In an instant, he had stopped running and turned around to face his attackers, his feet firmly planted and his arms together and extended in the baritsu defense posture.
The Arab nearest him leaped, curved blade high in the air, and brought it down in an overhand arc aimed straight at his temple. With a deceptively easy-looking twist of his body he moved aside, grasped his assailant's knife-arm as he passed, and pinned it behind. The Arab made the mistake of trying to twist free, and he screamed with shock and pain as his shoulder joint pulled out of its socket.
Then Barnett and Sefton reached the scene. The lieutenant, using his swordstick like an épée, took two of the Arabs on in classical Italian style, his left hand raised languidly behind him. Barnett, swinging his stick freely in both hands, rushed at the others.
One of the attackers yelled out a few words in a guttural language, and his comrades broke off the fighting and raced away in as close to five different directions as they could manage in the narrow street. Lieutenant Sefton, who had downed one of the men with the first thrust of his blade, raced after another, yelling at him to stop and fight.
"Pah!" the tall man spat, straightening up and glaring after the retreating figures. "Amateurs! I am insulted."
"Excuse me?" Barnett said, trying to catch his breath.
Moriarty dusted himself off. "Thank you for your assistance," he said. "I seem to have lost my hat."
Lieutenant Sefton chased the retreating Arab to the corner before giving up. "Too big a head start," he lamented, returning to the square. He took the body of his swordstick back from Barnett and returned the blade to its scabbard. "Are you all right, sir?"
"Yes," Moriarty said. "Except for a slight rent in the jacket sleeve and the loss of my stick and my hat. I owe you gentlemen a great debt. Your assistance alleviated a troublesome situation."
"Glad to help," Barnett said briefly. He personally thought it might have been a bit more than "troublesome," but he held his tongue. Traditional British understatement, he decided.
"Couldn't allow a fellow Englishman to be molested by cutthroat Arabs without doing something," Lieutenant Sefton said. "My pleasure, I assure you. I am Lieutenant Auric Sefton, Royal Navy. My companion is Mr. Benjamin Barnett, an American."
Moriarty shook hands with both of them. "From the great city of New York, I perceive," he told Barnett. "Although most recently from Paris. And a journalist, if I am not mistaken."
"Why, that's quite right," Barnett said, looking with amazement at the tall man.
"Of course it is. I am Professor James Moriarty. I think we could all use a chance to catch our breath. Come, there's a small coffeeshop a few blocks from here. If you would care to accompany me, it would be my pleasure to offer you a cup of that thick brew which the Turk, in his wisdom, calls coffee."
"Why did those chaps attack you?" Sefton asked.
"I have no idea," Moriarty said. "Let us go to the coffeeshop, where I can sit down. I think I lead too sedentary an existence. My wind isn't what it should be. I promise I'll answer your questions there. Oh—one last thing ..." Moriarty bent over the body of the downed attacker and gave it a perfunctory examination. "All right," he said, straightening up. "It is as I thought. Let us go."
-
The tables at the coffeeshop were arranged outside on the sidewalk, under a wide awning. Barnett and Sefton instinctively picked a table with a bench against the wall, where they could sit facing the street. Moriarty calmly sat facing them across the postage-stamp-sized table. "My usual preference is also the seat with the, ah, view," Moriarty told them, smiling grimly. "But with you two stalwart gentlemen guarding my rear, I feel confident that there will be no surprises. Is it to be shekerli or sade, gentlemen?"
"What's that?" Barnett asked.
"Sweet or bitter," Sefton explained. "The coffee."
"Oh," Barnett said. "Sweet. Very sweet."
The waiter was a short, wide man, sporting a great handlebar mustache and swathed in a white apron. He approached his European customers and performed an impressive dumb show to indicate that whatever language they spoke, he didn't. Moriarty spoke to him in Turkish, interrupting him in mid-gesture, and his face lit up. A minute later he was back at the table, making the coffee in the customary small brass pot over a charcoal burner.
"Your knowledge of the language is excellent," Lieutenant Sefton complimented Moriarty. "I have lived here for some time, and I don't speak it nearly so well. Have you been in Constantinople long?"
"On the contrary," said Moriarty. "I have been here for but three days. I leave tomorrow."
Lieutenant Sefton leaned forward. "And you haven't been here before?"
"Never."
"Then where did you learn Turkish?"
"I have developed a system for learning languages," Moriarty said. "I now speak nine. I confess that Turkish was something of a challenge for the system; I never expected to have to use it. When I learned that I had to go to Odessa on business, I couldn't resist arranging to spend a few days here in Constantinople, both to see the city and to practice my Turkish."
"Then you are a professor of languages?" Barnett asked.
Moriarty shook his head. "Using my system, the learning of languages is no great task for one of superior intellect," he said. "My degree is in mathematics. When I was younger I held the Chair of Mathematics at a small provincial university, but I am no longer so employed."
"You don't know who attacked you?" Lieutenant Sefton asked, getting back to the matter at hand. "We should probably report the ruffians to the authorities."
"I have no idea," Professor Moriarty said. "I came out of a shop and two of them attempted to propel me into an alley, where the others waited. I broke away. Aside from the fact that they were amateur assassins, and definitely not Arabs, I know nothing whatever about them."
"Why do you say they were not Arabs?" Lieutenant Sefton asked. "They looked like Arabs to me."
"Such was their intent, but there were a few small details they missed," Moriarty said. "One of them called to the others, and he did not speak Arabic. And the characteristic butternut color of their skin—was greasepaint."
"Greasepaint?"
"Yes." He pulled out his pocket handkerchief and displayed a dark brown stain across one corner. "The gentleman you left hors de combat was wearing this. I suspected it, so I ran the handkerchief across his chin."
Lieutenant Sefton took the handkerchief and examined the stain. "Curiouser and curiouser," he said. "So it was more than just an attempted robbery. It did seem to be quite a pack to be hounding one retired professor of mathematics."
"Yes," Moriarty said dryly. "I thought so myself."
"Tell me, Professor," Barnett said. "I don't want to seem to pry into your affairs, but you're not here, by any chance, to watch the sea trials, are you?"
"Sea trials?" Moriarty asked, sounding puzzled.
"The Garrett-Harris submersible boat," Barnett explained. "Day after tomorrow."
"No, gentlemen, I have nothing to do with the trials. I would find it fascinating to watch them, but I cannot stay. My business in Odessa calls me away tomorrow."
"Then you are not with Her Majesty's Government in any way?" Lieutenant Sefton asked.
The idea seemed to amuse Professor Moriarty greatly. "You have my word," he assured Sefton.
"Say!" Barnett said. "I meant to ask: how did you know I'm a journalist, and from New York?"
"And Paris," Lieutenant Sefton added.
Moriarty touched his finger to his ear. "If you could hear yourself," he said, "you wouldn't have to ask the second part of that question. As to the first: the notebook in your inner pocket, the sharpened pencils in your breast pocket, the writing callus on your right forefinger—all point in a certain direction. And to verify my deduction, I had only to look at the signet on your ring. The New York Press Club sigil is not unfamiliar to me."
"I see," Barnett said, fingering the ring Moriarty had mentioned and nodding his head slowly. "And Paris? H
ow did you know I had come from Paris?"
"Your shoes, sir," Moriarty said. "Unmistakable."
"Is that all?" Lieutenant Sefton asked. "How simple!"
Moriarty laughed—a dry, humorless sound. "For a moment you thought I'd done something clever, is that it?" He leaned forward and fixed Sefton with his gray eyes.
"Well, yes, I—"
"My little feats of deductive and inductive reasoning are only clever until they are explained. I must learn, like magicians, never to divulge my methods. Conjurers never explain their illusions. Neither do the other sort."
"What other sort?" Lieutenant Sefton asked.
"Mentalists, mystics, mediums: all practitioners of the occult. The gentlemen who blow bugles from inside cabinets and start stopped pocket watches. The ladies who hold long conversations with your poor deceased Aunt Tillie and Lord Nelson. And the only thing Lord Nelson can find to say is, 'it's very beautiful up here and we're all very happy.' And death seems to have given a certain cockney lilt to his speech that it never had in life."
"You seem quite conversant with the subject, sir," Barnett said.
"Conjuring has been a fascination of mine," Moriarty told him. "And I have made a special study of human gullibility. The number of patent idiocies that otherwise intelligent people believe, or profess to believe, never cease to amaze me."
"For example?" Barnett said, finding himself intrigued with this ex-professor of mathematics.
"The examples are endless. People have fought wars in the ridiculous belief that one religion is somehow superior to another or that one man is inherently better than another."
"That is a bit strong, sir," Barnett said.
"Do you profess to believe, sir," Sefton asked, "that all men are exactly equal?"
"Certainly not. I, for example, am superior. But this superiority is due to clearly establishable intellectual capacity, not to the lightness of my skin, the blondness of my hair, or the blind chance of my being born in England rather than in Abyssinia." This statement was delivered with such bland assurance that it was clearly neither conceit nor arrogance from Professor Moriarty's point of view, but a simple assertion of fact.
The waiter brought over a small plate of candies. "Try one," Lieutenant Sefton said, shoving it over to Barnett. "Rahat loukoum. Call them 'Turkish delights' in England. Go with the coffee."
"I've heard of them," Barnett said, sampling one of the small squares. It was a sweet gel of assorted fruits, which did indeed go well with the thick Turkish coffee.
Professor Moriarty took a small leather case from his pocket. "Allow me to give you gentlemen my card," he said. "I expect you both to look me up at your earliest opportunity."
Barnett took the proffered pasteboard and looked at it:
JAMES C. MORIARTY, Ph.D.
64 RUSSELL SQUARE CONSULTING
"Consulting?" he asked.
Moriarty stared at him with a curious intensity. Barnett had the odd feeling that the professor could see through his skin to the soul beneath. And, further, that he wasn't being judged but merely examined and classified by this strange, intense man. "Consulting," Moriarty affirmed.
Lieutenant Sefton examined the card at arm's length. "I say," he said. "At what do you consult? Who consults you?"
"I answer questions," Professor Moriarty explained patiently. "I solve problems. Very occasionally I perform services. My rates vary with the difficulty of the task."
"Is there much demand for such a service?" Barnett asked.
"I am never at a loss for commissions and my rates are quite high. Of course, I am paid only for success."
"You mean you guarantee success?" Lieutenant Sefton asked, incredulously.
"No man can guarantee success at any task. What I do is minimize the chance of failure."
"It sounds fascinating," Barnett said. "I shall surely look you up after this assignment, when I next visit London. I might do an article about you and your business for my newspaper, the New York World, if you don't mind."
"I mind!" Moriarty said sharply. "Further, I absolutely forbid it. I have neither the need nor the desire for notoriety."
"Well," Barnett said, standing up and putting his cup down. "I'm sorry."
Moriarty waved Barnett back into his seat. "No need to take offense," he said, signaling the waiter for another pot of coffee. "I am aware that many people like to read about themselves. I do not happen to be one of those people. If I am ever to be known to the world, it must be for my scientific endeavors. If I am remembered at all by history, it will be for the research I am doing rather than for the occupation, however novel, which supports this research."
"What sort of scientific work are you engaged in?" Barnett asked, sitting back down.
"I am doing theoretical studies in the realm of astronomical physics," Professor Moriarty said. "There are certain anomalies in the behavior of light—but I don't want to bore you."
"Not at all, not at all," Lieutenant Sefton said politely. "You really must go into it in detail sometime; I'm sure it will be fascinating."
"How nice of you to say so," Moriarty murmured.
They had one last cup of coffee together before separating. Barnett and Lieutenant Sefton offered to walk the professor back to his hotel, but he refused. "I do not anticipate any further trouble," he said.
"I hope you're right," Lieutenant Sefton said. They shook hands, and the professor strode off.
"Queer cove, that," Sefton commented thoughtfully as he and Barnett started back to the Hotel Ibrahim. "Do you suppose he's anywhere near as intelligent as he thinks he is?"
Barnett thought about it for a minute. "I reckon he is, Lieutenant," he said. "You know, I just reckon he is."
THREE — DEATH
He who commands the sea commands everything.
—Themistocles
It was cold, damp, foggy, and uncomfortable—altogether as one would expect on a small caique in the Bosporus just after dawn in mid-March. "They can't find the yacht," Lieutenant Sefton announced after the boss caiquejee yelled to him in Turkish.
"What?" Barnett asked in disbelief.
"They can't—"
"I know. I heard."
"Then why did you say 'what?' " Sefton asked irritably. "Why can't they find the yacht?"
"Because it isn't in sight." Lieutenant Sefton waved his hand at the fog. "There doesn't seem to be too much of anything in sight."
The boss caiquejee, a small, swarthy man with immense biceps and a mustache that seemed to curl around his ears, started an earnest, profound discussion with Lieutenant Sefton that involved much pounding on the oarlock and gesticulating. The assistant caiquejee shipped his oar, and he and Barnett stared silently at each other while the discussion went on. After a few minutes of this, Barnett found that he was getting increasingly nervous. "What's happening?" he asked Sefton at the first pause in the discussion.
"There are two problems," Lieutenant Sefton said. "The first is that, although Turkish is our only common language, my friend here speaks it worse than I do. It seems to be a tradition in the Stamboul docks that all the caiquejeem—oarsmen—are recruited from somewhere in Eastern Europe. The second problem is that they want to return to the dock now. I'm trying to convince him that they were hired to take us to the Osmanieh and that their job isn't done until they find it, wherever it is."
The boss caiquejee said something slowly and distinctly to Barnett, then wiped his mustache carefully with his sleeve and spat into the sea. His companion nodded and spat out the other side of the boat. They both glared at Barnett.
"What's happening now?" Barnett demanded.
"They are not afraid of you," Sefton explained. "They just want you to know that."
"Why," Barnett asked with a sinking feeling in his stomach, "should they be afraid of me?"
"When my friend here suggested that we could swim out to the Osmanieh if we wanted to find it so badly, I told him of your reputation."
The two caiquejeem spat again, almost in
unison. "My reputation?" Barnett asked.
"Yes. I told them that you were reputed to have a long knife and a short temper. I told them you were a cowboy from America. They know about cowboys."
"Wonderful," Barnett said. "What's that noise?"
"Noise?" Sefton asked.
The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus Page 3
