Professor Moriarty: The Hound Of The D’urbervilles

by Kim Newman

  ‘There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,’ began Mad Carew...

  Lord, I thought, here we go again.

  III

  Some stories you’ve heard so often you know how they’ll come out. ‘I was a good girl once, a clergyman’s daughter, but fell in with bad men...’ ‘I fully intended to pay back the rhino I owed you, but I had this hot tip straight from the jockey’s brother...’ ‘I thought there was no harm in popping in to the Rat and Raven for a quick gin...’ ‘I must have put on the wrong coat at the club and walked off wearing a garment identical to – but not – my own, which happens to have these counterfeit bonds sewn into the lining...’

  And, yes, ‘There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu...’

  I’ve a rule about one-eyed yellow idols – and, indeed, idols of other precious hues with any number of eyes, arms, heads or arses. Simply put: hands off!

  I don’t have the patience to be a professional cracksman, which involves fiddling with locks and safes and precision explosives. As a trade, it’s on a level with being a plumber or glazier, with a better chance of being blown to bits or rotting on Dartmoor – not that most plumbers and glaziers wouldn’t deserve it, the rooking bastards! Oh, I have done more than my fair share of thieving. I’ve robbed, burgled, rifled, raided, waylaid, heisted, abducted, abstracted, plundered, pilfered and pinched across five continents and seven seas. I’ve lifted anything that wasn’t nailed down – and, indeed, have prised up the nails of a few items which were.

  So, I admit it – I’m a thief. I take things which are not mine. Mostly, money. Or stuff easily turned into money. I may be the sort of thief who, an alienist will tell you, can’t help himself. I steal (or cheat, which is the same thing) just for a lark when I don’t especially need the readies. If a fellow owns something and doesn’t take steps to keep hold of it, that’s his lookout. But even I know better than to pluck an emerald from the eye socket of a heathen idol... whether it be north, south, east or west of Kathmandu.

  Ever heard of the Moonstone? The Eye of Klesh? The All-Seeing Eye of the Goddess of Light? The Crimson Gem of Cyttorak? The Pink Diamond of Lugash? All sparklers jemmied off other men’s idols by fools who, as they say, ‘Suffered the Consequences’. Any cult which can afford to use priceless ornaments in church decoration can extend limitless travel allowance to assassins. They have on permanent call the sort of determined, ruthless little sods who’ll cross the whole world to retrieve their bauble and behead the infidel who snaffled it. That also goes for the worshippers of ugly chunks of African wood you wouldn’t get sixpence for in Portobello Market. Pop Chuku or Lukundoo or a Zuni Fetish into your game bag as a souvenir of the safari, and wake up six months later with a naked Porroh man squatting at your bed-end in Wandsworth and coverlets drenched with your own blood.

  Come to that, common-or-garden, non-sacred jewels like the Barlow Rubies, the Rosenthall Diamonds and the Mirror of Portugal are usually pretty poison to crooks who waste their lives trying to get hold of ’em. Remember the fabled Agra Treasure which ended up at the bottom of the Thames? [3] Best place for it.

  Imagine stealing something you can’t spend? Oversize gems are famous, thus instantly recognisable. They have histories (‘provenance’ in the trade, don’t you know? – a list of people they’ve been stolen from) and permanent addresses under lock and key in the coffers of dusky potentates or the Tower of London where Queen Vicky (long may she reign!) can play with them when she has a mind to.

  Even cutting a prize into smaller stones doesn’t cover the trail. Clots who loot temples are too bedazzled by the booty to take elementary precautions. Changing the name on your passport doesn’t help. If you’re the bloke with the Fang of Azathoth on your watch chain or the Tears of Tabanga decorating your tart’s décolletage, you can expect fanatics with strangling cords to show up sooner or later. Want to steal from a church? Have the lead off the roof of St Custard’s down the road. I can more or less guarantee the Archbishop of Canterbury won’t send implacable curates after you with scimitars clenched between their teeth.

  Ahem, so, to return to the case in hand. Since the tale has been set down by another (one J. Milton Hayes – ever heard of anything else by him?), I’ll copy it longhand. Hell, that’s too much trouble. I’ll shoplift a Big Book of Dramatic and Comic Recitations for All Occasions from WH Smith & Sons and paste in a torn-out page. I’ll be careful not to use ‘Christmas Day in the Workhouse’, ‘The Face on the Bar-Room Floor’ or ‘The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck (His Name Was Albert Trollocks)’ by mistake. Among the set who stay away from music halls and pride themselves on ‘making their own entertainment’, every fool and his cousin gets up at the drop of a hat to launch into ‘The Ballad of Mad Carew’. You’ve probably suffered Mr Hayes’ effulgence many times on long, agonising evenings, but bear with me. I’ll append footnotes to sweeten the deal.

  There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,

  There’s a little marble cross below the town;

  There’s a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,

  And the yellow god forever gazes down.

  He was known as ‘Mad Carew’ by the subs at Khatmandu,

  He was hotter than they felt inclined to tell;

  But for all his foolish pranks*, he was worshipped in the ranks,

  And the Colonel’s daughter§ smiled on him as well.

  * e.g.: setting light to the bhishti’s turban, putting firecrackers in the padre’s thunderbox... oh how we all laughed! – S.M.

  § Amaryllis Framington, by name. Fat and squinty, but white women are in short supply in Nepal and you land the fish you can get. – S.M.

  He had loved her all along, with a passion of the strong,

  The fact that she loved him was plain to all.

  She was nearly twenty-one* and arrangements had begun

  To celebrate her birthday with a ball.

  * forty if she was a day. – S.M.

  He wrote* to ask what present she would like from Mad Carew;

  They met next day as he dismissed a squad;

  And jestingly she told him then that nothing else would do

  But the green eye of the little yellow god§.

  * since they were at the same hill station, why didn’t he just ask her? Even sherpas have better things to do than be forever carrying letters between folks who live practically next door to each other. – S.M.

  § that’s colonel’s daughters for you, covetous and stupid, God bless ’em. – S.M.

  On the night before the dance, Mad Carew seemed in a trance*.

  And they chaffed him as they puffed at their cigars;

  But for once he failed to smile, and he sat alone awhile,

  Then went out into the night beneath the stars.

  * kif, probably. It’s not just the natives who smoke it. Bloody boring, a posting in Nepal. – S.M.

  He returned before the dawn, with his shirt and tunic torn,

  And a gash across his temple dripping red;

  He was patched up right away, and he slept through all the day*,

  And the Colonel’s daughter watched beside his bed.

  * lazy malingering tosser. – S.M.

  He woke at last and asked if they could send his tunic through;

  She brought it, and he thanked her with a nod;

  He bade her search the pocket saying ‘That’s from Mad Carew’,

  And she found the little green eye of the god*.

  * if you saw this coming, you are not alone. – S.M.

  She upbraided poor Carew in the way that women do*,

  Though both her eyes were strangely hot and wet;

  But she wouldn’t take the stone§ and Mad Carew was left alone

  With the jewel that he’d chanced his life to get.

  * here’s gratitude for you: the flaming cretin gets himself half-killed to fetch her a birthday present and she throws a sulk. – S.M.

  § which shows she
wasn’t entirely addle-witted, old Amaryllis. – S.M.

  When the ball was at its height, on that still and tropic night,

  She thought of him* and hurried to his room;

  As she crossed the barrack square she could hear the dreamy air

  Of a waltz tune softly stealing thro’ the gloom.§

  * the least she could do, all things considered. Note that M.C. being stabbed didn’t stop her having her bally party. – S.M.

  § poetic license at its most mendacious. You imagine an orchestra conducted by Strauss himself and lilting, melodic strains wafting across the parade ground. The musical capabilities of the average hill station run to a corporal with a heat-warped fiddle, a boy with a Jew’s harp and a Welshman cashiered from his colliery choir for gross indecency (and singing flat). The repertoire runs to ditties like ‘Come Into the Garden, Maud (and Get the Poking You’ve Been Asking For All Evening)’ and ‘I Dreamt I Dwelled in Marble Halls (and Found Myself Fondling Prince Albert’s Balls)’. – S.M.

  His door was open wide*, with silver moonlight shining through;

  The place was wet and slipp’ry where she trod;

  An ugly knife lay buried in the heart of Mad Carew§,

  ’Twas the vengeance of the little yellow god.

  * where were the guards? I’d bloody have ’em up on a charge for letting yak-bothering clod-stabbers through the lines. – S.M.

  § how much worse than being stabbed with a pretty knife, eh? – S.M.

  There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,*

  There’s a little marble cross below the town;

  There’s a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,

  And the yellow god forever gazes down§.

  * yes, J. Milton skimps on his poetical efforts by putting the first verse back in again. When Uncle Bertie or the bank manager’s sister read it aloud, they tend to do it jocular the first time, emphasising that rumty-tumty-tum metre, then pour on the drama for the reprise, drawing it out with exaggerated face pulling to convey the broken heartedness and a crack-of-doom hollow rumble for that final, ominous line. I blame Rudyard Kipling. – S.M.

  § Have you noticed the ambiguity about the idol? Is it only one eyed because M.C. has filched the other, or regularly configured like Polyphemus and now has its single eye back? Well, Mr Hayes was fudging because he plain didn’t know. To set the record straight, this was always a Cyclopean idol. And the poet didn’t hear the end of the story. – S.M.

  Oh, I know what you’re thinking – if Mad Carew’s emerald-pinching escapade led to a twit-tended grave north of Khatmandu, how did he fetch up un-stabbed in our London consulting room, presenting a sickly countenance? Ah-hah, then read on...

  IV

  ‘I took the eye from the idol,’ Carew admitted. ‘I don’t care what you’ve heard about why I did it. That doesn’t matter. I took it. And I didn’t give it away. I can’t give it away, because it comes back. I’ve tried. It’s mine, by right of... well, conquest. Do you understand, Professor?’

  Moriarty nodded. If he understood, that was more than I did.

  ‘I had to fight – to kill – to get it. I’ve had to do worse to keep alive since. They’ve not let up. They came for me at the hill station. Nearly had me, too. If letting them have the stone would save my hide, I’d wish it good riddance. But it’s not the gem they want, really. It’s the vengeance. Blighters with knives have my number. Heathen priests. That’s an end to it – they think, at any rate. Some say they did get me, and I’m a ghost...’

  I’d not thought of that. He didn’t look like any ghost I’d run across, but, then again, they don’t, do they. Ghosts? Look like what you’re expecting, that is.

  ‘I didn’t just take this thing. I copped a fortune in other stones and gold doodads, too. Not as sacred, apparently. Though most folk who bought from me – chiselled at a penny in the pound, if that – are dead now. Even with miserly rates of fencing, I netted enough to buy out and set myself up for life. Thought I could do a lot better than Fat Amy Framington, I tell you.

  ‘Resigned my commission, and left for India... with the little brown men after me. More of ’em than I can count. Some odd ones, too – brown in the face, but hairy all over. White hairy, more brute than man. There are a few of ’em left in mountain country. Mi-go or yeti or Abominable Snowballs. They’re the trackers, when the priests let them off their leashes. They dogged me over India, into China... across the Pacific and through the States and the Northern Territories. Up to the Arctic with them after me on sledges... they have yeti in Canada too, Sasquatch and windigo. I heard the damned beasts hooting to each other like owls. Close scrape in New York. Had to pay off the coppers to dodge a murder charge. Steam-packet to Blighty.

  ‘They nearly got me again in a hotel in Liverpool, but I left six of ’em dead. Six howling bastards who won’t make further obeisance to their bloody little yellow god. Now I’m here, in London. The white man’s Kathmandu. I’ve still got this green lump. Worth a kingdom, and worth nothing...’

  ‘This narrative is very picturesque,’ Moriarty said, ‘though I would quibble about your strict veracity on one or two points. You could place it in the illustrated press. What I fail to perceive, Major Carew, is what exactly you want us to do?’

  Carew’s eyes became hooded, shifty. For the first time, he almost smiled.

  ‘I heard of you in a bazaar in Peking, Professor. From a ruined Englishman who was once called Giles Conover...’

  Him, I remembered. Cracksman, and a toff with it. Also enthusiastic about precious stones, though pearls were his line. Why anyone decided to set a high price on clams’ gallstones is beyond me. Conover went for whole strings. Lifted the Ingestre Necklace from Scotland Yard’s Black Museum to celebrate the centenary of the burning down of Mrs Lovett’s Fleet Street pie shop. I’ll wager you know that story. [4]

  The Firm had done business with Conover. Before his spine got crushed.

  ‘You are... what was Conover’s expression... a consultant? Like a doctor or a lawyer?’

  Moriarty nodded.

  ‘A consulting criminal?’

  ‘A simple way of stating my business, but it will suffice. Professionals – not only doctors and lawyers, but architects, detectives and military strategists – are available to any who meet their fees. Individuals or organisations have problems they have not the wits to solve, and call on those with expertise and experience to do so. Criminal individuals or organisations have problems too. If sufficiently interesting, I apply myself to the solution of such.’

  ‘Conover said you helped him...’

  ‘Advised him.’

  ‘...with a robbery. You – what? – drew up plans he followed? Like an engineer?’

  ‘Like a playwright, Major Carew. A dramatist. Conover’s problem required a certain flamboyance. Parties needed to be distracted while work was being done. I suggested a means of distraction.’

  ‘For a cut?’

  ‘A fee was paid.’

  The Prof was being cagey about details. We arranged for a runaway cab to collide with a crowded omnibus at the corner of Leather Lane and St Cross Street. This convenient calamity drew away night guards at Tucker & Tarbert’s Gemstone Exchange long enough for Conover to nip in and abstract a cluster known as ‘the Bunch of Grapes’. Nobody died except a drunken Yorkshireman, but seven passengers were handily crippled – including a Member of Parliament who couldn’t explain why he was in the hansom with two tight-trousered post office boys and had to resign his seat. A fine night’s work all round.

  Carew thought about it for a moment.

  ‘They are in London. The brown priests. The yeti. They mean to kill me and take back their green eye.’

  ‘So you have said.’

  ‘They nearly had me in Paddington two nights ago.’

  The Professor said nothing.

  ‘Consider this an after-the-fact consultation, Moriarty,’ Carew said, taking a plunge. ‘I don’t need help in plann
ing a crime. The crime’s done with, months ago and on the other side of the world. I need your help in getting away with it.’

  It became clear. The Professor ruminated. His head oscillated. Carew hadn’t seen that before and was startled.

  ‘You will be killed,’ the Professor said. ‘There’s no doubt about it. In all parallel cases – you have heard of the Herncastle Heirloom, I trust [5] – the, as you call them, “little brown men” have prevailed. Unless some other ironic fate overtakes him first, the despoiler is routinely done to death by the cult. Did Conover tell you of the Black Pearl of the Borgias?’

  ‘He said he’d lost the use of his legs and been driven from England because of the thing, and he didn’t have it in his hands for more than a minute or two.’

  ‘That is so,’ Moriarty confirmed. ‘There are differences between your circumstances, between your Green Eye and his Black Pearl, but similarities also. With the Borgia pearl, the attendant problem was not presented by brown men, but by a white man, if man he can truthfully be called. The Hoxton Creeper. He has haunted the pearl through its unhappy chain of ownership, breaking the backs of all who try to keep hold of it. He crushed Conover’s bones to powder, though the prize was already fenced. I dare say the Creeper, a London-born Neanderthal atavism, is as abominable as any Himalayan snowman.’

  Some in dire situations are gloomily happy to know others have been in the same boat. Not Carew.

  ‘Hang the Creeper,’ he exclaimed. ‘There’s only one of him. I’ve a whole congregation of Creepers, Crawlers and Crushers after me!’

  ‘So, you must die and that’s all there is to it.’

  The last remaining puff went out of Mad Carew. He might as well change his daredevil nickname to Dead Carew and be done with it.

  ‘...and yet...’

  Now the Prof’s eyes glowed, as other eyes glowed when the emerald was in view. His blood was up. Profit didn’t really stir Moriarty. He loved the numbers, not the spoils they tallied. It was the problem. The challenge. Doing that which no one else had done, which no one else could do.