Professor Moriarty The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

CHAPTER SIX: THE GREEK INVERTEBRATE

I

‘James,’ the Professor said.

‘James,’ his brother acknowledged.

‘You’ve not met my associate,’ Moriarty said. ‘Colonel Moran, Colonel Moriarty.’

‘Colonel,’ nodded the thin-faced cove.

‘Colonel,’ I responded.

I’ve seldom had cause to mention Moriarty’s family. Read on, and you’ll find out why.

Until that winter, I knew little of the clan. The parents had been lost at sea some years previously. The single odd thing my partner in crime — not just a turn of phrase — had let slip about his people was that Mr and Mrs Moriarty had such a liking for the name ‘James’ they gave it to each and every child of their union.

‘It’s James, James,’ the Colonel said.

Yes, there was a third Moriarty brother. It was fortunate there were no sisters.

The triplicate nonsense would have been even more confusing if any of the three brothers could lay claim to a single intimate acquaintance who might wish to address them by their first name. You’re feeling sorry for them now, aren’t you? No love for the Jameses Moriarty, boo hoo hoo. Just goes to show you never met any of ’em. If you had, you’d suppress a shudder and nod sagely. Only one Moriarty is a villain in the public eye (though not, as it happens, a court of law), but if you ask me the Professor wasn’t the worst of them.

Most of us are saddled with relations. I’ve touched on my own from time to time. Seldom happily. With regret, I discern traits passed down — though not anything useful, like the family loot — from old Sir Augustus to me. He was a terror, a bully and a cool shot in the service of Queen and Country. I’ve worked for myself — or the Prof — but otherwise carry on in pater’s tradition. I’ve also attained that sorry point in life when I look into the shaving mirror after a heavy night in the tap-room and see the old man staring back at me with bloodshot orbs. The propensity for slipperiness with cards, believe it or not, I have from dear Mama, who showed me how to deal from the bottom while I was in velvet knickers and had ringlets.

Somehow, the notion that Professor Moriarty had parents — might have been a child — never sat right. A viper is a snake straight from the egg. I couldn’t help but picture little Jamie as a balding midget in a sailor suit, spying Cook and the baker’s boy rolling in flour on the kitchen table through his toy telescope, and blackmailing them for extra buns.

It had been a profitable season for the Firm. We’d done nicely out of the Mystery of the Essex Werewolf, come out of the lamentable business of the Four Lemon Drops with surprising credit, and salvaged more than could be expected from the disaster of Loki Tunnel. Lately, England was too confining a laboratory for Moriarty’s experiments in crime.

We were expanding on the continent, tactfully skirting — for the moment — territories claimed by others and offering consultant services to blackguards in Spain, Holland and Poland. Moriarty had put his stamp on a series of coups — kidnappings, major thefts, an assassination — which raised his stock as the premier criminal mastermind in Europe.

Queen Victoria could unroll a map of the world and take pride in the extensive red patches which mark the Empire; the Prof had similar ambitions for the globe in his study. Stuck with red-headed needles wherever a Moriarty crime had been accomplished, the globe increasingly resembled a pincushion.

I had recently greatly enjoyed murdering a Member of Parliament with a garrotte of red ribbon, then providing succor to his saucy widow, his blushing twin daughters… and, thanks to a fortuitous midnight encounter, his tweeny maid. I’d have done the prig for the bonuses alone, but that business put twenty thou in the coffers. You’d never believe who paid for that forced bye-election. My only regret was that I couldn’t mount an honourable head on the wall. I contented myself with draping the ribbon on some antlers and keeping intimate trophies from the ladies of the deceased’s household in a private drawer alongside like items.

It was a new year, a new decade: 1891. Life was fine. Crime was paying.

Then, early in January, Professor Moriarty asked me to accompany him to the Xeniades Club to meet with his brother, Colonel Moriarty.

Are you familiar with that breed of novel heroine who prefaces a chapter of awful experiences with ‘had I but known…’? Well, had I but bloody known, I’d have stayed in bed with or without a tweeny foot warmer. But I didn’t and got up. Cheerful as a goose-throttler the week before Christmas, I put on my hat, picked up my cane, and toodled along to Jermyn Street and Colonel Moriarty’s club.

A few words on the Xeniades Club — what a horrible place! I’m a member of the Anglo-Indian and the Tankerville myself, though I tend to let niceties like paying annual fees slide for the odd decade. As a cardplayer, yarn-spinner, hero of the Empire, big-game hunting bore (I admit it) and devotee of manly pursuits, I’ve been in and out of every gent’s club in London, from the Athaneum and the Beefsteak through the Troy Club and Boodle’s to the Club of the Damned and the Mausoleum Club (pronounced Mouse-o-layum, if you ever get the invite). I’m also known at exclusive gathering places catering to fellows who are most decidedly not gentlemen but can afford to pay for their pleasures and the privilege of having those who provide them keep quiet afterwards.

The Xeniades Club was founded by whining bounders who’d been blackballed at any number of established London clubs and decided that at least one should have no barriers at all to membership. You can imagine the shower that let in: grubby-fingered tradesmen, monomaniacs and cranks of every persuasion; plain-speaking provincial aldermen; foreigners, even. Furthermore, the Xeniades encouraged ‘lively debate’, and was thus one of the noisiest big rooms I have ever been in… not excluding the mess hall at Sing Sing Prison during a riot in which twelve inmates and three guards were killed, or the auditorium of the Paris Opéra after a chandelier fell on the audience during (what else?) that bloody jewel song from Faust.

If I were in the habit of thinking things through, I’d have made these deductions: the Xeniades was for blighters so objectionable no other club would have them. Colonel James Moriarty was a member. Colonel James Moriarty. What kind of colonel can’t even get into the Army and Navy, which is open to any serving officer on full or half pay? Any soldier who can rise to the rank of colonel — which is, admittedly, where they leave you when they tumble to what sort of a rotter or loon you are behind the medal ribbons and, yes, I am speaking for experience — ought to have distinguished himself in some manner which would at least get him into Stoats and Weasels.

No, Colonel James was in the Xeniades.

At least, we didn’t have our awkward introductions in the Loud Room but rather in a draughty, underused annexe I gathered was called the Cold Room.

The Professor was vague as to which regiment his brother was a colonel in, but had let on that the fellow was still serving. Somehow — and, again, I of all people should have known better — that made me imagine a younger, straighter-spined, suntanned version of the James Moriarty I knew. More hair on his head and a set of fierce whiskers, in full uniform, bristling with martial fervour. I envisioned a cruel, canny Moriarty brain applied to devastating pre-emptive strikes against the foe (always best to get your reprisals in first, I say).

Instead, the Colonel was a sallow, slouching fellow with a sunken chest, the ill-cared-for clothes of a clerk who no longer has hopes of advancement, a perpetual cold which required odd poultices and compresses which afforded no appreciable benefit, and a little square of moustache like a patch he’d missed with his cutthroat three days ago. He was seven years younger than the Professor, but seemed nearer death.

From one whiff of him, I knew he’d never set foot on a battlefield. Asked what army line he was in, he bluntly said ‘supplies’ and left it at that. I assumed he was less a soldier than a wholesale orderer and deliverer of boots, tins of bully and those greased cartridges which make Indians mutinous. Again, I leapfrogged to a conclusion. Throughout this whole affair, I did that. I wish I could say I learned my lesson, but plainly I didn’t.

So, minimal pleasantries aside, to the point: ‘It’s James, James.’

‘My youngest brother is a stationmaster in the west of England, Moran,’ the Professor stated.

‘Fal Vale Junction, in Cornwall,’ said the Colonel.

‘Where he can’t do any harm,’ said the Professor.

‘So you say, James.’

‘I do say, James.’

At that, the Professor’s head began its familiar oscillation. Unnervingly, the Colonel began to sway his head from side to side in mirror of his brother. It was a family habit! The two bobbed heads like Peruvian llamas working up to a spitting contest. My hands convulsed in a kind of terror. Was this a tussle of fraternal wills or some species of communication beyond other mortals? The brothers kept it up for several minutes.

I wondered if it was possible to get a drink in this place.

At length, they quit playing silly beggars.

‘Through my influence,’ the Colonel said, ‘James has secured his present position…’

‘He owes you his station, you mean,’ I interjected.

‘As I said… Colonel Moran, was that one of those, what are they called, jokes?… I have gone to no little trouble to put James where he is. I gather he is not satisfied, which will scarcely come as a surprise to you.’

‘James is seldom satisfied,’ the Professor said, addressing me as an aside.

I shrugged, unsure what was required.

‘James will attempt to rope you in, James,’ the Colonel said. ‘He has ever tried to play us off, one against the other. You remember when he was expelled from Greyfriars?’

‘An incident not one of us is liable to forget.’

‘Indeed not. This time, I insist you stay out of it. No good can come of your involvement. James is hysterical and unreliable, again.’

‘In that case, I wonder you troubled to use your influence in your brother’s cause, Colonel,’ I said.

The question of how a supply officer could ‘influence’ a railway company appointment did occur to me.

‘Blood is thicker than vinegar, Colonel,’ the Colonel said.

‘True true,’ I assented, like a pious idiot.

‘James will approach you, James,’ the Colonel continued, fixing eyes on his brother. ‘You will ignore him. All will benefit. Have I made myself clear?’

‘Admirably, James.’

‘Good. Now, James, f-k off back to your blackboard.’

The Colonel turned and walked back into the noisy room. I gathered, with some astonishment, that we were dismissed.

My face burned. Professor Moriarty stood there, expression unchanged.

‘Moriarty, does your brother… your brother, the Colonel… have any idea of your real business?’

The Professor cocked his head to one side, smiling unpleasantly.

‘James is not the most perceptive of us.’

Moriarty was sensitive about defiance and discourtesy. The last man to tell him in so many words to f-k off was a cracksman who came across some jewels in a safe he was rifling for documents we had paid him to obtain, and foolishly decided no tithe was owed on them. After a week in our thick-walled basement, what was left of the poor sod was grateful to be tossed into the Thames.

‘If you want me to kill him, I’ll do it for nothing. As a favour, Moriarty. To repay your years of, ah, friendship. Bare hands?’

The Professor considered it.

‘No, Moran. It’s not yet time. And this matter is not ended.’

‘Well, any time you want it done, it’s done. You can count on me.’

‘I have often said that, Moran.’

That was news to me. He laid a cold hand on my shoulder. From him, this was almost a singular gesture. Recalling that the last time he unbent so, he palmed the cursed Black Pearl off on me, I instinctively patted my pockets. If the Professor noticed, he was too lost in his own thoughts to pass comment.

I fancied he was in a melancholy humour.

Family reunions will do that to you.

II

When we returned to Conduit Street, a telegram awaited. From the third James Moriarty. The Professor read the wire, and passed it to me.

JAMES — FAL VALE TERRORISED BY GIANT WORM! — COME AT ONCE — JAMES.

I gave him back the telegram.

‘A giant worm?’ the Professor said. ‘What, pray, does James expect me to do about it?’

I considered the matter.

‘Tricky proposition, giant worms,’ I said. ‘Hard to know which gun to pack. Or which end to shoot. A good, sharp kris is your best tool. You have to chop the devil into slices rather than segments, or they all wriggle off separately and you’ve got a pack of little crawlers to deal with rather than the one outsize specimen.’

I knew what I was talking about. I’ve come across six-foot worms, mouths ringed with shark teeth, in South Africa. They looklike pale, boneless pythons and can eat through solid rock, let alone a man’s chest. You tend to mistake them for a thick rope or a draught-excluder, until you see a swallowing ripple run along their length or discern the disgusting brownish-pink core at the centre of the creamish translucent tube.

‘James doesn’t mean worm in that sense, Moran.’

‘Is there another?’

‘Archaic English, sometimes ourm. A synonym for dragon. The notion that such fantastic creatures breathe fire is associated with the English worm dragon rather than the Chinese lizard dragon.’

That was a different challenge.

‘I’ve never stalked dragon, but I fancy an elephant gun would suffice.’

I was not entirely serious. I mean, I’ve heard of the kuripuri of the Amazon — degenerate survivors from the prehistoric age of reptiles — and I’ve shot the head off a Komodo dragon, which is merely an overgrown iguana and poor sport. If you’ve paid attention, you’ll know I’ve tangled with several mythical species. Red Shuck and his pack turned out to be just dyed wolves, but the taxonomists were still out on the mi-go I’d run across in Nepal and Soho. Still, I wasn’t prepared to swallow a worm unknown to science in Cornwall. Moriarty’s head bobbed, though, so I knew there’d be trouble in it.

After furious oscillation, Moriarty crumpled his brother’s telegram and tossed it into the fire. It went up with a puff, like a stage magician’s flash paper.

‘More urgent matters must be attended to, Moran,’ the Professor declared, turning away from the fire. He touched fingertips to his pinpricked globe and gave it an idle spin. ‘Soon, we must consider seriously the obstacles presented to our continental expansion by the entrenched interests of our colleagues in France and Germany.’

I’d known this was coming.

In Paris, a new Grand Vampire held office. He had displaced his predecessor after the Affair of the Six Maledictions — in which Les Vampires had been involved, not very happily. Having been forced (by us) into unprofitable battle with the Knights Templar, the Frenchies had cause to feel they’d not been dealt fairly. Reprisals were expected.

In Berlin, an ambitious pup was slavishly imitating the Moriarty Method by assembling his own criminal cartel. More adept at disguising his person than the Professor, this upstart seldom showed his real face. On our books, the kraut-eating swine was marked for an eventual seeing-to because one of his favoured impostures — a shock-haired, stooped alienist with mesmeric eyes — was an impudent caricature of the man whose act he had blatantly stolen. He even guyed Moriarty’s side-to-side head wobble, which ticked off the Prof more than the arrant plagiarism of his Loughborough Diamond Coup in the Dusseldorf Marzipan Stone Substitution.

It wasn’t just restlessness, a jaded need to expand an empire, which compelled Moriarty into border skirmishes with his continental rivals. In his mettle, he needed to be the best — which is to say, worst — in his field.

The Firm would go to war!

Not soon enough, said I. For I wasn’t content to be content, to grow plump and pampered in a London rut — no matter how many blushing twins were thrown into the pot — when there were savage lands to be conquered, and desperate campaigns to be waged. The hunter’s blood stirred and would not be quieted. View halloo, and into the fray…

Then, a railway messenger arrived. The lad was startled to be greeted on our doorstep by Tessie the Two-Ton Taff, in peignoir and straining stays. Mrs Halifax was off with one of her filles de joie, selling a healthy ‘inconvenience’ to thin-blooded, childless Americans, so the Great Lay of Llandudno was serving in Mrs H.’s stead for the day. The Welsh girl took the messenger by his ear and hauled him up to our reception room, where he presented a sealed envelope to the Professor. Having taken a shine to the railway lad, Tess then dragged him into the kitchens for what she referred to as ‘a nice dollop of dripping’. I doubt the boy ever reported back to his office, though I don’t credit the rumour spread by envious, bonier girls that Tess ate him.

This time, Stationmaster Moriarty enclosed a signed letter on the headed paper of the GS&W Railway Company. If presented to the conductor of the Fal Vale Special, which was to leave Paddington at two o’clock that afternoon, the document would entitle the bearer to accommodation gratis for himself and his party.

A wilful contrarian, Professor Moriarty was in a quandary. One brother had ordered him not to go to Cornwall. The other had summoned him to Cornwall. He could not disobey both equally. To defy one, he must satisfy the other. Besides weaving his head from side to side, he was grinding his teeth — a new habit, so far as I knew.

I tried to get him back to continental matters, asking his estimate of the Great Vampire’s intriguing new protégée — a female who styled herself ‘Irma Vep’ and was reputedly the greatest man manipulator in the business since that bitch herself.

But he would not be distracted from family business.

‘There’s nothing else for it, Moran. We shall have to seek out this worm. Pack guns.’

‘Your brother doesn’t mention a fee.’

‘He would not.’

‘Family discount, eh?’

Moriarty’s shoulders were rounder than usual. I saw my needling was getting through. Family can worry under the skin like a tick. The Professor was, in his way, a great man. Yet, despite what many who encountered him said, he was still a human man.

I’ll warrant Gladstone, Palliser and Attila were the same — in command of their destinies and fixed on their great goals, but red-faced and sputtering when joshed by some sibling who remembered when nursie smacked their bottoms for making sicky-sicky on their bibs. Attila, of course, could have irritating relations thrown into a wolf pit. However, in the so-called enlightened modern age, such methods of easing domestic stress were frowned upon.

So, we were hunting dragons. With no payday in sight.

I consoled myself with the thought that this expedition was but an appetiser: a quick kill to warm up for the long, delicious hunt to come.

We were at Paddington Station in good time for the Special, which was ready to board at its platform. We passed through scalding steam to reach the steps to the single carriage. Other passengers were already in their seats, which made me wonder who else was invited on the Fal Vale Worm Express. A conductor stood by the steps, with a whistle and a clipboard. Folds of skin hung loose under his eyes and chin.

Moriarty presented his brother’s letter to the official, who stated — in a tedious West Country drone — that no one had told him of extra passengers, opined that anyone could obtain a sample of the company’s stationery and declared he had never heard of the supposed signatory.

‘This b’ain’t no good yurr,’ he said. ‘Only money or murder’ll get yer ’board this train, or my name b’aint ’Ubert Berkins.’

Foolishly, we opted for money.

III

As the Fal Vale Special steamed out of London, the Professor sank into a deep quiet. He was thinking.

I’d known him not speak for a week, then arrange the removal of a human obstacle to one of his designs and become almost morbidly cheerful. I’d seen his crazes start up like a sudden summer storm, ending in ruination of one stripe or another for someone who had crossed him.

I need not mention again Nevil Airey Stent, the former Astronomer Royal. Even the Red Planet League business pales beside the fate of Fred Porlock, convicted in a court convened in our basement of a capital crime for selling information about the Firm’s dealings to outside interests. What was done to the traitor made the Lord of Strange Deaths seem lenient, and stood as a serious disincentive to anyone else who might consider following his unhappy path of collaboration with the law.

I’d even been in the room while the Moriarty brain ticked as he worked over purely abstract problems. As a devotee of games of chance and calculation, I’m a fair hand at practical maths, but Moriarty’s sums were well beyond my capabilities. He could have said ‘ah-ha!’ or ‘eureka!’ and chalked stickmen on the blackboard, claiming to have solved a puzzle which had baffled generations of clever clogs, and I’d be none the wiser.

But this was different. His head was not bobbing. His chin was clamped to his chest. He was still grinding his teeth. He would not be spoken to.

I’d never seen Moriarty like this. I concluded that only family could put him in such a black humour. His brothers set him equations for which there were no solutions, but which prompted endless, futile calculations. This was a new side to the Professor, and, I admit, I was uncomfortable with it. This forced me to a strange, giddying realisation that I had become comfortable with Moriarty’s other sides, the ones which were terrifying to the rest of the world. What did that say about me? Through association, had I become as much a freak of nature — as much a monster — as the old man?

Moriarty wasn’t in conversational mood and I’d not packed anything to read. Railway bookstalls tend not to stock Mistress Payne’s Rollicking Academy or R.G. Sanders’ Natives I Have Shot, my favoured perusing material. I was thrown back on eyeing up the other passengers.

Since this was a Special, the rest of the crowd must also have been invited.

I couldn’t immediately see how they fit together. A young lady, travelling alone — always promising, rarely delivering — trim enough figure, but affecting pince-nez and a severe look. A funny little Frenchman with waxed moustaches, deep in the Journal of the Society for Psychic Research. A middle-aged parson with white powder in his hair and dusting his cassock; an old scratch on his cheek, a scar you’d be more likely to pick up duelling with sabres at Heidelberg than reading up Acts of the Apostles at Lampeter. A man-about-town type, who had clocked the lone young lady and was buffing his nails in an attempt to draw her attention. And a gaunt, floppy-haired gent, who ogled me balefully. I tossed him a jovial smile, and got a more penetrating stare for my pains. He produced, filled and lit an ostentatious pipe, wreathing himself in rings of pungent smoke.

‘We’re all for Fal Vale, then,’ I ventured.

Yes, an extraordinarily stupid thing to say. It often helps to give an impression of extraordinary stupidity. Folk think so little of you they don’t pay attention when you’re standing behind them with a handy shiv.

‘Indeed,’ the parson said, in a high-pitched voice. ‘The Special only stops there.’

‘That is why it’s called a “Special”, don’t you know,’ drawled the man-about-town type. Too much hair oil for a proper Englishman. ‘I’m Lucas, by the way. Eduardo of that ilk. I’m in it, too. Psychical research.’

The little Frenchman shrugged ‘nom de’ something. He continued to make squiggly notations in the margins of an article on ectoplasmic manifestations.

‘I suppose you’ve heard of the Fal Vale Worm,’ I said.

Lucas nodded. ‘I imagine we all have. It’s why we’re here.’

‘I was not given to understand that this would be a tourist excursion,’ the gaunt pipe smoker said. ‘I took this for a serious investigation.’

‘Who might you be, old bean?’ Lucas asked.

‘Thomas Carnacki,’ the fellow replied.

The little Frenchman, impressed, muttered ‘nom de’ something else.

‘The Ghost Finder,’ the parson observed. ‘Celebrated investigator of the Whistling Room, the Horse of the Invisible and the Dwellers in the Abyss? This is quite a pleasure…’ [44]

‘Yes, indeed,’ I said. ‘I should like to shake the hand of the famous Mr Carnacki.’

‘I imagine you would, ah…?’ Carnacki asked, making no attempt to stick out a hand to be shaken.

‘Sebastian Moran,’ I said.

‘Colonel Moran, the big-game hunter,’ the parson said. Plainly, he was handily up on his Who’s Who. I waited for him to list my medals, distinctions and tiger bags, but he didn’t.

The celebrated psychic sleuth fiddled with his pipe.

‘My name is Cursitor Doone,’ the parson said, with a curt little nod as if acknowledging a salute. ‘I am a ghost finder myself, in an amateur manner of speaking. Our friends the spirits are much misunderstood, I believe.’

‘Sabin,’ the Frenchman said. ‘I take a sceptic’s interest. All can be explained by the light of reason and logic. You will see — yes, you will — I am correct. There is no worm.’

The Reverend Doone seemed on the point of rebutting the sceptic, but Lucas spoke over him…

‘Miss…?’ he said, raising a hopeful eyebrow at the lady.

‘Madame… Madame Gabrielle Valladon,’ the woman said. ‘I am Belgian zoologist.’

Which was odd, since she had a German accent.

But not as odd as someone who wasn’t Thomas Carnacki claiming to be him. The hollow-cheeked, pipe-puffing lookalike might have fooled someone who’d seen a picture in the rotogravure, but I know Carnacki. I’d fallen asleep during one of the Ghost Finder’s interminable tale-telling evenings in Cheyne Walk, and was booted out for having the temerity to snore during an account of his encounter with the Persistent Poltergeist of Penge.

During the Affair of the Mountaineer’s Bum, a tale for which the world will never be ready, the Firm secured Carnacki’s services to establish the supernatural bona fides of a public convenience in Tooting we wished to convince Inspector Patterson of Scotland Yard was haunted. Given his reputation as the least credulous of his profession — the dimwitted Flaxman Low, for instance, is eager to credit every twitching curtain and damp patch to phantoms from beyond the veil — a Carnacki verdict is respected. It is one of the Professor’s greatest triumphs that he was able to pull the wool over such perspicacious eyes.

This gaunt stranger was someone else. A disguise merchant. That narrowed the field down a little, even if men of a thousand faces were becoming ten a penny. Sometimes — as on this train — you couldn’t toss a bottle without beaning a detective made up as a ruffian, a crook posing as a toff, a swell larking about as a disfigured beggar, or a swindler in a dog collar and surplice. But I couldn’t put a name to this particular mask.

I didn’t let on that I’d tumbled the imposter and kept smiling like a fathead.

‘Oh,’ I said, as if remembering there was one more introduction to be made. ‘This is Professor Moriarty.’

Moriarty didn’t come out of his thought fugue.

‘The mathematician?’ the parson said. ‘Author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid?’

‘No, the master criminal, author of ransom notes and blackmail demands,’ I didn’t say — though it did spring to mind.

‘Yes. He’s one of your cold fire of logic boys, too, Monsieur Sabin,’ I said instead. ‘Between the party of us, we’ll soon have this worm in its place.’

‘If place it has, Colonel,’ the parson responded, as if that meant something. ‘If place it has.’

There were two others with us. It was peculiar that a single-carriage Special should need two conductors, especially since one took the trouble to stay away from the passengers. The jowly Berkins, who had gouged us for our ‘gratis’ travel, passed regularly down the aisle, offering ‘refreshments’ which also turned out not to be complementary. While another person in the black, silver-trimmed tunic and cap of the GS&W line spent the journey sat at the rear of the carriage, peak pulled low over a face further obscured by several bandagelike strips of sticking plaster. Yes, another play-actor — though an uncommon shapely one. Despite a sparse moustache and thick eyebrows, this conductor was — as the swell of the tunic-front told my practiced eye — a woman.

‘I say, let’s pass the time with a hand or two,’ Lucas said, producing a deck of cards from his top pocket and pretending to be clumsy as he shuffled. ‘Sixpenny stakes, to make it more interesting, eh what?’

That was blood in the water to this old shark.

By Fal Vale Junction, I would have earned back the train fare and more. I could feel it in my cracking knuckles.

IV

I arrived at Fal Vale a little poorer, but much wiser. Lucas was a lamentable cheat, almost ostentatiously… but lost, consistently. Sabin could have won most hands, but folded early… not bothered by winning or losing, and putting on a show as a distracted, exasperated logician. By the second deal, I knew Reverend Doone and Madame Valladon were playing as secret partners. I kept my losses down, resisting subtle suggestions that stakes be upped just when I held a surprisingly strong (but not winning) hand.

The fake Carnacki did not play with us, but took out a deck of tarot cards and laid out a patience I swear he invented on the spot just to look mystic. The real ghost finder wouldn’t have wasted a captive audience, the whole carriage would have been regaled with his exploits. The Incident of the Boiling Kettle, The Mystery of the House of the Improbable, The Dreadful Affair of the Slug — I’ve heard them all.

The gaunt fellow watched the game through his tobacco fug. He couldn’t have kept a closer eye on us if he’d produced a magnifying glass.

After rattling along the main line at speed — when an engine only has to pull a single carriage, it can beat timetabled trains by hours — we slowed down and chuffed along a Cornish branch which wound through deep cuttings and past tiny stations. Finally, we stopped at one of these neglected halts.

‘Fal Vale Junction,’ ’Ubert Berkins announced, needlessly. ‘All change yurr.’

It was already full dark. The station was lit by three poor lamps.

I nudged Moriarty. He was suddenly alert.

‘None of our fellow passengers are who they say they are,’ he whispered. I’d worked that out for myself, thank you very much. ‘Watch out for the Greek woman in the conductor’s uniform. She has a throwing knife holstered between her shoulder blades.’

That was news. Later, Moriarty would explain how he knew her nationality from the way she buttoned her borrowed trousers or chewed her little fingernail, and I’d pretend to pay attention. It was an impressive parlour trick, but tiresome all the same. The throwing knife gen was useful info, though.

We busied ourselves collecting our belongings. I took care with my gun case, not letting Berkins ‘assist’ me, rather shooing the pest out of the way to try and cadge a tip from someone else. We all descended from carriage to platform.

The mysterious other conductor deigned to step down after us, but slipped into the steam cloud before anyone could try to talk with her. I watched her go, then noticed Madame Valladon also had an eye on her. In silhouette, the conductor’s womanly gait was obvious.

The echt-Belgian zoologist looked away from me, casually. Lucas was still lingering about her, with the air of a near-sighted lion who doesn’t realise the gazelle he’s stalking has a revolver in her handbag. See, I can spot a concealed weapon too.

Sabin collared Berkins and issued instructions for the unloading of heavy trunks which supposedly contained delicate scientific instruments which should not be piled upside down. The conductor could have done with another pair of hands, but his distaff colleague was gone.

The Reverend Doone beamed, and announced, ‘The emanations are strong here. I sense a presence. Discarnate, but welcoming. Can anyone hear me on the astral plane?’

I was more concerned with the earthly plane.

Especially when the Special pulled out of the station, steaming off with a shrill of its whistle. I wondered where the train was going, since this was its only stop — then guessed it had to loop about somewhere before going back to London. Nothing had been said about return travel arrangements.

The engine driver had made haste away from Fal Vale Junction, not lingering even for a pie and a cup of tea. It seemed someone who knew more about this stretch of country than I did was keen not to bide here long. At that, most people with a brain would take fright. I felt a thrill in my water.

In a moment of clarity, I felt every droplet of mist in the night air, heard every tiny sound from the trees. I anticipated danger with a half-sickened, half-excited craving which — I now admit — was close to the hateful love a dope fiend has for the pipe or a drunkard for the bottle. With potential death in the air, I was alive!

Berkins was gone with the Special. As far as I could tell, the woman conductor had not got back on board.

Moriarty strode along the platform, ulster flapping like bat wings, chin thrust out. I wondered if and when he would trouble to take me into his confidence. From experience, I knew he had an idea of what was going on. But frequently it suited him to keep it all to himself, and just tell me when to shoot someone.

Fal Vale Junction was not much of a station. There was a waiting room, with a welcoming open fire and a selection of periodicals on a rack… but it was locked. Out on the platform, without the benefit of the fire, it was freezing. The tearoom was open, in the sense that its door was wedged with a brick… but it was dark and cold. I touched the urn to see if there was still hot water, but it was like ice. Cakes and sandwiches from an earlier decade were on display. Something with teeth and a tail had been in among them and left chew marks and droppings.

‘A warm welcome,’ I commented. ‘I was hoping for one of those famous Cornish clotted cream teas.’

‘Can’t get they yurr,’ Lucas said, guying Berkins.

Outside, the Reverend marched about, sensing things of a spiritual nature. His boots clicked on the flagstones of the platform.

A branch veered off from the line and vanished into a hillside tunnel. A big wheel on the platform worked a set of points which could send trains into this hole. I’d looked up Fal Vale Junction in Bradshaw’s Guide, and not been able to determine where this offshoot ran to. Probably a tin mine, clay pit or unloading dock in Poldhu Cove. Beyond the hill was the coast, which put me in mind of wreckers and smugglers. It wasn’t like Bradshaw to be vague, though. The rails were shiny and well maintained, so the branch was obviously in use.

Moriarty walked nearly to the end of the platform, and peered into the dark as if through a telescope. Could he discern life on some far-distant star? Or was he just fixed on some theoretical point half a mile into the tunnel?

‘I sense a visitor,’ the Reverend said, and stood up straight as if for inspection.

We were all ignoring him now, but he was right. In the dark of the tunnel, a tiny flame burned.

‘It is an apparition of fire,’ Doone announced. ‘We must be calm and receptive. Those who have passed beyond the veil are more frightened of us than we are of them.’

The flame was bigger. No, it was the same size… but coming closer.

Madame Valladon’s hand was in her bag, curled around her revolver, no doubt. She could fire through the seam if she had to.

We watched the light. It bobbed slightly as it advanced.

‘Well met, spirit,’ Doone said, almost singing.

The fake Carnacki touched his fingers to his temples, as if doing a music hall mind-reading act.

‘That is no spirit light,’ Monsieur Sabin declared. ‘It is a railwayman’s dark lantern. There is always, you see, a logical explanation. Have I not proved this? Yes, I have.’

The Frenchman was right.

Now we could see the lantern, swinging from side to side, and make out the man carrying it. He wore a peaked cap, which flashed silver, and a long, black coat.

‘James, is that you?’ the Professor shouted.

‘Yes, James,’ came the answer.

‘Hurry up,’ Moriarty insisted. ‘It’s cold here on the platform.’

‘I’m aware of that. It’s cold here in Cornwall. On winter nights, those tend to be the climactic conditions throughout these isles.’

‘Climatic. “Climactic” refers to a climax or culmination, not the weather,’ the Professor said.

The newcomer shrugged off the correction.

Stationmaster Moriarty trudged along the gravel rail bed and up the incline to the platform, where the Professor waited impatiently. The brothers exchanged beak nods. They walked together towards the rest of us. They shared a stalking gait.

Young James was a Moriarty all right, with piercing eyes behind thin-rimmed spectacles and the beginnings of the family stoop. His face had not yet sunk to the vulture leanness shared by the Colonel and the Professor, but that would come in a few years if nobody hanged him. Walking up to our group, he set down his lantern and took off his cap. He had a fuller, darker head of hair than either of his brothers. He ran his fingers through his locks, probably a sly dig.

‘James, you’re not looking well,’ he said, mildly. ‘The country does not agree with you. You are a city bird.’

‘I say, do you two know each other?’ Lucas asked. ‘I only just realised, same name and all that. Stationmaster Moriarty. Professor Moriarty. You must be father and son?’

At this suggestion, the Jameses made faces as if they’d bitten something sour.

‘They are brothers,’ Sabin said. ‘I am surprised you failed to find that out when you researched our summons here.’

‘Research? Oh I never bother with that. Prejudices the mind. Prods you to premature conclusions.’

‘Tchah,’ said the Frenchman, dismissing Lucas’ pensée.

‘I suppose James told you to keep away from Fal Vale,’ Stationmaster Moriarty said to the Professor. ‘He’s made his position clear, as usual.’

‘I thought you were James?’ Madame Valladon said.

‘No, he is James,’ Doone said. ‘Professor James Moriarty.’

Neither brother explained. Our fellow travellers were left in confusion.

Professor and Stationmaster smirked together, almost undetectably — a family expression which excluded the rest of us. I got a chill from more than the night air.

The brothers didn’t much care for one another, but each knew the other well. I was on as intimate terms with the Prof as he would allow, yet I was often forced to admit I shared rooms with a stranger. Hitherto, it hadn’t bothered me: Moriarty kept secrets from everyone, so why should I be any different? I was his employee, not his friend. We knocked about for mutual advantage, not hale-fellow-well-met nonsense. Sometimes, I despised him more than I hate my old man… with a similar, curious sort of hate commingled with admiration, passion and a sense they were impossible to get away from.

I broke with Sir Augustus to avoid becoming simply ‘the dutiful son’, only to become Moriarty’s Number Two. In many things, the Professor had supplanted pater — whippings were less direct, but no less frequent. With the appearance of Moriarty’s brothers, I realised there were those closer to his cold heart. Family by blood, not association. I’d thought the Professor invincible, beyond human hurt or harm, but it seemed the other Jameses could prick him.

Stationmaster Moriarty produced keys and opened the waiting room. We all pressed eagerly indoors. Thanks to Lucas lifting his hat and getting in the way, Madame Valladon claimed the chair nearest the fire. Sabin wasn’t happy leaving his precious boxes on the platform, but reluctantly did so. Doone said he was sure the spirits wouldn’t disturb Sabin’s belongings.

Only the fake Carnacki kept away from the fire. I wondered if he was wearing a wax nose which would melt if he got too close.

The Stationmaster stood like a man in command, enjoying the company he had put together, anticipating fun and frolics. I’ve known society matrons take pleasure in seating next to each other people they know will quarrel before the fish course is done. ‘Fireworks’ are all part of the entertainment. I wondered if Young James had combined sceptics and believers in this party for similar reasons, then recalled none of this lot were who they said they were. Ergo, this ghost-worm hunt was nothing of the sort.

The Professor stood to one side, watching his brother.

One other thing: Young James Moriarty hadn’t asked who I might be.

During the journey, I’d ferreted out that everyone else present had received a personal invitation. Though his note to the Professor referred to ‘you and your party’, the Stationmaster could scarcely have expected his brother — a maths master, so far as anyone knew — to show up at Fal Vale with a war-scarred, semi-notorious reprobate in tow. Most folk would be astonished that Professor Moriarty was even on a nodding acquaintance with the ferocious Basher Moran. So, I reckoned Young James already knew who I was. Unlike Colonel Moriarty, he had an idea what business the Prof was really in. Our Stationmaster hid his dark lantern under a bushel in the Cornish wilds, but some stratagem boiled in his Moriarty brain.

‘Now, about this worm…’ Young James began. ‘What am I bid for its secrets?’

V

I had not expected to attend an auction in the waiting room of an obscure railway station. Apparently, the ‘secrets of the worm’ were on the block. I couldn’t say whether Stationmaster Moriarty intended his brother to join the bidding or had invited the Professor to observe and be impressed.

None of the other Special passengers immediately stuck up paws, scratched noses or waved sheaves of banknotes. The game had changed quickly, and our pack of psychic investigators were still playing the last hand.

Young James looked pleased with himself.

‘The legend of the Fal Vale Worm is well known,’ he said. Stepping aside, he pointed to an indifferent, faded picture hung over the fireplace. It showed a creature slithering white coils among green Cornish hills. Hairless and earless, it had a catlike snarl and human eyes. A knight in armour raised a lance against plumes of flame pouring from the beast’s nostrils. Rude peasants sensibly scattered away from the titanic combat. The creature had no legs, but from the peculiar way the unknown artist had depicted the running peasants I judged legs weren’t his strong suit, so he might have been tempted to leave them out.

‘The story is old as clay,’ the Stationmaster continued. ‘An undying beast, native to the depths of the ancient mine-workings, the worm emerges by night to exhale infernal flame. Every village hereabouts has an inn called The White Dragon where folktale collectors buy drinks for yokels who trot out their family legends. Always, someone claims their grandfather or great-uncle saw or met or fought the worm, and it’s always some other man’s grandfather who got burned or eaten. You have variations on this theme all over the country, in remote regions where a Beast of the Bog or a Wyvern of the Wold might hide away from the local hunt or the catchers from London Zoo.’

He produced another framed picture to spice up the narrative, a photograph of a canvas and papier-mâché worm with twelve human legs protruding from its body posing against a stone wall. It had a snarling, frilly eyebrowed, fanged head at either end.

Young James continued, ‘Every year at the Padstow May Day Festival, a team of six Fal Vale men represent the worm. They skirmish in the street with rivals from other villages who dress up as ’obby ’osses.’

Evidently, lecturing was a Moriarty family trait. I wished Young James would hurry up and get to it.

‘Uncommonly for its breed, the Fal Vale Worm has been active lately, and left evidence of its night work. You will have seen notices in the press of the fires which have troubled this area in the last few months; fires which will not be put out by buckets of water. Copses and haystacks turned to white ash. Fields brown and smoking after heavy rain. A farm at Compton Dando burned to the ground. A scarecrow caught fire two nights ago, and the black skeleton of a crucified man was found where the scarecrow had stood.’

The Professor nodded. If he had known about this incendiary outbreak, he hadn’t shared the information.

‘There is natural explanation,’ Sabin insisted.

‘You never know, though,’ Lucas said. ‘Not with a worm.’

‘I doubt a spirit would cause such harm,’ Doone said.

I was not immediately inclined to conclude that the Fal Vale Worm was the genuine article. My first suspect would be some sweaty, burn-marked little fellow with a box of lucifers, a jug of paraffin and a heart which skips whenever anything catches light.

We had a couple of firebugs on our lists; gents who go by names like Benny Blazes, Tim the Torch or Firebrand Sam. Even if there’s a solid bit of profit, from insurance or otherwise, to be had, it makes sense to use someone who knows — and loves — fire to perform arson duties. They’ll do it for nothing but jollies, for a start. The flame which burns when doused with water is a firebug tell. It’s not magic, just a mix of chemicals: they all have favourite recipes and jealously guard their secret ingredients.

‘The worm has been seen,’ the Stationmaster said, ‘zooming along the rail bed outside, disappearing into the tunnel faster than any train. I can produce sworn testimony. But sworn testimony will not, I believe, impress anyone in this room. I shall accept no bids until you’ve the evidence of your own senses.’

He smiled, readily. Not an expression I associated with his brothers. From his waistcoat pocket, he produced a railwayman’s watch.

‘If we forsake the comfort of this room for a few moments, we may bear witness to an, ah, occult phenomenon.’

‘…Which runs on a timetable, James?’

‘Yes, James. Punctually.’

‘Many spirits are affected by cycles of the moon,’ Doone put in.

I had the uneasy feeling I was the only one in the room completely in the dark. It was plain we were no longer hunting ghosts.

‘I say,’ Lucas said. ‘Where’s our Carnacki toddled off to?’

Madame Valladon swore in German.

The imposter had slipped out of the room when everyone else was paying attention to the Stationmaster. He had left his pipe propped by a stopped clock, so his smell lingered.

‘This is not to be tolerated,’ Sabin declared.

‘Raw-ther,’ Lucas agreed.

‘Mayhap Mr Carnacki was an astral projection all along?’ ventured Doone.

‘An astral projection who left the door open?’ I said.

The Stationmaster seemed to be thrown off his game by this distraction, but swiftly tried to re-establish order. He held up his watch and tapped it.

‘I insist that agreed rules of conduct remain in force,’ said the Frenchman.

Young James put his railwayman’s whistle to his lips and blew a shrill toot.

‘I suggest we follow my brother’s direction, for the moment,’ the Professor said. ‘We shall see what is to be seen, then draw conclusions. Is that acceptable?’

Sabin nodded. The others fell in line.

Moriarty looked to his brother, like a headmaster who has shown a junior staff member how to quiet the boys. Our host, I fancied, was irritated. Of the three Jameses Moriarty, he was the least commanding… It seemed a comedown that a family which could produce a Professor Moriarty and a Colonel Moriarty should run to a mere Stationmaster. Now, I wondered whether Young James had not been promoted above his natural abilities.

The Professor lead us out onto the platform. His brother followed.

A thick mist had risen, turning the rail beds into rivers of white. I smelled something like sulphur… which I associate with firearms rather than hellfire. I could taste danger in the air. Fal Vale Junction felt like a fort just before the attack. While the others formed their observing party, I sauntered towards the pile of luggage and slipped a rifle out of my gun case. I carried it unostentatiously, barrel-down like a crutch. I felt much happier with a loaded gun at hand.

‘What’s through that tunnel?’ Lucas asked.

‘Tin mines,’ explained the Stationmaster. ‘In the daytime, ore trains run to and from Tarleton. The metals are cold at night.’

‘The so-called worm, it abide in its mine by day, and emerge by night?’ Sabin asked. ‘This is your suggestion?’

‘More than a suggestion,’ Young James said. ‘You can set your watch by it.’

Everyone turned towards the tunnel. All I could see was night and fog.

In a music hall, when the magician wants you to watch the pretty lady in tights or pay attention to his waving wand… that’s the time to look everywhere else, to see how the trick’s being pulled off. I let the ghost-finding brigade peer into the hole, and scanned the station and environs. The fake Carnacki was hiding somewhere. I’d not forgotten the lady conductor with the throwing-knife either. With all this mist, there were many places nearby where a person could lie low.

‘Can you hear that?’ Lucas asked, hand up to his ear.

From inside the tunnel, there was a sound. A shushing, wailing, rattling. Worms, as a rule, are quieter. Even giant ones. The gunpowdery smell was stronger.

‘There are spirits…’ the parson began.

‘Shush, Hugo,’ cut in Madame Valladon. ‘You can stop play-acting.’

Doone shut up, crestfallen.

The noise grew louder.

‘Something runs on the rails?’ Sabin said. ‘A train, hein?’

It sounded like no train I’d ever heard.

‘Look…’ Lucas pointed.

There was firelight in the fog. It barrelled towards us faster than something without legs or wheels ought to be able to.

I had my rifle up. Whatever came out of that tunnel would get one between its eyes, if eyes it had.

Stationmaster Moriarty was still brandishing his watch, grinning. He seemed to be enjoying the spell cast over his guests. The Professor hung back, tutting impatiently.

A cold, sharp point pricked under my chin. The rifle was firmly twisted out of my hands. A female person pressed close to my back, arm about my chest. The Greek lady, of course. I stood stock still.

Then, in a rush, the worm was out of its hole…

…and rushing through the station past us, leaving only a swirling wake. The disturbed fog reformed over the rails.

The worm wasn’t white and fires burned in its belly. A foul smell lingered behind: it was a mechanical thing.

Down the line a way, bright flame blossomed. For an instant, the countryside lit up as if it were daytime. I blinked away fire patterns burned into my eyes and watched as a burning wave swept across a field that inclined towards the rail bed. An old shed was instantly obliterated. Flaming sheep scurried, screaming, for the horizon. A butt of water exploded into fragments.

In the firelight, the worm was visible — it had soundlessly halted on the tracks. Liquid fire dribbled from hose-like cannons protruding from its sides. It was armoured, shield-like plates bolted together in a limber, flexible carapace — a big, bulletproof version of the May Day Festival worm costume.

The worm was a war train! A land dreadnought.

The bogus ghost finders chattered to each other, in several languages. I had an idea now of their true profession.

‘England alone must not have this thing,’ Sabin said. ‘It would mean catastrophe for the civilised world.’

‘So we hear from France,’ Stationmaster Moriarty said. ‘Can I take it that a bid is made?’

Sabin nodded.

‘Thank you, Monsieur de la Meux. What of Imperial Germany? Fraulein von Hoffmannsthal, can you and Herr Oberstein make an offer?’

Madame Valladon — whose real name turned out to be Ilse von Hoffmannsthal — conferred with the parson — the notorious spy Hugo Oberstein — and gave a nod. They had abandoned their pretence of not knowing each other, let alone their fraying cover identities. I was relieved not to have to listen to any more prattle about spirits from the Reverend Doone.

‘Mr Lucas. You are a free agent. Do you act, in this instance, for the Tsar of all the Russias?’ Young James addressed the dandy.

‘A little to the East, old top. A more humane mikado ne’er did in Japan exist, you know… and they have the railways too, very modern.’

This was a nest of damn foreign spies! I’ve played the Great Game myself, on several sides. Nothing crawls like as a patriot lying and sneaking for his country.

‘So “Carnacki” represents the Tsar?’ the Stationmaster asked.

‘That one acts for himself, James,’ the Professor said. ‘If you troubled to use your brain, you should have seen that first thing. He is the imposter among imposters. The real fake Carnacki is trussed in a trunk in the left-luggage department at Paddington.’

‘Come, come, James. Nothing is amiss.’

‘No? Then why is Miss Kratides holding a knife to my man’s throat?’

Now, everyone looked at us. I raised the paw not pinned by the lady’s grip in an attempt at a cheery wave.

‘Don’t mind me,’ I said. ‘Play on. Though, apropos of nothing, Oberstein: when you’re introduced to people, you start to click your boot heels then remember not to. Few English parsons have that habit. If you’re to continue your, ah, theatrical career, you might try to get that seen to.’

Oberstein spat on the platform. That wasn’t like a clergyman, either.

Ilse von Hoffmannsthal took out her revolver, as she had been dying to do all evening, and pointed it at people who didn’t notice or care.

The fire down the way wasn’t dying down. The worm wasn’t moving. It had no funnel and wasn’t expelling steam. I wondered in an academic sort of way why it was so bloody fast. I had more immediate concerns, though. Blood was dribbling into my collar.

Young James was off his stride.

‘Sophy,’ he said. ‘Is that you?’

The lady pushed me away. I stumbled, but got my balance and clapped a hand to my throat. For a moment, I was worried this Sophy Kratides person had slit my throat. They say you don’t feel it if the knife is sharp enough, though who ‘they’ might be who’ve lived to pass on this intelligence, I couldn’t say. Everyone whose throat I’ve cut has only managed a minute or so of inarticulate gurgling before shutting up permanently. I let my wound go and saw only spots of blood on my fingers. She’d just administered an attention-getting scratch.

Turning, I saw Miss Kratides peel off her mask of sticking-plaster, taking off the moustache and eyebrows with it. Sophy had a handsome, if severe face, and held a knife like someone practiced in its use. She slid it between her fingers, wiping off my blood. The top three buttons of her uniform jacket were undone. A smaller knife was holstered in the front of her corset, handle nestled between prize plums. How many other blades had she concealed in out-of-the-way portions of her anatomy? It might be diverting, if dangerous, to discover the answer. Her flashing eyes and sharp edges reminded me of other exciting ladies of my acquaintance… Mattie Ball of Wessex, Malilella of the Stiletto, Lady Yuki Kashima, Mad Margaret Trelawny. Yes, I never learn. I like the dangerous ones.

‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ the Stationmaster said to her. ‘You’re supposed to be on the Kallinikos. Keeping an eye on Lampros.’

‘Miss Kratides is where I want her to be, James,’ said a voice from the other side of the platform. ‘Keeping an eye on you.’

‘James?’ sputtered Stationmaster Moriarty.

I looked at the Professor, who raised his shoulders in a ‘not me’ shrug.

‘Yes, James,’ said the voice.

Out of the fog stalked Colonel James Moriarty.

We had the full set.

VI

So this is what the Colonel meant by ‘supplies’. Secret weapons. I should have known no Moriarty would spend his life on bully and boots. I still took him for a sickly desk-rider, but he could do damage enough while sitting on his arse.

‘James,’ the Colonel said to the Stationmaster, ‘I gave you this position to perform one duty, and one duty only. To revive and disseminate the legend of the Fal Vale Worm. To keep prying eyes away from the Kallinikos…’

Just to show I paid some attention at Eton… the war train was named for Kallinikos of Heliopolis, inventor of ‘Greek fire’, as used by the Byzantine Empire against the infidel circa 672 AD. The secret of the weapon, a forerunner of arsonists’ accelerants, was supposedly lost. It seemed it had been rediscovered.

‘Not only have you failed in this, James. You have contrived to gather all the prying eyes in one party.’

‘Yes, James,’ responded Stationmaster Moriarty. ‘On my own initiative. You can round them up. Buy them off. Shoot them. Whatever you do, they won’t be spying on your trials and reporting back to their masters. Isn’t that more useful than leaving them at large?’

‘Not cricket, eh what,’ Lucas said. ‘You’ve got to have some standards!’

‘No, Mr Lucas, you do not,’ Young James responded. ‘Do you not understood your own profession? As a spy, you must have no standards at all!’

M. Sabin — Herbert de la Meux, Victor-Duc de Souspennier — tried to step back into the shadows. My new girlfriend was there behind him, two interesting little knives slipped out of her bracelets. She made symbolic slices in his jacket. He didn’t try to escape again.

We were all going to have to play audience to this family discussion.

‘James,’ the Stationmaster appealed to the Professor, ‘tell James about human nature.’

The Colonel blew his nose. ‘I see you are in this too, James,’ he said. ‘Despite express instructions.’

‘Your cover is outmoded, James,’ the Professor told the Colonel, his voice dripping with scorn. ‘Putting the spook story about to scare off the curious might have done for Dr Syn. In those days, a dab of phosphor on an old sack-mask could turn a smuggler into a marsh phantom frightening enough for ignorant folk to shiver under their bedclothes on nights when the ghosts rode. But this is a world of telephone and telegraph. Entire societies of busybodies chase ghosts with anemometers and Kodaks.

‘Reviving the worm legend is not a sensible tactic for keeping people away from military secrets. Rather, it is an invitation to every crank in the land to crawl over your proving ground. Frankly, it’s a wonder this party consists only of spies. It won’t be long before someone hires the real Thomas Carnacki to poke about with his electric pentacle and plum-bob. If a circulation-chasing newspaper puts a bounty on the worm, you’ll have to deal with Moran’s game-hunting fraternity too.’

The Colonel was on the ropes, his brothers ganged against him.

All three heads oscillated as they stared at each other, like a convocation of cobra. It was hard to look away from, but harder to look at.

The Kallinikos was on the move, coming back this way. I glimpsed the Greek invertebrate’s operators through slits in its hide. Like the Cornish worm, the war train had a head at both ends. Two engines. It could move at equal speed in either direction, so long as there were rails to run on.

Metal snail tracks were creeping all over the world. The machine was not made for my sort of war: putting down natives, chasing hill-bandits, looting dusky potentates’ treasure stores. It was built to roll over Europe, pissing fire on uhlans, cathedrals and shopkeepers. The contraption stank of bloody cleverness. The representatives of foreign powers took mental notes. Which wouldn’t do anyone’s empire any good without the plans. It’s always the plans spies are after.

The worm slid into the station.

I didn’t swallow Stationmaster Moriarty’s latest version of events, in which he’d selflessly rounded up the most dangerous spies in Britain. I judged young James had the cold, calculating self-interest of his eldest brother. No atom of patriotism stirred in his breast. He might have planned a double-cross — technically, a triple-cross — but, if not for the early arrival of Colonel Moriarty and Miss Kratides, he’d at least have tried to get paid for the secrets of the worm before turning his catch over to the mercies of the Department of Supplies.

Lucas considered the Kallinikos wistfully. I could imagine the riches the Emperor of Japan would bestow on the man who brought him such a dragon.

I just felt a kind of congealed disgust.

It was like the first time I saw a Maxim gun in action. Oh, for a minute or two, the rat-tat-tat is exciting, and it’s quite amusing to see wave upon wave of spear-chucking, astounded natives jigging like broken marionettes as red chunks of their bodies fly off in all directions. Then, a battle which would once have raged for three days — and seen seven Victoria crosses bestowed (five posthumously) on the brave, foolish lads who defended some flyblown ridge just because a Union Jack fluttered above it — is over and done with inside two minutes. As the operator fusses about his overheated precious gadget, wiping grease off his spectacles and calling for tea and biscuits, it all seems terribly empty.

Anyone who can direct a hosepipe can turn the crank of a wonder-gun and murder more heathens in a single burst than a sharpshooter with clear eye, steady nerve and taste for the kill — which is to say, Basher Moran or the nearest offer — can pot in an entire campaign. I knew how handloom weavers must have felt when factory owners installed the spinning jenny. One thing about Mr Hiram Maxim’s gun, though: a sock full of blasting powder and pebbles, shoved down a fat barrel and packed tight with a swagger-stick, makes for an amusing incident the next time the clerk in charge gives the machinegun a test-fire to impress the staff officers.

Professor Moriarty, who had science instead of a soul, was interested in the Kallinikos. He quizzed Colonel Moriarty, who — I saw — was not beyond wanting to impress his older brother.

‘You have George Lampros, then?’

‘This is a Lampros — Partington design,’ the Colonel admitted.

Now, it was the Professor’s turn to lecture. ‘The formula for “Greek Fire” has been preserved since the Byzantine Empire by a family of alchemists and engineers. George Lampros is the last of them. Moran, you will recall I drew your attention to his obituary in The Times and listed the seven significant factors that suggested his death had been faked to cover a new, secret employment…’

I did not recall. Quite often, I didn’t pay attention when the Professor was off on one of his tears. I’d probably been waiting for him to hand over the paper so I could see how much I’d lost at the races the day before.

‘Lampros is a Greek patriot,’ continued the Professor. ‘Why has he shared his secret with Britain?’

The Colonel made a pfui gesture. His face was dark red in the light of the still-burning fields. He responded, ‘As a Greek patriot, Lampros envisions a coming war between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire, in which our island fortress will be the last redoubt. He is politically naïve, of course. We have a contingency plan for modern crusades against the infidel Turk, but it is but one among many potential conflicts for which we must prepare. The Kallinikos is a prototype, the first launch of a land fleet which will take the rails against any threat to the interests of our Empire. One day, soon, half the world will be in flames thanks to the Lampros formula… I intend to make sure Great Britain is in the other half.’

Sadly, I had no sock of blasting powder about me.

‘You disagree, Colonel Moran?’ Colonel Moriarty said. ‘Does the Kallinikos offend your sensibilities?’

Like the Professor, the Colonel could read my face. It’s not such a trick. When I’m angry, I frown like thunder. When I’m enjoying myself, I grin like an ape. Only when I’ve got a better hand than the other fellow does the curtain come down and I present an aspect of stone. I was frowning, now.

‘It does take the sport out of it,’ I suggested mildly.

Three Moriarty brothers craned their necks to glare electrically at me.

‘Sport!’ spat the Stationmaster. ‘Have you missed the last fifty years of history?’

‘No, chummy, I’ve been in the thick of it, where the medals are won and the bodies are buried. I’ve had the fun, while you’ve been clipping platform tickets.’

‘In a generation, you’ll be obsolete,’ Colonel Moriarty told me. ‘The first time the Kallinikos sees off a cavalry charge, your type of soldier will be one with the dinosaurs. It may be less sporting, less fun, but we shall win.’

‘You may be right, Colonel,’ I told him. ‘But you’ll have the deuce of a battle first. Not with the enemy, with your own lot. You’re still in the British army and they’ll never stand for…’

‘I’m not in the British army,’ he said, with a Moriartian gleam in his eyes. ‘I am the British army. Just now, in command of a single train, I outgun all the medal-laden idiots who rode into the Valley of Death but didn’t learn from it.

‘You think the Empire’s war machine is still run by public school bullies who went into their father’s regiment and had a commission warm and waiting? I admit there are all too many of that breed. You can find them guzzling brandy in deadly dull clubs or sweltering in Turkish baths, swapping yarns about the wily Pathan and Johnny Zulu. They’re for show, Moran. For parades and guarding Buckingham Palace and skirmishing with brown bandits.

‘When we go against, say, Kaiser Wilhelm — and, make no mistake, we will — the Kallinikos, designed by scientists and operated by engineers, will carry the day. We’ll keep you on, of course. Your kind of soldier. We might call you a land captain and put you on top of the train like a figurehead. We’ll give you medals when you get your head shot off. But soldiers in overalls, not scarlet uniforms, will carry the fight.’

Colonel Moriarty looked at me and saw the sort of men who sneered at his precious Department of Supplies and would never let him sit at the top table no matter how many battles his choo-choo juggernaut won. He couldn’t even make or operate the Kallinikos — just fill in the forms to get it on the rails.

I took my revolver from my coat pocket and pointed it at the Colonel’s head. That shut him up.

‘Moran,’ cautioned the Professor, mildly.

In that moment, I couldn’t tell whether Moriarty would be grateful or furious if I killed his brother out of hand.

‘I could have you burned where you stand, before you manage to fire,’ Colonel Moriarty said.

I had noticed the nozzles of the flame-cannons swivelling to point at me.

Turning, I fired… and took off one of Oberstein’s kneecaps. He was felled and the palm-sized compression pistol — disguised as a big pocket watch — rolled from his grip. He had been creeping into a position where he could have shoved the thing in the small of the Colonel’s back and blasted his spine.

‘Can I have another medal for that, chief clerk?’ I asked. ‘I seem to have saved your life.’

Sophy Kratides’ face was burning. She’d been behind Oberstein and had not seen him reaching under his cassock.

At my shot, Lucas and Sabin had thrown themselves on the ground. Ilse von Hoffmannsthal, however, stood straight.

Oberstein swore in German.

Lucas and Sabin began to roll along the platform and — in a flash! — I perceived something not one of the brothers Moriarty had yet realised.

I can’t sniff dropped cigar ashes and tell you the inside-leg measurement of the smoker. But I’ve come through numerous battles with skin relatively intact because I don’t suffer from a maths teacher’s need to dwell on my workings-out. I just know things, without really troubling with how or why I know them. It’s a whiff in the air, sometimes; or a broken twig on the trail which is just too neatly snapped to be natural. Now, it was two men who — we had been told — acted for different masters moving in unison.

Stationmaster Moriarty thought he had summoned rival bidders, but his bogus psychic investigators were a spy ring. The card game which had tipped me off that Oberstein and Ilse were in cahoots was a double-bluff to convince me Sabin and Lucas weren’t in it with them.

Sophy Kratides whipped out throwing-knives, and might have skewered both the rolling men but for von Hoffmannsthal, who stepped in front of her and launched a kick which would have done credit to a cancan dancer — it turned out her skirts were loose trousers tailored to seem like conventional feminine attire, until the wearer made a move like this — and planted a boot-heel into the Greek woman’s sternum. I heard the thump of impact and Sophy staggered back.

Ilse then pulled a comb from her hair, which turned out to be a long, thin dagger. Sophy recovered her balance and thrust both of her knives toward the other woman’s eyes, only for the blades to be struck aside — with sparks — by a sweep of Ilse’s dagger.

Then, it was on… an expert knife-fight between fit fillies who whirled like dervishes and slashed at each other with well-matched precision and clinical malice. Their loose hair tossed as they hissed insults at each other in several languages. Both took minor cuts and sustained rents in their clothes, but avoided the other’s would-be killing thrusts.

Entertaining, I admit, but a distraction. I rapped on the worm’s metal hide with my revolver.

One of the plates of the Kallinikos slid aside, making an aperture in the carapace. An engineer — our old friend Berkins, in tailored overall and a peakless cap like a convict’s — was puzzled by the sudden commotion.

‘You can’t do that yurr,’ he said.

Lucas and Sabin had rolled away from the train, and stood up. They got busy with the big wheel which worked the points. Lucas struggled with the control. Sabin — whose walking stick was a disguised shotgun — kept us from interfering.

It wasn’t them I was bothered with, anyway. Though I saw what they were up to.

The Professor spotted him first.

‘Moran,’ he shouted. ‘Up there.’

On top of the train crouched a thin, spidery figure. He wore a black body-stocking and a tight-fitting hood with slit-holes for eyes. He must have been lying on the roof of the waiting room.

It was the double-fake Carnacki. Chief of the spy ring, it appeared.

I took a shot, which went true. It spanged against my target’s chest, and he was pushed backward but not knocked down. He was armoured, just like the worm. The gaunt, lithe fellow made sure I hadn’t another shot at him, stepping off the other side of the train and dropping behind it.

‘All aboard,’ I shouted, and barged past Berkins.

‘You’re not cleared for the Kallinikos,’ complained Colonel Moriarty. ‘You could be shot for treason!’

It wouldn’t be the first time they’d tried.

The Professor held his brother back. Which showed a faith in me I’d come to expect. At least the Professor understood what I was doing. Neither of us could have said why, though. Oh, we wanted to slap down the false-face fellow who thought he could pull off a coup under our noses, but it’s not as if we felt an obligation to preserve Her Majesty’s secrets for the Department of Bloody Supplies. I’ve lived long enough with my impulse to hare off into dicey situations where death and danger lurk to know I could no more moderate this tendency than a tiger could decide to be polka-dotted for a change.

Moriarty, however, was usually more calculating.

The spy master would get into the worm somehow, and I’d face him in its belly.

The interior of the Kallinikos was cramped, certainly not designed for comfort. Also, stifling and malodorous. Canvas straps hung everywhere. I couldn’t stand up straight without bumping my head on the ceiling. Gauges, batteries, dynamos and dials took up too much space. Charts and graphs were pinned to a draughtsman’s table. Electric light bulbs hung from a thick central wire, pulsing with inconsistent current.

I pushed Berkins off the train, with some pleasure. He fell on his fat arse.

There was a shot. Sabin, firing at the ground as Lucas finally wrenched the wheel. With the points thrown, the Kallinikos could roll onto the main line — off the branch it had been using in the trial manoeuvres. If the spy master took command, he could burn the whole county to cover his escape and plunder the machine’s secrets at his leisure.

All three Moriarty brothers crammed into the aperture like Siamese triplets, jostling to board the war train. The Professor established seniority with sharp elbows, and was inside the Kallinikos ahead of the Colonel and the Stationmaster. None of them needed to be on the worm, but no James could have borne it if another were on board and they were left behind. Brothers, eh?

In the present pickle, I’d have found Sophy the Knives more useful than the Moriarty boys, but she was still apache dancing with Ilse. There was a reason the Professor employed me to handle the rough stuff — it wasn’t that he couldn’t take care of himself when there was blood on the floor, but he saw the wisdom of delegating to experts. In battle, that meant me. Still, I could have done without worrying over an arithmetic tutor, a desk soldier and the family idiot.

‘Keep out of my bloody way,’ I told the brothers, ‘and I’ll find our bloody imposter.’

They showed identical, stricken faces. None cared to be told what to do. All chewed over any sleight with eventual retribution in mind. Scratch any of ’em, and there was Moriarty marrow underneath.

‘Carnacki the Ghost Finder,’ I shouted, ‘is there anybody there? Do I sense a presence in the aether?’

Our spy master had got into the Kallinikos, I’d no doubt. One of the plates hung loose, showing a sliver of the outside through the hide of the worm. The hole didn’t seem big enough for a grown man to squeeze through, but this customer had more than proved his slipperiness today.

I saw a shadow and fired. Something exploded. A cloud of sulphurous flame puffed, burning brighter than natural fire. A couple of canvas straps were incinerated. A wave of intense heat rolled at me. I nipped behind a bulkhead. If Greek Fire got on flesh, it would sizzle through to the bone. The puff burned out quickly, but left a residue of acrid fumes. They might be lethal, too. This contraption was as dangerous to the operators as the enemy.

‘This is a delicate system,’ the Colonel said. ‘It’s not advisable to use firearms in here.’

Heaven forbid anyone should shoot a gun in a war machine!

The Colonel’s face and hands were soot-blackened. The Moriarty brothers were a music hall act. I supposed I could join in too. I’d lost my eyebrows to the flame.

Flares of light popped in my vision, even if I rubbed fists into my closed eyes.

Someone screamed further down the worm — inside one of its heads.

There was a lurch. The machine began to move.

VII

A whistle shrilled.

I found out what the canvas straps were for. The brothers Moriarty clung to the appendages, but still swung like human punching bags. I saw why the charts were pinned down and the equipment bolted to frames fixed to the interior walls.

‘Who is this man?’ the Colonel demanded. ‘The one who isn’t Carnacki.’

We all looked at Stationmaster Moriarty. He had issued the invitations.

‘He’s supposed to be Paul Finglemore, alias Colonel Clay, alias many others,’ Young James admitted. ‘The man who never wears the same face twice…’

The Professor pooh-poohed that. ‘But he’s not Finglemore, is he? This is an unknown, a shadow man, a ringer. He learned of your auction of secrets, James. Your net for spies, if you will. He saw a way to exploit it. A man who acts for himself.’

The Professor should know about that.

‘He’s a damned anarchist,’ the Colonel declared.

At present, I didn’t care who our shadow man was or what cause — if any — he espoused. I just thought it past time to stop him. He’d blacked all our faces. I was thirsty for a little evening up of the scores.

The Kallinikos picked up speed.

‘Colonel,’ I said, ‘who else is on board?’

‘That’s not information I can share with anyone outside the Department of Supplies,’ he replied.

‘Don’t be an ass, James,’ said his brothers.

‘Colonel,’ Colonel Moriarty said, ‘you’re to swear on your honour not to reveal anything you might learn of this machine…’

It was all I could manage not to laugh in his face. I held my hand up as if pledging a solemn oath — which I’m breaking by writing all this down. Dearie me, I’ll be sent to bed without supper.

‘…there’s Lampros, supervising the Greek Fire tests… Major Upshall… we call him the pilot, you might think he’s an engine driver… Berkins — no, wait, you threw him out… two assistant technicians from the Royal Engineers, don’t know their names… a recording clerk, Philip Gould… and Ram Singh, my immediate junior in Supplies.’

‘They’re all almost certainly dead.’

‘That’d be a nuisance.’

The Colonel had the traditional Moriarty reverence for the lives of his fellow men. Not that I’m any different.

‘Except Lampros,’ said the Colonel. ‘He’ll need Lampros.’

‘Your alchemist hasn’t given you his formula, then?’ I asked. ‘He mixes up his own batches of Liquid Inferno, and your stinks profs can’t work out the recipe?’

The Colonel nodded. ‘Bright boy. Preserve a secret since 672 AD and it’s hard to let go. Once you’ve shared, you’re not special any more. Not essential to the program. And if you’re not essential, you’re surplus.

‘We need that formula and we need Lampros,’ the Colonel continued. ‘More than the Kallinikos, it’s what this project is about. The train is a moving platform for the fire weapon. A replaceable prototype.’

‘I’ll remember you said that,’ I said.

The next compartment contained sighting and firing mechanisms for the fire nozzles. I found three dead men, trussed and hanging from the canvas straps. Not a mark on them, but faces twisted enough to indicate their last moments had been unpleasant. These were the two sappers whose names the Colonel hadn’t bothered to learn and the recording clerk, Gould. All wore overalls and rimless caps. Gould had a green eye shade and an inky right hand. Whatever he’d been keeping records in — a logbook or ledger — was missing.

I peered through a periscope-like apparatus, and saw Cornish fields whiz by. Some sort of green-tinted, see-in-the-dark lenses were involved. Fiddling with the thing in the hope of sighting a road sign or landmark, I twisted the wrong knob.

A bright, burning stream arced across the countryside and scattered like twenty gallons of flaming puke. We sped on, so I don’t know if I awoke some rustic by burning the thatch over his head or harmlessly set fire to a pile of rail-side gravel.

Beyond the firing compartment was the currently leading engine. Our shadow man must be at the controls. I had my revolver up, determined to put bullets into soft living flesh rather than dangerous combustibles.

My inadvertent test-firing of the flame cannon must have drawn attention.

The compartment door — a concertinaing, semi-transparent sheet of something chitinous like isinglass — was crinkled aside. A dark silhouette stood in the breach, eyes angry in mask-slits, gun in hand.

I shot first and a ragged red hole opened in his chest. My ears rang from the report. My kill collapsed, in a mess. No, not a kill. I’d plugged a decoy. Tumbling to the mistake, I threw myself to one side.

I heard a puff. A six-inch nail juddered in a bulkhead, a breath away from my ear.

‘Nice bit of kit,’ I said. ‘But only at close-range. For a distance shot, an air rifle can match any gun. But air pistols are one-shot toys.’

The dead man’s gun — empty, I’ll be bound — was fastened skilfully to his hand with twine. His skin was white, so he wasn’t Ram Singh. That made him Upshall. The shadow man had put his clothes on the pilot, but kept the chest armour which had saved him earlier.

I stepped through the door, into the worm’s head.

The ringer hadn’t had time to pump his pistol again. Of course, I’d have come a cropper if he’d had a brace of the things… but he hadn’t. He carried a back-up gun, but that was tied to the late Major Upshall’s hand.

There was a stench in the air, worse even than the foul smell elsewhere on the Kallinikos. A dead body lay across the floor, face smashed into a contraption of glass tubes, tanks and copper wires. Acid was eating through his head. So much for Ram Singh of Supplies.

In command of the train was the fake Finglemore, the fake fake Carnacki. The shadow man now showed another face. Beaky nose, high brow, hawk eyes. He could have been anyone. He wore Upshall’s overalls.

He had one hand on what I took to be the throttle of the Kallinikos, and the other about the throat of a stocky, olive-skinned gent. This could only be George Lampros: Keeper of the Flame, Greek patriot, political naïf, valuable item.

‘Stay back, Colonel Moran, or I’ll kill him.’

His fingers squeezed the Greek’s plump neck, thumb working up around the ear for a snapping grip.

‘Let me take care of that for you,’ I said, and shot Lampros in the face.

VIII

I’d just killed the only man in the world who knew the secret of Greek Fire. We’d have to make do with all the other ways of setting light to each other’s houses. I recommend a bucket of coal oil poured through the letterbox, some rags shoved in afterwards to soak it up a bit and a slow taper to give you time to be somewhere else when the blaze catches. No doubt a new, even-more-devastating method of burning half the world would come along in a minute.

The shadow man was surprised, though. Hawk eyes a-goggle. I had a warm thrill — as if I’d lost every hand for an afternoon and evening, but a single turn of the cards had put me back in chips.

I took aim, again. It would have to be another head shot, since he still had armour under his overalls.

Forestalling his execution, he chucked Lampros at me.

He had a caber-tosser’s strength. The heavy Greek landed on me like a sack of melons. A lot of blood from the grapefruit-sized hole in his face got in my eyes.

The ringer wrenched the throttle-handle loose and stood over me with the broken-off iron bar raised like a club. I tried my best to shift the dead Greek so I could kick the spy master in the shins. He brought the handle down, but I got Lampros’ head in the way.

He didn’t try that again, but turned his club to the controls of the Kallinikos. He battered a brass panel, smashing dials and knocking off switches. Sparks cascaded from a broken meter. Then he grabbed a canvas strap, pulled himself up like an acrobat and disappeared through a hole in the roof.

I freed myself from the corpse and assessed the controls. Even if they hadn’t been ruined, I wouldn’t know how to toot the whistle let alone throw the brakes. On recent experience, I’d be likely to yank the wrong chain and blast us all to flinders.

I peered through the green-tinted, eye-shaped portholes which studded the worm’s head. The Kallinikos was making express time. It was also tipping from side to side alarmingly. I had doubts it was up to anything but a straight stretch. Lighter, and more flexible, than an ordinary train — those scale-like armour plates rattling against each other — it might come off the rails at any moment.

I went back to share the news with the Moriarty brothers and found them bickering. It might have all gone back to the unsettled matter of who scoffed the last picnic pastry on that outing to the Great Exhibition for all I knew.

‘James, James, James,’ I shouted. ‘Everyone on the crew is dead. The ringer’s on the roof. He wrecked the controls; I assume he took the brakes. The train’s going to crash.’

‘Lampros?’ the Colonel asked anxiously.

‘Moran said everyone on the crew, James,’ the Professor said. ‘Further elucidation is neither necessary nor, in the circumstances, desirable.’

That put Moriarty medius in his place.

‘There’s a swing bridge ahead,’ the Stationmaster said. ‘At this time of night, it’ll be open. Boats come up the Ross for the china clay.’

‘Thank you for that touch of local colour,’ I said. ‘Open — that doesn’t mean open for railway traffic, does it? It means we’re hurtling towards a bridge that won’t be there?’

Young James nodded.

‘Tell me something useful,’ I said. ‘How soon will we reach this open bridge?’

‘How fast are we going?’

‘No bloody idea. Fast.’

‘Impossible to tell, then. Soon.’

Jumping off the Kallinikos was not an option. It would mean, at best, getting smeared along the side of the track like breakfast marmalade.

‘Our present enemy does not strike me as bent on self-destruction,’ the Professor said calmly. ‘He will have a safe way out.’

‘At this speed, he can’t grab a low branch without breaking his fool neck,’ I said.

‘The Kallinikos has two engines,’ the Professor responded. ‘Two complete sets of controls. He will be making for the other set. Does he know how to drive the train?’

‘He was making a fair fist of it before I barged in on him.’

‘Then, he will reverse our direction.’

‘That can’t be done unless the other engine is disengaged,’ the Colonel said. ‘If its controls are smashed, then that is not possible.’

‘Can the engine be decoupled?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Then, he will free himself from the Kallinikos and effect an escape…’

Young James spelled out the obvious ‘…leaving us to go into the river!’

The Colonel made his way, monkey-like, from strap to strap to the rear of the carriage. He tried to wrench aside the door. It was jammed shut.

The Professor went to the hole through which the shadow man had got onto the train, and set about enlarging it enough for me to get through.

I reloaded my revolver.

‘He’ll know you’re coming,’ Moriarty said.

‘Of course,’ I replied, handing him my hat.

I stuck my head through the hole. A rush of air hit me like a wave full of pebbles. The Kallinikos was racing through a deep cutting. A wall of banked-up earth was barely two feet away from the train. If I touched it, I’d be scraped loose and mangled. So I took care to hug the worm’s metal hide as I crawled up on top.

I threw myself flat on the train roof and dragged myself towards the rear engine. By touch, I found the hole where the shadow man had got inside — a long cut made between plates. Typical of the Department of Supplies. For all its armour and revolutionary design, the war-worm was more pregnable than the average third-class carriage on the 8.15 to Dog-Walloper’s Bottom.

I was not fool enough to plop through the hole, and get a knife in my ribs for my pains.

There was a porthole above the controls, offering a glow like a skylight. I made my way there, inch by thorny inch. I didn’t let my head show, but got a glimpse below. The spy master was throwing switches and pulling levers. Electric lights burned. Dials came to life. He was getting his engine running before decoupling the rest of the train.

He kept looking around, alert.

I rose to a crouch, struggling to keep balance. The rushing wind would blow me off the roof if I presented too broad a back. Keeping steady, resisting an impulse to go too quickly, I stood. I let seconds pass, to get used to the slipstream. I took out my revolver and aimed at the porthole.

I fired, then stepped into the hole I’d made.

I intended to drop neatly down into the cabin in a rain of glass.

Instead, the train’s impetus slammed me into the rim of the porthole at waist height. Jagged glass shards ripped through my coat. I fell badly, on top of the ringer.

He got a knife — something small, like a scalpel — in my side, but I smashed my revolver-butt into his nose. It squashed and bled. I didn’t know how badly I was stuck, but got up off him. I kicked the shadow man several times, in the head and kidneys. He rolled away from my boots, and sprang up — agile as a big cat.

I shot him in the chest again, knowing it wouldn’t kill him. At close range, the impact must have broken some ribs. He yelled and fell again.

I saw the wedge — a wrench — that was keeping the door to the compartment shut, and kicked it free.

‘In here,’ I called to the Moriarty brothers.

I hauled the ringer up, took away his knife, and put my gun to the soft part under his chin. No chain mail there. Give him credit, he was already recovering from the equivalent of a sledgehammer blow to the chest. He was scouting for new means to vex me.

The Professor, the Colonel and the Stationmaster entered the cabin. The space was not really large enough to accommodate us all.

‘Why haven’t you killed him?’ the Colonel asked.

‘Can you drive a train, James?’ I said.

‘No.’

‘Can you, James, or you, James?’

Twin headshakes.

‘Then we need him alive, for the present. Can any of you at least decouple this locomotive?’

‘That’s simple,’ the Stationmaster said.

Young James took the loose wrench and used it to open a hatch in the floor. He twisted a lever below. There was a ripping sound, as plates parted. We were free of the rest of the Kallinikos, but still travelling in the same direction — fast.

On a slight incline towards the bridge which wasn’t shut, we gained speed and pressed against the other carriages.

I looked into the shadow man’s angry eyes. ‘Now, chummy,’ I said, ‘do you still want to be an engine driver when you grow up?’

I slightly relaxed the pressure on the pistol, without taking it away.

For a moment, I thought I’d misjudged the man. Plenty would die rather than give in. Some players see mate in two moves and kick over the board. I’ve never found out if I’m that sort myself, but rather think I am. If I’d been the one who knew how to drive the train, I’d have laughed at me and double-dared me to shoot my head off.

This was a more calculating person.

Someone more like the Professor. Cold-blooded, but practical.

Without saying anything, he rose and turned to the controls. A charge had built up in the batteries. I saw dynamos and what-nots whizzing. Acid bubbled in tanks. My impression was that all he had to do was engage this engine — whatever that meant — and we would be away.

The Kallinikos came out of the deep cutting and, miraculously, held to the rails as they took a gentle curve down a hillside towards the Ross Gorge. The other head smashed through a white wooden pole which hung across the line as a warning that the swing bridge was open.

‘Toot-toot,’ I said, darkly.

The shadow man threw a lever. A whistle did sound — not steam, but some indicator that the engine was working. Our wheels screamed as they were forced to turn the other way.

The rest of the train parted from us.

Through the open door which had lead into the previous carriage, now separated from our engine, I saw the rails leading to the edge of the precipice. Our lights showed what awaited us. Below was the River Ross. Not a raging, foaming torrent but a placid waterway. Ahead, useless, was the middle-section of the bridge, turned sideways on its pillar in the middle of the river.

The gap widened, but we were still travelling the wrong way.

If I shot the ringer now, it wouldn’t make any difference. On balance, I decided I’d rather what happened to me happened to him, too.

The front engine breasted the edge, dragging its carriages — which twisted, flame-nozzles pointing upwards — into the air. The Kallinikos was going at such speed I thought briefly that it might leap the gap, but the bridge-section was in the way. The worm’s head smashed against the pillar, and the whole contraption fell into the Ross with a scream of metal…

…there was an explosion, which left spots in my eyes for months. All the Greek Fire in the belly of the worm went up at once. A patch spread across the water like a floating island of flame.

I assumed we were going to fall into that.

But we slowed. The rails complained.

The brothers Moriarty held fast to canvas straps.

Through the open door, I could count the number of sleepers between us and the edge.

Then, there were half as many…

Then, none. Our wheels, I fancy, touched the lip of the gorge as we slowed to a stop. We all lurched, and Stationmaster Moriarty fell towards the door. Neither of his brothers tried to haul him back, but he got hold of the folding isinglass and didn’t tumble into the burning river.

The engine still ran. The wheels got traction.

And we changed direction, drawing away from the drop.

The sleepers appeared again. The gorge receded. Without the rest of the train as an anchor, we got up speed quickly. We were back in the cutting, rolling towards Fal Vale.

With another gun-prod, I persuaded our reluctant pilot to moderate our speed. A fatal crash now would be beyond irony.

‘How about a toot of the whistle,’ I suggested.

He made no comment.

‘Next stop, Fal Vale Junction,’ I said, light-headed. ‘All change yurr…’ [45]

IX

The surviving head of the Kallinikos rolled into the station. I took care to watch the pilot as he threw the brakes and prodded him as he turned off the engine. A series of switches had to be thrown in sequence. The drone of the dynamos died.

Colonel Moriarty was trying to issue orders again. No one listened. Most of the folk who would have snapped to when he told them had gone into the river with the tail of his wonderful war-worm. The Department of Supplies wasn’t an easy, safe commission any more. In the Colonel’s coming wars, even file-clerk and engine-maintenance soldiers would be asked to pay the butcher’s bill.

At Fal Vale, the fighting was over.

There was some precariousness in getting out of the engine. There was no side door, just an egress to the rest of the train… so, the Moriarty brothers had to clamber down onto the rail bed and then make their way up onto the platform. They could have walked to the far end of the station, and taken the gentle slope up, but Young James pulled himself up to the platform, tearing his uniform at the knees, to show how limber he was. After that, his older brothers grimly followed suit, despite aged bones, tight waistcoats and a seeming unsuitability for such physical action. The Colonel grunted, went red in the face as he lifted his feet off the rails, and had to be pulled up by Stationmaster Moriarty and Berkins. He lost some buttons, and the last vestiges of his commanding manner.

Both brothers stuck out hands to assist the venerable Professor, but Moriarty couldn’t resist letting a card he rarely showed fall out into the open.

After taking a step or two back, the Professor rushed forward, and swarmed out of the rail bed up onto the platform with the agility of a young monkey. He might give the impression of being like a dry stick, with bent shoulders and fragile bones. In fact, he had a wiry, cultivated strength and physical aptitude which — on several occasions — proved a fatal surprise to people who thought he’d be easy pickings in a straight-up punching match. He had some Eastern tricks — nobody knows more about dirty fighting than the Chinese, who’ve made a religion out of pokes, kicks and gouges which would get you barred in disgrace from a British boxing ring — and held by a peculiar diet involving melon seeds and carrot shavings. You couldn’t get me to eat that if it bestowed eternal youth and added six inches to your prick.

I shoved the shadow man out of the train, revolver aimed steadily at the back of his head, and — taking no chances — escorted him to the end of the platform and up the slope. I’ve nothing to prove and if there’s an easy way to be had, I’ll have it. We rejoined the rest of the party by the waiting room.

Berkins — not entirely the yokel I’d taken him for — had Oberstein, Lucas and Sabin tied to the points wheel. The Frenchman had been shot in the shoulder, making him a lopsided match for the German I’d shot in the knee. Lucas had been lightly tortured in a friendly, no-particular-information-required sort of way. They made a sorry lot of minions, and didn’t meet the angry gaze of our un-humbled but bested master spy.

I hoped we could settle the matter of the ringer’s true identity before dawn. I was prepared to peel off his faces, one by one, with a razor.

Berkins took over with rope, and knotted him to his fellows.

The war of the wildcats had to be counted a draw. Ilse von Hoffmannsthal was in the wind, but Sophy Kratides wasn’t dead. The Greek fury, bodice interestingly in shreds, swore revenge against the German valkyrie.

As returning hero, it struck me that a kiss and a cuddle might be in order. Coming through battles alive always makes a body frisky. Yes, a healthy bounce on handy upholstery would see out the night nicely. However, one glimpse of Sophy’s dark face, augmented by a cut along the jawbone, made me think better of the fancy. No one wants to barely escape a train crash and capture a dangerous spy, then get struck in the vitals by a hot-tempered foreign wench. When she found out what had happened to her countryman Lampros, she’d be well off me… even without the detail, which I was keeping to myself, that I’d done for him.

‘There are few railways in South Africa,’ Professor Moriarty said.

I didn’t know where that came from, but the Colonel did.

‘The Boers have no fight in them, James. They’re well down the list. France or Germany, or France and Germany. Then, the Americans.’

The Professor said nothing more. I took his point — a war train was no use unless your enemy obligingly built rails straight into the heart of his territory and then didn’t mine them when hostilities started. Even Greek Fire, if its secret could be recovered, wasn’t suited to a ruck with scattered intransigents who knew the lay of their land. The Kallinikos might have been named the White Elephant for all the good it really was.

My sort of soldier would be killing foreigners for the Queen for the foreseeable. The Department of Supplies would have to lump it. The last whisper I heard was that they were sponsoring mechanical wings which kill every dolt who straps them on and jumps off a cliff.

‘James,’ the Colonel said, ‘what is your association with Colonel Moran? I have made enquiries. He has a, shall we say, somewhat mixed reputation.’

I knew what that meant. Ask anyone who knew me in the army and you’ll hear the same things about Basher. Tiger in the field, bounder in the mess. A good man to have your back, but a bad one to show your back to. Trust him with a fight, but not your sister, your wallet or a deck of cards.

Stationmaster Moriarty waited for the Professor’s answer, too. ‘Moran is my associate, James. I employ him.’

‘For what? Wiping off the blackboard and collecting exercise books?’

‘My business is numbers, James. You know that. Numbers and equations. You do not understand them. You never have. A fault in Supplies, I would have thought. Value is calculated in numbers. And chance. Morality does not come into it. That’s the purity of mathematics. Nothing clouds the issue. Not religion, not politics, not sentiment. I have applied my methods to a well-established field of human endeavour. In this, I use Moran and men and women like him.’

He turned to the Greek hellcat.

‘Miss Kratides, take my card. As bodyguard to a man who no longer has need of one, you are without a position. A place could be found for someone with your skills in my business. One day, James, you will work it out. You will see the solution.’

The Colonel was none the wiser. Young James was laughing.

‘James,’ he said, ‘well spoken… and might I say that it’s time I… ah, that I was given your card?’

The Professor looked his youngest brother square in the face, then inclined his head in turn to the truncated wreck of the Kallinikos and the tied-up collection of sorry spies. He gazed up to dark skies, already tainted by the seeping red of dawn. He lifted his shoulders, indicating the mess of the world in general and this worm business in particular.

‘No, James. I have no place for you.’

‘Not sentiment,’ he’d said. ‘Not family,’ he’d meant.

Stationmaster Moriarty, least stony faced of the brothers, gulped as if he’d been slapped. I doubt if Colonel Moriarty was much impressed with his showing this night either. The Firm would not take him on and the Department of Supplies would have little further use for him. The GS&W Railway Company wouldn’t be too happy with his record, either. Someone would have to take the blame for the flaming crash at the swing bridge.

‘The Lizard to Newquay stopping train will be here in ten minutes, Moran,’ Moriarty said, tapping his watch chain. ‘We can change at Truro and be in London by midday.’

To the Stationmaster, the Professor said, ‘James, you will issue travel documents for Colonel Moran and myself. You will also have Berkins refund the monies extorted from us to board your Special.’

To the Colonel, the Professor said, ‘James, you will wish to remain here until your superiors arrive to have a report from you about this incident and take these gentlemen in hand. You will want to keep my involvement sub rosa.’

Neither of the Professor’s brothers were happy, but both did as they were told.

Now, Moriarty turned to the shadow man — who had patiently followed all this.

‘We have not met before, but you have been aware of me as long as I have been aware of you,’ the Professor addressed the spy master. ‘Your associates believe your intent was to deliver the secrets of the Kallinikos to a foreign power, simply for money.’

‘Not money, Professor.’ He smiled, thinly. ‘Numbers.’

Moriarty nodded.

‘You think yourself my mirror, I see. Well, then, numbers, if you will. You have traded secrets before, I know. You have stolen them simply to prove they can be stolen and sold them back to their original owners. But that is not your real interest, your passion. Which is for the game, the gamble. Now, you have crossed my path. I foresee a wearisome inevitability to future relations. I might tell you that you have learned your lesson, that you should from henceforth take care not to incommode me. I know you would take this as a challenge, and set out to inconvenience me. I shall, of course, counter your every move, and retaliate, hampering your larger plans. Neither of us will prevail, immediately. Our businesses will suffer in this, the true coming war. The situation will become impossible. There can be only one outcome.’

‘Agreed.’

‘Then you will withdraw?’

‘I agree there can only be one outcome,’ the ringer said. ‘I imagine we disagree about what it might be.’

‘Moran,’ the Professor said. ‘Kill him.’

I brought up my gun.

The Colonel began a protest.

I pulled back the hammer.

The shadow man remained calm. I’ve seen that before.

Again, I felt a knife at my throat. Again, my gun was taken. Again, Sophy.

Ah, Sophy, Sophy, Sophy.

‘This man is a prisoner, James,’ the Colonel said, with icy relish. ‘The property of the Department of Supplies.’

The Professor’s head oscillated. He was grinding his teeth.

Now, Colonel Moriarty — a punctured gasbag, filling out again — thought he was higher up the pole, and relaxed, confident in Sophy’s blade. Stationmaster Moriarty — still sulking at the rejection, swinging back to cling to his other brother — backed him up, and made show of checking the prisoner’s bonds.

‘You will not keep such a property,’ the Professor said.

I remembered the gun bound to Major Upshall’s hand. Someone as good with knots as that wouldn’t stay tied up long.

The shadow man’s face — if it was his own — flickered with amusement.

‘Catch your train, Professor Moriarty. We shall continue this match in due course. You will know where to find me.’

The Lizard to Newquay was puffing down the line. A whistle shrilled.

The Professor looked at the ringer, then at his brothers. No trace of expression all round.

Sophy gave me back my gun. I’d no doubt she’d kill me if I tried to use it. I still hoped she’d call on us in Conduit Street.

Berkins came up with tickets and a refund on our original fare.

No one said goodbye, so I did, cheerfully. It was a split decision as to whose expression was the most angry, miserable or murderous.

Moriarty and I boarded the train.

X

At Truro, we secured a first-class compartment on the Penzance to Paddington. Moriarty gave off such deadly emanations that — though the train was busy — no one dared to join us.

The Professor hadn’t spoken since Fal Vale.

I beetled off to the dining carriage and had a large breakfast. I winked and twirled my moustache at three ripe, giggling country girls going up to the city for a day trip. The way I felt after the night’s work, I could have ruined the lot of them before they had to catch their return train. Then, some hale fellows joined them and they giggled much more, pointing at me from behind tiny hands. I realised I was still soot-blackened, and repaired to the lavatory to scrub my face. The dirt came off, but the bruises were still there, and the cut to my throat. I also had a scratch in my side where I’d been stabbed. I felt ridiculously old.

I ordered a pot of coffee from the steward and went back to the compartment.

The Professor consented to drink. He was chewing over the night’s events.

There was the question of the ringer’s true identity, but that would keep. Instead, I asked the thing that had nagged at me ever since the meeting with Colonel Moriarty at Xeniades Club.

‘Moriarty,’ I said. ‘Why did your parents give their three sons the same name? Why are you all James?’

‘It was our father’s name. He wished to pass it on.’

‘To all of you?’

‘To a son who pleased him. It is my understanding that, upon my birth, he was pleased. In the nursery, as I began to show aptitude… with sums… he continued to be pleased. My mother also, I believe, though she never said as much. She never said much of anything, I recall. Father would review each week with me and declare himself pleased. Then, when I reached the age of six, he found himself less pleased. Then, not pleased at all. I went over my sums again and could find no error in my workings. So I reasoned that the failing was not in me, but in Father. I did not tell him as much, for I knew he would not see it that way.

‘Then, when I was seven, my brother was born. My brother James. Father was pleased with James. From the day of my brother’s birth, I believe my father spoke not one word to me. I was fed and clothed and schooled, but in the house, I was a ghost. My brother did not know who I was, but eventually gathered he would not be punished if he visited trifling nuisances and afflictions on me. Father was still pleased with James. In the nursery, and for some while after, he continued to be. My brother was James. He would not believe that was my name too. He only truly realised who I was, what my name was, when our brother was born. Our brother James. I was fourteen and James was seven. He lost the name too.

‘Young James was the only James. We were ghosts separately, James and I. Not together. That was not possible after what had passed between us when I was the only ghost. Young James was the James and Father was pleased with him. In the nursery, and afterward… He never became a ghost, and — as you can tell — lacks firmness of character, if not craft and cunning. Had Father and Mother not been lost at sea, they might have had another child, another James. That might have been the making of Young James.’

‘How did your parents come to be “lost at sea”, Moriarty?’

The Professor paused, and said, ‘Mysteriously, Moran.’

I drank my coffee. Remember I said the Professor wasn’t the worst of his family. Wasn’t the worst James in his family. Neither were his brothers. The worst, so far as I could see, was James the first.

‘James, James and I have taken different paths,’ Moriarty said. ‘We have never been fond, but we are family. I am not given to calculations with no outcome. But I have considered the question of how things might have differed if I’d been the only James born to my parents’ union, or if my brothers were named, say, Robert and Stuart. Then, might I — the sole James Moriarty — have been different? Much of what I might have been was taken away, taken back with my name, and failed to survive successive attempts to transplant it to my brothers. James and James, also, are not whole, have had to share with me something that should be one man’s alone. But there is a strength in that. Some qualities, some possessions, are distractions.

‘Young James had a comfortable settlement from our parents, but it did him little good and is all gone now. He will never be more than a functionary. A poor one at that. James went into the army, to find an order, system and path. He is respectable. My first inclination was to join the clergy. That I see no mathematical proof whatsoever for the existence of God is no drawback. Rather, atheism is likely to help advance in the Church of England. No distracting beliefs. Then, I saw what could be done with numbers and have made my life’s work the business which employs you and so many others. Had I been the only James Moriarty, I would not be what you see before you.’

I looked into his clear, cold eyes. His head was steady.

I had no doubt of what he had told me. No doubt at all.

In that compartment, it was cold. Around Moriarty, there would never be warmth.

We were well past Reading.

‘We’re nearing our final destination, Moriarty.’

‘Yes, Moran. I believe we are.’