The Return of Moriarty Read online

  “Here. Quickly, Professor,” Harkness called, and the next moment he was in the cab with the driver whipping up the horses just as another shot ripped into the woodwork.

  Crow and Tanner had followed Moriarty through the window, and indeed it was Crow who loosed off the final shot at the fast-departing cab. Now he was running for the police carriage, shouting at the driver to turn the horses and get after the hansom.

  Harkness peered through the heavy rain and murk that surrounded them, urging the horse forward with his whip. For him this was the most difficult part; the roads outside the boundaries of the estate he knew backward, having spent the whole week driving them night and day. Soaked to the bone, he hunched forward on his seat, watching for the gates ahead.

  They came up quickly through the film of water, the porter running into the drive waving his arms, but Harkness flicked the whip over his horse’s flanks and drove on so that the porter had to leap for his life. Behind him, Harkness heard a shot—the Professor potting hopefully at the sprawled porter.

  Then they were out, turning and rumbling off toward Dersingham, eating up the road, with the wind and rain stinging the driver’s face, roaring in his ears above the rattle of the cab and the metal hoofbeats of the horse.

  The gatehouse porter was lying, drenched, beside the drive, part of his shoulder ripped away by the Professor’s parting shot. But he was conscious enough to cry that the cab had taken the Dersingham road. Crow swore, shouting to him that there’d be others along in a moment.

  The police driver called back that he did not think much of their chances on a black and wet night like this. But Crow, infuriated with failure, screamed at him to go on.

  An hour or so later, going around in circles, riding back and forth through Dersingham and along the surrounding roads he knew it was no good. Tomorrow they would mount some kind of a search for the cab but Crow knew it would be useless. It was at this moment, standing by the side of the road, his clothes sticking to his body, hair plastered over his head and down his face, that Inspector Angus McCready Crow dedicated his life’s work to the capture, imprisonment, and final execution of Professor James Moriarty, or any man who lived under that name.

  At Dersingham they turned left, heading toward the sea. After a mile or so Harkness slowed, in order to cross the Hunstanton Railway at Dersingham station. It was a mile further on that they saw the light, held swinging by the roadside.

  Ember came out of the darkness, holding the lamp high.

  “You’re all right, Professor?” he shouted through the wind and rain.

  Moriarty swore, stepping down from the cab and wrapping around him the cloak Harkness had placed in the back of the cab.

  “Did you—” started Ember.

  “Crow,” spat Moriarty. “Crow, by heaven. He was onto me.”

  “We got away though,” chimed Harkness with relish.

  “Aye, we did. But I’ll be back.”

  Ember clutched at Moriarty’s arm.

  “We must go quickly. They’ll not wait forever. It’s nearly two miles, and heavy going at that.”

  Moriarty nodded, raising his hand in farewell to Harkness as Ember lifted the lamp and began the long trudge, guiding his master across the sand and mud flats to where the dinghy waited at the entrance between Wolferton Creek and the Inner Roads.

  Snug in their bed in the small tavern some three miles out of Leamington Spa, Fanny Paget smiled in her sleep, rolled over and threw an arm across her husband’s chest.

  Tomorrow, she thought dimly within sleep. Tomorrow we can look for work. The new life is here, and we are free.

  Saturday, April 28, 1894

  (THE SECOND EXILE)

  MORIARTY GAZED OUT on the shoreline as it receded into the morning mist. They had followed the coast through the early hours, hugging it and making good use of the stiff breeze, wallowing a little from the heavy swell. Now, Le Conflit, an old French-built fishing smack that Grisombre had sent for him was pointing her bows toward home. For Moriarty it meant safety.

  Ember had been sick from the moment they had got into the dinghy to row out to Le Conflit, and was now propped, green, in one corner of the wheelhouse. Moriarty drew his eyes back from the dipping shoreline and smiled. In a few hours he would be in Belgium. Tomorrow Paris, next week Marseilles and a boat to America. He glanced back again. It would not be long before he would return.

  He thought of the house and estate in Berkshire. Spear would be just waking, next to his Bridget. Today he would doubtless make arrangements for the cash carriers to pay their money to some house in London, convenient for it to be brought down to the country. With Parker gone there would have to be much rearranging among the lurkers; one of the Jacobs boys would perhaps take Parker’s place. The lurkers would become more important now that the headquarters was moved out of London.

  He felt a twinge of annoyance at last night’s failure. But something like that would not go against him. If anything, the attempt would only serve to show him to good advantage—for who else but Moriarty could have walked into Sandringham and out again, with the police baying at his heels. He thought about that for a moment, wondering in passing what had become of Mary McNiel. She would live. Girls like Mary McNiel always survived.

  In London they would be waking up also, the markets setting up stalls for Saturday’s trading—in Lambeth and the Elephant and Castle; Petticoat Lane, Berwick Street and out at Shepherd’s Bush. The costermongers would be carting their wares about, and the more fashionable shops—the drapers, grocers, haberdashers, tailors and dressmakers—taking down their shutters. The whores would still be sleeping, their turn to come at evening; and the public houses, taverns and inns would already be alive with people.

  The dippers would be at it by now, and the macers and bullies: his dippers, his macers, his bullies.

  Moriarty laughed aloud, for as he thought of all this trade and work beginning, he also reflected how, at some point during the day, pairs of hard young men—one of them always carrying a black bag—would pass among these people, stopping at stalls, in shops and restaurants, public houses and thieves’ kitchens. They would smile quietly at the proprietors and stall holders, or at the whores’ cash carriers, and say wherever they went, “We’ve come for the Professor’s contribution.”

  Better still, it was not just happening in London, but also in other cities—among tradesfolk and criminals alike—in Manchester and Liverpool, Birmingham, Newcastle, Leeds, and soon further still, in Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Rome, Naples, Milan, Berlin, Hamburg, right across the Continent—and maybe further, even to the new world of America.

  As the spray came up over the ploughing bows of Le Conflit, Moriarty felt truly master of his world. For the fine mist that spread about the ship seemed to carry with it those words of comfort—“We’ve come. Come for the Professor’s contribution.”

  Glossary

  abbess female brothel keeper

  alderman a half crown

  barkers, barking irons pistols, revolvers

  blow, blower inform, informant

  bludger violent criminal, apt to use a

  bludgeon

  broadsman a card sharper: hence, broading

  buttoner decoy

  cash carrier ponce, or whore’s minder

  caper a criminal act, dodge or device

  candle to the devil,

  to hold a to be evil

  Chapel, the Whitechapel

  chaunting singing: more explicitly, criminal

  informing, or exposing

  chiv knife

  cracksman burglar, safecracker

  crooked cross,

  to play the betray, swindle, cheat

  crow a lookout

  devil’s claws the broad arrows on a convict’s

  uniform

  don a distinguished (expert, clever)

  person; a leader

  dollymop a whore—often an amateur or

  part-time street girl

  drum

 
; dipper

  duffer a building, house or lodging

  pickpocket

  a seller of supposed stolen goods

  esclop policeman: backslang. The c is not

  pronounced, and the e is often

  omitted

  family, the the criminal underworld

  fawney

  fawney-dropping a ring

  a ruse whereby the villain pretends

  to find a ring (which is worthless)

  and sells it as a possibly valuable

  article at a low price

  flash vulgar, showy, criminal

  gen a shilling

  glim, to catch the venereal disease

  gonoph minor thief, small-time criminal

  gulpy easily duped

  hammered for life

  holy water sprinkler

  Huntley, to take the to be married

  a cudgel spiked with nails

  take the cake, or biscuit: to be most

  excellent (Huntley & Palmers

  Biscuits)

  irons See barking irons

  kinchen-lay

  know life stealing from children

  knowledgeable of criminal ways

  lackin

  ladybird

  Laycock, Miss

  lurker wife

  a whore

  female sexual organs

  criminal man of all work, especially

  a beggar, or one who uses a

  beggar’s disguise

  lushery, lushing ken low public house or drinking den

  macer a cheat

  magsman an inferior cheat

  mandrake a homosexual

  mobsman a swindler, pickpocket, usually well

  dressed and originally of the Swell

  Mob (early nineteenth-century

  high-grade thieves and

  pickpockets)

  monkery the country

  mollisher a woman, often a villain’s mistress

  mutcher a thief who steals from drunks

  nibbed arrested

  Nebuchadnezzar the male sexual organs. Hence: put

  Nebuchadnezzar out to grass, to have

  sexual intercourse

  netherskens low lodging houses

  nickey simple (in the head)

  nobblers those who nobble, i.e., criminals

  used for the express purpose of

  inflicting grievous bodily harm

  palmers shoplifters

  pig policeman, usually a detective

  punishers superior nobblers, men employed to

  inflict severe beatings

  racket illicit criminal occupations and tricks

  rampsman, rampers a tearaway, hoodlum

  ream superior, good: as in ream swag,

  highly valued stolen property

  Rothschild, to come

  the to brag and pretend to be rich

  salt box the condemned cell

  St. Peter’s needle severe discipline

  sharp a (card) swindler

  servants lurk lodging or public house used by

  shady, or dismissed, servants

  shirkster a layabout

  shofulman a coiner

  snakesman slightly built (boy) criminal used in

  burglary and housebreaking

  sweeteners decoys used by street traders and

  swindlers to push prices up or be

  seen to win

  toffer a superior whore

  toolers pickpockets

  trasseno an evil person

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1974 by John Gardner

  Introduction copyright © 2012 by Otto Penzler

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  This 2012 edition distributed by Open Road Integrated Media

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