“I was just walking down the street when you gentlemen jumped me,” the man insisted.
“Yes?” Moriarty asked. “And just what business had you down this alleyway? And why were you carrying a lead pipe? And why did you attack me with it?”
“A man’s got to defend himself,” the man insisted.
“Enough of this,” Moran growled. “I’ll just kill him, and we’ll be out of here.” A large knife suddenly appeared in his hand.
The man looked up at the knife and his eyes got very large. “No, no,” he yelped. “I am not ready for the hereafter. I meant you no harm—argh!” The last as Moriarty twisted ever so slightly more on the arm he was holding. “I mean, it was just a job. No need to take it personal. I failed—I’ll admit that. I underestimated you, and I lost. Let’s call it quits, fair and square, and I’ll just be off.”
“What’s your name?” asked Moriarty.
“Why—ah!—they call me Plum. Ask anyone. That’s my name, Plum.”
“Well, Plum, why were you trying to kill me?” Moriarty asked. “Who sent you?”
“Trying to kill you?” Plum laughed weakly. His face, pressed against the pavement, was turning white from the pain inflicted by Moriarty’s scientifically applied baritsu hold. “I think you are dislocating my shoulder. Perhaps you could let up a little, just a bit, no more. No, mein herr, I was not trying to kill you. I see the confusion now, and an honest mistake it was indeed. You thought—But no, I had no intention of trying to kill you. Indeed not!”
“What then?” Moriarty demanded.
“I was just to break a few bones, that’s all. A few small, unimportant bones. Just to keep you here for some time.”
“Keep me here?”
“That’s what I was told. That’s all I know.”
“Who hired you?”
“Hired me?”
Moriarty applied more pressure to the arm.
“Argh! Gott, but that hurts. When this is over, and we are friends again, perhaps you will teach me that move.”
“Perhaps,” said Moriarty. “Who hired you?”
“I got the job from the Crow. He gives out all the work assignments.”
“Work assignments, is it?” Colonel Moran said savagely. “And a fine sort of work it is.”
“He’s the head of your gang?” Moriarty asked.
“It’s not so much of a gang, as an informal association,” Plum said. “The Crow is more like the secretary, if you see what I mean. He works out the assignments and tries to keep everything fair between us. If you’ll let go of my gottverdammt arm and let me up, I’ll be pleased to discuss the system with you.”
“And just why did the Crow want two passing Englishmen beaten up?” demanded Moran.
“Not two Englishmen,” said Plum. “Just him.” He pointed his chin at Moriarty. “The Crow described him and told me where to find him. He said there was someone with him, but you were incidental. I could beat you if I had to, but I wouldn’t get paid anything extra for it.”
“I’ve been slighted,” said Moran. “I should find this Crow and ask him what’s wrong with me that I’m not to be beaten up along with you, Professor.”
“And who is paying the Crow for this job?” asked Moriarty.
Up until now Plum had looked phlegmatic and resigned, for all that he was facedown on the sidewalk with his arm being twisted. Being beaten up was, after all, part of the game. Suddenly he looked frightened and tried to pull away, and he screamed at the sudden unbearable pain as his arm was twisted well beyond where nature had intended it to go.
“You brought that on yourself,” Moriarty told him. “You’re not permanently injured yet, but don’t do that again. Now, who is paying to have my bones broken?”
“I don’t know,” Plum whined. “He didn’t tell me. Honest.”
“You’re lying,” Moriarty said dispassionately.
Moran bent down and brought his knife to within inches of the man’s face. “Left eye or right eye?” he asked pleasantly.
“Mein Gott!” cried Plum. “You wouldn’t.” He shuddered and looked up at the leer on Moran’s face. “You would, yes, you would. I can tell you. The Crow was bragging about it, his first assignment from the world-famous English master criminal.”
“What English master criminal?”
“Professor Moriarty is his name. An English gentleman employed the Crow on behalf of his chief, the famous English Herr Professor Moriarty to break your bones so that you could not leave Vienna for some weeks. You will not tell on me, will you?”
Colonel Moran leaned back on his heels, folded his clasp knife, and broke out laughing.
“Tell me about this English gentleman who spoke for the master criminal Moriarty,” Moriarty said.
“I know nothing about him,” Plum insisted. “He dealt only with the Crow. I swear!”
Moriarty released his hold on Plum and pulled him to his feet. “I believe you,” he said. “A touch; a distinct touch. You may go now.”
Plum moved his right arm gingerly, and seemed surprised to see that it still worked properly. “Yes,” he agreed. “Yes, I will go now.” He trotted down the alleyway to the street, never pausing to look back, and disappeared around the corner.
“Well, Professor,” Moran said, shaking his head. “You’ve set a new record for the master criminal’s devious behavior. You’ve sent someone out to break your own bones.” He burst out laughing again. “Isn’t that too much?”
“I’m flattered that my name has acquired such currency throughout Europe that someone would use it to establish his bona fides as a master criminal,” Moriarty said sourly. “I must find out whom to thank for the honor.”
ELEVEN
THE GAME’S AFOOT
There is a time for some things, and a time for all things; a time for great things and a time for small things.
—Miguel de Cervantes
An old, long-disused wharf squatted over the muddy water where Covington Street met the Thames, its rotting planks and slimy pilings concealed from view by the sagging wooden fence that kept drunks and children from falling through the unsafe relic into the river below. The barge tied up to the wharf had not been new during the Napoleonic Wars, and was slowly sinking in place, its small deckhouse tilting at a crazy angle on the afterdeck, the whole rotting away from age and neglect.
Or so it was meant to look to a casual observer.
It was early evening on this Saturday, the first day of March, 1890. The sun had disappeared behind the shops and warehouses and a light snow was falling, which further obscured the arrival at the wharf of four of what the commissioner of the metropolitan police described as “London’s most undesirable residents.” They were all known by name to the chief inspector of the detective division, who would happily have given a week’s pay to put any one of them away for a stretch in Dartmoor Prison. Angelic Tim McAdams and Cooley the Pup arrived moments apart, and disappeared into the depths of the barge. The Artful Codger came perhaps five minutes later, looked carefully around to be sure he was unobserved, and then, settling his leather cap more firmly on his head, proceeded cautiously down into the blackness of the hold.
After another minute the bottom half of the door in the small deck-house opened, and Dr. Pin Dok Low scurried forth like a fox emerging cautiously from its burrow. He paused to savor the smells coming off the river, drinking them in like the steam off a cup of the blackest souchong tea, then hurried to join his compatriots below the deck.
Behind the door to the hold was a double curtain of black muslin, keeping in the light from the two oil lamps that swung from the ceiling.
Cooley the Pup looked up as the curtain was pushed aside, his hand to the back of his neck, where a slender leaf-bladed throwing knife was concealed. As Pin Dok Low emerged through the doorway, he dropped his hand back into his lap. “Well, Pin, about time you got here,” he whined. “We thought you’d be here waiting for us, seeing as how it was you asked us to this here meeting.”
&nbs
p; “Oh, I was, I was,” Pin said smoothly, going around to sit at the head of the table, the spot instinctively reserved for him by the others. “I awaited you at a vantage point from which I could assure myself—and you—that you were not being followed.”
“I can look after meself, without no help from you nor anybody else,” growled Angelic Tim McAdams.
“Self-reliance is a wonderful thing,” Pin agreed. “Very useful, I believe, in prison.”
“Here, now; what has prison got to do with it?” demanded the Pup.
“Nothing, I sincerely hope,” Pin said smoothly. “But it pays to remain alert. ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom,’ would be a good adage to engrave above the portal of every criminal enterprise.”
“Is that so?” said the Artful Codger, leaning back in his chair until it was teetering on its back legs. “Then who’s watching the store at present?”
Pin took a pair of black-framed glasses from the pocket of his tunic, polished them on the hem of the garment, and settled them onto his nose. “One of my associates is in the deckhouse, keeping the area under surveillance,” he told the Codger. “If he sees anything that should concern us, a bell will direct our attention to the fact.” He pointed to a spot on the ceiling, where a small bell had been fastened. “We will have sufficient time to consider the possibilities and act as seems best.”
“Well, then,” said McAdams, “just what are we doing here? I got better things to do than to hang about in a stinking barge.”
“Stinking is right,” the Codger agreed. “There’s a smell of bilge water about this place that all the perfumes of Araby couldn’t cover up.”
“Ah, such ingratitude,” Dr. Pin said. “And I thought it would make you gentlemen feel right at home.”
“How come you got so many little hidey-holes, Pin?” the Codger asked. “Every time you call a meeting, it ain’t for the last place we met at, it’s for some new place altogether. Why is that?”
“Yeah, that’s a good question,” McAdams agreed.
“You would think so, McAdams,” Pin said, smiling a gentle smile. “It must be very frustrating to have your minions keep watch on that old clothes shop in Mincing Lane, or the Friends of the Benighted Heathen Missionary Society warehouse for days on end, through rain, sleet, or snow, as the expression goes, and catch not a glimpse of myself or my companions.”
“So you got companions, do you?” the Codger asked. “My friends and I, we were kind of wondering.”
“Perhaps I speak metaphorically,” said Pin. He held his hands in front of him, palms up. “My ten fingers and my brain are all the companions I need, and all you need to know about.”
“And what information do you and your ten fingers wish to impart?” asked the Codger. “You going to open up a bit more on the gold shipment? When is it coming in? Just how are we going to take it away from them as are undoubtedly sitting on top of it with loaded blunderbusses?”
“The gold has not left Calcutta yet,” Pin told them, “but it is due to be loaded aboard the steamship Empress of India shortly for its voyage to the vaults of the Bank of England.”
“That’s good, that’s good,” McAdams said, rubbing his massive hands together. “My boys have been growing a bit impatient, what with me trying to keep them out of trouble until the big moment.”
“Wait just a blooming minute,” Cooley the Pup interrupted. “If the ship is just getting ready to leave India, why, then, it won’t be here for at least—what?—five weeks. Is that right?”
Pin nodded. “I could not fail to disagree with you less,” he said.
McAdams thought that over for a long moment. “Say,” he said finally, “is that a yes or a no?”
“It will be about a week before the Empress arrives in Calcutta, then a week or so there, and then five weeks, or perhaps a bit more, before the gold arrives in Southampton,” Dr. Pin said, “if it arrives at all.”
“If it arrives?” asked the Pup.
“Say, what do you mean by that?” asked McAdams. “You been stringing us?”
“I don’t like the sound of that if,” commented the Artful Codger. “Perhaps you’d better go on.”
“Yeah,” said the Pup. “Go on. Do go on.”
Dr. Pin Dok Low leaned back in his chair and surveyed his companions. “Professor Moriarty has left London,” he told them.
“We know that,” said McAdams. “The Yob is following him, ain’t he?”
“The Twopenny Yob is indeed on his, ah, tail,” Pin agreed. “Four attempts have been made on the professor’s life. None have been successful. Not that I expected that any of them would succeed. If Professor Moriarty could be stopped that easily, he would have been stopped long since.”
“I don’t hold with killing unnecessarily,” said Angelic Tim McAdams unexpectedly. The others around the table turned to look at him.
“Well,” he insisted, “I don’t.”
The Artful Codger turned back to Pin Dok Low. “So?” he asked. “The professor is out of the way. You can’t use him as a—what?—as a decoy for the rozzers anymore, but by the same chance, he ain’t around to get in our way or foul up our plans.”
Pin Dok Low scowled. “Moriarty is making his way across Europe,” he told them. “The Twopenny Yob was close behind him but, at the moment, this is no longer so. As far as we can tell, he’s on his way to India.”
McAdams slapped his hand on the table. “Good,” he said. “The farther away the better for that cove. He’s a mite too wise for playing him the way you wanted to, and that’s what I think.”
“I’m glad it relieves your anxiety,” Pin said smoothly, “and I hate to be the one to raise it in another quarter, but, as I’m sure you will realize after a moment’s thought, there is one most interesting possibility that we must not overlook.”
“And what’s that?” asked the Pup.
The Artful Codger half rose from his chair, and then fell back down. “Calcutta!” he exclaimed. “Calcutta!”
“Exactly,” Pin Dok Low agreed. “Why would Professor Moriarty, the most brilliant criminal mind in England, possibly in all Europe—present company excepted, of course—be headed to India at just this moment? Could it be a coincidence that a large shipment of gold is being prepared to leave Calcutta in about two weeks? I think not.”
“So,” McAdams said, a fierce scowl growing across his face, “the professor’s going to beat us to the gold.”
Pin Dok Low smiled at him, a beatific smile. “I think not,” he repeated.
“So,” the Codger said, leaning his elbows on the table and staring across at the wily Oriental. “What’s your plan, Pin?”
“Simple,” Pin said. “We are going to prevent the gold being stolen until we are ready to steal it ourselves.”
“How’s that?” asked McAdams.
“You”—Pin pointed a long finger at McAdams—“are going to stay here in London, and you and your boys are going to be ready to remove the gold according to the original plan.”
“All very good,” McAdams agreed, “only you ain’t never told me the original plan.”
“A man must have his little secrets,” Pin said, chuckling. “But I will explain it now, at the end of this meeting.” He turned to Cooley the Pup. “You are going to go to Amsterdam and make the preparations for disposing of two tons of gold.”
“Sounds good,” the Pup agreed.
“And returning with the money,” Pin added.
“Of course,” said the Pup, sounding hurt. “What do you take me for?”
“I’ll be taking your head,” McAdams remarked, “if you attempt to ab-bloody-scond with what’s mine.”
“I’m not afraid of your threats,” said Cooley the Pup, “but I have my sense of honor.”
That remark shocked the others into silence, and they stared at the Pup until he started shifting nervously in his chair. “Well,” he insisted, “I do.”
Pin sighed a long-suffering sigh, and continued. “Codger, you’re going to come
with me.”
“Right-oh. Where to?”
“India,” Pin told him.
“India? What’s the play?”
“If we’re going to steal the gold for ourselves,” Pin told him, “we’re going to have to make sure that nobody else gets it first.”
The Artful Codger rubbed his left ear thoughtfully. “It makes sense,” he allowed finally. “It’s right-on weird, but it makes sense when you think about it. We’re to guard the gold so’s we can steal the gold.”
“How’re you going to get there in two weeks?” McAdams demanded.
“We can’t get to Calcutta in two weeks,” Pin admitted. “But we can get to Bombay in a bit over that. And the Empress should arrive a day or so after we do. We will book passage on The Empress of India, and accompany our gold back to England, to make sure that nothing happens to it.”
The Codger thought it over for a second. “I fancy a sea voyage wouldn’t be amiss,” he said. “How are we to get to Bombay?”
“By special train to Naples, and then by a fast steamer through the canal.”
“Special train, is it?” asked McAdams. “And how do we pay for it? I hope we ain’t expected to lay out the expenses for this venture.”
“Pay for it?” Pin Dok Low smiled his inscrutable smile. “What a thought. We’ll bill it to the government of Bavaria.”
“Bavaria?”
“Yes, and why not Bavaria? I have a printer at work right now making up the necessary official documents and permissions and such. I shall go in disguise as Graf von Falkenberg, cousin to Crown Prince Sigismund. There will be no problems.”
“But,” said Cooley the Pup, pointing a quavering finger at Dr. Pin Dok Low, “you’re Chinese!”
“Am I?” asked Pin. “Why, so I am. But I have always fancied myself a master of disguise. How’s your German, Codger?”
“ ’Bout the same as my French,” the Codger said. “As a matter of fact, my German could easily be mistaken for my French.”
“Ah!” said Pin. “Well, we’ll think of something. Go put on your gentleman’s disguise and pack a bag. Meet me at Victoria Station in, say, two hours. We will leave tonight.”
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