"It sounds interesting," Miss Perrine said. "Although I'm afraid to imagine what sort of stories the American newspapers are interested in. Where do you get your stories, Mr. Barnett? You don't just cull the London dailies, do you?"
"I'm developing connections with the city editors of several of the larger papers," Barnett replied. "They will supply the basic facts—for a fee, of course. If the story seems to warrant it, there are several free-lance reporters I can hire to develop additional facts. I also do reporting work myself, but at present I have a private client who will take up much of my time away from the office."
"A private client, Mr. Barnett?"
The incredulous question made Barnett realize how strange the idea of a news bureau having a private client sounded to anyone with even a rudimentary notion of how such a business worked. "I am engaged in, ah, research, Miss Perrine, among the indigent and criminal classes in London. A private charitable foundation is supplying the financing."
"How fascinating!" Miss Perrine said. "You will have to tell me all about it!"
"I certainly shall," Barnett agreed. "Now as to your duties. At first they will be mainly secretarial, but as the service expands there will be an increasing amount of in-house journalistic writing to be done. If you can handle the work, it's yours."
"There's the matter of remuneration, Mr. Barnett," Miss Perrine reminded him.
"True," Barnett said. "I have no idea ... What is the standard rate for secretarial help around here?"
"I believe that a capable secretary would command fifteen to twenty pounds a quarter. That is, a woman would. A man, of course, would get more. Say twenty-five or thirty pounds."
"Well, why don't we flout custom, Miss Perrine, and start you at twenty-five pounds a quarter. I have a feeling that your initiative and intelligence will prove invaluable to this organization. Perhaps even more than if you had been a man."
Miss Perrine gave Barnett a searching look, but his answering gaze was innocence itself. "Very well," she said, "when do you want me to begin?"
"You do use a typewriter, don't you?" Barnett asked.
Miss Perrine looked disapprovingly at his machine. "The Grandall is a good typewriter," she said, "but I prefer the Remington."
"As I shall need my own machine at any rate, I was planning to get a second. It shall be a Remington, as you say."
"Thank you, Mr. Barnett."
"As for starting, right now would seem a suitable time."
"Very good. What would you have me do?"
Barnett indicated the pile of letters on his desk. "Answer these," he said.
FOURTEEN — PASSING STRANGE
The City is of Night, perchance of Death But Certainly of Night.
—James Thomson
Cecily Perrine proved to be more than Barnett could have hoped for. He had advertised for a secretary and he had found a wonder. She handled the business side of American News Service so well that it almost immediately ceased being merely a front for Barnett's other activity and became a profitable enterprise in its own right. Very quickly she became adept at providing what American newspapers would pay for, from crime news to war news, feature articles to in-depth studies of European affairs. Barnett suppressed his infatuation with her as best he could, and replaced it with admiration for her ability.
In the meantime, he was busy with his own task: searching through the crime news, the society pages, the letters to the editors (published and un-), and even the agony columns for that hint of the bizarre which might indicate the presence of Trepoff or the Belye Krystall.
The bizarre was not hard to find in London, but identifying the elusive hand of Trepoff was another matter. The head of a small child was found in a hatbox in the parcel room of Kensington station. Was Trepoff involved? A man in Walling left his house in the morning, was seen going back for his umbrella, and then disappeared from the face of the Earth. A strange explosion destroyed the house of a Paddington chalk-merchant, who was then found in the cellar, dead of the bite of a giant tropical spider. Was Trepoff the agent, and if so, to what end?
The great safe deposit vaults of the London & Midlands Bank were opened one Monday morning and discovered to be completely empty, with no discernible trace of how the event had happened. The police professed themselves to be baffled in one sentence, and in the next promised an "early arrest."
"It really is quite puzzling," Barnett told Moriarty that evening, "although I see no sign that our mysterious Trepoff is involved in it. The only set of keys, without which I am assured no man could have opened the vault doors unless he employed sufficient explosive to bring the building down around him, was in the hands of the branch manager continuously from the time he left the bank on Friday until he returned on Monday morning. The time clock on the vault was set by the assistant manager, in the manager's presence, as is their custom, and, indeed, did not release the mechanism until eight o'clock Monday morning. The electric alarm system, which connects with the local police station, was not set off. And the guard, who is locked in for the weekend, saw nothing unusual. Nevertheless, two large vaults have been completely emptied of their contents."
"It does not concern us," Moriarty told Barnett. "Trepoff was not involved."
"How can you be sure?"
Moriarty was bent over the small worktable in his study, titrating a clear reagent into a test tube half-full of brown liquid. For a time he did not answer, but continued to critically observe the liquid. All at once the brown color faded and the test tube was clear. Moriarty made a note in his notebook and kept watching as the reagent mixed with the now-clear liquid drop by drop. Within a minute there was another change, this one more gradual, until the liquid had turned a deep blue. Moriarty put the test tube aside and wrote a couple of quick lines in the notebook. Then he turned to Barnett.
"The bank manager keeps the keys to his branch—the entire set, mind you—on his dresser while he sleeps. Does this strike you as being a safe procedure?"
"I, ah, don't know," Barnett said. "I suppose not."
"Further, he does not share a bedroom with his wife, but sleeps alone. And he is a heavy sleeper. It would be no trick for a clever man to obtain impressions of the keys."
"I see," Barnett said, and by now he thought he was beginning to.
"The Briggs-Murcheson time clock is a fascinating device," Moriarty said, going over to his desk and sitting down. "Mr. Murcheson—Mr. Briggs is deceased—Mr. Murcheson would no doubt be quite surprised to discover that if a powerful electromagnet is placed in the proximity of the escapement mechanism and the current applied to it is reversed fifty times a second, the clock is speeded up to approximately twice its normal speed. Which means that if the clock were set for, let us say, the sixty-one hours between Friday at seven P.M. and Monday at eight A.M., and someone were to apply such an electromagnet in the appropriate place shortly after midnight Friday, he might expect the timing mechanism to be released at about four-thirty Sunday morning. It could, of course, be reset after someone had gained access to the interior of the vault."
"This is all just a theory, of course," Barnett said. "What of the guard?"
"Theoretically," Moriarty said, smiling, "we may assume that the gentleman, as is common with many of his sort, is fond of the bottle. A little laudanum mixed into the flask that he takes to work would effectively render him non compos mentis for the required period. And he could hardly be expected to mention it afterward, as it would cost him his job."
"And the electrical alarm?"
"Ah, yes," Moriarty said. "Which goes under the streets to the police station. A workman at the appropriate manhole, several blocks away from the bank, could easily render it inoperative for the required time."
"I see," Barnett repeated. And he was now sure he did.
"An aggregate of defenses, when taken together, may sound formidable," Moriarty said, "although when individually examined, they may be nothing of the sort." He laced his fingers together on the desk. "But let us leave off this
theoretical discussion, however fascinating, and get on to more urgent matters. I have some word of Trepoff."
"You do?" Barnett said. "What have you found out? And how did you go about it?"
"I have spent every evening for the last few weeks playing chess at the Bohemian Club and at the Balalaika. The Russians have a passion for chess equaled only by their passion for intrigue. If I may say so, they are on the average better at chess."
"Weren't you afraid of being recognized? This Trepoff is trying to kill you, after all."
"He seems to have given up that notion—at least for the time being," Moriarty said. "And I took precautions against being recognized. Indeed, I passed you once as you rounded the corner of Montague Place, and you failed to recognize me. I added thirty years to my age and took six inches off my height. You have no idea how tiring it is to appear six inches shorter for hours at a time."
"Have you made any contacts among the anarchists?" Barnett asked.
Moriarty nodded. "They trust me. I am an old gentleman who beats them at chess and refuses to allow them to discuss their politics around him because it's all a stupid game and will accomplish nothing. I rant at them about how stupid they are, so they trust me."
"You speak Russian?" Barnett asked.
"Well enough," Moriarty said. "I mostly listen."
"What sort of people are they?"
Moriarty shook his head. "They are as ineffectual as children. They talk and they talk, they plan, and they argue. Hour after hour they argue. They may kill a few people—it is easy to kill—but they cannot form a successful committee. So how can they ever hope to form a government?"
"What did you find out?"
"Trepoff, calling himself Ivan Zorta, has been recruiting from the anarchist community. He has formed a secret group, which does not appear to have a name, made up of three-man cells. He has extorted strong oaths of allegiance from those he has subverted, promising them something big, something earthshaking. And soon."
"Did you see him?"
"No. Nobody has ever seen him, or so they say over the chess table. That is why I believe Zorta to be Trepoff. That and the promise of something big that he is holding out to his recruits. Also, it is all, except for Zorta himself, a little too visible. Despite all the horrible oaths and vows of secrecy, everyone in the community knows of the organization with no name. Whatever it does will surely be blamed on the anarchists, which is just what Trepoff is trying to accomplish. Now, let's look at your reports for the day."
Moriarty skimmed over the four sheets of paper Barnett had brought home filled with the day's unusual events. Apart from the mysterious bank robbery, into which Barnett decided not to delve any deeper, Barnett didn't think there was anything of particular interest.
Moriarty evidently agreed with him, as he didn't pause at any of the items until he reached the last. This he read through twice, and then he put the paper down and tapped it with his finger. "Tell me about this," he said.
"Not much to tell," Barnett said. "It looked to be a fascinating story for a while, but turned out to be nothing in the end. Luckily, all the papers picked up the correction before it got into print.
"The story got out that the Duke of Ipswich's seventeen-year-old daughter was missing under mysterious circumstances My agent, a reporter for the Standard, went out to Baddeley, the Ipswich ancestral manor in Kensington, to check on it. The butler answered the door and would not permit a reporter on the premises, but he assured my man that he was mistaken and that there was nothing wrong. My agent went to the local police station and discovered that they had indeed been called some hours before—this was early morning, so make it late last night—and were informed that Lady Catherine, the daughter, was missing. She had been entertaining a small group of friends and they had been playing a game—fish, I believe it is called—that involved much scurrying about and concealment.
"Lady Catherine went out to conceal herself, apparently, and could not be found. After an hour, her friends got worried and went around the house calling for her to come out, but she didn't. So they and the servants organized a systematic search of the mansion, from top to bottom. When they didn't find her—and by now over two hours had passed—they called in the police."
"A wise move," Moriarty noted.
"The butler informed the constable that the house had been locked for the night before Lady Catherine's disappearance. There is a patent burglar alarm on all the doors and windows, and it had been turned on. This had not been set off. So far, a first-class mystery and a first-class story, I'm sure you'll agree."
"I do," Moriarty said. "What is the denouement?"
"Well, just before my agent and the several other reporters who had appeared went racing back to their city rooms, His Grace the Duke of Ipswich arrived back at Baddeley Hall in the ducal carriage and demanded to know what was going on. When he was told that his daughter was missing, he said that on the contrary, he had taken her away himself only two hours before. The duchess, Lady Catherine's mother, is ill and in confinement at her mother's, and the duke and Lady Catherine had driven off to visit. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision of the duke's to take his daughter, and she apparently didn't bother to mention it to anyone in the house. She stayed with her mother while the duke returned home."
"And the burglar alarms?"
"He has a key."
"Of course. He would have."
Barnett shrugged. "So a first-class mystery becomes an ordinary series of misunderstandings. Luckily, the truth came out before the story was published."
"The truth," Moriarty said, "has yet to come out."
"What do you mean?"
"Life does not normally attain the qualities of a bad Restoration comedy. When you look at it from the far side of the mirror—that is, as a past event, the implausibility is less evident. But examine the story point by point, as it is supposed to have happened, and see what evolves. The Duke of Ipswich decides to visit his sick wife, who has chosen to be ill at her mother's house. On his way out he sees his daughter, who happens to be hiding from everyone else in the house, and invites her along. They leave, without seeing anyone else, whether friend, guest, or servant. Which has the duke opening and closing his own doors and turning off and resetting his own alarms. Did the duke give any reason for this extraordinary behavior?"
"No," Barnett said. "Not that I know of. Is it really that extraordinary?"
"For a duke to open his own front door? I should think so. That's the sort of naiveté that occurs in children's fairy tales. There's a knock on the castle door, and the king goes to answer it. Dukes do not open their own front doors. And if any servant had let them out, he would have mentioned it when the search for Lady Catherine began."
"So you conclude?"
"That the girl is, indeed, missing. That the Duke was notified of her absence, probably by the abductors, and was rushing back to Baddeley Hall to see if it was true. That he immediately denied her absence because he had been warned by the abductors to do so."
"Isn't that a slender thread upon which to hang such a weighty conclusion?" Barnett asked.
"It will bear the weight," Moriarty said. "I'll go further: there's at least a sporting chance that this is Trepoff's opening gambit."
"Why do you say that? What signs of Trepoff do you see?"
"None," Moriarty admitted. "But yet I see nothing to indicate that it isn't Trepoff. And my nose detects the slight odor of the bizarre that makes this one of the few events you've brought to my attention that might involve Trepoff, and therefore it warrants further investigation."
"Do you want me to get one of my free-lance men out there?"
"He would see nothing," Moriarty said. "And if you will forgive the remark, you would not see much more. Therefore, we must go together." He reached for the bell-pull on the wall behind him.
"You mean now?" Barnett asked. "By the time we get there it will be after ten."
"If I'm correct," Moriarty said, "and if the duke's daughter has inde
ed been abducted, then I assure you he will be awake."
Mr. Maws appeared at the door, and Moriarty told him to go out and procure a four-wheeler. "See if Clarence or Dermot are at their stand," he suggested. "After our recent experience, I am partial to the jarvey I know. At any rate, have one back here in five minutes if you can. We'll be ready to leave then."
"Very good, Professor," Mr. Maws said.
-
As the four-wheeler, with Clarence atop, proceeded toward Kensington, Moriarty sat stooped like a great hawk, his prominent chin resting on his folded hands above the ivory handle of his stick, his eyes narrowed in thought. Barnett, across from him, kept silent out of respect for the professor's thought processes and amused himself by trying to decide what was occupying Moriarty's mind as they sped across London. Was it thoughts of the unfortunate duke and his missing daughter? Speculations as to the current state of the mysterious Trepoff's plans against Britain in general and Moriarty in particular? Satisfied musing about the current whereabouts of the goods that until recently had occupied the vaults of the London & Midlands Bank? Reflections, perhaps, on his latest monograph, bound copies of which had just been delivered from the printers, entitled, Some Considerations on the Spectral Composition of Certain Interstellar Nebulosities?
The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus Page 14
