What did he want of me, this Professor? Had he understood my purpose for being here, seen my true unimportant self? Panic filled me, and I was on the point of running for my very life, when he spoke to me: ‘My shoes, if you please.’
He addressed me, but fortunately my companion seized the opportunity of another tanner and took over the task of polishing the Professor’s laced leather footwear. I felt he watched me, however. I thought he would speak to me, but he did not. I reckoned my ordeal would never end, and it was with great relief that I watched him hail a hansom and disappear from our sight.
Then a terrible suspicion came to me and, try as I might, it turned into certainty. Colonel Moran was not the Spider I had sought. The Spider was Professor Moriarty and I was now within the reach of his carnivorous tentacles.
I felt near to tears, but this was no time for weakness. What did this insidious Spider have in mind for the morrow? ‘Every crowned head of Europe will be with the Queen … Indian guards.’ I shivered. I had read that the Queen’s carriage would be preceded by her Indian Army as well as the Household Cavalry. One of them was a traitor.
What could I do to wreck the Spider’s plans? Nothing.
Then I realised that I was wrong. There was a step I could take, even now. Scotland Yard would take no notice of me, but they would pay heed to Mr Sherlock Holmes, the greatest detective in London. Should I telegraph? Deliver a letter to his Baker Street lodgings? My head spun with indecision. I might be followed, watched, killed, the message destroyed. I must take that risk. There must be no way that Mr Holmes could trace me. I must invent another false name, use a code … It must be a letter, delivered by myself to Baker Street. I hurried to the nearest open post office in St James’s Street to acquire paper and ink, and scribbled the best I could think of on the spur of the moment:
Golden rosebay clive bilberries: Fred Porlock
I had partly used the language of flowers. I had not forgotten poor Elsie.
The whole of London, the whole world rejoiced as kings, em perors and potentates gathered under a cloudless blue sky to celebrate fifty years of Victoria’s golden reign. Like Atlas, however, I felt the whole weight of that world on my shoulders. I had delivered my letter and then slept overnight in St James’s Park, as if by my physical presence near to Buckingham Palace I could protect Her Majesty from harm.
The processional route to Westminster Abbey was a long one from Buckingham Palace through the streets of London, Hyde Park Corner, Regent Street and Whitehall, and thence to the Abbey. At some point, a mounted guard would turn assassin. There would be no attack in the Abbey itself, I reasoned. It was too enclosed a space for such an outrage. Along the processional route, troops lined each street, an impressive sight with their red uniforms and black bearskins, but they would provide little defence against a sudden move by a mounted assassin.
What to do? I was ignorant, I was helpless, I was of no importance. My letter to Sherlock would be of no use. Even he could not watch the whole route.
I chose to stand at the foot of Regent Street on its corner with Pall Mall to wait for the procession to pass me. Perhaps I thought being near to where I met the Spider last evening might help me read his evil mind and even now prevent his planned crime.
At last, I heard the sound of cheering above the noise of the waiting crowds. It grew louder, then the sound of the horses became audible.
‘Here she is, God bless her,’ someone roared, words taken up by the entire crowd. ‘Here she is … here she is …’
I could see the troops’ horses now, seeming to make straight for me as the noise began to deafen me. I forgot the Spider; I forgot the danger. I was caught up with the spectacle. Behind the mounted guard, six cream horses pulled an open landau in which was seated one small figure: Victoria. Did she wear a crown? No. Did she hold swords of state? No. There was no need of either. This was majesty. This was Victoria. She wore a simple bonnet that sparkled in the sunlight. The empress of a quarter of the world did not need a crown to boast her majesty. My eyes filled with tears of emotion, as the sound of the hooves and the cheering merged in one excited roar.
‘Keep on going, duck,’ shouted one daring man.
Hats flew in the air, cheers rang in my ears, and then she had passed us, followed by her sons and other family riding on horseback, including the Prince of Wales, the Crown Prince of Germany and his son Prince Wilhelm, withered arm or not. Her Majesty’s grandson was said to have a great love of all things English – but a great envy of his grandmother’s power and graciousness had led him to a wilful insistence on his own preroga tives and rights. He was twenty-eight now, but not, it was said, beyond playing practical jokes, the kind that are not jokes.
‘Every crowned head of Europe will be with the Queen …’ I had heard the Colonel say.
The procession was passing and I craned my neck to see it to the very last.
‘It will not be here,’ murmured a voice in my ear.
‘The Abbey?’ I instinctively blurted out, before terror at this unexpected companion silenced me. Then I relaxed. It was a tall, lean clergyman at my side, who seemed to offer me no threat. I must have been mistaken over what he had said. There was no doubt about his next statement, however.
‘The Palace, Mr Porlock. I am sure of it. But how? That is the question. Do you have no other information?’
I shook with fear now. I was followed last night, I must have been. ‘None,’ I stumbled out. ‘The guards, the Indian Army.’
‘I think not. Come, man. What does that embodiment of evil have in mind?’
I could not speak for terror, but, as I looked at him, with his shrewd eyes and air of coiled tension, I calmed myself. He had called me Porlock. ‘Mr Holmes,’ I breathed, hardly daring to hope.
‘The same. Think, man, think.’
‘I know not,’ I cried in despair. When I next looked, Mr Holmes had gone.
Hurry, I thought despairingly. The service at the Abbey would last an hour and then the procession would return this way to the Palace. Surely Mr Holmes must be wrong. How could the attack come there, where there could no longer be a threat from the guards?
I could not rest. I must see the procession on its return journey, watch it at a point where I could see it safely reach the Palace itself. And so I ran along Pall Mall, down past St James’s Palace to the Mall which led up to the Palace. But my plan was to cross Green Park and wait at Hyde Park Corner. Here were the stands specially built for the Jubilee and full of quality folk. Beneath them, crowds blocked the entire road to the west as well as lining the road to Piccadilly and the point where the roadway sweeps round to join Constitution Hill. The island of green in the middle of the roadways was equally full of excited onlookers waiting for the return of the procession after the service in the Abbey.
Here, surely, was where the attack would happen. It was another hour and a half before the procession could be heard once again, and my head was dizzy. This vigil began to seem a mere dream and I was lulled into a conviction that all would be well as the procession passed and the Queen remained safe. I followed it with the cheering crowds down Constitution Hill to the Palace gates and saw the Queen’s procession pass safely inside.
The Palace, Mr Holmes had said. Perhaps I had been wrong and he right. The attack would come now. I was pressed far back in the crowds as the Queen came out on the balcony of the Palace and the cheering began again. How could they cheer when the Queen would be assassinated? Someone in the crowd shouted that the Queen was watching a parade of Blue-Jackets in the courtyard, but so thick were the crowds I could see no sailors. Every moment I expected the sound of a rifle.
None came.
Where now, as the Queen went back inside the Palace?
‘Hurry,’ Elsie had said.
‘Think,’ said Mr Holmes.
Other snatches came back to me … ‘Well served …’ ‘No, but his servants may …’
What about the Queen’s servants who guarded her and not her Army guards? Th
e Queen’s Indian servants. They were newly arrived and …
I must find Mr Holmes immediately. But where? How? I forced myself through to the front of the crowds, to the gates of the Palace courtyard. I could not enter them; they were too well guarded, not by police, who would recognise the name of Holmes, but the army. I was turned back.
Think, man, think. The servants’ entrance! Perhaps there, or the mews. These were in Buckingham Palace Road, so yet again I found myself running, so fast now that my heart hurt with the strain. But what could I do? Leave it to burst with grief if I failed Elsie, if I failed my Queen?
This time it was uniformed police at the gates, but they turned a blank face to me when I asked for Mr Holmes. They told me to be gone.
I stood back and I howled to the skies: ‘Fred Porlock!’
Instantly, it seemed he was there, with half a dozen men in plain clothes who seized me, dragged me inside those gates as though I had wanted to escape them. And there was Mr Sherlock Holmes, looking strained and grim.
‘Indian servants,’ was all I could gasp out.
He groaned in disappointment. ‘I was there before you. Two new ones arrived yesterday; we hold them already, but I fear we are too late. The mischief is done. Tell me their plan. The Queen’s life may depend on it.’
‘I do not know,’ I sobbed. This had all been for nothing.
Mr Holmes did not reproach me, but looked at me kindly. ‘Mr Porlock, you are a person of importance. Think. Where came your earlier information? From that murdered flower girl?’
So he knew about Elsie. I nodded. ‘I was with her when she died.’
His eyes brightened. ‘She spoke?’
‘But one word, hurry, and I have been too late.’
He brushed this aside impatiently. ‘Think. Relive that moment, if you please. Speak as you do so.’
I closed my eyes, conscious of all these people around me waiting for me, hoping, demanding … Elsie was with me again, I took one breath and was back with her in the flower market: ‘She is dying,’ I whispered. ‘I am putting my head close to her, trying to help, to hear if she would speak. She tries her very best, gasping, breathing out sounds from her throat …’
I sensed quickening interest around me, but I was with Elsie and must not lose her. I subdued the temptation to force the word from her. ‘Tell me again, just as it was,’ I whispered to her.
I listened and spoke: ‘She is trying and it comes so softly like a breath itself, hurry – but she has no strength left, only the breath that comes as “hurry” because she can no longer form the proper sounds in her mouth …’ And then I had it:
‘Curry!’ I cried.
One of the duties of Her Majesty’s Indian servants was to prepare curry for Her Majesty, to which she had taken a liking. By the time they were apprehended in the Palace that day, so Mr Holmes told me later, the curry had already been prepared only for Her Majesty at the formal dinner that evening. It was found to be poisoned. The two Indian men who had come to join her household the day before the Jubilee were not those intended for the Palace staff, but assassins. Jesse Bracken had been ordered to meet the two genuine new Indian servants at Tilbury, but he had met his death. They were abducted by others of Professor Moriarty’s web, taken to Sussex and held in captivity. The plan had been to hold them there until their replacements had finished their perfidious work at the Palace, and these two genuine Indian servants had been fortunate not to be killed. On 23 June, two days after the Jubilee celebrations, Abdul Karim and Mahomet had been presented to Her Majesty and taken up their lawful appointment on her staff.
‘But who would plan such an outrage?’ I cried. ‘Why would the Professor wish to kill his monarch?’
Mr Holmes frowned. ‘That man’s malignant intent would have daunted even Machiavelli. There are no lengths to which he will not go in pursuit of his own corrupt power. To those who do not know the truth, he is a brilliant and respected mathematician, a scientist of the first order. To those who do, he is the epitome of everything that is vile, but he brings to that the same brilliance with which he writes his learned tomes. His evil services are sought at the highest levels in kingdoms and empires far beyond this one.’
‘By the Indian maharajahs?’ I asked.
‘I believe the plan we have foiled began much nearer our homeland than India. You have heard that the ruler of a certain European state is far from well?’
‘The German emperor?’
‘Please, no names. It is not generally known that the heir to the throne is also in bad health, and it is probable that his son will within the next few years bear the title of Kaiser.’
‘The prince with a withered arm? But he would not wish to poison his grandmother.’
‘You speak plainly, Mr Porlock, but you are correct. I fear the people he employs to perpetrate the practical jokes of which he is so fond are not all loyal to him. Instead of the mild emetic he had plotted to be added to her curry at the dinner that evening, a strong poison was substituted. There is a powerful circle in his country whom it would suit both to rid themselves of the Queen of England and to cast doubt over this Prince’s suitability to rule over their nation and empire. And who, indeed, is to say that they are not right in that latter respect?’
‘And the Professor’s purpose?’ I ventured to ask.
‘Think of the power he would wield had this foul plan succeeded, of the great European monarchs he would have at his mercy. Why, he would have been an emperor himself, but of a sinister underworld that never seeks the light and wreaks only evil.’
‘What will happen to the Professor now, Mr Holmes?’
‘He and I will clash on more occasions I fear before my evidence is complete and he and that chief of staff of his, Colonel Sebastian Moran, are unmasked so that justice may take its course. If Moriarty is the core of all evil, then Moran is its physical presence. But it is for me, not you, Mr Porlock, to break Moriarty’s power. As for you, forget the name Porlock, forget the Professor and his web, and take up some toil far from London.’
How greatly I wanted to follow his advice, but I could not. There would be other Elsies, innocent flies caught in a web whom I might manage to free. Roses, red roses …
‘I cannot do so,’ I told Mr Holmes in anguish.
Sherlock Holmes smiled. ‘I see you wear a flower in your buttonhole, Mr Porlock, and I understand. Very well, forget we have ever met, as I shall forget both you and my involvement in this case. As long as you feel it is safe to do so, however, you will be of extreme importance in my quest.’
I was greatly moved. ‘I will try to be so.’
He smiled. ‘I shall not seek you out, so avail yourself of an appropriate means of communication between ourselves – you might consider Camberwell Post Office as a neutral channel. Use the name of Fred Porlock only to me. Pray continue, if you please, your invaluable role as a person of no importance.’
How the Professor Taught a Lesson to the Gnoles
Josh Reynolds
For Dunsany and Doyle
“A most peculiar problem, Mr Nuth, I do agree,” the Professor said, in his sibilant way, as I sipped at his bitter tea. It was of his own devising, or so he assured me, brewed from the leaves of a certain flower that grew only on the most remote crags of the Scottish Highlands and mixed, improbably, with a jelly culled from the nests of wasps. “And they snatched him right through the knotholes, you say?”
“So I perceived, Professor Moriarty,” I said, setting the tea aside, somewhat gratefully. It was not to my taste, but I had drunk enough, I thought, to avoid insult. It was not wise to insult the Professor, or to otherwise cross him. For as I was, in my own sphere, so too was he, in his. And even cunning Nuth knew better than to test the patience of the Napoleon of Crime, in his own apartments, no less. “They were … quite swift. Poor Tommy barely had time to scream.”
“Such things often are. I have heard of the gnoles, though never have our paths crossed, for I do not much venture out of the city and, w
hen I do, it is often to the continent, rather than the countryside.” The Professor twitched his head. “I do know something of their methods, of course, and the fear that they incite in others, though they rarely leave their little dark house, in their dark woods.” He looked at me. “You say you recorded certain details in your notebook? May I see it?” He held out one pale, thin-fingered hand, and I drew my notebook from the pocket of my waistcoat.
I was not surprised that he knew of it, or of my habit of recording my impressions, though writing was a task for which I had little patience. The Professor was a keen one, and sharp as an adder’s fang. He took the notebook and flicked through it one-handed, his long thumb stabbing each page in turn. At certain points, he paused and his head oscillated slightly, as if in consideration of some point or other.
Eventually, he tossed the notebook back to me. “A problem, yes,” he said, drawing out the sibilants in a peculiar manner. “But not an insurmountable one, I think.” He met my gaze. “Your name is known to me, Mr Nuth. You are well spoken of, in certain circles. You do not advertise, for like my own, your skills are consummate.”
I nodded, accepting the compliment. Moriarty smiled. “I seem to recall some outrage in Surrey, of late. The pilfering of Lord Castlenorman’s shirt studs …”
I said nothing, for there was little to say that would not be viewed as boasting. And I am not, as a rule, inclined to the boastful. I am Nuth, and Nuth is me and all men know Nuth. Even the gnoles know Nuth, and I daresay that thought has kept me up at night.
“Tell me again,” the Professor said. He leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped together before him. “Spare no detail, however inconsequential.”
And so, I told him again of Tommy Tonker and how the youth’s mother had brought him to me, in order to apprentice him so that he might learn a worthy trade. Moriarty nodded at this, for to him, the trade of thievery was an old and honoured one, with a storied history. After all, do we thieves not trace our lineage to Slith, and before him, Prometheus? The history of thievery is as storied as that of any noble house in Ruritania or Cephelais, and Nuth is said by some to be its grand culmination; though not me, for I am not, as I have said, inclined to the boastful. Tommy was a likely lad and he learned quickly how to cross bare boards without making a sound and how to go silently up creaky stairs. The business prospered greatly while Tommy was apprenticed to me and, after the affair of Lord Castlenorman’s shirt studs, I judged it was time to try something more … extravagant.
The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty Page 11
