Holmes smiled grimly. "It occurs to me," he said, "that if we're mistaken, some poor bargee is about to experience the shock of his life."
Holmes and Watson lay prone on a bed of coal, their weapons pointed at the door, while Moriarty snapped it open with a well-placed baritsu kick and ducked aside. It swung wildly back and forth with a clatter that echoed off the water. Still nothing moved.
After a cautious moment, Moriarty dropped to the deck and carefully peered around the doorway. Then he stood up and dusted himself off, looking disgusted. "Come here, gentlemen," he said, "Look at this."
Inside the cabin were three men. Two of them were sprawled opposite each other across a small table and the third was crumpled on the floor halfway to the door. The two men at the table each had a hole in his chest, a great, ugly gaping hole of the sort caused by a large-caliber handgun fired from close range. The man on the floor had three such holes in his back. He lay in a clotted pool of his own blood, his face turned up, eyes opened, wearing a surprised expression. On the table was a small mound of anarchist literature, now covered with dried blood.
Stepping gingerly to avoid the blood, Holmes bent down to examine the body on the floor. "Dead for some time, I should say," he said. "What do you think, Watson?"
Watson stooped over and pressed his fingernail into the flesh of the wrist and then opened the dead eye and peered at it. "Four or five hours, as a quick estimate," he said. "Nasty way to go—not that any death is pleasant. Still, the massive trauma of a half-inch piece of lead pushing its way through the human gut must rank as one of the less desirable ends."
"Well," Moriarty said. "Trepoff has his dead anarchists. Now what has he done with the submersible?" He knelt down and began tapping on the deck, to be rewarded almost immediately with a dull thumping. "Down here," he said. "There must be a trap door."
Holmes joined him and, together, they pried and tapped and examined and pushed and prodded at the boards of the cabin floor. It took them five minutes to find the catch, hidden between two floorboards. Moriarty pushed at it, and it dropped a pair of hinged doors to reveal a three-foot-square hole. Holmes went over to the table for a candle which stood between the two dead anarchists and lighted it.
"He's gone, of course," Moriarty said. "But we'd best check," Holmes said.
"Of course," Moriarty said. He swung himself over the side of the trap and climbed down the ladder affixed to the edge. When his head was level with the floor, Holmes handed him the candle, and then he disappeared below.
A few moments later he was back. "Come down here," he called to Holmes. "This is impressive. You should see it. Bring another candle or, by preference, one of the oil lamps."
Holmes and Watson removed two oil lamps from the gimbals that tied them to the cabin walls, lighted them, and clambered down the ladder to join Moriarty. The whole interior of the barge proved to be a vast, empty chamber. A board and beam load-bearing ceiling roofed it over, and provided support for the one or two feet of coal above, which disguised and concealed the chamber. Along the two sides and the aft section where they stood ran a wooden platform. Water came up to about three feet below the platform, filling the whole center of the chamber.
"Here," Moriarty said, "is where the Garrett-Harris was moored."
"There must be a hole in the bottom of the barge," Holmes said, "just large enough for the submersible to come in and out."
"At the moment," Moriarty added, "it is out. We can investigate this later, but right now we'd best get back to the Water Witch and see if we can determine where that blasted steel cigar is lying in wait."
-
They had no sooner reached the upper cabin than they heard Captain Coster hallooing for them. Moriarty raced out on deck and over to the side. "What?" he yelled.
Captain Coster pointed up. Moriarty turned. There, in the air above them, was the fading light of a blue signal flare. Suddenly a second flare arced up to join the first. This new one burst forth with a brilliant white ball of light.
"Blue, then white," Moriarty said. "Southeast. Very clever of Barnett." He scrambled over the side of the barge and onto the steam-launch, with Holmes and Watson only a few steps behind. "Southeast," he told Captain Coster. "Head southeast. Holmes, get forward and see if you can spot the thing."
"What can we do if we find it, now it's submerged?" Watson asked.
"Ram it!" Moriarty snapped. "It won't be more than four or five feet down. We should be able to split it open like an eggshell."
"Here, now!" Captain Coster said. "What is it you're talking about ramming with the Water Witch? Her hull is none too strong, you know. Besides, I can get into an awful mess of trouble if I go about ramming other boats."
"Don't worry about that, Captain," Moriarty said with firm authority. "Just make your course, and quickly! We're on the Queen's business. If any harm comes to your boat, you shall be completely reimbursed for damages."
"The Queen's—"
"Get a move on, Captain," Moriarty said. "There's a submersible out there somewhere stalking the Victoria and Albert, and we have to stop it!"
"Yes, sir," Captain Coster said, snapping him a firm salute. "Aye, aye, sir." He grabbed the wheel and headed the Water Witch around.
The sea was cluttered with small pleasure-boats—a thousand Sunday skippers all out to cheer their favorites as the great race drew to a close. The first of the big yachts were now coming into sight in the distance, tacking into the bay and lining up on the Victoria and Albert and the finish line.
The Water Witch cut a line due southeast, passing to the left of the Royal Yacht and heading into the Solent. "We'll pass well to the lee of the yachts," Captain Coster said, "so that's all right. But where is this submersible?"
"Perhaps your associate saw a partly submerged tree trunk," Holmes suggested.
"I say!" Watson called from the bow. "Look!" he pointed to a rocket trail streaking into the sky about them. As they watched, it burst into a shower of green sparks cascading over their heads.
"Green," Moriarty said. "West."
"Perhaps it merely signifies the start of the evening display," Holmes suggested sourly.
"No," Moriarty said. "Barnett is sending the best information he can with but four colors as a language. Captain, turn this craft due west."
"As you say," Captain Coster said, swinging the ship around.
Moriarty climbed up to the top of the cabin and stared about him, examining the positions of the ships in the bay. Then he jumped down. "Of course!" he said, snapping his fingers.
"What?" Holmes demanded.
"The submersible is circling the Victoria and Albert from the west," Moriarty said. "Trepoff wants to have nothing between himself and the Solent channel after he makes his shot. Barnett must have estimated that we couldn't catch up with him in direct pursuit, so he sent us around this way." He turned to the captain. "Cut in closer to the Victoria and Albert," he directed.
"Those Navy steam cutters surrounding her will stop us," Coster said.
"We'll take that chance."
"We'll be cutting across the finish line in front of the yachts. The commodore won't like it."
"We'll live with that too," Moriarty said. "Cut it close, there. And open up that engine!"
Captain Coster yelled instructions to his one-man crew, who was down below stoking the boiler, and the Water Witch, engine racing, moving in to cut across the side of the Victoria and Albert. Two Navy cutters came to life and sprung out to intercept her. The nearer one was alongside in a minute, just as the Water Witch came parallel to the side of the Royal Yacht. A skinny young man in a full-dress uniform with the thin, curled stripe of a sub-lieutenant on his sleeve was leaning out from the prow of the cutter, his gold sword flapping against his leg. "Ahoy there!" he yelled, cupping his hands against the wind, "Heave to, you men!" Captain Coster shrugged and started to comply.
"There!" Watson suddenly yelled. "There it is! I can see it. Off to the left there!"
Moriarty peered ou
t and saw the barely visible submersible, a menacing cigar-shaped shadow beneath the waters. Suddenly, a streak of white foam detached from the bow in an upward arc and sped toward the Victoria and Albert; a Whitehead torpedo with a two-hundred-pound nitrocellulose warhead creating its destiny, racing to meet the monarch of one-third of the world's people.
"It's now running on the surface!" Moriarty yelled. "Quick, kick that engine in and get off this boat!" He grabbed the wheel and spun it around, as Coster, who had shut down the throttle, slapped it full open again.
"Here, you!" the sub-lieutenant yelled, "where the deuce do you think you're going? Stop or we'll fire!"
"Holmes, Watson, get off this boat!" Moriarty yelled, swinging the Water Witch onto a path that would intercept the Whitehead torpedo. "Captain Coster, jump!"
Holmes swung himself over the aft rail. "Leap for it, Watson," he yelled, before cutting the water with a clean dive toward the Navy cutter. Watson spun his bowler toward the horizon and joined Holmes in the water. The ship's one crewman appeared from somewhere below and leaped overboard.
"My boat man!" Captain Coster screamed, trying to grab the wheel from Moriarty. The professor picked him up by the front of his pea jacket. "Victoria will buy you a new one," he said savagely, and with seemingly superhuman strength he lifted Coster high and threw him over the stern rail.
Moriarty made a final adjustment in the course of the boat, lashed the wheel in position, and then raced back to the stern rail. Making one last check on the closing trajectories of the boat and the torpedo, he decided that the Water Witch would intersect a full ten yards before the torpedo reached the Victoria and Albert. Then he stripped off his jacket and dove, a long, flat dive, into the bay.
He was in the water no more than a few seconds when the Whitehead torpedo punched into the Water Witch. It drove through the scantling on the port side, all the way through the boat, and out the starboard side before it exploded. A great geyser shot up, cresting a hundred feet in the air, and fell back across the bow of the Victoria and Albert, causing the big yacht to rock ponderously in place. A moment later the concussion wave reached Moriarty, throwing him out of the water and putting a deep trough under him when he fell back down. Then the water closed over him and he had to struggle hard to reach the surface before his lungs gave out.
The Water Witch took on water rapidly, settling by the bow. The deck was already awash, and only the small cabin was clear of the sea. Then the stern lifted clear of the water and the bow plunged. It stood frozen in that position for a long moment before sliding, bow first, to the bottom.
A moment later the Navy cutter reached Moriarty, and two seamen pulled him from the water. Holmes, Watson, Captain Coster, and his crewman were already on board. Holmes was deep in discussion with the young sub-lieutenant.
"Oh, my God," Watson suddenly screamed, pointing across the water to the Royal Yacht. There, etched by the rays of the Western sun, the clear wake of a second Whitehead torpedo could be seen cleaving a path toward the bow of the Victoria and Albert.
One of the guarding Navy steam cutters, now on the lookout, raced to intercept it. For a moment it seemed as though the cutter would be too late, but then, scant feet from the bow of the Royal Yacht, it crossed the line of the torpedo. The sailors on the cutter scattered, jumping overboard in every direction; but the young officer at its helm stayed motionless behind the wheel, calmly steering the craft into the torpedo.
And then the cutter was gone, and an exploding cloud of white water marked where it had been. A second later the crump of the explosion reached them, rocking and shaking their boat. Then the cloud of water fell back, obscuring the Victoria and Albert for a moment and drenching its decks. A large concussion wave spread out from where the launch had been, and the Royal Yacht bobbed up and down like a rowboat for a few seconds. Of the cutter and the young officer, there was no sign.
The sub-lieutenant, his face white, turned to Moriarty. "Mr.
Holmes has been telling me what this is all about, Professor Moriarty," he said. "I am Lieutenant Simms. How can I help?"
"Find that damned submersible," Moriarty said.
"Has it any more Whitehead torpedoes?"
"I think that's the lot," Holmes said.
"It can't fire more without surfacing at any rate," Moriarty said. "I'd like to get him before he has a chance to reload."
"You think he's going to try?"
"No. I think he's going to leave as expeditiously as possible. He—look there!"
A red starburst lit the sky above them. "North," Moriarty said. "Barnett is still on the job. Trepoff has decided not to run the Solent."
Another red burst spread its crystal light, followed by a white ball of fire.
"North-northeast," Moriarty said. "Have you a compass?"
"Don't need one," the officer said. "It would be, let's see ..." He looked around and sighted along his arm. "Just that way."
"Right back toward Miro's tethered aerostats," Moriarty said. "Trepoff may have a land vehicle concealed somewhere about. We must try to beat him to the shore."
Lieutenant Simms leaned over to a brass speaking-tube by the wheel and blew into it. "Engine crew!"
"Aye, sir?" came a thin voice out of it.
"I want you men to shovel coal into that boiler until you redline the gauge. That's an order."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Kelly," the lieutenant said, turning to the young seaman at the wheel, "make a straight course for that great tethered balloon abaft the fitting station. As straight a course as you can without running us aground or hitting anything."
"That balloon's coming down, sir," the sailor pointed out.
"It's pretty big," the lieutenant said. "I don't think it will descend from sight. But if it does, then make a course for where it was."
"Aye, aye, sir."
-
In a minute the sturdy cutter was plowing through the water in a mechanical frenzy, the tie rods from the double pistons clanking madly in their housing. In two minutes the escape valve for the boiler was whistling and burbling as it released some of the tremendous pressure that had been built up.
"Is this safe?" Watson asked the young officer, looking nervously at the escaping steam.
"They don't usually blow up," Lieutenant Simms said. "They are supposed to be built for a twenty-five percent overload. Of course, this is an experimental model. We shall see."
"Umph," Watson said, and he made his way to the bow.
Holmes stood on top of the wheelhouse, clutching the small signal mast for support. "There," he said. "Look! It has surfaced."
Moriarty peered over the water in the direction of Holmes's pointing finger, but he couldn't make out anything, so he climbed up to join Holmes. "Where?"
"Over there!"
"Oh, yes," Moriarty said. The thick metal cigar was moving rapidly through the water dead ahead of them, with its small conning tower completely above water. "On the surface, with air for its engine, it can make surprisingly good time." He pulled out his watch and timed the closing distance between the cutter and the submersible against the submersible's approach to the shore. "It will beat us ashore," he said. "But only by a minute or so."
"Ashore or not," Holmes said, "he will not escape me. I will get this man."
"We," Moriarty corrected, "will get this man." Holmes turned a bleak eye on him. "Did you see the Queen?" he asked.
"What do you mean, Holmes? When?"
"After the Water Witch exploded—you were still in the water—I saw Her Majesty come forward on the upper deck of the Victoria and Albert to watch what was happening. The wave from the second explosion washed right over her."
"Was her Majesty hurt?"
"I don't believe so. But, dammit, Moriarty, that was the Queen of England! That man was trying to assassinate the crowned head of the English people merely to accomplish a political end in a country two thousand miles away from here."
A sudden gust of wind blew salt spray in Moriarty's
face and he took out his handkerchief to wipe it. For a moment he was surprised to find that his handkerchief was soaking wet already. "True," he said.
"She is not perfect, Moriarty," Holmes said, clenching his fist.
"I'll admit that, dammit, she is not perfect. But I've never known England without Victoria, and I have no desire to. She stands for decency and morality and everything that's good in this imperfect world."
"I don't want to argue with a man in the grip of a patriotic passion," Moriarty said, doing his best to wring his handkerchief out. "Besides, you may be right. At any rate, we saved her life. Doesn't that make you feel good?"
"You saved her life," Holmes said. "You and the officer at the wheel of that cutter. What a strange thing fate is that it should twist so: Moriarty saving the life of his queen. Surely one of the great ironies of our time."
The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus Page 25
