catching sight of myself in the long mirror behind the bar, I saw my cheeks had gone a nasty shade of red. More vermilion than crimson. My fists were knotted, white-knuckled, around the rail. This, I understand, is what I look like before I ‘go off’. You can’t live through all I have without ‘going off’ from time to time. Usually, I ‘come to’ in handcuffs between policemen with black eyes. The other fellow or fellows or lady is too busy being carried away to hospital to press charges.

Still, a ‘tell’ is a handicap for a card player. And my red face gave warning.

Stamford smiled like someone who knows there’s a confederate behind the curtain with a bead drawn on the back of your neck and a finger on the trigger.

Libertè,
hah!

‘Have you popped your guns, Colonel?’

I would pawn, and indeed have pawned, the family silver. I’d raise money on my medals, ponce my sisters (not that anyone would pay for the hymn-singing old trouts) and sell Royal Navy torpedo plans to the Russians... but a man’s guns are sacred. Mine were at the Anglo-Indian Club, oiled and wrapped and packed away in cherrywood cases, along with a kitbag full of assorted cartridges. If any cats got out of Regent’s Park Zoo, I’d be well set up to use a hansom for a howdah and track them along Oxford Street.

Stamford knew from my look what an outrage he had suggested. This wasn’t the red-hot pillar-box-faced Basher bearing down on him, this was the deadly icy calm of – and other folks have said this, so it’s not just me boasting – ‘the best heavy game shot that our Eastern Empire has produced’.

‘There’s a fellow,’ he continued, nervously, ‘this man of vision I mentioned. In a roundabout way, he is my employer. Probably the employer of half the folk in this room, whether they know it or not...’

He looked about. It was the usual shower: idlers and painted dames, jostling each other with stuck-on smiles, reaching sticky fingers into jacket pockets and up loose skirts, finely dressed fellows talking of ‘business’ which was no more than powdered thievery, a scattering of moon-faced cretins who didn’t know their size-thirteens gave them away as undercover detectives.

Stamford produced a card and handed it to me.

‘He’s looking for a shooter...’

The fellow could never say the right thing. I am a sportsman, not a keeper. A gun, not a gunslinger. A shot, not a shooter.

Still, game is game...

‘...and you might find him interesting.’

I looked down at the card. It bore the legend ‘Professor James Moriarty’, and an address in Conduit Street.

‘A professor, is it?’ I sneered. I pictured a dusty coot like the stick-men who’d bedevilled me through Eton (interminably) and Oxford (briefly). Or else a music-hall slickster, inflating himself with made-up titles. ‘What might
he profess,
Archie?’

Stamford was a touch offended, and took back the card. It was as if Archie were a new convert to papism and I’d farted during a sermon from Cardinal Newman.

‘You’ve been out of England a long time, Basher.’

He summoned the barman, who had been eyeing us with that fakir’s trick of knowing who was most likely, fine clothes or not, to do a runner.

‘Will you be paying now, sirs?’

Stamford held up the card and shoved it in the man’s face.

The barman went pale, dug into his own pocket to settle the tab, apologised, and backed off in terror.

Stamford just looked smug as he handed the card back to me.

‘You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive,’ said the Professor.

‘How the devil did you know that?’ I asked in astonishment.

His eyes caught mine. Cobra eyes, they say. Large, clear, cold, grey and fascinating. I’ve met cobras, and they aren’t half as deadly – trust me. I imagine Moriarty left off tutoring because his pupils were too terrified to con their two times table. I seemed to suffer his gaze for a full minute, though only a few seconds passed. It had been like that in the hug of Kali’s Kitten. I’d have sworn on a stack of well-thumbed copies of
The Pearl
that the mauling went on for an hour of pain, but the procedure was over inside thirty seconds. If I’d had a Webley on my hip, I might have shot the Professor in the heart on instinct – though it’s my guess bullets wouldn’t dare enter him. He had a queer unhealthy light about him. Not unhealthy in himself, but for everybody else.

Suddenly, pacing distractedly about the room, head wavering from side to side as if he had two dozen extra flexible bones in his neck, he began to rattle off facts.

Facts about me.

‘...you are retired from your regiment, resigning at the request of a superior to avoid the mutual disgrace of dishonourable discharge; you have suffered a serious injury at the claws of a beast, are fully recovered physically, but worry your nerve might have gone; you are the son of a late Minister to Persia and have two sisters, your only living relatives beside a number of unacknowledged half-native illegitimates; you are addicted, most of all to gambling, but also to sexual encounters, spirits, the murder of animals and the fawning of a duped public; most of the time, you blunder through life like a bull, snatching and punching to get your own way, but in moments of extreme danger you are possessed by a strange serenity which has enabled you to survive situations that would have killed another man; in fact, your true addiction is to
danger,
to fear – only near death do you feel alive; you are unscrupulous, amoral, habitually violent and, at present, have no means of income, though your tastes and habits require a constant inflow of money...’

Throughout this performance, I took in Professor James Moriarty. Tall, stooped, hair thin at the temples, cheeks sunken, wearing a dusty (no,
chalky)
frock coat, sallow as only an indoorsman can be; yellow cigarette stain between his first and second fingers, teeth to match. And, obviously, very pleased with himself.

He reminded me of Gladstone gone wrong. With just a touch of a hill-chief who had tortured me with fire ants.

But I had no patience with his lecture. I’d eaten enough of that from the
pater
for a lifetime.

‘Tell me something I
don’t
know,’ I interrupted...

The Professor was unpleasantly surprised. It was as if no one had ever dared break into one of his speeches before. He halted in his tracks, swivelled his skull and levelled those shotgun-barrel-hole eyes at me.

‘I’ve had this done at a bazaar,’ I continued. ‘It’s no great trick. The fortuneteller notices tiny little things and makes dead-eye guesses – you can tell I gamble from the marks on my cuffs, and was in Afghanistan by the colour of my tan. If you spout with enough confidence, you score so many hits the bits you get wrong – like that tommyrot about being addicted to
danger – are
swallowed and forgotten. I’d expected a better show from your advance notices, “Professor”.’

He slapped me across the face, swiftly, with a hand like wet leather.

Now, I was amazed.

I knew I was vermilion again, and my dukes went up.

Moriarty whirled, coat-tails flying, and his boot-toe struck me in the groin, belly and chest. I found myself sat in a deep chair, too shocked to hurt, pinned down by wiry, strong hands which pressed my wrists to the armrests. That dead face was close up to mine and those eyes horribly filled the view.

That calm he mentioned came on me. And I knew I should just sit still and listen.

‘Only an idiot
guesses
or
reasons
or
deduces,’
the Professor said, patiently. He withdrew, which meant I could breathe again and become aware of how much pain I was in. ‘No one comes into these rooms unless I know
everything
about him that can be found out through the simple means of asking behind his back. The public record is easily filled in by looking in any one of a number of reference books, from the
Army Guide
to
Who’s Who.
But all the interesting material comes from a man’s enemies. I am not a conjurer, Colonel Moran. I am a scientist.’

There was a large telescope in the room, aimed out of the window. On the walls were astronomical charts and a collection of impaled insects. A long side table was piled with brass, copper and glass contraptions I took for parts of instruments used in the study of the stars or navigation at sea. That shows I wasn’t yet used to the Professor. Everything about him was lethal, and that included his assorted bric-a-brac.