The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus

by Michael Kurland

  "Well, thank you very much, Inspector," Barnett said. "We shall be going along now. One or the other of us will be visiting you daily to hear the latest details."

  "I shall be happy to oblige."

  "Thank you. If it's all right with you, I think we shall go now to visit the scenes of the crimes, so that we can better describe them to our readers."

  "Certainly," Lestrade said. "The Yard always tries to help out journalists, when it can. You won't let on now about the arrests?"

  "My word, Inspector. Not a mention of either of their names until we hear that they are safely behind bars."

  "It has been delightful meeting you, Inspector Lestrade," Cecily said. "It is comforting to know that our safety lies in such capable hands."

  "We do our best, miss," Lestrade said, escorting them to the door and beaming at them as they left.

  -

  "You are an ass, Lestrade," a voice behind the inspector said as he gazed down the hall. He turned to find Sherlock Holmes sitting in the chair he had just vacated.

  "Holmes! Where did you come from? I thought you had left."

  "I got bored sitting there waiting for you to return," Holmes said, "so I started going through your files. When I saw your company approaching, I concealed myself between the filing cabinet and the wall, over there."

  "I see," Lestrade said. "And why did you do a thing like that?"

  "That young man, Barnett, is in the employ of Professor Moriarty, as you well know. It occurred to me that it might be a good idea to hear what he had to say when he thought himself unobserved."

  "So? And what did he say?"

  "Nothing. That imbecile of a constable never left them alone. What a shame—it might have been quite instructive."

  "You still have that bee in your bonnet about the professor, eh, Holmes?" Lestrade chuckled. "Well, I don't fancy that he's your killer this time. I can't quite see him as an habitué of the Gentlemen's Gentlemen."

  "Lestrade, you are incorrigible," Holmes said. "You really believe those poor butlers had something to do with the crimes?"

  "I believe it well enough so that I'm having them held on suspicion," Lestrade said. "I don't take such action as a joke."

  "Well, do that if it pleases you," Holmes told him. "But there is another action that I want you to take. You are obliged to follow my instructions, I believe?"

  "We are," Lestrade said. "Orders is orders, whatever I think of them, and I have been so ordered. What do you want me to do?"

  "I think those two came to pump you for information," Holmes said. "And, if that's so, then Moriarty is up to his neck in this in some way, and I intend to find out how. I want you to detail ten of your best plainclothesmen to follow Moriarty wherever he goes from now on, and report to you on his every move."

  "If you say so, Mr. Holmes," Lestrade said. "Ten of my best it is. He won't make a move without our knowing of it."

  "Nonsense," Holmes said. "Of course he will. I'm just hoping that this will annoy him sufficiently that he'll make a mistake. A small mistake, that's all I ask."

  "Um," Lestrade said.

  SIX — THE FOX

  Was it a friend or foe that spread these lies? Nay, who but infants question in such wise, 'Twas one of my most intimate enemies.

  — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  Old Potts had been with Moriarty from the beginning, and there were few around who knew how far back that went. Slowly, and with great love, over the course of many years, he had converted the upper cellar in the house at 64 Russell Square into a huge, well-equipped basement laboratory and workshop.

  The old man had his bed in a corner of the workshop. He seldom came upstairs, and almost never left the house, except for occasional visits to the professor's observatory on Crimpton Moor. And he was happy thus. Professor Moriarty spent much time in the basement with old Potts. It was here that he designed the delicate apparatus with which he studied the cosmos and tested his physical and astronomical theories.

  Within the past year, old Potts had helped Moriarty fabricate a mechanism which could determine the speed of light to better than three parts per thousand. Together they had experimented with a series of evacuated glass valves with sealed electrodes of various rare materials, and observed fascinating and as yet inexplicable results when an electric current was passed through. It may be that they also had constructed a device which would enable one to bypass an electrical alarm system without setting off the alarm, and an instrument which would allow one to hear the tumblers falling in the latest model wall safe. If so, it is perhaps reprehensible that such mundane practical engineering projects were necessary to support the professor's flights of pure science. But that is the way of the world.

  When Barnett came down into the workshop a few days after his visit to Scotland Yard, he found Moriarty and old Potts working together on a new design of light-frame astronomical telescope, specially constructed to be carried high above the earth in a giant hydrogen balloon. The telescope was strapped into a great jig on the central table while Professor Moriarty, with his shirtsleeves rolled up, made final adjustments in a series of setscrews around the telescope's rim. Old Potts, with his lab smock wrapped around him, followed behind the professor and put little dabs of cement on each screw to lock it permanently in place.

  "Well, it looks as if you've got it just about finished, Professor," Barnett commented, strolling over to inspect the intricate, spidery mechanism that held the highly polished mirror.

  "It had better be," Moriarty said. "It lofts next week, if the weather on the moor stays clear."

  "You are going off to Crimpton Moor, then?" Barnett asked.

  Moriarty nodded. The estate he maintained on Crimpton Moor included a residence, a workshop, and an observatory housing his precious twelve-inch reflector. This was the site of most of his astronomical observations. "Prince Tseng Li-Chang is already in residence, preparing the balloon," he said. "His son claims to have perfected a new emulsion for the photographic plates that will more than double their sensitivity. If it performs as promised, we should get some fascinating pictures."

  "What do you expect to learn from these balloon experiments, Professor?" Barnett asked. "And please don't just fob me off with your usual reply that you're furthering human knowledge. I'm sure you are. But as an answer, you will have to admit it is rather vague."

  Moriarty snorted. "You, a journalist, are concerned about an answer being 'rather vague'? Truly the millennium has arrived."

  "I ask purely out of my own interest, Professor," Barnett assured him. "The great newspaper-reading public will not concern itself with staring at Mars unless it feels that something up there is staring back."

  Professor Moriarty made the final adjustment on the aluminum-bronze telescope mounting and put the tiny screwdriver back in its small case. He turned and regarded Barnett with interest. "Now that," he said, "is a truly fascinating notion!"

  "How's that?"

  "Ah, Benjamin, you know not what you say," Moriarty replied. "For some time I have been pondering ways to interest the common man in the abstruse sciences. You may have just given me a valuable suggestion: 'Something is staring back.' I like the sound of that! And, indeed, there is a good chance that something is staring back."

  "I assume that you are not speaking religiously, Professor," Barnett said.

  "Religiously? Indeed, no. Neither religiously nor metaphorically nor psychically nor figuratively. Somewhere out there, Mr. Barnett, there are intelligences greater than our own. How could it be else? And these beings might, even now, be watching us with the same diligence that a hymenopterologist studies a colony of ants. And for purposes as far beyond our understanding as the hymenopterologist's purposes are beyond the understanding of the ant."

  "You really believe this?"

  "I am forced to this conclusion by the inescapable logic of the universe," Moriarty said.

  "But intelligences superior to our own?"

  Moriarty smiled. "I am very afraid," he said, "th
at any intelligences we find—or who find us—will be superior to our own."

  "You speak as a confirmed atheist," Barnett said as he sat on the wooden bench running along the great worktable.

  Moriarty shrugged. "It is not that I disbelieve in God," he said, "it is merely that I see no need to drag some immortal being into the equation in order to explain the universe."

  Moriarty's housekeeper, Mrs. H, appeared on the landing leading down to the basement. "I trust you are ready with your drayage, Professor," she said, folding her arms across the severe bosom of her stiffly starched black dress. "The dray awaits."

  "Splendid," Mrs. H," Moriarty said, rolling his sleeves down and shrugging his arms back into his gray frock coat. "The instrument is ready, and the packing is prepared. It only remains to lower the telescope into the crate and nail it shut."

  Mrs. H sniffed. "I shall inform the drayman that you will be within the hour," she said.

  "I trust my instructions were followed?" Moriarty asked.

  "Implicitly, Professor," Mrs. H told him. "The dray is around the corner on Montague Street, by the hotel. Mr. Maws awaited its arrival."

  "Excellent!" Moriarty said. "Then this large crate, which will almost immediately contain the telescope, and these other five crates which are already nailed down, are to be taken out through the accommodation exit and loaded into the dray. Great care is to be taken; this is delicate apparatus."

  "I shall see to it, Professor."

  "I know you will, Mrs. H. You are a paragon of getting-it-done-properly. You run this household with an efficiency which amazes even me. It is a constant delight to be associated with you. Please send the Mummer down to me now."

  "Very well, Professor." Mrs. H nodded and withdrew.

  What Moriarty called the "accommodation exit" was a back way that led, through a twisting maze of alleys and two subtly concealed doors in separating walls, to the side entrance to the hotel on Montague Street. "Why are you going out that way, Professor?" Barnett asked. "Are you sneaking this equipment out?"

  "I never sneak," Moriarty said firmly. "Since my business is nobody else's affair, I fail to see how my effort to avoid prying eyes can be considered 'sneaking.' "

  "I take it back, Professor," Barnett said. "I wasn't aware that we had any prying eyes about. Whose eyes are they, and what are they trying to find out?"

  "A good question," Moriarty said, "and one deserving of a factual answer. At the moment I have only conjecture, but I expect— Ah! Perhaps we can find out now; here is the Mummer."

  "I didn't want to disturb you while you was at work down here, Professor," the little man said, bounding down the wooden staircase.

  "Thoughtful of you, Mummer," Moriarty said. "Did you succeed?"

  " 'Course I did, what do you think?" the Mummer said, looking offended.

  "With what result?"

  "I buzzed the tall gent what's been mucking about outside keeping the admiral company, and found a rozzer in his poke."

  "You see," Moriarty said, turning to Barnett. "It is as I suspected."

  "What is?" Barnett asked.

  "This house has been being watched for the past two days. Three men at least, at all times. Now Tolliver has picked the pocket of the tall gentleman who was loitering across the street by the statue of Lord Hornblower, and found a police badge in his wallet."

  " 'At's right," Tolliver agreed. " 'Oo says I didn't?"

  "This sudden interest in our doings corresponds with your visit to the CID," Moriarty told Barnett. "There may be some connection between that correspondence and the fact that Mr. Sherlock Holmes has been retained to assist the police in the matter of those murders that so fascinate you."

  "How do you know that?" Barnett asked. "Sherlock Holmes certainly didn't tell you. He doesn't seem to have a very high opinion of you."

  "Every time a purse is snatched anywhere in the greater London area, Holmes is certain that I am behind it," Moriarty said. "It gets tiresome."

  "How do you know that he is helping Scotland Yard solve the murders?"

  Moriarty chuckled. "I spoke to his landlady."

  "His landlady?"

  "Yes. Mrs. Hudson, by name. Charming lady. A bit deaf. I dressed myself as a nonconformist clergyman and went to Baker Street at a time I knew Holmes would be out. I told Mrs. Hudson that I needed the great man's services immediately. I was very put out that he wasn't at home. I told her I needed Holmes in relation to a case involving a politician, a lighthouse, and a trained cormorant. She told me that it was just the sort of thing that Mr. Holmes would be happy to take up, but that at the moment he was working with the police on the baffling murders of those aristocrats."

  "I see," Barnett said.

  "I told the charming lady how sorry I was to have missed Mr. Holmes, and that I was unable to wait. She begged me to stay, saying she was sure Holmes would want to talk with me. I said something to the effect that I thought so myself, but I really couldn't stay."

  Barnett shook his head. "There is a certain justice in all of this, you will have to admit," he said. "While you are out with a false beard questioning Sherlock Holmes's landlady, he is having your house watched by Scotland Yard."

  "There is indeed an elegant symmetry," Moriarty admitted. "But I assure you there was no false beard. Ecclesiastical muttonchops was as far as I went."

  The Mummer hopped down from the bench, where he had been examining the telescope. "Quite a pickle you've got there, Professor," he said. "Is there anything else you need of me?"

  Moriarty thought this over for a minute. "Yes," he said. "Go to that cupboard in the corner and open it up. Mr. Potts, please give the Mummer your key."

  Tolliver took the key from old Potts and skipped over to the corner. He opened the cabinet, and for a second Barnett felt his heart rap against his chest and he caught his breath. There, inside the cabinet, was Professor Moriarty!

  Barnett half turned to make sure that the professor was still, in reality, standing alongside of him, and then he approached the cabinet to figure out what he had just seen. It still, even from four feet away, appeared to be Moriarty closeted within the narrow confines of the small cabinet. He bent down to examine the apparition. "A dummy!" he exclaimed.

  "Indeed," Moriarty said. "It was made at my direction some time ago. Amberly, the forger, did the face of papier-mâché, with the coloring accomplished with stage makeup dissolved in wax. Do you think it is good? You are a better judge than I, as my face is seldom visible to me except reversed in a glass."

  "Good?" Barnett cried. "It is excellent! Remarkable!"

  "I am glad to hear that," Moriarty said. "Because for the next two weeks, that dummy will be me." He turned to old Potts. "Do you think you can make a frame for it that the Mummer can wear on his shoulders?"

  Old Potts looked reflectively at Tolliver and at the dummy. "Take a couple of hours," he said.

  "Excellent," Moriarty said. "Then I leave with my telescope. Mummer, you will be me while I am gone. Follow Barnett's suggestions in that regard. That should keep the hounds away from Crimpton Moor while I complete these observations."

  "I'll do my best, Professor," the Mummer said.

  Moriarty turned to Barnett. "I leave you in charge of such of my activities as come within your purview in my absence," he said. "Do not get overenthusiastic. I shall see you in a fortnight."

  "Goodbye, Professor," Barnett said. "Good luck!"

  "Indeed?" Moriarty said. "Let us hope that luck plays small part in either of our endeavors for the next two weeks. For if you invoke the good, you may have to settle for the other. Goodbye, Mr. Barnett."

  SEVEN — INTERLUDE: THE WIND

  Thou wilt not with predestined evil round Enmesh, and then impute my fall to sin!

  —Edward Fitzgerald

  By ten-thirty in the evening he was done with his day's work, which had been his life's work; the daily repetition that had been his life, and was now but a senseless blur that marked the passing time. At ten-thirty he would be
able to come to life; the new life that spread its endless days before him: days of seeking, days of hunting, days of revenge, days full of the infinite jest that had become his life, the jest that was death. At ten-thirty, with the sun safely down, the creature of the night that he had become could once more roam the streets of London and stalk its prey.

  But he had to hunt out the right streets, for his prey was subtle; stalk silently through the ever-changing streets, for his prey was wily. And his prey was clever, for they went about disguised as gentlemen; but he knew them for secret devils by the mark of Cain, the hidden mark of Cain they wore.