The Return of Moriarty Page 5

  “Colonel,” the young prig had said, “I would rather not believe it, but now I have proof.” He held out the piece of cork fitted with the “shiner,” which had fallen from Moran’s pipe. “I may be young and inexperienced in some of the ways of the world, but I know what this is. In Australia we have firsthand knowledge of this kind of thing. I know a “shiner” when I see one. You are a cheat, sir, and, as I have been playing with you, and winning with you, I am implicated.”

  Moran had stayed silent, it was better to let the young fool get it out of his system.

  “I can only presume, sir,” Adair had continued, “that some pressing and personal difficulty has forced you into this distressing, ungentlemanly and dishonorable act. I will not precipitate matters. You may rest easy on that score, but I cannot stay silent forever. There is, as I see it, only one course of action open to you. You must remove yourself from the temptation of resorting to this behavior again, by which I mean you will have to resign from all your clubs. A week should be more than ample time for that. I would ask you, therefore, to give me evidence of your various resignations within the week. If you have not done so in that time, then I will be forced to go at least to the secretary of this club and present him with the evidence, no matter what scandal it may bring upon me.”

  Moran knew the puppy was fool enough to do it. Two days later he set out for Adair’s temporary home at 427 Park Lane, equipped as he was now, with the air gun and the box of soft-nosed bullets that were the weapon’s deadly projectiles. While there was murder in his heart and mind, he had, on that occasion, no firm plan, as he had now. It was only when he arrived opposite the Park Lane house and saw that young Adair’s window was open and the man actually in his room, visible from the street, that Moran quickly made his plan, slipped into the shadow of a convenient doorway, put the weapon together, pumped in the air, loaded it with one bullet, stepped into the street again, took fast and careful aim and noiselessly fired the fatal shot.

  This business, now, was of a different mettle: calculated, cold and performed with unswerving malice. The weapon was ready, locked together, the small hand pump providing the necessary pressure of 500 pounds per square inch, and the soft bullet loaded into the breach. Moran still did not take his eyes from the quarry in the room across the street, conscious that this was possibly the most important shot of his entire life.

  The black outline of Moran’s target against the yellow blind was aligned with the foresight and the V of the back-sight, the skeletal butt firm against his shoulder, the chill of its cold metal against the colonel’s cheek.

  Slowly his hand tightened as his finger squeezed the trigger. With no kick or jerk, only a slight popping sound, the air gun fired. Moran was conscious of the tinkle of glass as the bullet penetrated the window across the street.

  Then all hell and chaos broke out in the dark room.*

  Moriarty’s face was gray. He had not taken the news of Moran’s arrest well. Initially there was a reaction of rage which was quickly followed by a cold, hard, silent anger which could be felt by anyone who approached him. The lamps still burned in the main room of his chambers, though by now it was almost three in the morning. Spear had wakened Mrs. Wright—for it was Mrs. Kate Wright and her husband Bartholomew who ran the bar in the “waiting room” and also attended to the Professor’s personal needs: his laundry, food, and the cleaning of his chambers. Kate Wright, knowing Moriarty’s likes and dislikes, had prepared a glass of mulled claret, fussing about the room, hooking the mulling pan onto the grate before the fire to heat, finishing it off with the traditional warm poker and adding the cinnamon, ginger, lemon and lemon rind. Moriarty drank slowly, sipping it and staring into the fire, Spear and Lee Chow silently looking on, Ember having been sent out in an attempt to locate Paget, who had not yet returned from his commissions regarding Alton at Coldbath Fields, and the sinister Michael the Peg.

  “Where’s Paget got to?” Moriarty suddenly exclaimed.

  “Could take all night, Professor, if he’s on the lay for the Peg. Got to go easy with a man like the Peg.”

  “I’m not going easy with any cheap gonoph, nor anyone else. I just hope Paget isn’t wasting his time in some lushery or doing a mattress jig with one of Sal’s tails.”

  “Come on, Plofessor. Paget no faggot master or Rushington.”

  It was the first time Lee Chow had spoken. Moriarty allowed himself a half-chuckle at the Chinaman’s short-tongued speech defect.

  “Rushington, Lee Chow? Paget no Rushington? My Lord Lushington would like to hear you say that.”

  “True though, guv’nor,” grinned Spear, glad that the Chinese had at least goaded a tip of humor from his master. “Paget’ll have to work the lushing-kens for intelligence of the Peg and Peter. No other way, but I don’t see him doing no mattress jigs. He’s got a steady lackin of his own now.”

  “Oh?” Moriarty’s eyebrows raised. “I wasn’t told of that. So, Paget’s become a family man in all senses of the name?” The Professor looked hard at Spear, realizing, for the first time, that the facial mutilation intersecting the right corner of the man’s mouth gave him a permanently surprised expression.

  “Well, not as how they’re spliced or anything. But he has this Judy. She’s here in his quarters.”

  “Is she now?” The Professor had once more become cold. “Moran bothers me, Spear. He was supposed to keep me informed, and when I get to the bones of it, he has done little more than give me a half-finished picture. There’s never been any detail, and now they have him in the lockup. I wonder how much he’ll blow on us to escape being popped into the saltbox?”

  “They’ve got the colonel square by all accounts. All the blowing in the world’s not going to get him off the apple tree.”

  “But he can still blow, Spear. Blow on a large number of matters. I think there is no—”

  The sound of boots hurrying up the stairs cut short the Professor’s sentence. A second later, Paget, followed closely by Ember, was in the room.

  “Ember’s just told me.” Paget breathed heavily. “Is it true?”

  “As the dawn. You’ve taken time, Paget.”

  “I saw Alton first, at his drum in Clerkenwell. He’s willing, but it will not come light on your purse.”

  “Our purse, Paget.” Moriarty rose, stretching himself before the fire. “This is a family matter, and I am determined to have the Jacobs boys out of the ’Steel as soon as I can.”

  “Then it can be done. He’ll meet you at any time, and you to name the place.”

  “And what of the Peg and Peter?”

  “Whitechapel.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Both. And more besides. They been laying out of a drum off the Commercial Road. Owns the place and four or five netherskens besides, and his bullies’re carrying the cash for a couple o’ dozen tails. I saw Blind Fred up the Lamb and Teazle, said he’d complained to the colonel several times over the last three months. The colonel said as how he’d do something about it, but he never did. There’s some of our people been done over, and I know for sure the Peg’s takin’ a share of cash out of a couple of flash-houses and another dozen netherskens that he don’t own. That man’s a real trasseno, Professor, not a don like you.”*

  Moriarty ignored the intended compliment.

  “How many’re with him?”

  “Hard to tell, but it seems he’s got a lot of rampsmen in the area: bullyboys, dippers, cracksmen. A lot of rackets going.”

  Moriarty’s face was set in a hard mask. All four members of the “Praetorian Guard” knew the look and sensed the charged atmosphere. When Moriarty was like this, it was time to look to oneself, to beware, to watch your tongue and manner. Moriarty was as dangerous as a poisonous reptile when this mood was upon him; in fact the odd oscillation of his head appeared to become more pronounced.

  “That’s our beat and has been for years,” was all he said.

  The other men nodded in agreement.

  “What about the
colonel, then, guv’nor?”

  Paget’s face betrayed his own anxiety.

  “Yes.” Moriarty’s voice was even more soft than usual. “Indeed, yes, what about the colonel, Paget? What in hell has the colonel been up to in my absence? It would seem that Colonel Moran has been playing the shirkster at everybody’s expense.”

  Spear shuffled his feet. It was time to display loyalty and be damned.

  “At your expense to be sure, Professor.”

  The others mumbled assent.

  “Everybody’s expense,” hissed Moriarty. “All our family is affected if we start to lose in any racket, any lay.”

  “He’s spent a lot of time broading, always been a bit of a broadsman, the colonel.”

  “I know about the gaming, and I’ll bet he’s been on the randy with the winnings. Well, that’s all right. We all have to have our pleasure, but when it meddles with business, that’s a different matter. There’s not been one report about the Peg or Peter or Whitechapel made to me. Come to that”—he looked sharply at Paget—“there’s a lot of things not been mentioned to me. Like you having a lackin of your own, here in your quarters, Paget. That’s something I should at least have been told of.”

  Paget came as near to blushing as any man of his persuasion could.

  “I thought the colonel would’ve told you that, sir,” he mumbled.

  “Well, he did not. Who is she, Paget? Is she a trustworthy mollisher, a flash girl or what?”

  “She’s out of the monkery, name of Fanny Jones, from Warwick way. I met her in a servants’ lurk a year back. She’d come into service with some swells, Sir Richard and Lady Bray. Got a mansion in Park Lane, near where that Adair was done in. They sacked her for some trifle and she was down on her luck. She knew the Bray house inside out, and I thought it might come in handy. Then I got to thinkin’ she’d make a toffer, even talked to Sal Hodges about it, but … well, guv’nor, you know how these things are …”

  “I know how things are, my dear Paget, and I will meet the young woman in due course. What did the Brays dismiss her for?”

  “It was Lady Bray, a right dowager duchess she is. Fanny took an hour off, out of the house, one night, to go and see some friend. Well, the long and the short was that the butler discovered it, and her royal highness Lady Bray dismisses her. Into the street with bag and baggage. She’s a good girl, guv’nor.”

  Moriarty flashed a quick look at Spear, who rightly interpreted his master and hoped Paget had missed the glance. The Professor wanted someone to ask around, making sure about Fanny’s background and her story. It was something Moran had been lax about and, in a certain measure, Spear was pleased at Moriarty’s thoroughness.

  There was a minute or so of silence, Moriarty lost in thought. Then Paget spoke once more.

  “It’s true then, about the colonel, so what shall we do, Professor?”

  “Why Holmes? The fool,” Moriarty mused, casting his eyes first at Paget and then at Spear. “Does he not realize the damage he could have done? After all the trouble we went to, after all that happened and was said and agreed between Holmes and myself at the Reichenbach. God knows, Holmes may even believe that I have broken the truce.” He paused, looking up from beneath lowered lids. “Well, the colonel is jugged by Inspector Lestrade, it seems. It’s certain he’ll be topped.…”

  “Do we rescue—”

  “You can ask that when you see all about you what Moran has been doing? Good Jesus, Paget, Moran is revealed as the kind of man who would not even pull a soldier off his own mother, and you talk of rescue. No, we have two problems. If Moran did not know so much, I’d say he could go to hell and pump thunder, but he knows much. Too much. He’ll blow it to Lestrade, or others if he thinks it will help him.”

  A slow smile spread over Moriarty’s face. It had all the appearance of a smile of glee, or friendship, yet somehow the face became changed, as though another visage could be seen behind, bearing all the marks of a gargoyle.

  “I suppose you could call it a rescue, after a fashion,” he continued. “A rescue for us. But more of a release for Colonel Moran.”

  Spear looked seriously at his master.

  “You mean we have to do for the colonel before the Topper gets at him.”

  “Long before, Spear, long before. For all we know he is chaunting to the coppers at this moment; about me, this place, our family, our influence, plans, lays, rackets. He has to lose his tongue. After that we must concern ourselves with our businesses in Whitechapel.”

  “With the Peg,” observed Ember tersely.

  “You’ll be needing to send the punishers in.”

  Paget had no doubts about the action they would have to take.

  “The punishers will be only part of it. We will have to use some tact.” Moriarty looked toward Spear. “I want you to take over the question of Moran,” he said. “We have to know where he is, who is with him, which police officers, when he is being brought to trial, his routine. These things we need to know quickly. The iron is hot, so we must strike before it is cold. You, Paget”—a finger stabbed toward his other lieutenant—“round up a dozen or so punishers who’ve served well. Have them ready. Also see if Alton can meet me early tomorrow evening. Somewhere that people would least think we would meet. I know Alton and he can, at times, contrive to look like a gentleman, so let us say I will meet him at the Café Royal at seven. And brief him well, Paget, he must glitter. I must be in disguise. Remind him of my appearance as the older Moriarty, for that is how I shall be attired, and be certain he does not look the screw that he is.”

  Paget nodded. “We are to use the punishers on the Peg’s men?”

  “On some of them. Ember, get into Whitechapel; have Parker’s lurkers working with you, into the lodging houses, the lush-kens and sluiceries. We need to know who the Peg’s most important men are: his best half-dozen or so.”

  Foxy little Ember grinned, showing a set of cracked and yellow teeth.

  “I’ll get to that.”

  Moriarty’s eyes were sparkling as they swung from one man to the other.

  “If we pound his most able officers, then I think he’ll listen to reason.”

  “What kind of reason?” From Spear.

  “I mean to have him out of our streets and houses, away from our people. When we’ve punished his people, I think I will be in a position to put a suggestion to him that he will find it hard to spurn.”

  All five men chuckled.

  * The description referred to is, of course, Sherlock Holmes’ famous word picture, documented by Dr. Watson in The Final Problem. “He is extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes out in a white curve, and his two eyes are deeply sunken in his head. He is clean-shaven, pale, and ascetic-looking, retaining something of the professor in his features. His shoulders are rounded from much study, and his face protrudes forward, and is forever oscillating from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion. He peered at me with great curiosity in his puckered eyes” (The Final Problem, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle).

  * It is plain, from letters now in the author’s possession, that Colonel Moran was familiar with such refinements as marking by dot or puncture during a game, shading and tint-marking, and the intricacies of marking through line and scrollwork.

  † From the above-mentioned letters it is clear that Moran consistently used a briar-root pipe reflector, this being a device whereby a “shiner” (as the reflector was known in gaming circles of the time), a small convex mirror cemented to a piece of cork, was shaped to fit inside the bowl of a briar pipe. The sharper carries the “shiner” separately from the pipe. At the required moment, he knocks the ashes from his pipe and inserts the reflector, placing the pipe on the table with the bowl facing toward him. In this position the mirror is visible to nobody but the sharp, who, with practice, can align himself so that cards dealt or passed over the table are reflected and so glimpsed. From the few facts available, the author feels that Ronald Adair’s discovery of Moran’s cheating at the Bagatelle
Card Club (see below) was not unconnected with the pipe shiner.

  * It is interesting to note here that this fact, together with one or two other points, appears to be inconsistent with Sherlock Holmes’ own statements as recorded by Dr. Watson. In The Final Problem Holmes categorically states to Watson that “… the London police … have secured the whole gang with the exception of him [Moriarty].” From later evidence we know this was not the case. On his return from “the grave,” in The Empty House, Holmes mentions Parker, the garroter who was watching 221B Baker Street and, of course, Moran himself. It is possible that Holmes was under the impression that all Moriarty’s agents had been secured in April, 1891; but it is clear that this was far from being the case. Certainly his European network was left intact, and a large number of close associates, including Ember, Paget, Spear and Lee Chow, whom Moriarty referred to collectively as the “Praetorian Guard.” As we shall see, this quartet undeniably acted as the close bodyguards and what present-day gang leaders would call “muscle.”

  * At this point we should pause and reflect on a further inconsistency. Before his description of Moriarty in The Final Problem, Holmes says to Watson, “His appearance was quite familiar to me.” We are then given the description quoted in the footnote on page 19. As we have already seen, that description does not tally with Moriarty’s appearance in his chambers above the warehouse on the evening of April 5, 1894. Holmes is convinced that the man he knew as Moriarty was the one he described to Watson, and the one whom Watson himself glimpsed at Voctoria and on a later occasion. Yet Moran, the four members of the “Praetorian Guard,” Mrs. Hetty Jacobs and, as we shall see, a large number of friends and criminal associates, immediately recognize the younger, shorter man as the real Moriarty. At this stage we must assume that the Moriarty Holmes knew and recognized is either another man or that the Moriarty of this manuscript, known and recognized by the criminal element, is as great a master of disguise as Holmes himself. The true facts regarding this and the puzzling questions of Moriarty’s age and background, will, in due course, be revealed. This footnote is appended simply to point out the inconsistency, and assure any skeptic that the facts are fully documented later in the manuscript.