Death by Gaslight

by Michael Kurland

  “Well, if that is so,” Barnett asked, “then how secure is the code? If you found it this fast, why haven’t others?”

  “They have to know what to look for,” Moriarty said. “Even if someone should guess that it is a map coordinate code he would have to know what map to use.”

  “You did,” Barnett said.

  “I had a list of the effects of the murdered men,” Moriarty said. “Two of them had Jarvis & Braff maps close enough to their persons when killed to have them mentioned on the inventories.”

  “And the others didn’t?”

  “Presumably,” Moriarty said, “the others had their copies of the map in an unremarkable place—the library, perhaps, or the hall table. That being so, the existence of the map was not remarked. Really, Barnett, I should have thought that was obvious.”

  “What is obvious to you, Professor, is not necessarily obvious to others. If that were not so, you might be in my employ instead of I in yours.”

  Moriarty began to frown, and then chose to smile instead. “A touch, Barnett, a distinct touch,” he admitted.

  Barnett retrieved his coffee cup from under the map. “What did you find on Gage Street?” he asked. “And, incidentally, why didn’t you ask me to accompany you?”

  “This was for reconnoitering purposes only,” Moriarty said. “I knew the club was no longer there. The present whereabouts is indicated in the agony column of this past Wednesday’s Morning Chronicle. And you needed your sleep.” He laced his fingers together and stretched his arms out before him, palms forward. “I found the house almost immediately, despite the absence of the specified red light, because it, also, was still vacant. A lovely old manor house, set back on its own bit of land, surrounded by the ever-advancing squads of identical row houses. It was perfect for their purposes. Since the neighbors, in this case, could tell me nothing, I investigated the interior.”

  “You broke in?” Barnett asked. “For shame, Professor. That’s against the law.”

  “I broke nothing,” Moriarty insisted. “The front door was ajar, and so I walked in.”

  “There was, I assume, no one there,” Barnett said.

  “You assume correctly. The house was devoid of both inhabitants and furnishings. The only things I found to verify my theory were a pattern of screw and bolt holes in the floors, walls, and ceilings of certain of the rooms, suggestive of the apparatus that must have been fastened there. And this.” Moriarty reached in his pocket and removed a small bit of knotted leather, which he held in the palm of his hand. “I found this—this artifact—by chance, in a crack in the baseboard in one of the rooms.”

  Barnett took it and examined it closely. To his eye it was nothing but a short, stiff, discolored strand of leather, tied in a knot. “What does it do?” he asked.

  Moriarty took the object from Barnett’s hand. “I remember once reading a description by Admiral Sturdy of life in the old sailing navy,” he said, tossing the bit of leather from hand to hand like a magician about to do a conjuring trick. “He was a midshipman about the time of Nelson, and one of his clearest memories of that period was of the floggings he was forced to watch. The lash was tied with a little knot at the end to keep it from splitting. After each use—after some poor sailor had had his back laid open for some minor infraction—the ends of the lash were soaked in salt water to remove the blood. For if they allowed the blood to dry on, you see, the leather would get stiff; and the next time the lash was used, the tip, knot and all, might break off.”

  Barnett looked with sudden horror at the small leather knot. “You mean—”

  “Whoever used this,” said Moriarty, holding the tiny thing between thumb and forefinger, “didn’t know about the salt water.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  INTERLUDE: ECSTASY

  Did ye not hear it?—No; ’twas but the wind.

  GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

  He would get but one chance, and he must perform flawlessly to succeed, to live. But so it had been all his life, each escape more difficult, more critical than the last, each allowing no margin for error.

  The notion had come to him the night before, while wearing the devil’s mask and spying on the devil’s entertainments. The satisfying pattern that he had been following—the stalking, the confrontations, the deaths of these devil’s imps one by one—would no longer serve. It had filled his need, this singular obliteration, it had satisfied his soul. But ripping off the leaves would not kill the tree; he must strike deeper, and harder, and crush the root so that it could not spring to life again.

  The plan he evolved was simple, but the details required much thought and preparation. All through the night he had thought, and all morning he had prepared. Shortly after noon he was ready to proceed.

  It was almost one o’clock when he pulled up before the devil’s house in his rented wagon. He climbed down from the driver’s seat and carefully dusted off his green-and-brown-checked suit and meticulously adjusted his brown bowler before strutting up to the front door. With a conscious skill acquired over a lifetime of deluding people, both at stage distance and face to face, he had become the part he was playing. His face, indeed his entire character, wore an air of smugness that was proof against all casual inquiry.

  The door opened at his insistent pounding, revealing a tall, hawk-nosed man garbed as a butler, wearing the noncommittal, disinterested air of the well-trained household servant.

  This place has no need for such as a butler. It is clear that we are, the both of us, liars, he thought, glancing up cordially at the hawk-nosed man. But I am the better. “Afternoon,” he said, touching the brim of his bowler. “I take it this is 204 Upper Pondbury Crescent?”

  The hawk-nosed man thought the question over carefully before committing himself. “What if it is?” he asked finally.

  “Delivery.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the wagon. The man in the butler suit peered in that direction, reading the big, freshly painted sign hanging on the vehicle’s side. GAITSKILL & SON, it said, WINE MERCHANTS.

  “Brought ’em myself.” Taking off the bowler, he wiped his forehead with a large almost-white handkerchief. “I’m Gaitskill. Needed in a hurry, they told me, so I brought ’em right along. Regular carter off this week. Mother quite ill. Streatham, or some such place. Damned inconvenient time. Bertie’s on the Continent on a buying trip. That’s the son. So here I am. Where do you want ’em?”

  “What?” asked the hawk-nosed pseudo-butler.

  The pseudo-Gaitskill pulled out a sheaf of consignment orders and shuffled through them. “Here it is,” he said. “Twelve firkins of best claret. Where do you want ’em? My lad will help you take ’em in.” He indicated the gangly youth sitting with his legs dangling over the back gate of the wagon. “Hired lad. Not too bright, but willing. A cool spot is best.”

  “How’s that?” asked Hawk-nose. “Best for what?” A touch of confusion shaded his supercilious expression.

  “The claret,” Gaitskill explained impatiently. “Best in a cool spot. Keep for years that way. Decades. Best not moved around too much. Give each firkin a quarter turn every five years or so.”

  The hawk-nosed man stared at the two-foot-long casks neatly stacked in the rear of the wagon. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Wine cellar is best,” said the merchant. “As you might imagine from the name. Wine.”

  “I haven’t been informed about this,” the hawk-nosed man said.

  The man who was the wind shrugged a merchant’s shrug. “Someone forgot to tell you,” he said. “Makes no difference to me. I’ve been paid. I’ll take ’em away with me, or leave ’em here on the street, as you please. But I haven’t all day, you know. Suppose me and the lad just stack the firkins neatly like on the pavement? Then you and yours can do as you like with ’em—at your leisure.”

  “No—well—” He paused to consider, to weigh the possibilities for error against each other. Obviously his master was not there to consult. “The cellar, you say?�
�

  “Best place.” The wind nodded.

  “Well, come around back, then. There’s an entrance to the cellar around back. No need to go through the house.”

  “No need indeed,” the man who was the wind agreed, signaling to the lad he had hired to bring the first firkin around with him as they sought out the cellar door.

  In half an hour they were unloaded, and the small casks were neatly stacked on an old shelf in the stone cellar. “This should keep ’em cool,” the wine merchant told the butler. “I think your master will find that the vintage exceeds his expectations. Just let ’em settle for a day or so before you broach the first one.”

  “It’s good quality, then?” the butler asked.

  “Heavenly,” the merchant assured him. “Ta, now. I must be on my way.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  RESCUE

  Here lovely boys; what death forbids my life,

  That let your lives command in spite of death.

  CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

  The rain began again in late afternoon, a cold rain falling through the gusts of a chill spring wind. By sunset it had fallen steadily for several hours, and promised to continue indefinitely. The overhanging clouds shut out what remained of the twilight, prematurely darkening the sky. The bay cob, for whom the rain was but one more indignity, plodded stolidly through the puddled streets, and the four-wheeler bounced and lurched behind. Barnett hunched forward in his damp leather-covered seat and stared through the mist-covered window at the shifting murky shadows of the passing scene: buildings, pavement, lamp poles, pillar boxes, occasional people scurrying to get out of the rain. It all had an unreal quality, as though it possessed no separate existence, but had been placed there, as a stage set might be, at the whim of some godlike director.

  Barnett felt himself caught up in this world of unreality; for some reason he could not understand, he felt curiously divorced from himself, from where he was and what he was doing. He shook his head sharply to try to drive away the mental fog and turned to Professor Moriarty. “How much longer?” he asked.

  Moriarty glanced outside for a moment, getting his bearings. “Ten more minutes should see us there,” he said. “A bit early for our needs, I’m afraid. We may have to skulk in some doorway for a bit.”

  “I don’t know if I can tolerate waiting once we’re in sight of the house,” Barnett said. “I feel as though I’ve already been waiting for centuries. Besides, I don’t like to think of what might be happening inside that house while we are outside waiting.”

  “Practice patience,” Moriarty instructed. “It is the one virtue that will stand you in good stead in almost any circumstance. In this case, it is essential. If we burst in before the time is ready, we will most assuredly do more harm than good. God only knows what these good citizens and accomplished clubmen we are planning to visit might do in a panic.”

  “I thought you were an atheist,” Barnett commented.

  “I am also a pragmatist,” Moriarty said. “Therefore, what we must do is insinuate ourselves amongst them, and, at the propitious moment, effect a rescue of Miss Perrine.”

  “If she’s there,” Barnett said. He suddenly found that he was biting his lower lip, and consciously restrained himself.

  “If she is not there,” said Moriarty grimly, “we shall cause one of the gentlemen who is there to desire very strongly to tell us just where she is! You have my word, Barnett, before this night is out we shall have located and repatriated your lady.”

  “I pray that is so,” Barnett said. “This is the fourth day she’s been in their hands. It is not pleasant to contemplate what might have happened to her by now.”

  Moriarty looked at him. “That is self-defeating,” he said. “Whatever has happened to Miss Perrine has already happened; there is nothing you can do to change it. And whatever it is, you must not blame her or yourself for it. You must accept it and go on.”

  “Are you saying one should do nothing about what is past?” Barnett asked.

  “One can learn from the past,” Moriarty said. Then, after a pause, he added softly, “Vengeance, occasionally, is acceptable.”

  A few minutes later the four-wheeler pulled to a stop, and the jarvey opened the tiny communicating hatch on the roof, cascading a small puddle of water onto the seat next to Barnett. “We’re ’ere, Professor, just like you said,” he yelled down. “Right around the corner from the ’ouse in question.”

  “Very good, Dermot,” the professor replied. “Are any of our people in evidence?”

  The jarvey put his ear to the small hole in order to hear the professor’s question over the wind. “There’s a couple of individuals what are loitering in doorways on the next block,” he replied. “But as to ’oo they are, I can’t rightly say from this distance, what with the inclement weather and all.”

  “Well, let’s go see what we can see,” Moriarty said, nodding to Barnett. “Wait here, Dermot. You might as well get inside the carriage and keep warm and dry until you are needed.”

  “Too late,” Dermot yelled down, and he slid the hatch closed.

  Barnett followed Moriarty across the street in front of them, which he noted from the corner sign was Upper Pondbury Crescent. The street, bordered by orderly rows of well-spaced houses, set comfortably back from the pavement, went off in either direction with only the slightest hint of a curve. “What do you suppose,” Barnett asked the professor, “makes this a crescent?”

  Moriarty glanced at his associate. “The vagaries of Lord Pondbury’s business manager,” he suggested. “A fondness for the term ‘crescent’ when he turned his lordship’s private game preserve into sixty-five unattached town houses.”

  Mummer Tolliver appeared from behind a hedge and came trotting over. “Morning, chum,” he said, nodding at Barnett. “Morning, Professor. That’s the house over there.” He pointed across the street at a house about halfway up the block. “The one with the chest-high stone wall running along the walk to the front door.”

  “Chest-high?” Barnett asked, peering through the gloom at the house Tolliver indicated.

  The Mummer glared at him. “My chest,” he explained. “Your arse.”

  Barnett looked down at the little man. “Don’t be coarse,” he said. “And what do you mean, ‘morning’? It happens to be eight in the evening. Ten after, as a matter of fact.”

  “I ’ere tell as ’ow it’s morning somewhere,” the Mummer said coldly, dropping his aitches for emphasis. “Don’t you know no science whatsoever?”

  “Save your horological repartee for another time, Mummer,” Moriarty said, staring suspiciously at the house across the street. “Are you certain that’s the right place?”

  “That is the place, Professor, no mistake,” the Mummer said.

  “Did you find a green cross?” Moriarty demanded. “That is the identification in this month’s advertisement—a green cross,” he explained to Barnett.

  “There’s a Maltese cross done in green glass set into the front window to the right of the door,” the Mummer said. “You know, like them windows in a church.”

  “Stained glass?” Barnett suggested.

  “You’ve got it,” the Mummer agreed. “It shows up real good when you’re right in front of it, ’cause of the light behind it; but you can’t hardly see it from either side ’cause the window’s inset quite a bit.”

  “Very good,” Moriarty said. “This must, indeed, be the right place. Has there been much traffic while you’ve been watching?”

  “Very little in-and-out,” Tolliver said. “A cluster of gents went in shortly after I set myself and the other lads up here—that would be about six o’clock. Shortly after it started raining. Six in since then, and two out. They left together in a trap. And, o’course, one strange event.”

  “What’s that?”

  Tolliver led Moriarty and Barnett a few houses down from where they were standing and pointed out a bicycle which had been well concealed in the shrubbery to the side of the house. “
A gent came pedaling up on this contraption and discarded it here, carefully out-of-sight like. Then he went over to the house what we’re watching and immediately snuck off around the corner of the house. I can’t say whether he went inside or not, but he didn’t use the front door. That were about ten or fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Come now, that’s fascinating!” Moriarty exclaimed.

  “I would have merely assumed it was a servant, perhaps being a bit secretive on account of being late for work, feeling the necessity of using the back door,” the Mummer said, “were it not for the peculiar circumstance of this here bicycle.”

  “That is, indeed, a peculiar circumstance,” Moriarty agreed. “What do you make of it, Barnett?”

  “You’ve got me,” Barnett said. “Someone else watching the house?”

  “Perhaps,” Moriarty said. “But he must be myopic, indeed, to need to watch it from so intimate a distance. How many more of our people have we here, Mummer?”

  “Fourteen, at present,” Tolliver said. “Scattered up and down the street in places of concealment.”

  “Good, good,” Moriarty said. “That should suffice. Now let us settle ourselves down and try to remain comparatively dry. The, ah, membership should start arriving any time now. Mummer, do you think you can insinuate yourself close enough to that door to enable you to get a good view? I want to know what the entrance procedure is.”

  “One of the few advantages of being small,” Tolliver said. “I can hide in half the space it would take a person of standard stature. I’ll give ’er a try.”

  “Good lad, Mummer,” Moriarty said, patting him on the back. “Remember, discretion is the watchword. It is more important for you not to be seen than for you to see every detail.”

  “Don’t worry, Professor,” the Mummer said cheerfully. “I may be seen, but I won’t be caught. And they won’t nary suspect nothing, either. Here, watch this!” Tolliver shrugged his coat off and twisted his jacket around. Then, taking the dripping-wet bowler hat off his head, he removed a cloth cap from its inner recesses. He put the cap on and pulled it tightly down around his ears. Slouching and throwing his shoulders forward, he tilted his head a bit to the side, and allowed an innocent expression to wipe the usual sly grin off his face.