The Return of Moriarty Read online

  Mary McNiel arrived as he was closing the briefcase.

  “Is it true?” she asked. “True we’re leaving?”

  The Professor nodded. “We’re all leaving. And, Mary, my dear, you and I have particular things to do.”

  He faced her, holding her eyes in his in that strange mesmeric way he had, as though the whole of his strength and will were pouring from his mind into hers.

  “In the next few days you will be witness to many strange things. I shall call upon you to perform certain actions you might not wholly understand. But I need your loyalty, Mary, and your promise that whatever occurs, you will obey me instantly and without question.”

  Mary felt lightheaded, as though she were about to swoon, yet most aware of the importance of what the Professor was saying. Her will seemed hardly her own, and there was no resisting her master.

  “I shall do whatever you ask,” she said firmly.

  “Good, then go down and get Harkness to bring the cab to the front. We go within the next five and twenty minutes.”

  Moriarty stood for a short while at the window, then turned to look around the room. It was frustrating to think that circumstances forced him to leave all this, but needs must. There would be other places, as well out of sight as the warehouse—maybe even better. He shrugged into his greatcoat, picked up his briefcase, jammed his hat on his head and walked with purpose from the room.

  Sunday, April 22, to Friday, April 27, 1894

  (THE REALMS OF NIGHT)

  “IT’S ALL A risk.” Paget looked thoughtfully into his mug of ale. “Everything we do—now we have left the warehouse—is a risk; so I have to do my best to see the Professor is as inconvenienced as possible—to hamper any search for us. If I can do that without bringing any harm to him, more the better.”

  “But then what?” Fanny looked close to crying.

  They sat, close together in the corner of the refreshment rooms at the Great Western Station at Paddington, their eyes constantly moving and searching for any of Parker’s lurkers who might be about.

  “Then,” said Paget, “we take the railway to the Midlands. Not a city, Fan. If we hid in a city he’d find us, sure as eggs are bloody eggs. But you know the country. I mean you know Warwickshire—”

  “I can’t go home, not now. You know that.”

  “No, not home, but somewhere in the country. Fanny, my love, I’ve three hundred pound in my pocket that’ll keep us going for a while. We’ll put up at some inn, out of the way, where neither the bobbies nor the Professor would ever think of looking. It’ll give us time, and time’s what we need.” He looked at her hard, a loving and almost foolish smile crossing his face. “Fanny, I’ve done it for you, girl. You didn’t want to stay chained there for the rest of our lives, did you?”

  She sighed, a shallow breath. “No, Pip. Lord, you know I didn’t want to stay there a minute longer.” She put out her hand, covering his. “But, Pip, if anything happened now when you—”

  “Nothing’ll happen. You just get us tickets to … where? Where’s a good place that you know?”

  “Warwick? Or there’s Leamington Spa—Royal Leamington Spa. There’s plenty of villages around there with inns, and there’d be work.”

  “Then get us tickets to Royal Leamington Spa, my girl. Just wait here. Look.” He pushed the Brighton bag toward her with his foot. “Everything’s in there. Everything we have, including my three hundred pound. If I’m not back by four o’clock, take it and go to Leamington.”

  “But if you get held up? If you’re late?”

  “If I’m not here by four o’clock, then you go without me, Fan. But I’ll be back before then. Long before then.”

  At least he hoped he would be. Just as he prayed none of Parker’s men were already hunting. Getting away into the country was really the only hope they had, and a good distance from Steventon also, where Moriarty had the other house. There was nowhere Paget dared take Fanny in London; nobody he could even think of trusting. It was a case of going it alone and trying to put pressure on the Professor—at least enough to keep his head down until he and Fanny were clear. If it worked, then he reckoned a year would see them in a new life, settled and comfortable. He’d grow a beard, that would help, and they’d try and dodge all the old things. Time would inevitably cool the trail. In a year or so they would be safe.

  But now it was a case of remaining safe for another few hours. Putting his head deep inside the lion’s mouth before leaving London.

  Paget took a hansom to Scotland Yard, screwing his courage to the limit and asking the cabbie to wait while he strode over to the porter’s window, looking for all the world as if he had every right to walk into the place and give orders.

  “Inspector Crow.” Paget sounded urgent, as though authority were on his side—a ruse learned from watching the Professor in action.

  The sergeant at the desk looked at him, suspicion grained into every line of his face through years of dealing with dubious characters.

  “He won’t be in today.” The sergeant had a surly voice, as though he resented having to work on Sunday. “You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

  “I can’t do that. This is an urgent matter; family business, I’ve traveled all night to get here.”

  “Well, he’s not in today.”

  “Where can I find him? Any ideas?”

  The sergeant looked him up and down, still uncertain. “Urgent, you say?”

  “Greatly so. Matter of life and death.” It was as well, thought Paget.

  The sergeant turned away to consult a ledger. “Well …” His frown was deep. “I’d rather you didn’t tell him I said so, but you might find him at his lodgings: number sixty-three King Street. What did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t, but I’m his cousin, Albert Rookes. With an E.”

  “Oh! Well, that would be all right, I’m sure, sir. You try sixty-three King Street.”

  It was a full ten minutes before the sergeant began to wonder about Inspector Crow’s cousin being called Rookes, with an E.

  “I’ll pay you what I owe you now, and give you five shillings besides, if you’ll wait,” Paget told the cabbie when they pulled up in front of 63 King Street. “I have to take a message from here, so you’ll have to drive like the devil when I come out. There’ll be another five shillings in it.”

  The cabbie nodded, touching his hat. “I’ll be here, guv’nor.”

  Paget descended from the cab and walked cleanly up to the door of Crow’s lodgings. He put one hand inside his coat, wrapping his fingers around the butt of his revolver. With the other hand he pulled the bell.

  Harkness drove Moriarty and Mary McNiel to a public house off Leicester Square that opened on Sundays and served roast luncheons. They ate in silence—beef and potatoes—Moriarty pausing to talk only when the food was cleared. He gave Mary a few simple yet precise instructions. Then, once the account was settled, took her outside, ordering Harkness to drive to the Alhambra, where he was already half an hour late for his daily appointment with Dr. Night.

  The stage-door keeper, who appeared to live on the premises and had got to know the Professor well during the last few days, gave them a cheery smile.

  “He’s waiting for you up on the stage, sir. You’ve the run of the place this afternoon. Nobody else here on a Sunday.”

  Night, or Wotherspoon, or whatever else he wished to call himself, was on stage with the plump Rosie, who looked peeved at having to come in from her lodgings in Clapham on a Sunday afternoon. Moriarty noted the look and wondered at the ways of a woman who was quite willing to take the extra money Dr. Night was paying her, yet obviously begrudged the time she had to give for it.

  Things had fallen out well though. Moriarty had not intended to put this part of his plan into action much before Thursday evening, but the change in matters made the moves essential now. Moriarty smiled. At least he would be able to disappear from police and public alike without a trace. A truly magical feat.

  �
�Ah, there you are, there you are.” Wotherspoon came forward with outstretched hand.

  “I am sorry we have been delayed,” Moriarty said pompously. “Business, even on a Sunday, you know, always business.”

  “And a lady as well.” Wotherspoon raised an eyebrow, not quite happy about Mary McNiel’s presence.

  “Mary Malloney, my private secretary,” Moriarty said, quite unconcerned by Wotherspoon’s attitude. “I wanted to show off to somebody and thought she’d make a perfect audience.”

  Wotherspoon softened. “Of course, of course. You’ve let her into our little secret then?”

  “Naturally. She is my private secretary.”

  “Well …” The magician rubbed his hands. “Well, my dear, your employer is very good, an apt pupil. Do you know that he can perform my act nearly as well as I can do it myself.”

  “Not the new one though.” Moriarty indicated the two slim, almost coffinlike boxes that stood upended on the stage.

  “Ah, well.” Wotherspoon tapped his nose with a long forefinger. “I’m not sure that I can do that yet. Rosie and I have just been rehearsing it. I’m saving it for when we start at one of your halls.” He beamed, and then addressed Mary. “It will be most spectacular, my dear.” He became conspiratorial. “We shall get members of the audience to come up on the stage and examine the boxes—I call them the Transmogrification Cabinets. Then Rosie is placed in the one on the right, and it is roped up and tied. I am put into the one on the left, which is treated in a similar manner. The audience count to five after I have knocked on the inside of my box. Then the cabinets are untied and opened. I appear from the one in which Rosie was placed, and she steps from mine. What do you think of that?”

  “Amazing!” gasped Mary. “How’s it done?”

  “Ha! That would be telling. I’ll say one thing though, nobody could possibly get out of one of those boxes while the ropes are around it.”

  “Good gracious!”

  Moriarty shushed her. Mary was overacting. “I wonder if Rosie could, perhaps, take Miss Malloney to … er … to wash her hands, while we talk for a moment. In private.” He looked hard at Mary and then back at Wotherspoon.

  “Of course.” Wotherspoon smiled nervously, his dark beard twitching. “Rosie, show the lady up to your dressing room.”

  When they had gone, Moriarty sat down on a wooden stand chair that was part of Dr. Night’s equipment.

  “You must be getting most excited about Friday,” he said amiably.

  “Yes, yes indeed. Getting stage fright, if you want to know—something I’ve never suffered from in my life.”

  “Do they take you down on a special train or anything?”

  “Oh my, do they not. They’ve got another act to replace me here for Friday night—the Elliotts and Savonas musical act. Perhaps you’ve heard of them?”

  Moriarty nodded. Heard of them? He had employed them at one of his own music halls.

  “I have to be here, with all my apparatus at the stage door, for three o’clock. Special coaches to Shoreditch and then a train down to Wolferton. There’ll be an equerry traveling with us.”

  He made it sound very grand, and it was all Moriarty needed to know.

  The stage curtain was down and nobody else in the vicinity, but for the stage-door keeper. Dr. Night’s time had come.

  “I was practicing that cut-and-restored-rope trick you showed me yesterday.” Moriarty rose, quiet and slow—there was no sense in causing alarm. “I don’t think I’ve got the moves quite right. I wonder if you could show me again before the girls come back.”

  “Yes, of course. There is a knack to it.” Wotherspoon went over to one of his many tables. “Here, you take one piece of rope and follow the moves as I do them with this one.”

  He tossed a three-foot length of soft rope to Moriarty and began to walk toward him. When he was only a couple of paces away, Moriarty pointed across the room.

  “Is that cabinet all right?” He sounded concerned.

  Wotherspoon turned. Quicker than any magician, Moriarty lifted his hands. The rope was grasped tightly in each, passing around the fists, while the wrists were crossed.

  The noose fell, exact, over Dr. Night’s head, and Moriarty pulled outward and hard. He had learned the garrotte long ago.

  The magician gave one low gurgle, like an airlock clearing in a water tap, his hands scrabbling at the curtailing rope, legs threshing, his whole body heaving, but it took no more than a minute before he went limp, dropping to the floor like a pile of clothes put out for the rag-and-bone man.

  Moriarty, breathing hard from the exertion, rested for a moment before walking slowly to one of the Transmogrification Cabinets and opening the lid.

  He dragged the body across the stage and pushed it, all of a heap, into the cabinet, reaching in to clear out the keys, watch and wallet from the pockets before shutting the door. It took some five or six minutes to rope and secure the cabinet. Dr. Night was correct when he said nobody could get out once the box was roped. He won’t anyway, thought the Professor.

  He was sorry about the girl but there was no other way the matter could be accomplished, and he consoled himself with the thought that she was running to fat, would have been out of a job soon anyway, and appeared to have a vulgar streak.

  “There ain’t half a pong down here,” she said when she returned with Mary. “Where’s the great doctor?”

  “In the cabinet,” smiled Moriarty. “He wants you in the other one.”

  When it was all done, Moriarty dragged both cabinets into the wings, piling them against a convenient wall. He then took a pair of large labels from among Wotherspoon’s effects, spent a few moments writing in plain capitals, and affixed one to each cabinet. They read:

  DR NIGHT. ILLUSIONIST AND

  PRESTIDIGITATOR EXTRAORDINARY

  NOT WANTED AT SANDRINGHAM.

  Moriarty had no doubt that Mary was truly frightened, but his mesmeric influence was still upon her, and there would be ample time to reinforce it during the days ahead. In the meantime she helped him pile Dr. Night’s equipment in its usual position off stage. Moriarty had an eye for detail, and during the previous week he had made certain of the correct manner in which the magician kept his apparatus.

  Once it was done, Moriarty led the girl up to Wotherspoon’s dressing room. He was approaching the most difficult phase.

  On the previous afternoon, the Professor had espied one of Wotherspoon’s atrocious check suits hanging in the dressing room. It was still there and with Mary’s help Moriarty changed. As he had guessed, they were about the same size, and although the effect was far from immaculate, there were no unseemly bags or bulges. He then opened his briefcase, removed the disguise material, and sat down in front of the mirror to complete the already much-practiced transformation.

  It took a little less than half an hour, and when he was finished, Moriarty turned to face Mary.

  “I can hardly believe—”

  “You have to believe it.” He spoke sharply. “From now on you have to believe that I am Dr. Night. You understand?”

  She nodded meekly.

  “Good. And you know what to do next?”

  “I know.”

  “Then go to it.”

  Mary left the dressing room, passing down toward the stage door. The keeper did not seem to be about, but she waited for a moment before leaving quickly to join Harkness in Leicester Square, whence they drove to an appointed rendezvous.

  Moriarty allowed another half hour to elapse before following her, but this time he paused at the stage door—it was the first test of his disguise.

  The old keeper was there, sitting in his cubbyhole, all snug with a cup of tea and a pipe.

  “Anyone using the stage in the morning?” Moriarty inquired.

  “Not so far as I know, Mr. Wotherspoon.” The old boy hardly looked up.

  “Well, will you tell the stage manager I may need to use it all day,” he said sharply. “I’ll be rehearsing a new girl.�
�

  “New girl?” This time he did look up. “What’s happened to our Rosie?”

  “Didn’t she tell you before she left?”

  “Haven’t seen her.”

  “Well, you won’t now. I’ve had to fire her. Getting a bit above her station, that one.”

  The keeper nodded his head. “I had noticed, so I’m not surprised. Right, I’ll tell him. You got anyone in mind?”

  “A girl that’s worked for me before. I’ll have her in temporary anyway.”

  Moriarty walked casually through the stage door. He felt safer now—a new man almost.

  Mrs. Sylvia Cowles opened the door.

  “Inspector Crow?” asked Paget, smiling comfortably while inside he trembled, aspenlike.

  “Who wishes to see him?”

  “Inspector Crow, is he in?” he repeated.

  “He is in, but who wishes to see him?”

  “Me.”

  Paget drew the revolver: a movement of the hand and wrist only, no flamboyance or dramatics as he stepped inside, Mrs. Cowles backing away, her mouth gaping open and eyes screwed up as though the scream she wanted to let loose had actually broken from her vocal chords.

  Paget kicked the door closed behind him. Now he could afford to menace.

  “Where is he? No shouting or you’ll get this in your pretty belly.”

  Her mouth opened wider; she swallowed, closed the lips again, then gaped once more.

  “Come on, come on,” Paget said gruffly.

  She was not to know that the last thing he would have done was pull the trigger. She kept looking to her left, toward the second door along the passage.

  “In there, is he?”

  The look in Mrs. Cowles’ eyes told Paget the truth. He prodded the unhappy lady with the barrel of his revolver, easing her forward and into the room.

  Crow was sitting in an easy chair, turning the pages of some catalogue—for the couple were in the process of choosing items for the refurbishing of their home: garnering for domestic bliss.

  Paget had to admit the copper was a cool one. He turned, almost lazily, taking in the situation at a glance, his eyes resting first on the revolver and then on Paget.