Professor Moriarty The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE PROBLEM OF THE FINAL ADVENTURE

I

You know how this ends. Someone goes over a waterfall.

A lot of rot has been spouted about what happened to Moriarty in Switzerland. One of his brothers and that medical writer in The Strand muddied the waters with a public row [46]. It was a surprise to me when Colonel Moriarty of ‘f-k off back to your blackboard’ fame put the Professor up for posthumous sainthood.

In letters to the press, Moriarty medius tossed off accusations about his brother’s demise, which he laid at the door of ‘an unlicensed, semi-professional adventurer’. This Watson oik piped up with a spume of ‘most dangerous man in London’ piffle to exonerate his long-nosed, trouble-making former flatmate. Lawsuits were threatened. Arguments raged in clubs, letter columns and the streets.

In a battle which might interest scholars of modern urban warfare, the Conduit Street Comanche whipped the tar out of an irregular band of crybaby destitutes who pledged allegiance to the Watson’s departed mucker-wallah.

The third James Moriarty — with bloody cheek! — sold the Pall Mall Gazette personal, intimate memoirs of all the wickedness his brother the Professor was behind. Even with an Irish spinster scribbler as a ghost [47], Young James was unable to cough out anything publishable and became the only Moriarty ever convicted in court of anything. The Gazette had him up for breach of contract and reclaimed the advance fee.

Colonel Moriarty and the Fat Man of Whitehall — who turned out to be the brother of the Thin Man of Baker Street — exchanged cryptic, terse, bitter communiqués under the letterheads of the Department of Supplies and the Diogenes Club, respectively. No one outside ‘most secret’ circles will be allowed to read these until one hundred years after the death of someone called ‘Billy the Page’ [48].

Holding myself aloof from this hullaballoo, I found it expedient to continue a continental holiday with pleasant companions. I followed the controversy via week-old newspapers left in hotel lobbies. Always good sport on the French Riviera. You can see North Africa from there, which offers exotic game and fragrant souks.

My longstanding curiosity about whether those Mississippi riverboat gamblers were half as sharp with the pasteboards as their reputation has it, still pricked. And, not satisfied by two go-rounds with the yeti (home court advantage helped neither of us to better than a draw each time), I still felt honour bound to make a third attempt at bagging a big shaggy mi-go pelt from the Himalayas.

Many — indeed, most — surviving members of the Firm were, by then, in police custody. Only one, Charlie Vokins of the Royal Opera House, came close to naming the Prof — whom he called Macavity — in his statement. He was subsequently killed in his cell, bitten by a venomous spider hitherto unknown outside the tropics. Its presence in Holborn has set the world of arachnology afire. The rest of the gang took a sensible ‘don’t know nuffink’ line from arrest to arraignment and beyond. Chop uttered only his name, which he shouted in response to every question — usually with a violent hand gesture.

It was said the Moriarty Firm was smashed completely, but you have to pay attention to who’s saying it. To whit… Scotland Yard, who’d only just been forced by this nagging Thin Man to admit such an outfit even existed. On the whole, the Yard would rather not have known about it because (adopt the proper brandy-soaked drone), ‘These things can’t happen in London, don’t you know, and if they can, they couldn’t last out the week because Great Britain has the finest police force in the world.’ Depressingly, this may be true — foreign rozzers generally make imbeciles like Lestrade, Mackenzie and MacDonald seem towering geniuses.

The only other person to declare the Firm defunct was a certain John H. — or James H., to cloud an already fogbound issue — Watson, MD, whose literary prospects had just washed over the Falls. I have it on good authority that The Strand doesn’t care to run reminiscences about beastly bad backs, mysterious gammy legs or interesting appendicitis.

Oh, we’d had setbacks, but I wasn’t the only one of the Firm in the wind. Parker the garrotter, for one, escaped notice. Simon Carne came up with another disguise, and posed as a private detective who swore to bring ‘that scoundrel Carne’ to book. ‘PC Purbright’ was working a scam with Filthy Fanny, shaking down monied toffs the faux waif accused of molesting her in Seven Dials. When the raid came, PCP mingled with the real coppers and ‘arrested’ Filth. He said he’d get her swiftly to the Yard for questioning. They hopped on the Brighton Belle and vanished from history. After a good wash and dressed in grown-up clothes, Filth would have been unrecognisable.

Mrs Halifax willingly confessed to crimes from gross indecency through baby-farming and living off immoral earnings to impersonating a Mother Superior, but swore up and down that the old gent and his military pal who rented her upper rooms were complete innocents and unaware of what went on at her now-notorious address. I like a trollop who knows her business — you don’t pay ’em just for the tumble, you also pay ’em to keep their mouths shut about it afterwards. Her girls were all credits to the oldest profession. It brings a tear to the eye, a tickle to the loins and an irresistible urge to check the inside pocket to see if the wallet’s still there when I think of any of ’em.

Polly Chalmers, ‘the occasional maid’, claimed she had just woken from a horrible dream and had no memory of the last seven years. Ceridwen Thomas, ‘Tessie the Two-Ton Taff’, put three constables in hospital (one permanently) during her arrest and swore no gaol cell could hold her (fit her, more like). Halina Staniewiczowa, ‘Swedish Suzette’, answered questions only in Polish, to the confusion of the Swedish interpreter Scotland Yard had brought in at great expense for her interrogation.

Wing Liu Tsong, ‘Lotus Lei’, was released after mysterious strings were pulled and got a job lighting joss sticks in Limehouse for the Lord of Strange Deaths… whom, truth to tell, she’d been working for all along; her new duties sound innocent enough, but you don’t know what happens to the mandarin’s guests if they don’t comply with his polite requests for cooperation or information by the time the stick has burned down.

Molly Duff, ‘the Ranee of Ranchipur’, formed a Thuggee strangling sisterhood in Aylesbury Women’s Prison and queened over the place for twenty years. Lady Deborah Hope-Collins, ‘Mistress Strict’, went up before a judge she recognised as one of her overgrown schoolboy regulars; she was given a good character by the court after all charges were dismissed. Marie-Françoise Lely, ma belle Fifi, slipped through the net by marrying Inspector Patterson, the plod in charge of the Conduit Street round-up, then disappearing with the wedding presents two days into the honeymoon… at that, Pie-Eye Patterson was lucky to have had forty-eight hours service from the finest truncheon-polishing lips in Europe.

Neverthehowsoever, the cat was at least halfway out of the bag.

During his long career as an evildoer, Moriarty shrugged off rumours about his true enterprise and maintained a respectable false front to the outside world. All through our association, even as he cut himself into crimes and netted one of the highest private incomes in the Empire, he kept at a dull teaching job which brought in just £700 per annum. The Devil knows where he found the time to give lectures, mark papers and expel slackers, but he did.

None of his former students or present colleagues spoke up in his favour when the press had a field day maligning him. I gather the inkies were as terrified of the dear old soul as anyone who met him in his criminal capacity — once, I know for certain, he slowly put a youth to death for misplacing a decimal point — even before it came out that he was, as the sensation papers have it, ‘a diabolical mastermind’.

So, the world now knows — or thinks it knows — the truth about the terrible Professor James Moriarty.

Well, that’s fair, so far as it goes.

Still, in Fleet Street terms, I’ve an ‘exclusive’. Only two people really know how Moriarty died. One took that long plunge into the foaming torrent, and is in no position to reveal anything. The other is me. I’ve kept schtumm so far, but now it’s time to tell the end of the story of the worst and wildest man I have ever known. Have I your attention? Good, let us continue…

II

On our return from Cornwall — early in January, 1891, for those who like to mark off the dates — Professor Moriarty bunged himself into his work. Oh, he was still in one of his moods… brooding on family matters, I’ll be bound, redoubling his efforts to achieve abstruse goals in a triply vain effort to earn back his name. All he wanted was the recognition of a sire who was a) plainly an out-and-out maniac incapable of human feeling, b) unlikely to appreciate the Prof’s high standing in any of his chosen fields and c) long since drowned.

After one glimpse behind the curtain, I knew better than to ask for more. I was on hand with the Firm for my sure eye, cold nerve and lack of scruple, not as sob shoulder or scratching post for an unknowable conundrum of a man. In those days, Moriarty spent more time with his wasps — remember them? — than his lieutenants, but popped out of his study periodically to issue orders and pass comment. I made sure his instructions were carried out, though even after long experience I was puzzled by some of his moves…

Dynamiting a pillar box on the corner of Wigmore and Welbeck Streets just after the post had been collected and it was empty…

Bestowing one hundred pounds upon a respectable solicitor in Taunton on the condition that he dash acid at the portrait of a former alderman which hung in the local assizes (respectable or no, the shyster went through with it)…

Contriving a delay of twenty minutes on the City & South London Railway to ensure a minor government clerk did not keep an appointment with an optician in King William Street…

Injecting minute quantities of a bacillus into every bottle but one of a case of port wine — tricky thing, using a hypodermic needle on the cork without leaving an obvious hole — presented to the Chief Coroner of Cardiff, ostensibly by a grateful widow lately exonerated of husbandicide.

Whatever that little lot was all about went over the waterfall, so your guess is as good as mine. The Professor was always doing things like that. Usually, there would come a moment when I could see the point of these preliminary moves, and a grand scheme would be apparent. In these cases, that moment never eventuated. I think of this as Moriarty’s Unfinished Symphony of Crime.

In years to come, a mastermind as yet unborn might read this passage, see at once the design thick old Basher couldn’t make head nor tail of, and set out to complete Moriarty’s final coup. Good luck to you, mate. Post me my cut — care of Box Brothers Bank — if I’m still living.

The only profit to come from the Fal Vale excursion was a welcome addition to the Firm. Three weeks after the loss of the Kallinikos, who should present herself at Conduit Street but Miss Sophy Kratides, bearing the card Moriarty had given her. She sought employment suitable for her skills.

To reach our reception room, she had to climb the stairs past Mrs Halifax’s establishment, uncommonly busy at that time of the morning. Swedish Suzette and Mistress Strict, en deshabille, were riding a publisher and a merchant banker across the landing. Not a few of their gentlemen callers liked the bit between their teeth and the lash on their flanks. At the last formal event, I’d won seven guineas wagering on the Librarian of Jesus College to best a muscular Christian poet by a full length. Coming across this sporting event gave Sophy the wrong idea about the line of work on offer.

She charged into our rooms het up, red in the face and knife out, intent on avenging any slur against her virtue. Since the Prof did not emerge from his study to investigate the commotion — which was mostly in Greek — I was responsible for calming the tigress with assurances that we only wanted her to stick her knives into people. Eventually, I persuaded her to put away the blade and share a divan with me for a proper job interview. I had Mrs Halifax send in tea, without her deadly biscuits. Mercifully, Polly remembered to wear the full uniform — not just mob-cap and apron — when she brought in the tray.

‘Do you have references?’ I enquired.

Sophy opened her pocketbook and handed me a newspaper clipping from an English language periodical published in Hungary. The news item involved Harold Latimer and Wilson Kemp, two dissolute Englishmen, who were reckoned to have quarrelled and stabbed each other to death [49]. Kemp, also known as Davenport, was a familiar if unwelcome face. Crooked as a corkscrew but not half so handy, he’d done a share of minor minionage about town, obtaining compromising letters for the blackmailer Charles Milverton or suborning young idiots onto the books of the shylock Dan Levy [50]. Moriarty had several times turned down Kemp’s petitions to join the Firm, rating him unreliable, vile and inept. Getting stabbed in Budapest proved the Prof right again. Latimer was a new to me, but if he knocked about with Kemp it was a fair bet that he was a c-t of the first water.

Sophy claimed both for her bag. She’d been settling a personal score — avenging a murdered brother. One had to appreciate not only the dainty knife-work but the care taken to arrange matters so the Hungarian peelers had a cut-and-dried solution to the mystery and no need to trouble the lady said to be travelling with the deceased clots.

In finishing Kemp and Latimer, she’d discovered an aptitude for wet red work and had taken to it professionally. She had stabbed a French juge d’instruction through the lungs for Les Vampires on a freelance basis, but turned down the Grand Vampire’s offer of a permanent position. She shrewdly reckoned the rising Irma Vep would not take kindly to competition for the title of deadliest woman in Paris. A bureau of the Greek government gave her employment, on the condition that she stay out of Greece, then contracted her to look after the late George Lampros — mention of whom prompted me to hem and haw somewhat — as a liaison with the British Department of Supplies.

‘The death of Lampros counts as a black mark on your record,’ I said, making sympathetic moon-eyes from the other end of the divan. ‘I imagine you’re motivated to do better in your next position.’

She spat out a mouthful of tea.

‘You misunderstand my former commission, Colonel…’

‘Call me Sebastian, or Basher even, Sophy, if I may…’

I own I might have twirled my moustache. I know it’s a tiresome old look-at-me-I’m-a-roué stage gesture, but — dash it — I’ve got a moustache (a big one too), and it’s there for the twirling. I’d lick my thumb and twirl my eyebrows if I thought it’d produce the desired results. I mean, I was on a divan, with a trembling young miss (and her knives) prettily arranged on the cushions, in need of tea and sympathy and a job… and the warm possibility she might accommodate to an obliging gent who saw his way to help her in this wicked world. If you don’t twirl the old ’tache then, you might as well not have whiskers at all.

As it happens, the minx was all business.

‘My orders were to keep Lampros alive, unless it seemed probable that he, and the secret of Greek Fire, were at risk of becoming the property of another power… in which case…’

She made an expressive pass across her throat with a barbed thumb and pulled an unmistakable grimace.

‘I would have killed him myself, Colonel.’

That was a facer. Did she suspect what even Moriarty hadn’t tumbled to, that mine was the bullet that had done for the oily inventor? There was no time to further discuss the matter. For, at this point, Moriarty emerged from his bolt-hole. He did not seem surprised to find Sophy Kratides in our parlour.

‘Has Moran discussed terms?’ he asked. ‘£4,000 per annum, payable in advance every quarter. An account will be opened for you at Box Brothers. This is acceptable, yes?’

She nodded. This was acceptable, yes.

Moriarty continued to talk at her, head bobbing as usual. ‘Do you own a black dress and veil? You are to be a widow this afternoon. If you do not have such items in your wardrobe, Mrs Halifax will provide. You will be furnished with a wedding ring, photographs of your late husband, and keepsakes of your two children — who were lost in a boating accident on the Serpentine. Since I don’t need to remember them but you do, you may choose their names. Your husband, Benjamin Thoroughgood, was English, so I suggest you do not choose Greek names.’

‘Will and Harry,’ she said.

Moriarty paused in his oscillation, elevating an eyebrow. He picked up the reference. Told you he memorised crimes from all over the world.

‘Very apt. My condolences on your loss, Mrs Thoroughgood. Colonel Moran and I will accompany you to Kingstead Cemetery this afternoon for the funerals. I suggest you put something in your eyes. You will have been crying for days.’

Sophy set down her teacup, sat up straight and arranged herself neatly on the divan. She put her hands in her lap, took a deep breath, paused… and let out a banshee wail. She tore her hair, screwed up her eyes, and slapped her cheeks. Tears poured out in floods. Mrs Halifax and Polly looked in, startled… but backed off when they saw Moriarty impassively watching the show. Sophy clawed the air and howled. Her screech set the teeth on edge more than la Castafiore’s high notes. I applauded and would have tossed roses if any had been to hand. Moriarty nodded approval and told our new employee to give Mrs H. her measurements.

III

Lot of rum doings in Kingstead Cemetery. The real Thomas Carnacki has a whole evening’s worth of spook anecdotes about the place. The management have had to double the night guard since the Van Helsing scandal broke in the Westminster Gazette. An old Dutch crank was arrested for repeatedly breaking in, vandalising the tombs and desecrating the corpses. Especially young, relatively fresh lady corpses. No accounting for taste, but — really? — is there nothing foreigners won’t sink to?

As it happens, we should have seen that coming. The degenerate quack was a regular of Fifi’s in Amsterdam and London. His particular jolly involved his lady companion of the evening sitting in a bath of ice water for half an hour to get her temperature down, then lying still, cold, silent and unresponsive on a garlanded bier while he did something unmentionable with a length of wood. I suppose this performance was all very well to take the edge off, but in the long run it didn’t quite slake the appetite. If I ever run into the johnny, I’ll give him a length of wood all right… and fill his mouth with garlic.

The Thoroughgood funeral was at three o’clock.

From their crowded tomb in the cemetery’s Egyptian Avenue, you’d reckon the Thoroughgoods must be the most unfortunate family in the land. Never were such people for dying. It seemed to be all they ever did. That was, indeed, the case. There was no Thoroughgood family. It was an account established with Bulstrode & Sons, undertakers. Said account was settled, generously and promptly, in cash.

Moriarty also supplied illicit and expensive materials to the senior Mr Bulstrode, an enthusiast of obscenity reckoned to have the finest collection of pornography in private hands in Europe. The Bulstrode Archive of Smut perhaps rivals the legendary section of the Vatican library at the personal disposal of the college of cardinals. I am proud that a presentation copy of My Nine Nights in a Harem reposes in a coffin-shaped bookcase in Bulstrode’s private mausoleum between The Secret Life of Wackford Squeers and The Intimate Encounter of Fanny Hill and Moll Flanders.

The Firm was tied in with Bulstrode because, on occasion, we found ourselves inconvenienced by a corpse who would not do for the river. Those fortunates were entombed with all due solemnity, as members of the Thoroughgood family. After many an enjoyable funeral, Moriarty, Moran and party had popped into Jack Straw’s Castle for pies, pints and ironic toasts to the dear departed. Not a few folk down on the lists as ‘disappeared without trace’ have ‘Thoroughgood’ in marble over their final resting places. If you ever wondered where to find Baron Maupertuis, the Belgian who tried to corner quap, you could have done worse than enquire after poor old Uncle Septimus Thoroughgood [51].

I wasn’t aware of any surplus stiffs on the premises — though I’d not have been surprised if one or two decedents showed up under the sideboard or in the window-seat. That had happened before. I was given pause by the two smaller coffins sharing the second funeral carriage. To my knowledge, the Professor had only ever murdered one circus midget… and that was in the way of an experiment. He wished to determine whether a child-sized corpse ‘burned beyond recognition’ in a bread-oven could be proved in autopsy not to be a particular missing heir. Guess what? It can. It was back to the drawing board in the Finsbury Disinheritance Caper.

Moriarty and I, hats ringed with black crepe, sat either side of the faux widow in an open calêche, holding up black umbrellas against the drizzle. Sophy sniffled like Eleanora Duse upon learning her fiancé has been assassinated in Fédora. Chop, suitably top-hatted and dour, sat up on the box, holding the reins as two fine black horses, with plumed headdresses, drew us up Kingstead Hill. At least one of the nags from Bulstrode & Sons was dappled, but soot-blacked every morning to fit the mood. In the rain — and have you noticed how it always rains at funerals? — the blacking began to run.

Other mourners awaited in Egyptian Avenue. Select souls, mostly in crow black. Sombre faces, betokening the friends of bluff Ben Thoroughgood and poor little lost Willy and Harry. Even I was shocked to see who’d turned out. I didn’t know ’em all straight off, but recognised enough faces to take a guess as to who else might be signing the condolence book. There were veiled ladies in the party, none making as much effort as Sophy.

I had, of course, brought my Gibbs side arm and pearl-handled pocket razor. In addition, a coil of piano wire nestled inside my hat — a trick I learned from the late Nakszynski, the Albino. In case of special circumstances, the ferrule of my umbrella came off to unsheath a needle which was envenomed by squeezing a bulb in the handle. Judging from the cut of everyone’s mourning clothes at this send-off, I wondered if I’d not come underarmed.

Grimes, a well-paid sexton, had the tomb opened and berths cleared for the three newcomers. Coffins were stacked up like child’s building bricks, suggesting that the Thoroughgood family would soon have to purchase another wing for their needs. I gallantly assisted the widow down, while Moriarty held the umbrellas. One or more of the mourners whistled.

A pair of Bulstrode sons shifted the coffins into the tomb. Mr Beebe, an entirely legitimate — if myopic in everything — clergyman, droned a sermon. We used to ask Mrs Halifax’s girls to come along for a pleasant outing, but their giggles and rude remarks put the parson off his stroke. Now, only those who could remain ‘in character’ — like the estimable Sophy — were entrusted with invitations.

Several of the Thoroughgood men were interred anonymously by the terms of contracts they had signed with Mrs H. It was a service she provided to any clients who died of a coronary, asphyxiation or sheer exhaustion in the pursuit of their pleasures, and would rather disappear than have loved ones know the exact circumstances of their deaths.

Solemn duties done, the morticians tactfully withdrew. Beebe hung about soliciting donations to a restoration fund or home for indigent seamstresses or somesuch. A pay-off mollified him and he left too.

Inside the tomb, mourners stood around glass-topped coffins. Some doffed hats, some raised hankies, some lit cigars and muttered, impatient with the performance. The beloved dead looked like Madame Tussaud’s waxworks, for the very good reason that the same artisans made both. Benjamin Thoroughgood was a spare head of General Gordon.

Moriarty told Grimes to seal the tomb doors behind us, and return in an hour. The sexton — who had never been able to account for the Dutch guilders he tried to pay for drink with on the night Van Helsing was arrested — had complied with stranger requests. I wish I could say this was the only time I’d heard the rasp and scrape of heavy stone tomb doors closing with me still on the inside and corpses for company.

‘Gentlemen, ladies, I bid you welcome,’ Moriarty addressed the mourners. ‘You know why I’ve invited you here. Several of you have travelled great distances, at no little inconvenience to your continuing interests. Your presence betokens the seriousness with which you take this matter. Most of you are familiar with each other, but some are new to this rarely convened circle. We all know who we are. Do I need to make introductions? Some of us prefer titles to names… so, the Lord of Strange Deaths and the Daughter of the Dragon… the Grand Vampire of Paris and Mademoiselle Irma Vep… Doctor Nikola of Australia and Madame Sara of the Strand… Miss Margaret Trelawny and the Hoxton Creeper… Doctor Mabuse of Berlin and Fraulein Alraune ten Brincken… Arthur Raffles of the Albany and his, ah, friend, Mr Manders… Théophraste Lupin and Josephine, Countess Cagliostro… Doctor Jack Quartz of New York and Princess Zanoni… Rupert, Count of Hentzau, and… Miss Irene Adler.’

One of the veiled ladies lifted her black gauze.

‘Hello, boys,’ said that bitch.

IV

So there you have it. The worst people in the world. All in the same tomb. If Grimes fell down a manhole and left us there to rot, or — more likely — eat each other, well… every detective, do-gooder and right-thinking prig in Christendom could get sloshed and break out their party hats.

I wouldn’t know how to send a telegram to someone like Dr Nikola, who favoured Asian mountain fastnesses and Pacific island hideaways, and I’m not deranged enough to invite the Lord of Strange Deaths to tea. As the loyal reader knows, I’m afraid of very little, but if anyone gives me pause it’s that dome-headed, bloody clever Chinaman. Being not afraid of death isn’t the same thing as not caring about hours — in some cases, weeks — of preliminary discomfort. The cellars of the Si-Fan were known as places to avoid. The mad mandarin had a marmoset on his shoulder, if you can believe it. His Eurasian companion — supposedly his daughter, as if that spared her anything — occasionally fed the chittering beast nuts from a packet. The Celestial pair wore white robes, because they do everything sideways out East and that’s the custom for attending the funerals of folks who aren’t in your immediate family.

As for the others… by now, you’ve heard of most of them. Those you don’t know you’re better off for it, but I’ll fill in the dance card anyway.

The second biggest surprise was the presence of my old friend Mad Margaret — Queen Tera as was — and her pet goon. The bandages were off. She now wore a smooth white alabaster mask which matched her replacement hand — eyebrows and lips picked out in gold. God knew what she looked like underneath, though her luxuriant raven hair had either re-grown or was a wig left over from the Princess Theatre’s last Antony and Cleopatra. She’d retrieved the Jewel of Seven Stars and wore it on her meat hand. The Black Pearl of the Borgias — which I happen to know Countess Cagliostro once coveted — winked from a brooch on her lapel. I doubted she’d forgiven or forgotten our previous encounter and she can’t have felt kindly towards the Professor after the mêlée in Conduit Street and the dismantling of her Kensington Temple. If she was here, keeping her resentments to herself, then she must have a very good, or very insane, reason to join the circle.

I’d never seen Jack Quartz before. Can’t say I was impressed. He sported an ostentatious cigar and the flashiest girlfriend. Princess Zanoni had more paint, powder and wax on her face than the fake heads in the coffins. The American mad doctor was tubby round the middle and running to jowls that made him look as if he were hiding cotton balls in his cheeks. Yanks never know when to stop, whether their passion is vivisecting beautiful women — which was how Dr Jack passed his leisure hours when running New York’s criminal underworld became too burdensome — or eating yard-across slabs of beef with fried potatoes washed down with brown carbonated health tonic. Nikola sliced people and animals up alive too, with obscure scientific end — the Prof tried to explain it to me once — but Quartz played with scalpels just for larks.

Lupin and Raffles were just jumped-up thieves, useful enough if you wanted a diamond necklace abstracted, but essentially lightweights. Then again, next to Moriarty, Nikola or the Lord of Strange Deaths, I was just a jumped-up murderer, and only got to sit on a slightly higher chair than the burglars.

Title or not, Rupert Count of Hentzau — a Ruritanian Michaelist, if your memory goes back that far — was just like me. Call him a dashing rogue or laughing daredevil if you must, but he was your basic assassin in comic opera uniform. His moustache was waxed to points which could have your eye out and he seemed forever on the point of bursting out laughing. We were both all-rounders, though he was a sword and I a shot. I daresay if we met under different circumstances, we’d each cede the other supremacy with our favoured tools and look for a third weapon to settle the question of who was the deadliest man in Europe. The jaunty cad reminded me of a young version of myself, which naturally inclined me to hate the fellow. He further antagonised me by showing up with that bitch as an arm adornment.

More interesting to the connoisseur of criminal masterminds was the young German the Prof had called Dr Mabuse, though that was only one of his preferred names. I’ve mentioned him before. Remember, the ardent imitator who was wont to present a sham of Moriarty’s own face and manner? He’d come to this party in his Moriarty costume, head bobbing atop an enormous fur collar, chalk on his cuffs and something in his eyes to make them glint. I had a sense I’d met him before, wearing another face or faces, and inwardly cursed this disguise craze… Simon Carne and Colonel Clay had started it, and now it was likely nobody was who they said they were or who you wanted them to be. Except the Hoxton Creeper — he could pass for a Stone Age Man or an Easter Island statue come to life, but otherwise had an extremely limited range. Others weren’t so distinctive. Anyone could wear an alabaster glove and mask, shove footballs down her blouse and claim to be Margaret Trelawny. However, most of the women in the world twisted enough to pull it off were in the present company as their own saucy selves. Mabuse’s moll — who looked no more than twelve, except for eyes that might have seen Babylon fall — was a strange duck, all angles and poses, with dramatic hair. I took her for another dagger-under-the-pillow damsel. It’s a sign of this age of emancipation that so many girls take to the trade.

Countess Cagliostro and Madame Sara were senior adventuresses, who had attained their station by stepping over the corpses of dozens of men who’d not thought to take them seriously. Most women — bless ’em — try to take a couple of years off their age, but Jo-Jo Balsamo put it about that she was decades older than she looked, and privy to the alchemical secrets of le Comte de Saint-Germain and her supposed ancestor the mountebank Cagliostro. Over a long weekend in a Valparaiso boudoir in ’63, she’d put my back out — nearly thirty years on, she seemed not a day older, while my back hurt more with every passing year. What was she doing with a perfumed lout like Lupin?

Sara, no last name given, ran a series of odd little rackets from a beauty shop on the Strand, and had her tithe to the Firm delivered in scented envelopes nestled in gift baskets of salves, unguents and creams the Prof had no use for. I’d tried her hair-restorer on a thinnish patch on my crown, but it hadn’t helped. Lately, her envelopes had been so fat I wondered if she was paying us over the odds in an attempt to persuade us she was a more notable crook than we took her for. Moriarty assured me she really was raking in as much as her payments indicated, and could claim financially to be the most successful female criminal of the age. Though she had Nikola at her side, the Madame generally had no use for masculine company. She worshipped at the altar of Sappho; or, if Sappho were unavailable, a bloomers-wearing, monocle-sporting saleslady in the bicycle department of Derry & Toms.

This Grand Vampire was new to me, successor to the fellow we’d given Napoleon’s brainbox and the fellow who’d retained Sophy’s stabbing prowess. Bald as an egg, he took the gang’s name seriously enough to have his eye-teeth filed to points. Showing up in Kingstead surely put him at risk of getting holy water dashed in his face. No Frenchman likes to wash, so it was just as well Van Helsing had been deported. His young companion — who stuck around as Grand Vampires came and went — was dressed and coiffed as a boy. No one was fooled. Even the light-fingered Raffles and the dimwitted Manders, queer as eight-bob notes, knew Irma Vep was no lad. Madame Sara must also have noticed her tight-cut black knickerbockers and shapely silk-stockinged calves. The ephebic, anagrammatical vampire bore watching… though in this company she had stiff competition, in both the general bounce-worthiness and deadly-as-a-mamba stakes.

Ah, yes, Irma, so sorry… also, profuse apologies to elusive Alraune, tempting Tera, experienced Jo-Jo, serpentine Sara (a cursory nod in her case), zestful Zanoni, and the by-no-means-hideous Daughter of the Dragon. Even Sophy Kratides, the woman I’d come with, would have to step aside.

‘Hello, boys,’ indeed.

So, here she was again. I knew I would forget everything I’d learned since Rosie the pot-girl in The Compasses told me she was ‘with child’ to get me to cough over the money I’d been sent from home for my fifteenth birthday. Which she then spent on gin and sailors before giving birth only to the bolster she’d shoved under her pinafore.

I’d rather have met Kali’s Kitten again.

But, even in a tomb, surrounded by arch-fiends… that smile… those eyes… that twist of the end of the lip… that artfully stray curl…

Irene Adler. Damnation.

I’d have turfed Ben Thoroughgood out of his last resting place and stretched out in his stead if she’d asked me to.

I’d have garrotted the Lord of Strange Deaths’ pet marmoset if she’d asked.

I’d have snatched the Black Pearl and swallowed it, daring the Creeper to cut me open to get it back.

I’d have… well, I I’d have made a fool of myself. Again.

V

Hentzau offered round a hip flask, but his sardonic smirk did not inspire confidence in the gesture. With an ‘oh well, more fool you’ shrug, Rupert took a healthy draught, opened his mouth to show brandy sloshing about inside, gulped and pantomimed satisfaction. He opened his mouth again to show he hadn’t shammed the swallow. The performance put off even those — like yours truly — who could have done with a stiff one. He might have dosed himself daily with minute portions of, say, arsenic, to build up tolerance. Such tricks have been known. Only Madame Sara took him up, taking a dainty swig. She’d probably rendered herself immune to every poison known to nature or science in the course of perfecting her ‘beauty treatments’.

The Daughter of the Dragon made no attempt to share her packet of nuts with anyone but the marmoset. Quartz didn’t hand out his cigars, though he had a fat case in his inside pocket. This prompted Raffles, who was puffing on a Sullivan, to show off his famous manners by passing round his cigarette case. I say his case — it had the crest of the Duke of Shires on it. That bitch, Irma and Hentzau accepted fags, and in no time at all the tomb smelled like a crematory. The snob thief waited for his Sullivans to come back — robbers always expect other people to steal from them, I know I do. Lupin didn’t take a cigarette, but did hold on to the case for a moment, jokingly making a pretence of slipping it absent-mindedly into his coat pocket before handing it over. Raffles didn’t look as though he found that funny.

So much for the social aspect of the gathering.

‘We are the greatest criminal minds of the nineteenth century,’ began Moriarty. Knowing we were in for a lecture, I settled my behind on a stack of Thoroughgood coffins. ‘And yet, like the century, our days are numbered…’

No one voiced outrage. Closed-mouth crowd, of course. Deep thinkers, on the whole, disinclined to bluster until they’d heard the whole story. Still, I’d have expected an indignant yelp or two of ‘I didn’t come all this way from Kensington… or Pago Pago… or Berlin… to be insulted’.

‘Really, we draw to the end of a golden age in our field of endeavour. Who has there been to oppose us, but ourselves? No police force constituted thus far has been more than a momentary inconvenience to our businesses, easy to thwart and easier to suborn. Not since Jonathan Wild has anyone at our level been brought to a court of law, let alone convicted and hanged. We have had an easy time of it — but it will not last. Already, some dilettantes have set about making war on us. Men — and a few women — of intellect, wealth, resource and character who have set themselves against us, not because they are supposed to, but because they must. We all know the species of law breaker who steals or murders or violates because he has not the strength of mind to resist the urge…’

The barest flicker of a glance at the Hoxton Creeper made his point.

‘Such impulses exist also in those who will be our enemies. They have a perverse instinct, a compulsion if you will, to bring us down. Plainly put, they do not like what we do and are not prepared to let us continue without hindrance. At present, it’s an easy matter to be rid of a stray honest prosecutor or police inspector. There are more than a sufficiency of our sort of public officials to thwart the efforts of such freaks. But, make no mistake, we see the dawn of a new era. Crime fighting is about to change. What will happen when civilised countries opt to devote as much to their police forces as to their armed forces? The sort of cool hand who once sought glory and fame fighting the foreign foe or discovering the source of the Nile will set out to become not a soldier or an explorer but a detective. Modern science will be turned against us. The detective of the future will be a thinking machine, as cold and effective as any of us. They will have capabilities to match, or better, our own. Let me give you an example…’

The Professor held up his hand, fingers splayed.

‘The lines and whorls on your fingertips are unique to you. Touch any surface with your naked hand and you leave traces more distinctive than a signature. All of us, wherever we go, leave these calling cards. As yet, this fact is unknown to all but a few. Within twenty years, it will put an end to your kind of crime, Raffles. In terms you understand, rain will stop play. Could you open a safe while wearing gloves, or trouble to wipe clean every object touched in the process of breaking and entering a house? Even if you could, could Mr Manders? Fingerprints on windows, strongboxes, weapons… even human skin… will send to gaol or the gallows three-quarters of the professional criminals currently active — and all of the amateurs.’

That put the cricketer in his place. He wouldn’t have looked half so startled if bowled out for a duck by a schoolboy.

‘I have heard of zese fingerprints,’ the Grand Vampire said. He had a high-pitched voice, and hissed through those teeth. ‘A Frenchman ’as pestered ze Surété about using zem to identify ze criminalss. Also, ze beumps on a man’s ’ead. Even ze shapess of earss.’

‘I’m not prone to sticking my ears against anything in the course of a crack,’ said Raffles.

‘Except safes, old boy,’ put in his friend. ‘Sometimes you do, to listen to the tumblers. Leave a perfect impression of the lugholes, I’ll be bound, eh what? If jolly old Mackenzie of the Yard had a cast of your ear, he’d nab you in no time, don’t you think?’

‘Shut up, Bunny,’ Raffles said, irritated. I’ve known clever crooks undone by devotion to imbecile girlfriends. Raffles and Manders showed it was the same story among bumboys.

‘Phrenology — the bumps on a man’s head, as you say — has its place, too,’ Moriarty said. ‘Dr Mabuse, you can change many things about your appearance, but the shape of your skull, even under crepe and wax, will be apparent. The squama occipitalis is distinctive and unmistakable. I would know you…’

The two stared at each other a moment.

‘And I would know you,’ responded the German, exaggeratedly bobbing his head. I’ve seen fighting cocks look at each other like that, just before the squawking, pecking, clawing and killing flurry. I was put in mind of the Moriarty family reunion I’d attended.

Good Lord, could Mabuse be some long-lost Moriarty bastard! If not the Professor’s, then the Colonel’s? No, such twists only happen in three-volume novels. Besides, well, really…!

‘I have considered fingerprints too,’ Dr Nikola said, breaking the moment. ‘Such things will first take hold in Europe and America, but will reach my quarter of the world in time. I agree we must pay attention to developments in detection, must not underestimate the scientific method. Moreover, we must not ignore the quality I think you do not fully appreciate, Moriarty. Idealism. Altruism. To label such things a mere compulsion is to simplify dangerously. Heroism is not susceptible to mathematics. It is not a condition to be cured, like a fever. Like all faiths, it is mysterious and strong. I daresay we shall have to get used to it. If we do not understand, appreciate and admire idealism, we shall lose.’

Hentzau got his cynical snort in before I did. Like me, he could show off a chestful of medals, mentions in dispatches and fancy write-ups in the press. We’ve both been called heroes by our nations and adoring multitudes, but we couldn’t scrape up a jot of idealism between us. What we had wasn’t heroism, but daring. Not the same thing, though it’s an easy mistake. In the army and the bush, I’d sneered at heroes — mostly at their wakes — but I’d moderated my opinion at about the time Jim Lassiter put a gun to the back of my head. That gun-fighter had something. Diggory Venn, too, dash his red skin and stout heart. Even the real Carnacki was a different breed. Men like that were out there, and would always be tough nuts for men like Bloody Basher and gallant Rupert.

Moriarty just looked blank at Nikola’s speech. Quartz was bored and impatient. The Lord of Strange Deaths was inscrutable, as if that were a novelty. Countess Cagliostro was counting her pearls. If you’ve heard anything about the later careers of all these individuals, you’ll know they should have paid more attention to the little dark chap who warned against heroes. All of our masterminds had a Jim Lassiter — or nearest offer — in their future. Not everyone in the circle got tossed off a waterfall, but we all got bloody noses. Some of us went to prison.

‘Heroism is an attractive quality,’ Irene said, mischievously.

‘Everyone can be bought, sister,’ Quartz snarled. ‘Or intimidated. Or dropped in the East River in a sack. Cut into an idealist and you find they bleed and die like all undermen.’

‘I disagree, Mr Quartz,’ Nikola said, warmed to the subject and pointedly not recognising the Yank’s academic qualification. ‘Idealism exists, as surely as terror, greed and lust. We deny it at our peril.’

‘Are you a tiny bit of an idealist yourself, Doc?’ Irene asked.

The minx was flirting with Nikola, who was — under the manners, clothes and intellect — still at bottom just a native. I squeezed my umbrella handle involuntarily, filling the ferrule with poison.

‘Not at all, Miss Adler,’ he responded. ‘I am a pragmatist, in search of enlightenment. I am not a romantic.’

That was a cup of cold water in her flirty face. Was Nikola one of Raffles’ lot? Didn’t seem likely. Exquisites, in my experience, tend to be randy sods, not ‘thinking machines’. In the end, the cracksman who stayed three steps ahead of Mackenzie of the Yard while burglarising the best houses in London had to flee to South Africa and get himself shot in one of those coming wars to avoid ending up jugged on charges of sodomy like Oscar Wilde. Those who sat at the top table, like the Prof and the Lord of Strange Deaths, seemed practically sexless. No one ever mentioned the mother of the Daughter of the Dragon. Would Mabuse’s need to emulate Moriarty extend to sawing off his own pecker? It was put about that Alraune, his present consort, was grown in a petri dish from mandrake root and protoplasm. That was one scientific way forward for the breed, though it takes a lot of the fun out of it to my thinking.

‘At the highest level of our calling,’ went on Moriarty, back to his memorised lecture notes, ‘most of us are scientists, even if we call it alchemy or vivisection or pursuing the secrets of the ancients…’

Sage nods from doctors, professors, sorceresses and quacks. The Lord of Strange Deaths got his degree from Edinburgh University, and both Moriarty and Nikola were pukka qualified brains. However, like Nikola, I was sure Jack Quartz had got his doctorate by collecting coupons from fudge tins and posting them off, with a dollar handling fee, to an outfit in Oklahoma who sent back the fancy sheepskin he had framed in his laboratory.

‘Unencumbered by morality, unhindered by Dr Nikola’s bugbear idealism, science has shown us the way,’ Moriarty continued. ‘Advances in warfare, medicine, engineering, transport, communications and economics have all contributed to the modernisation of crime. We have built upon the achievements of our predecessors. Where once a Dr Syn, a Dick Turpin or a Blackbeard had smuggling rings, outlaw bands or pirate ships, we have armies, businesses and fleets. My Lord of Strange Deaths, you are more truly an emperor than your ancestors who styled themselves as such. Dr Quartz, your operations extend from the Canadian Northwoods to Tierra del Fuego, an entire hemisphere. Monsieur le Vampire, wherever French is spoken, half of every louis d’or stolen passes into the coffers of your group. I am not flattering any of you. We could do better. The nations of Europe have carved up Africa, but — aside from the Si-Fan’s presence in Palestine and the Queen Tera Cult’s limited operation in Cairo — an entire continent is not represented here. As yet, sub-Saharan Africa has produced no one like us. That will come — ten years hence, should we gather again, there will be a black face among us.’

…and it’d be my job to shoot him, I didn’t add.

‘Like the other empires of the world, we do not always rub along. Countess, you have murdered two previous Grand Vampires that I am aware of. Dr Nikola, you oppose the interests of the Si-Fan in Northern India…’

‘…and you did me dirt in Panama, Prof,’ Quartz said. ‘Don’t think I didn’t know about that!’

‘You sent me Jasper Stoke-d’Urberville,’ Moriarty countered, coldly. ‘I have not convened this meeting to hash over old scores.’

Margaret Trelawny gave a slow handclap, flesh against alabaster. She was less chatty since she retreated behind the mask.

‘Good job too,’ Irene said. ‘Or we’d all need coffins.’

‘Thank you, Miss Adler…’

‘I heard you’d another term of endearment for me, Prof…’

She winked, and a string in the old vulture’s cheek went tight.

‘To move on,’ Moriarty insisted, ‘many thinkers believe the old powers of the world are marching towards a cataclysmic conflict which will bring ruination to established order and further only the cause of revolution.’

It surprised me that Professor Moriarty was quoting from Colonel Moriarty’s copybook. As we knew from the Kallinikos affair, the Department of Supplies was busy preparing for the coming wars.

‘We too risk such a world war.’

‘Some of us might welcome it,’ Dr Mabuse said. He even did Moriarty’s voice. ‘It is the way of empires to fall, and leave ruins.’

‘…and new outfits take over,’ Quartz said.

‘This is of no concern to my father,’ the Daughter of the Dragon suddenly piped up. ‘In the East, the Si-Fan is eternal.’

A snort came from behind Margaret Trelawny’s mask.

‘Ladies, ladies…’ I put in. ‘Play nice.’

It struck me that I’d never heard the Lord of Strange Deaths actually called ‘the Dragon’. That was another of those questions no one asked. He discouraged even trivial curiosity.

‘None of us have reached our present position without struggle,’ Moriarty said. ‘You know how Miss Trelawny came to be in her present position. She and I — and several other factions not represented here — had differences of opinion about how the business of crime might be conducted, particularly in London. Les Vampires, also, were involved, at one remove, in that battle. Alone of those who stood against me then, Miss Trelawny has made treaty, and been willing to adjust her methods to serve under me as regents of crown colonies serve under queens or emperors. She has seen the advantage. She is, for all the set-dressing, a reasonable woman.’

That was news to me. Which stung. Mad Margaret might be happy to throw in with the Firm if it meant she could return unhindered to her high old pharaonic life of blackmail and extortion in Kensington. But I would bet tuppence to a silver tiara she was less happy that the fellow who had chopped off her favourite hand was walking about unpunished. Moriarty must have offered her something while negotiating the ‘treaty’ which brought her into the fold. If that secret clause turned out to be my head on a dinner salver, I’d be steamed about it — especially if she was lining up the bloody Creeper to take my job.

While in the mood to brag about his status as Fagin to a band of grown-up pickpockets, Moriarty declared, ‘Madame Sara and Mr Raffles, among many others who have profitable endeavours in Great Britain, may also attest to the benefit they derive from operating under my umbrella.’

‘You’ve never offered little me a position under the bumbershoot, Prof…’ Irene said.

‘I can think of several,’ I put in.

‘Ah-hah, the organ-grinder’s monkey can speak,’ she said. ‘How’re your wounds, Basher Boy? Still sore? So, Jim, why haven’t you come to me to make a treaty as you did with Queenie here? My fizzog didn’t get burned off, so I might be even more disposed to take a proposition seriously.’

‘You are not to be trusted, Miss Adler,’ the Professor said.

‘And you are?’ she snapped back.

For an instant, I thought Moriarty would throttle her there and then. His fingers opened and closed, as if he were wringing the necks of invisible chickens. His head stopped moving, and he stared fire at the Jersey nightingale. She did something pretty with a handkerchief and smiled sweetly. Hentzau’s fingers drifted to the pommel of his dress sword — Ruritanian funeral gear runs to full honours and a sabre — and I saw why Irene had brought the lad along. Our Miss Adler had got about the world a bit since we’d met, not exactly leaving satisfied customers in every port. I’d guess most of the men present — and all of the women — wouldn’t mind leaving her locked inside one of the handy Thoroughgood coffins. Since infatuation is passing, even without poison or picked pockets, her present protection wouldn’t last. In six months, or six minutes, Rupert would knock along with prevailing opinion and join the queue of frustrated former partners who’d like to sheath steel in whatever that bitch had in place of a human heart. Just now, however, he was favoured in her eye and befuddled enough to put his sharp sword at her disposal. Could I slip inside his guard with a thrust from a poisoned brolly? In confined space, best not to chance it.

Moriarty, with a force of will greater than mine, answered Irene politely.

‘None of us is to be trusted, Miss Adler. At the risk of stating the obvious, we are criminals. To the world, we are villains.’

‘My father does not accept that Western definition,’ said the Daughter of the Dragon.

‘“To the world”,’ I said. Not to me. Not among ourselves. I hope that, here, in this tomb, we can be honest at least with each other. For, if we are not, then we shall fail and fall. We must find common cause.’

‘With you as chairman of the board, of course,’ Quartz said.

‘I have no interest in such a position. Only the insecure would need a title. I do not suggest we become one combine. Such would be unwieldy, and as prone to internal rifts and failings as, say, the British Empire. I merely suggest we divide the world, not simply according to geography and politics, but race and creed. We shall have a commonwealth of criminal empires. To have hope of victory, ultimately of survival, in a world where the police aren’t corruptible fools, we must be more than robber barons. Make no mistake, the world has always been against us. For an age, we have thrived because the world was divided between those who were afraid of us and those who didn’t believe in us. We cannot rely on that situation persisting much longer. We will stay in our shadows. We cannot operate openly, no matter how much some of us might like the limelight, Count Rupert. Name a famous criminal, and you’ll name someone who got caught. Light will be shone at us, but we shall have to remain invisible. Quartz, if you wish to be, as you say, Chairman of the Board, be my guest. You have my vote. If such a chair existed, I should not care to sit in it. To the Übermenschen of the law, the holder of such an office would be a challenge. And knights errant can’t resist a challenge.’

Quartz puffed more smoke. ‘“Übermenschen of the law”? That’s putting the case a bit strong, ain’t it, Moriarty? Pinkertons and vigilantes and flatfeet…’

‘They are coming, Quartz. We will face them. Agencies are being constituted in all our countries. In America, more than anywhere else. Individuals will hear a call. Detectives, adventurers, superior policemen, prosecutors. Men with unique abilities. Men who have badges, men who wear masks, men who are — and I do not exaggerate for effect — a match for us. Some will rise to fight for abstract notions of justice… some to protect the downtrodden… some to seek revenge. The most dangerous will be dispassionate thinkers for whom solving a mystery will be reward enough. We have all been setting puzzles which are to the scientific investigator what an unclimbed peak is to a mountaineer.’

‘Moriarty, you truly think the barbarians are at our gates?’ Raffles asked. ‘Is there nothing that can be done?’

‘We have to strike now,’ Moriarty insisted. ‘We must not wait to be crossed, inconvenienced, incommoded, hampered or persecuted. We must single out our enemies and smash them before they make their first moves. We must find these heroes… yes, Nikola, heroes… in their cribs and strangle them or beat their brains out. Kill their parents, assistants, comrades, sympathisers in the police or the press. They must never come to be. If we are to enjoy a utopia of crime, we cannot allow our adversaries to rise. Do you understand?’

A pause. Goggle eyes all around. People who impressed, hypnotised and terrified everyone they met were impressed, hypnotised and terrified. I felt the chill of the grave, but then again I was sat on a coffin in a tomb after a funeral. As always, I’d had no idea what had been going on in Moriarty’s brain.

Unsurprisingly, it was Irene who dared speak first.

‘Prof, I take it all back. That thing they call you. I always took it for a joke, but you’re the silver dollar. Rupe, gimme that jug, I want to — no, I have to — raise a toast. To Professor James Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime!’

She took Hentzau’s flask and drained it at a gulp.

VI

Grimes let us out of the Thoroughgood tomb, in case you were worried he’d forget. We emerged, veils lowered and hats back on, into afternoon gloom. The rain had stopped, but the bushes were dripping, the slate tombs slick and black.

The original plan for Kingstead Cemetery was to offer four distinct styles of funerary pomp. Patrons could select the Egyptian Avenue, Roman Avenue, Grecian Avenue or Gothic Avenue. Three of these imperial modes didn’t catch on, but a lasting craze for all things pharaonic prompted a proliferation of obelisks, animal-headed gods and columns etched with hieroglyphs. Marble angels, a faun or two and the odd hooded skeleton relieved the monotony, but these rare items were crowded into neglected corners.

Dominating Egyptian Avenue was a sphinx which was alarmingly stamped with the distinctive whiskered face of a certain dead banker. I knew his eternal riddle: when will you pay me? I had my own answer — which was why said moneybags was now mummy-wrapped in a gilt-covered sarcophagus under fifty tons of statuary built to thwart tombrobbers. It was not entirely pleasant to be confronted with the weathered features of a recent customer, five-times life-size, on a lion the length of a London omnibus. I blame Mad Margaret Trelawny’s fancy dress party, and not being able to forget that they’d toyed with making a mummy of me. Actually, like a great many foul things, the Egyptian rot started with that little Corsican oik — the Napoleon of Being Napoleon as we might say, if we were drinking a toast out of his brain-pan in the den of the Grand Vampire.

Founded in 1839, the cemetery had been built to seem ancient. Its artisans had skimped on materials, so there was more crumbling, cracking and moulding after fifty years than the bereaved might care for. It was one thing to want your forebears to rest in picturesque semi-ruins, yet another to find out they were interred with shoddy workmanship at an inflated price.

‘Fresh air and sunlight, eh?’ Rupert of Hentzau declared, filling his lungs. Like a lot of sword-wallahs, he had the prancing gait of an acrobat or a ballerino. He was practically jumping up and down to be out of the confined tomb. A natural show-off, he needed space and freedom to move — which was worth jotting down mentally. ‘Professor, I owe you an apology,’ he continued. ‘Irene and I idly considered that you might have some scheme in mind whereby you slipped out of the tomb alone, then shut the door on your guests, leaving us without even a cask of sherry to make our few remaining hours more pleasant. Eliminating your competition altogether. It’s not as if you’ve no history of such… amusing stratagems.’

He tossed his head towards Mad Margaret and the Creeper. Behind a veil, her white mask looked almost natural, while an outsized funeral hat and giant morning coat — bespoke tailoring was clearly among the benefits of hooking up with the Cult of Queen Tera — did not make him stand out less. Both wore scars which served as advertisements for distrusting Professor Moriarty.

Word of the Battle of Conduit Street had got round the world’s rogues and villains. Rupert’s amusement was doubtless sincere. Everyone who was in the game for thrills and boodle wished they’d thought of it first. Stamping down the fanatics, however temporarily, made for a more convivial, profitable, worry-free life of crime.

Meanwhile, I was none the wiser. Proving once again that Rupert was just a younger version of me with more hair oil, I’d also suspected the Prof intended a coup to wipe out his peers at a stroke. It’s not as if I’d be let in on the blessed great design, even when it came to pointing and telling me to shoot. Moriarty hadn’t taken me into his confidence when invoking the Six Maledictions, ensuring an enfeebled lunatic benefited from the Bermuda Tontine, or impersonating a broken-necked lady ghost in Wessex (his best acting role, by far). He burdened me with no more information than he deemed necessary for me to perform as a cog in contraptions conceived in the coils of his swollen brain. Sometimes I ruminated darkly that I wasn’t paid enough for the grief, though I kept my grumbles to myself. I knew what happened to crims who quibbled with the Professor about their cut of the take — in fact, I was what happened to them.

That bitch was smirking and cooing in German with her dashing Count — useless language for love-making, German, but she made it sound obscene enough to get what she wanted. I felt my colour rising. To my mind, there’d been too much clever talk lately… and not enough blood. Much of Moriarty’s lecture in the tomb was above my head. I was no diabolical mastermind. In this company, I got lumped in with knife-women, bag-carriers, bodyguards, sneak thieves and fast swords. When Moriarty knocked heads with the Lord of Strange Deaths, Countess Cagliostro and Dr Nikola — even the upstart Mabuse, the crass Quartz and whoever this Grand Vampire was — I might as well sit in the kiddies’ corner with imbeciles like ‘Bunny’ Manders and the Creeper.

Normally, at this juncture, I would have suggested a pie and a pint at the Spaniards. Maybe a round or two of whist. This company could surely boast other practiced hands with the pasteboards.

But it hadn’t been that sort of Thoroughgood funeral. Bulstrode & Sons were paid and gone, and Old Mr Bulstrode had graciously accepted rubbings from brasses found in a section of Barchester Cathedral definitely not open to the public. Everyone wanted to get away as swiftly as possible.

‘Houses don’t burgle themselves,’ Raffles said. I suspected he’d said it before and would say it again. ‘Let’s do this again soon. Another Thoroughood must be on his deathbed somewhere. Toodle-oo.’

All our colleagues had crimes to get to.

Our carriages lined up outside the cemetery. Chop and the other coachmen stood in a silent knot, out-staring each other, hands casually near concealed weapons. A word or a gesture could spark a fuse, and they’d pull guns, hatchets and long knives and go to work. Soldiers all, the coachmen were almost disappointed that the party broke up without bodies strewn on Kingstead Hill.

Some of the company left with ceremony, in ostentatious coaches. Quartz had hired something bulletproof and enormous, prompting me to ponder two or three different ways someone riding in such a secure monstrosity could be murdered. Others made a point of vanishing without trace when no one was looking. Mabuse and Alraune: there one moment, gone the next. Irma Vep only pretended to leave, bless her. She slid behind a lichen-pockmarked angel, keeping an ear out for fresh developments.

As host — theoretically nearest and dearest of the imaginary deceased — Moriarty remained while the rest were beetling off. Sophy, of course, was with us, dabbing a hankie under her veil. Irene lingered a while and tried to tweak the Prof by flirting with him. She’d have got more of a rise from the statue of Weary Death at the door of the Forsyte tomb. As ever, that bitch was after something but wouldn’t say what it was. If the hussy wanted to know the time, she’d make suggestive gestures with an unlit cigarette then half-inch your watch while you were striking a lucifer.

Finally, she gave up and fetched Rupert away to the Café Royal.

Moriarty, head oscillating, was deep in thought again. With him, it was either a lecture lasting for pages and pages or pin-drop dead silence. He had no chit-chat in him.

Sophy lifted her veil and cut off the waterworks.

‘I wish I’d snaffled one of Raffles’ Sullivans,’ I said.

Sophy produced the cracksman’s cigarette case from her widow’s weeds. For the first time, the Greek woman smiled broadly.

‘I take… for practice,’ she said.

I laughed out loud. Raffles would be livid.

‘Did you haul anything else out of him?’

‘Yes,’ she said, handing me back my wallet. The French postcards were all there, including the one I swore was Irene Adler wearing a domino mask and little else. I’d not felt a thing and could swear I’d not let the cricketer near me.

‘Cheeky bugger,’ I said, admiring the deftness of the lift. ‘Hah, that’s funny, you know, because Raffles is…’

‘One of those. Yes. We have them in Greece.’

‘Of course you do. Practically invented it.’

‘His friend, though. “Bunny”. Him… not so much. He like the French girl. Irma Vep.’

Another reason for Raffles to blow his top. When they got home, Manders would get an old-fashioned thrashing. The duo had been in it together since school, when the soppy new bug had fagged for the captain of the eleven. At Eton, they made me slave to a prefect, supposedly to build ‘character’. It worked, but not the way they wanted. After I stabbed Timkins with a letter-opener, he polished my boots and cooked my breakfast. Goes to show how folks take differently to the old school tie.

I doubted Irma would be interested in the Manders clot, but didn’t shout out to ask. She could look after her own love-life.

While I was gossiping with Sophy, Moriarty kept thinking.

Eventually, he snapped out of it and had Chop drive us home — with a detour to call at the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street. There, the Professor approached a matron to ask after three particular patients. These unfortunates had been wasp-stung during a picnic in Crystal Palace, hosted by a charitable society with a mania for getting unwashed slum tykes into the open air for healthy living and physical jerks. With practiced tact, the woman gave the sad news that one urchin had succumbed, another gone blind and the third wouldn’t stop shaking. Quietly pleased with himself, Moriarty noted the results of the experiment in a little book. A delicate girl, being discharged after being cured of fainting spells, took one look at the crow-black Prof, head bobbing like a vulture and hands knotted like a praying mantis, and had a relapse. Some brats — like some dogs and one or two horses — have the knack: they know a wrong’un straight off. Moriarty should have been more worried about common children than phantom heroes.

VII

Back in Conduit Street, something was up. My hunter’s instincts pricked and my whiskers twitched. Mrs Halifax was queerly excited by our return, and a peculiar air of conspiracy prevailed among the tarts. A long parcel had arrived, from Germany, and sat on my desk. Not something I was expecting.

‘It is the custom, I believe, to include a card with such presentations, Moran,’ Moriarty said, suddenly too close to me. ‘In this case, it would be contrary to my ruling on not leaving an evidentiary paper chain. Furthermore, no sentiment is required, for I believe — though others have argued the matter — you would not welcome such were it to be extended…’

I’d no idea what he was waffling about. One of us might have gone mad, but I’d be hard pressed to say which. First, a gathering of the world’s premier criminals for a summit. Then, experiments with wasp stings. Now, what…?

Moriarty trailed off, and gave Sophy the nod. She turned down the gaslights. It was evening dark out, and the room became a jungle of shadows. I tensed, prepared for attack. Had the Prof hired the woman to murder me and then replace me? Was I to be driven from the tribe like an old, broken-tusked elephant who can no longer trumpet? I’d not go without a scrap. Reaching for the pistol holstered in the small of my back, I discovered someone — Raffles, you bounder!? — had lifted it. So, it was just teeth and claws! If this were how it ended, I was ready to give an account of myself which would not be forgotten.

Then Mrs Halifax entered the darkened room, proudly bearing a cake — solid, brandy-saturated stodge under an inch of lemon cream — surmounted by a forest of thin candles. Little flickering flames lit up the room and the faces of the girls of the house — well, those who weren’t presently occupée — as they trouped in after the Madame. Fairy Mary Purbright, Throttler Parker, Filthy Fanny and other faithfuls of the Firm were also in the procession. Chop brought up the rear, pushing a trolley which bore ice buckets full of champagne bottles and a tray of Waterford crystal glasses.

Raggedly, the company sang ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’. To me.

I was less surprised the time I spotted the Bishop of Bath and Wells using the kink-wrist Mississippi shuffle and dealing from the bottom of the deck.

‘Happy birthday, Colonel Basher,’ Mrs H. said. ‘And many more of ’em.’

I was less surprised the time the Pirate King of the Lepers turned out to be my old Eton whipping boy Porky Sourbright, duffer of the second eleven.

The Madame passed the cake off to Two-Ton Tessie — not someone I’d have trusted it with — and lurched up to me. Harriet Halifax administered a ginny kiss which left powder on my cheeks and lip-rouge in my moustache. She still had the eight-inch tongue that made her name in her Stepney youth.

I was less surprised the time the Burmese Python Lady turned out to be a bloke.

In the ten years — god, ten years! — I’d been with the Firm, Professor Moriarty had given no indication he was even aware I had a birthday, let alone knew when it was (it’s in Who’s Who, of course). Since being fleeced of my birthday money by Rosie at fifteen, I’d not made much of the day myself. I bagged a white tiger on my thirty-fifth birthday after all the bearers had fled. Captain Jellinek served nicely as tethered kid, having hobbled himself by twisting his ankle. I personally skinned my cat, thinking a white winter coverlet would be my fine present to myself. That fur went missing, stolen by dirty natives, and Jammy Jelly died without settling his gambling debts, so the day was a curate’s egg. The look in the tiger’s eyes, though, as she raised her head with Jellinek’s heart in her jaws and saw me sighting on her… that was an exquisite moment. Not a day goes by that I don’t think at least once of those magnificent tiger eyes, the ropes of blood dangling from her maw, that contemptuous snarl of kill-me-if-you-must-but-you’ll-never-come-close-to-knowing-what-I-am [52]. If I were back in school again, perish the thought, that would be my ‘Most Memorable Birthday’ essay topic. Otherwise, while I was out of the country, Augusta and Christabelle — the blessed unmarriageable — annually dispatched knitted socks or scarves to my postings. I’d neglected to inform them of my London address. Really, I had meant to dash off a postcard, but just hadn’t got round to it… for ten years. It had been a busy decade, I supposed, and it was now a trifle late to tell my sisters I’d returned to Merrie Olde England. I imagined I’d worn out my heroes’ welcome at their rented hearth, if I’d ever have had one.

Somehow, even I had forgotten my birthday.

‘Blow them out, blow them out,’ chanted the girls and Purbright. If he kissed me, I’d knock his bobby’s helmet off.

I puffed and extinguished all but three of the candles. Mrs Halifax pretended I’d managed the clean sweep and earned my wish. She pinched them out while the Ranee of Ranchipur distracted me with a peck on the cheek.

Purbright turned up the gaslight again. I winced at the details which sprang up when the room was properly lit. There were mirrors.

‘Fifty years old,’ Mrs Halifax said, as if commiserating with a sufferer from a deadly disease. ‘It comes to us all, or at least all of us as is fortunate not to get killed off otherwise…’

Fifty! At that age, old Sir Augustus — for whom I was now a veritable twin — died of apoplexy. His once-iron constitution was weakened by the lingering effects of the brain fever which cut short his appointment as Minister to Persia in the forties — my first spoken language was Fārsi, have I ever mentioned that? But in the end a towering rage did for pater. He was set off by something snide Lord Palmerston’s undersecretary said when Prime Minister Pam was too busy dealing with Gladstone’s latest resignation to bother with a petition from a diplomatic corps warhorse who felt he should have been made ambassador to somewhere more important and less flyblown than Paraguay. Sir Augustus had been in a bate for years, probably his whole life — certainly, I can only remember him in states of dudgeon ranging from high to stratospheric — and his lid was forever on the point of boiling over. He was red in the face and steaming from the ears when he booted me out of the family home after I was sent down from Oxford for boxing a bursar’s ears and throwing the oik through a leaded Elizabethan window. He threw a threepenny bit in my eye and said it was the last coin I’d ever get from him. On the day of his funeral, the 19th of October 1864, I lost seventeen quid at Ascot, got drunk on Scotch whisky I couldn’t pay for and was jugged for the night on a drunk and disorderly. In Windsor clink, I roomed with Prince Stanley, a gypsy who later taught me how to thieve like a champion but took a knife to my face when he found I’d tupped his sister from behind. I first let my moustache grow to cover the scar Prince gave me; that, I realised now, was what had begun my slow transformation into a double for my father.

The convention is that drowning makes your life flash past your eyes… now, at this surprise party, my life flashing past my eyes made me feel as if I were drowning. Blowing out candles had taken more out of me than it should. I lit a Joy’s cigarette. No Sullivans in my case — they’re for ponces, poofs and parvenus. I filled my lungs with smoke, which ought to have made me feel better, but didn’t [53].

So, fifty years and still alive. Half a century, not out — though I did feel knocked for a six. Three-quarters of the lads I was at school with were bones on battlefields, rotten in fever pits or stuffed under marble in Kingstead. Most of those who were alive had white hair, if they’d kept it… false teeth… and grandchildren. I suppose I have grandchildren. If you run into a scamp in Kathmandu or Amritsar or Zula who looks a quarter like me, a quarter like some dusky tart and a half like an unknown personage, then kick his or her arse before he or she robs you or rooks you. The Basher blood will run true.

Almost as an afterthought, I did the sums. Born 1840. Mrs H. was wrong. I was past fifty-one. F-k me for a French tart, that was older than Old Sir Augustus got to be!

The cake was sawed into chunks. Moriarty didn’t trouble to conceal his impatience with this social occasion. It was my birthday, but Mrs Halifax followed the chain of command and offered the Prof a slice of cake first. Brusquely, he turned it down. The attentions of the girls who were there — Fifi was ‘busy,’ with some damned subaltern due to ship out for parts East in the morning who wanted to be up all night before departure — were welcome, but palled as quickly as the cake. Corks popped — I didn’t think to scrabble in the corners for them, and check for hypodermic needle punctures — and champagne was poured. The fizz was passed around. I couldn’t taste mine.

I looked at Sophy, my most promising recent acquaintance. She avoided my gaze. I fancied that passing this milestone made me of less interest to her in my cranky old age than I might have been in my roaring forties. I watched her drink champagne and talk with Lotus Lei. The girls warmed to their subject, trading the whereabouts of spots in a man’s body where a long needle or a stiletto can slide in unnoticed then produce the most excruciating pain.

As a birthday treat, I wondered if I could ask for that bloody subaltern to be hauled up here in his drawers, then turned over to the Greek and the Celestial as a sort of dressmaker’s dummy. They could stick needles into his balls for an hour or two. After that, I might relax by punching him in the face until it looked like meat. Then, on the morrow, it might be amusing if the young terrier’s cronies came to see him aboard the ship, which was supposed to bear him off to the Empire to make his name and fortune, and he didn’t make an appearance until the anchor was pulled up with him tied to it upside down.

‘Moran, get to it and open that, would you? Before we all die of old age.’

Moriarty reminded me of the parcel. His birthday present to me, I realised.

I had my penknife to the string before it occurred to me there might be a trick. It would be just like the Prof to test out some new explosive device — a bomb, sent through the mail! — on whoever happened to be handy, i.e. me. That would make way for Sophy the Knives to take my berth.

There was a bit of a hush, and folks — chewing their cake like cows chew the cud — gathered around to see what I found inside the wrapping paper.

It was a locked wooden case. Varnished cherrywood. Moriarty handed me a key. The custom-made lock had a left-hand turn — you’d be surprised how many people don’t even try to twist the key the ‘wrong’ way before giving up — and lifted the lid. Nestled in velvet recesses were the components of a device which distantly resembled a gun. Barrel and breech were conventional, but the stock was swollen to accommodate a rubber lung. Also included were a pump-handle and some lengths of rubber tube.

Sophy was interested, but it was too manly a contraption to enthral the other girls. They drifted away. A bell tinkled, and Mrs Halifax sent Polly and the Ranee to take care of gentlemen callers. Party or no, there was a business to run.

‘I had Von Herder make this,’ Moriarty explained. ‘It is an air rifle.’

‘I know, Moriarty,’ I said. ‘The shadow man on the Kallinikos had a toy pop-pistol like it.’

‘That was a Straubenzee, an inferior piece. For precision, the Von Herder will match your Gibbs, Moran. It is silent, has no recoil and fires revolver shells. Imagine… a man falls dead with a soft-nosed pistol ball in his head. He can’t have killed himself, for he has no gun in his hand. He is alone in a room or in an open space. No one is within pistol range. How can this be? The murderer is half a mile away, in a place of concealment. Who then shall take the blame? What a puzzle that will be, Moran. A challenge to the scientific detective, I should say.’

Of course, it would be me up a tree pumping like a loon to get the thing ready for a second shot. The Von Herder was for someone reasonably sure he’d shoot true the first time. Fair enough, I’m known for clean kills. I’ve almost always brought down the cat or the elephant or the barrister with a clean shot. But there are always circumstances. At long range, the wind plays tricks. Too many animals have a habit of resting still long enough for you to line up sights, then making sudden movements for no good reason except to avoid being shot in the head.

I assembled the air rifle, which fit together as neatly as a child’s model ship. On another birthday I recollected — my ninth or tenth — I was given a model ship, though I’d asked for a real gun. In a pet, I launched the ship in the ornamental ponds of the khanum’s palace at Mazandaran, and bombarded it with pebbles until it sank with all hands. I thought I was alone in the courtyard, but something made me turn round and I saw a raised trapdoor which had been concealed in a mosaic. A ghost poked his skull face up through it. Now, I realise it was just a white man with no nose and lips, but then I was convinced it was a genuine spook. Even at that age, I knew terrible deeds were done beneath the palace. It was then, with those fried-egg eyes staring and the exposed teeth snarling, I realised a curious thing about myself: I was brave. The ghost did not frighten me. I was excited, yet calm. Annoyed, but purposeful. Time slowed and I was its master. I still had some pebbles, and pitched one at the apparition, plonking him straight on the bony bonce. The trapdoor dropped shut and that was the last of my ghost [54]. The women of the palace said no such spirit walked here, and Mama told me to shut up about it — though Augusta and Christabelle were agog for details, the more hair-raising the better — lest our quixotic hostess be offended and urge her suggestible son to trade agreements with the wicked Tsar instead of our good Queen.

All these birthdays on, it was the model ship again. I still didn’t have a real gun, no matter how deadly this puff-rifle might be. Moriarty missed the point. The bang! Herons startled from the reeds! The echo, resounding in my ears! The animal keeling over, dropped and dead before the sound has died down. The pull of the bolt and the ting of the ejected cartridge case! All part of the moment of a perfect shot. Lost with the limp phut of this toy. A telescope sight was also included in the box. I looked through it, sighting on Moriarty’s globe. Before using the air rifle, I’d want to fire it in. I had confidence in Von Herder’s sensitive fingers when it came to mechanical parts, but knew better than to trust a blind engineer with optical jiggery-pokery, even if he did get his lenses ground in Venice.

I held the assembled airgun — it was light — and got the feel of it. It would do, I suppose. It would have its bag. Tradesmen and club bores and Australians and rats and detectives. Not tigers. Not wolves. Not sporting men. Not even natives. This was a tool for a job. No pleasure in it at all, really.

The company looked at me. Mrs Halifax said, ‘Aren’t you going to thank the Professor?’

Moriarty looked sour and turned away.

Something was called for, something needed to be said. No words came.

‘I shall be in with my wasps,’ he announced, and abandoned the party for his private study, the windowless room.

The champagne ran out, but there was beer and gin and Scotch. Purbright got squiffy and attempted to sing ‘The Boy I Love is Up in the Gallery’ in imitation of Marie Lloyd. Two-Ton Tessie, a fervent admirer of Miss Lloyd, sat on him to shut him up.

I disassembled my present and fit the parts back into the case. Sophy Kratides cast a sceptical eye over it.

‘I prefer knife. For to get up close. To see eyes,’ she said.

Those tiger eyes came back to me. I thought of telling Sophy about it. I had never mentioned how that moment stayed with me to anyone. There had never been anyone to whom I could mention it. I didn’t. It might have made me seem, I don’t know, weak.

‘How old are you, Sophy?’ I asked.

I know, I know… you never ask a lady her age, but it was my party and I had privileges and, lady though she was, Sophy Kratides was foreign and they have other standards.

‘Twenty-seven,’ she said. Her eyes were clear.

It was important to me, in that moment, that she was more than half my age. If only technically.

Of all the women in the room, Sophy was the one who wouldn’t want paying. I know, I know… I’ve said it before: you always end up paying, and with tarts at least you know that beforehand and can be cheerful about it. Sometimes you need the illusion of a thing freely given.

I claimed a birthday kiss. But we fit together wrong.

Another moment passed. Throttler Parker set his Jew’s harp twanging — he’s a virtuoso on the noise-making nuisance, so I’m told by experts — and Mistress Strict hauled Polly about in a regimented foxtrot.

Sophy, kindly if wet-lipped and moustache-scratched, asked me if I’d care to, but I’ve had too many evenings end with women smashing crockery to be tempted by Greek dancing. She was taken away by Simon Carne, nimble and limber despite his fake hunchback.

A while later, I left the party to avail myself of the lavatory on the first-floor landing. I was steady on the stairs, though I’d a lot of drink in me. It’s a Bangalore Pioneer point of pride to be ready for inspection (indeed, for battle), no matter how much firewater was downed in the mess. On my way back, I lingered at the door of Fifi’s boudoir. I heard the rattle of a bedstead and her famous screeches of abandon — louder, I fancied, than ever — all to a rhythmic pulse. The subaltern gasped as if the life were being yanked out of him.

I should have wrenched the door open, dragged the young pup off the girl, tossed him into a corner, and told him to sit quietly and take notes as I demonstrated the Basher Moran Special. I’d make Fifi scream, all right. Scream like the Mountmain banshee having her toenails pulled out. I’d rattle the bedstead till it flew apart, and we were rutting on springs.

I should have.

Instead, I succumbed on the stairs. I sat down for a moment’s rest, and fell asleep. I woke hugging the airgun case like a hard pillow. For some reason, I’d taken Moriarty’s present with me from party to pissoir. Well past midnight, the house was quiet except for someone sobbing in a distant room. It wasn’t my birthday any more.

VIII

After several dozen gins, Mrs Halifax finally cornered Throttler with a demand the little man put his Jew’s harp skill to lower purpose. The next morning, the Madame was indisposed, so Polly brought in breakfast. When bending over to polish the silver and ‘surprised’ by a caller who fancied himself Master of the House, Poll was frolicsome and saucy. Obliged to do actual drudge work, she was sour-tempered and tended to clatter.

I wasn’t fresh as a daisy. I could hardly look at my kedgeree. Moriarty, emerged refreshed from his wasp den, set to decapitating boiled eggs as he looked over a sheaf of telegrams. Some were strings of numbers. His plans proceeded well, I gathered. If thwarted, he’d be in a mood to torture his eggs before topping them. His oscillation was almost cheerful. He cut his toast into soldiers, for dipping in yolks.

The air rifle was on the table, locked in its case.

I was still astonished the Professor had thought to get me a birthday present, even if it was a tool I’d be expected to use in his service. I supposed I should show gratitude, or even interest.

‘The Von Herder, Moriarty… is it to be used in your pre-emptive strikes?’

His head stopped moving and he looked at me queerly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘To dash down the heroes before they set out on their quests. I assume you’ve a list of coconuts for the shy. Which budding genius of detection will first present a target for a silent potshot?’

Moriarty laid down a half-eaten soldier. He had yolk on his lips.

‘Moran, you should know better.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ I said, perplexed. ‘Your lecture to your peers, about the threats we face…’

‘Real enough and we’ll deal with them in time, but what I said in the tomb was mostly yarning. A distraction from the true purpose of the gathering.’

Even for Moriarty, this was rum.

‘You mean you do not propose “a commonwealth of criminal empires?”

‘Of course not. Can you imagine such a thing operating for more than a week? Would you care to be in business with Jack Quartz? The man’s insane, for one thing. An habitual, compulsive betrayer. They all are. Things we might do for expedience, they do out of habit. The Lord of Strange Deaths despises the white races and would always seek primacy. To that Chinaman, you and I and General Gordon and Queen Victoria are all the same barbarian breed. Les Vampires are French, no more need be said of them. Any arrangement such as I seemed to propose would lead to internecine wars and ruin us more swiftly than a dozen police forces acting in concert.’

“‘Seemed to propose”?’

‘A diversion, Moran. A serious enough proposition to be listened to for a short while. None of our guests will have considered it past nightfall. Even the Creeper. No, that was not the purpose of the summit I convened. I had to be sure one man would attend. An invitation to him alone would have been too obvious a trap. His flaw is vanity, you know. He wanted to look me in the face again and feel he had the measure of me… but, even more than that, he wants to be of our party, on a level with Professor Moriarty and Dr Nikola and the Countess Cagliostro. He does not lack ambition.’

‘Who are you talking about?’

‘Mabuse, of course. Dr Mabuse, or whatever else he may call himself. He likes “the Great Unknown”. The man without a real face. The master of disguise. The fake fake Carnacki. The shadow man of the Kallinikos.’

‘Dr Mabuse was the ringer?’

Moriarty clapped, once. ‘Enlightenment dawns. Yes, Moran. Dr Mabuse was the master spy who tried to steal the secret of Greek Fire. Oh, he’s had me marked for some while, observing at a distance, learning my methods. He was in the audience at Stent’s Red Planet League lecture. The droll student who shouted, “I say, Stent, is that the sick squid you owe me?” In the business of the Bensington Rejuvenator, he was one of the researchers in Cologne who falsified the experimental logs. Then, he assumed the guise of a London rough called “Frog Junkin”, and was even — at two or three removes — on our payrolls for a month, doing odd jobs in the East End. The Frog stood lookout when Parker garrotted the Reverend John Jago during the Spitalfields Anti-Vice Crusade. After that, he became a Neapolitan for a year, in the Camorra under Don Rafaele Corbucci. He was at the Battle of the Six Maledictions, and pretended to die with a Templar sword through him. All the while, he has been maintaining multiple lives in Berlin — as an alienist, a financier, a rabble-rouser, a rabbi, a washerwoman, a card shark, a policeman. Plagiarising my methods, he has built up his own gang. I do not know where his mania comes from, for mania it is. He wishes to steal everything from me. He wants to be me.’

My jaw was slack, and I dribbled tea.

Why on earth would anyone want to be Moriarty? Of all the people to idolise, to envy, to imitate… Professor James Moriarty! I honestly think the Grand Vampire got more enjoyment out of his calling, and his life expectancy could be calculated in months. Moriarty was what he was because his nature gave him no other option. He had grown crooked from stony ground, leeching what water he could from deep roots. To set out to become such a solitary monster was beyond understanding.

This kraut plainly couldn’t bear to be whoever he originally was. Else, why try on all the other faces? Great impersonators are all the same. Simon Carne and Paul Finglemore were just as cracked — ditchwater dull as themselves, but alive when they could hide under crepe hair, wax noses and trick corsets. Even that bitch dressed up for character parts and flung herself about to put clear blue ocean between Miss Irene Adler, international adventuress, and Mrs Irene Norton, New Jersey bourgeoise.

‘Surely, if the picklehead’s barmy, he’s liable to wake up one morning frothing at the mouth claiming he’s transformed into a giant beetle. You know what these disguise wallahs are like, Moriarty. It’s a short hop, skip and hysterical fit from padded cheeks to padded cell. No need to worry about competition from inside the madhouse.’

‘In the end, you are right, Moran. The strains of living so many lives are too much for one man. Yet, in the short term, Dr Mabuse will prove troublesome.’

‘You’ve only just found this out?’

‘I had to be sure Mabuse was the mastermind of the Kallinikos. Only face to face could I determine beyond doubt he was the creature who interfered with us in that business. Hah! The cheek of it! Playing Finglemore playing Carnacki, and running all those other agents as if they were rivals not minions. He uses mesmerism, of course. Symptomatic of a need to control what cannot be controlled. Very German. He’s no spy, not through conviction or calling. He set out to steal Greek Fire not for profit, though I daresay he could have turned a penny selling the secret on an exclusive basis to five or six governments. No, he took an interest because he knew my brothers — my cursed brothers! — would pull me into the affair. He came at me through my family, Moran.’

‘Low, I admit… but he is a foreigner.’

The Professor thumped the table, rattling the silverware. By his standards, he was impassioned.

‘I cannot tolerate such impudence. It’s to the death, now. There can be no other outcome. Mabuse must fall that Moriarty can endure.’

‘He’s no hero, no detective…’

‘Try to keep up, Moran. At present, we’ve little to fear from bloodhounds and magnifying glasses. My would-be doppelganger is a direct threat. Mabuse was the most likely, but the Grand Vampire and Hentzau were possibilities. I had to include them to rule them out. Even Théophraste Lupin was suspect. Only a scheme as vast as my balloon about a “commonwealth of criminal empires” could justify the guest list necessary to flush out our foe.’

My head span. It was not yet ten o’clock, and I could have done with a lie-down. The most outrageous aspect of what the Professor had done — the most inadvisable, to my feeble mind — was daring to summon the deadliest men and women on Earth as set-dressing.

It was all about some bloody German.

The likes of the Lord of Strange Deaths and Countess Cagliostro would not care to be ‘also in the cast as courtiers, gentlemen, sailors, gondoliers, etc.’ If they ever found out, they’d seek redress from the Professor. And, by association, everyone in the Firm — including me. These creatures didn’t last as long as they had — and the Lord and the Countess had, by some accounts, lasted for centuries — by being the sorts who don’t find things out. If his scheme went wrong, Moriarty would have his commonwealth of criminal empires all right — an alliance of evil geniuses, master crooks and deadly assassins directed against his oscillating head! Mabuse would only have to hold the others’ coats while they dismantled us piece by piece!

‘So, we hit Mabuse?’

‘How, Moran? He won’t look like he did yesterday.’

‘You said you’d know him however he was disguised.’

‘So I would. But I’d have to see him to know him. He won’t show himself now until he chooses to.’

‘Why didn’t we shoot him yesterday?’

He looked at me, piercingly. I recollected an alligator whose eye I caught while dropping off a New Orleans friend in a bayou. I half thought Moriarty would take up nictitating some day.

‘Moran, I would back you against Rupert of Hentzau, though you are twice his age… I would give you even odds against Irma Vep or Princess Zanoni… and you could best Arthur Raffles despite his boxing blue. But the Daughter of the Dragon? Dr Nikola? The Creeper? All of them together? I fear you would not survive a scrap like that. Which is why I took this from you…’

He returned my small-of-the-back revolver.

‘You do have a plan, Moriarty?’

‘Several.’

He went back to his breakfast and his telegrams. I was not reassured.

IX

What happened over the next three months was in the papers. Oh, the press didn’t make the connections. But the facts were noisy enough.

In the middle of February, someone with a Clontarf accent called Inspector Lukens on the telephone and told him a dynamite outrage was imminent in North London. That night, a terrific explosion in Kingstead Cemetery destroyed the Thoroughgood tomb. So many bodies — and parts of bodies — were flung about Egyptian Avenue that it was four days before they were sorted out. Then, the Special Irish Branch announced this ‘Fenian atrocity’ was not mere vandalism, but foul murder. Walter Grimes had been caught in the blast, prompting amusing ‘man found dead in graveyard’ headlines. The sexton’s widow couldn’t say why he was at the cemetery well after normal service hours.

Of more concern to the Firm, especially when Patterson of the Criminal Investigation Division took an interest, was that examination of supposed Thoroughgood corpses turned up one or two recognisable heads. The senior Mr Bulstrode sweated it out when called in to explain how he had come to mistake the absconded Belgian financier Maupertuis for Uncle Septimus. The undertaker acted befuddled, more concerned that the CID not examine the contents of the coffins in his private parlour than with trifling accessory to murder charges. Inspection of the ruins by those police laboratory bods the Prof had got his peers all steamed up about disclosed some curious facts. The dynamite had been smuggled into the tomb in the coffins of young Will and Harry. The trigger was a very slow-acting fuse, an ingenious — indeed, scientifically admirable — gadget. Acid took weeks to dissolve a metal catch, whereupon two chemicals rushed together in a glass chamber to produce a sudden flame and set off the bomb. It was a very Moriartian device, though I knew better than to say so in his presence.

If the bomber had hoped to provoke yet another sweep against London’s Irish poets and navvies, his purpose was achieved. More Mountmains were roughed up and tossed into cells. Lukens announced that the Invincible Republican Irish were now known to have been behind the cornering of quap, and Baron Maupertuis just the front man. Inspector Patterson counter-announced that the Fenians would have been pretty foolish then to draw attention to the fact with a bombing which returned the Baron to the public eye (so to speak) and reopened the old case. Lukens agreed that the Fenians, on the whole, were pretty foolish. In which case, Patterson idly wondered, why did Scotland Yard need a whole well-funded department to do battle with a bunch of inept clods who thought dynamiting a sexton advanced the cause of Home Rule? This public row did not convince me that the police were ever going to hamper the business of the Firm.

Then, a form of pox caught fire in Conduit Street. Every female person in the house came down with it — the symptoms were angry red blotches over the face, persistent voiding of bodily wastes from every orifice, and sleeping spells which lasted from twenty to thirty hours. With Mrs Halifax and every one of her girls out of commission, customers had to be turned away. Those few persistent enough to barge in and insist on regular appointments encountered swollen, puking, shitting, spotted filles de joie and beat a hasty retreat.

Dr Velvet, the quack on hand for the girls’ little female complaints, didn’t know this pox, but said it was not venereal in character. He thought it might be an allergic reaction, but really couldn’t say — though he charged his usual fee for not saying. Velvet was especially puzzled that only the women in the house were affected — the sole exception being Slender Simon, the catamite Mrs H. kept on hand for those bucks whose tastes ran to tossing a pretty boy into the mix when taking ’em on two or three at a time.

Chop and Purbright brought up some girls from South of the River — savages with tattoos and bone earrings, to hear the men talk about them — and put them in the empty house across the way, taking care not to let them get anywhere near our sickening tarts. The new soiled doves came down with the pox too, and were disappointed in any hopes they had of meeting a gent from up West.

At the risk of incurring a debt no one wanted to think about, we secured a consultation from the Lord of Strange Deaths — who would, in other years, have been our number one suspect. As the world’s greatest expert in exotic poisons and subtle plagues, he saw straight off how it had been done. A mixture of Peruvian boomslang venom and Tanzanian desert rose sap had been smeared on soap used in the laundry where the bed sheets were washed. The Lord was, in his inscrutable way, irked that the attack against us had been made from a Chinese establishment in which he, naturally, had a controlling interest. By way of apology, he had the laundry manager crushed in his own steam press. An outsider, of course, was responsible.

A sudden rash of efficiency erupted in police forces across the nation. A crime Moriarty had carefully planned for an Edinburgh mob — the theft and ransom of a collection of horrible Highland landscape paintings which happened to be favourites of the Queen — was a fizzle. The lay was cracked exactly as the Professor dictated, but a posse of jock constables lay in wait with truncheons. In several towns, bought-and-paid-for coppers were mysteriously reassigned to menial duties and replaced by newly appointed hotheads with private incomes and a burning zeal to fight crime. A long-standing blackmail operation in Leeds was smashed when a dozen worthies simultaneously grew spines and took their lumps by owning up to indiscretions, misappropriations and other sins to wives, employers or the petty sessions court. Thus rendering an extensive archive of letters, photographs and statements gathered over a decade entirely valueless. Five myopic customs officers in Dover were given a choice between resignation or arrest, shutting down a handy black-market trade route to and from Europe. An all-comers bare-knuckles contest in Epping Forest was raided. Some of the greatest sports in the land, who liked a flutter on the pugilists, had to be politely reminded such pursuits were technically against the law. A courier was arrested in Amsterdam. When punched in the gut, he sicked up a lavender bag of uncut diamonds. Three ringleaders of the Conduit Street Comanche were seized from their dens, scrubbed with lye and packed off to schools in remote rural areas run by muscular Christian brothers with gruel, the lash and compulsory prayers at four in the morning.

All this was inconvenient. The next phase was more bothersome, and struck closer to home. We were hampered.

I’ve not dwelled much on the day-to-day business of the Firm. My duties were elevated, and as a consequence I had little to do with the collection of tithes from outfits operating under our aegis. Various London businesses — public houses, restaurants, sweet shops, opium dens, theatres, music halls, casinos, dog tracks, pie stalls — paid handsomely for the privilege of not having their premises raided by the Comanche. They also allowed the Firm the use of services from time to time, and provided household necessities and luxuries gratis. A great part of the economy of the city, even the legitimate economy, depends upon criminal custom, and Moriarty had painstakingly spun his web so we profited from our associations. Then, there was a hiccough.

Nathaniel Rawlins, a solicitor with only one client, came reluctantly to Conduit Street to announce that his collectors were coming up short. It was his duty to oversee collections, pay out salaries and bank profits with Box Brothers. He was terrified of earning the boss’ opprobrium, so let the shortfall go unreported for several vital days before bringing the matter to us. The Professor was busy with his wasps and his plans, so I had to deal with the matter. Rawlins assembled his tallymen, and I listened — with growing fury — to their complaints. Some formerly cowed proprietors were withholding payments, claiming that if they were paying for protection they should get it. Windows had been smashed, pot-boys roughed up, some obscene public displays shut down by the police, and a café in Tite Street closed after an outbreak of food poisoning caused by something less exotic than boomslang venom in the soup. Folk who’d been happy to pay and tell themselves that they were subdivisions of the Firm rather than victims of extortion were bleating loudly.

As assassin-in-chief, I was expected to eliminate a plague of minor officials, vandals, constables and annoying customers to pay back all those sovereigns we’d squeezed out of Soho. I was not about to put my new airgun — tested and sighted in, but not yet fired in the field — to such low use, and told the collectors to collect harder. Rawlins wouldn’t have recruited them if they weren’t capable. Over the fat years, they had got too used to an easy life, and let their saps go soft and knuckle-dusters get rusty. For a while, more insistent demands restored the flow of money… but then the Tite Street waiters, unemployed and crotchety, set about Bruiser Downes with table legs and saw him off. New faces sprung up in the street, eager to offer the protection it was whispered that the Firm could no longer deliver. Several of Rawlins’ collectors took beatings, set up in business for themselves (very unwise) or scarpered on long-planned seaside holidays. The Professor shrugged this drip-drip-drip problem off as not sufficiently interesting, and told me to take drastic measures. Unable to think of anyone else who could do the job, I negotiated with Margaret Trelawny — not a lady I was overly keen to dine with á deux — to borrow the Hoxton Creeper. His looming presence made the average publican or shop manager find cash they didn’t know they had to make arrears payments, but the Creeper was not subtle. Witnesses tended to remember his face, and couldn’t help giving good descriptions of him. Mad Margaret demanded a greater degree of autonomy for her Temple of Tera, which I was forced to grant her. At that, I fancied her mask smiled nastily.

The Firm was trembling.

Most of the Thoroughgood funeral party had hied back from whence they came — Dr Nikola was rumoured to be in the Congo, perfecting surgical procedures on gorillas — but that bitch was still in town. I considered setting the Creeper on her for my peace of mind, but the giant was a mug for a pretty face and I didn’t fancy having a spine-snapping juggernaut lobbed straight back at me. Irene and her beau were everywhere… at the opera, at society balls, giving charity concerts, visiting missions in the East End, dining with cabinet ministers. I wondered what had become of Colonel Sapt, the Ruritanian Secret Police Chief. When that bitch first plagued us, he was her companion and secret confederate. Sapt was a Rudolfite and Hentzau a Michaelist, so she’d hopped the fence in the Ruritanian succession debate. I assumed that, as ever, she was on nobody’s side but her own.

I discerned no obvious link between Irene Adler and the troubles besetting us, but she was up to something. Even if she was just in London to see the fireworks, she was a nagging pain. In a move which, even if I say so myself, was exceptionally clever, I assigned Sophy to discover that bitch’s secrets. Naturally impervious to the diva’s charms, our knife-woman also had experience enough with handsome scoundrels to see through Rupert’s hand-kissing insouciance.

Sophy came back and reported, with a cold smirk, that Irene’s main reason for staying in London was a secret course of beauty treatments at Madame Sara’s — touching up her hair colour, ironing out tiny wrinkles around her eyes. Sophy took great delight in this. Picking up Moriarty’s pet name for Irene, she amended it to that old bitch. I should have been reassured… but was struck with melancholia. Irene Adler, too, was not as young as she’d once been. Only Jo-Jo Balsamo was eternal, and she looked more marble statue than woman.

A week after Sophy’s intelligence, we received a formal letter from Madame Sara, severing all ties — financial and otherwise — with the Firm. Damn me, but I should have seen it coming. All the while she was having cream worked into her temples, Irene had worked her spell on the Sorceress of the Strand. The Derry & Tom’s androgyne was furiously pedalling off heartbreak on a bicycle tour of Wales while Sara worshipped at the altar of Adler. My instinct was to order an explosive reprisal against the Madame’s premises, prefaced by telephoning Lukens with a begorrah or two, but the papers announced Sara had temporarily shut up shop and would be travelling on the continent with friends. She had been invited to Ruritania to ‘do’ the Princess Flavia’s hair for an upcoming coronation. There might be time to nobble her before she boarded the boat-train, but what with all the other grief the Firm had only a skeleton staff on hand. Sophy volunteered to do the deed, but I didn’t want to chance such valuable asset on a mere pettish killing. A mad vitriol-chucker would do, but they were in short supply that season.

The Professor, uncharacteristically, said we should let Sara go and be glad to be rid of her if she took that bitch off the table. I hoped the pair of she-cats tore Rupert of Hentzau to pieces. When word got out that Moriarty had accepted letters of resignation and declarations of independence — hitherto unthinkable — there was a queue of messengers from ship-deserting rats of all colours. It was Decline and Fall to the letter, and the Goths and Vandals overrunning our empire sported size-nineteen boots and knob-end helmets.

X

The Firm ran a printing press in Wapping, running off snide [55] good enough to pass in Threadneedle Street. Not an Archie Stamford botch, but prime quality forgery. In April, the plant was subtly sabotaged. Paper with a face value of £7,000 had to go in the furnace. The rag was excellent, the engraving exceptional and the ink mixed to the proper recipe. Our plates matched the genuine article, down to the rubric ‘For the Gov.r and Comp.a of the Bank of England, Frank May’, but our five-pound notes came out signed ‘James Moriarty’.

This prompted me to a deduction: our ‘Great Unknown’, the intelligence behind the strikes against us, couldn’t be Dr Mabuse, or — at least — not Mabuse solo. The nose-tweak with the chief cashier’s signature betrayed that most un-German characteristic: a sense of humour. I barged into the Prof’s study with this profound insight, but he’d already worked it out through wear on a vanished night-watchman’s left-behind trousers or the depth rat turds had sunk into the dripping pan on a hot day or somesuch.

‘Mabuse needed only to prick us,’ I was told. ‘He has put blood in the water. To alert the sharks. He himself has left the country. He is not at any of his Berlin addresses, which are watched constantly. He wears a new face. He is gone to earth. But he pays attention, follows the feeding frenzy.’

Moriarty had nervous energy now. For months he had accepted each blow and merely oscillated, thinking thinking thinking… I hoped we were at the point of doing doing doing.

The Professor wiped wasps off his long canvas gloves, brushing them into the funnel of the glass and wood nest-maze he had constructed. He took down his best hat and pulled on his coat.

‘I have a call to pay, Moran,’ he said. ‘In Baker Street. A minor nuisance on the point of becoming a middle-sized obstacle must be bent to our purpose…’

Ah-hah, I thought, the Thin Man! He’d been a bother a time or two. The Birdy Edwards foul-up, for once. The Maupertuis fiasco, for twice. He’d also nabbed a couple of the Firm’s sometime clients: Grimesby Roylott was dead and John Clay gaoled thanks to his unwanted intervention. And… well, he was just a shit… a puffed-up, hectoring, tiresome beaky shit. With a halfway decent line in publicising himself, as witness: all those back numbers of The Strand piled up in the jakes.

This brothel-creeping keyhole bandit had popped up at the edges of the picture all spring. In Leeds, just before the smashing of the blackmail ring. At Scotland Yard, in conference with Inspector Patterson. Disguised as a trainer at the Epping Forest tourney. Delivering a box of papers to the Crown prosecutor in Dover. Treating himself to a celebratory beefsteak at Simpson’s in the Strand. He was one of the toothiest of the sharks tearing into our flanks.

‘This is his handiwork, then?’ I said, waving the funny money.

Moriarty allowed it was. ‘Most droll, Moran. Our consulting detective has the fingers of a forger. He has my signature to the curlicue. He could cash a cheque at Box Brothers.’

My fire rose. Larks like this got under my skin. I was heating up, and — after all these months of frustration — ready to ‘go off’ like Krakatoa.

‘Hang a dartboard on the fiddler’s back, Moriarty. The Von Herder’s fired in. This pestilential sleuth c-t would make a decent first kill for its bag!’

‘Not yet, Moran. I’ve a use in mind for the Thin Man.’

This surprised me.

‘I know the blighter’s in trade, but surely he wouldn’t take you as a client.’

‘I have, through proxies, hired him three times. We couldn’t get shot of that homicidal lunatic Bert Stevens until I persuaded him to carry his carcass to Baker Street. Mabuse can do us more injury than Stevens ever did. And he is in hiding, where he thinks he cannot be found. We need a bloodhound, and the Thin Man has a reputation. It will be a simple matter to draw the attention of the Great Detective to the Great Unknown. He believes he serves abstract reason, but has been manipulated into this persecution of our Firm. With all his cleverness, the Thin Man cannot realise the full extent of our organisation. He has us in his sights now, but would not know our names — would not be scribbling details on his index cards, would not be in cahoots with Patterson of Scotland Yard — were it not for information gifted him by Mabuse. You remember “Fred Porlock”?’

I did. All too well. It was the alias of someone inside the Firm who leaked titbits to all sorts of wrong people: policemen and detectives and journalists. We found him out, and Moriarty… well, let’s just say a culprit was duly tried, convicted and punished.

‘We were given the wrong man. “Frog Junkin” was “Fred Porlock”. Mabuse himself, sowing the seeds of our ruin.’

We were beset on all sides. The spectres the Professor had invoked in the Thoroughgood tomb were manifesting. I wondered if we’d ever be rid of these parasites. Napoleon hadn’t survived concerted attacks by lesser men. We had our Blucher in Mabuse, and now it seemed we had our Wellington in the Thin Man.

Just remember, when that sycophant Watson credits him with the fall of the Firm, the Great Detective had to be told about us. Our real arch-enemy was ‘Fred Porlock’.

XI

While Moriarty was in Baker Street, I arranged murder attempts. The bloodhound needed pepper on his tail, so near misses were to be contrived. As I’ve said before, it’s too easy to misjudge and put a warning shot in someone’s fool head.

The Professor returned to HQ and gave a report of his meeting with the Thin Man. He was especially full of himself.

‘His nerves are shot, Moran. He hides behind curtains. He knows about the Von Herder, and is terrified to show a silhouette at the window. He takes precautions when out and about, changing directions like a compulsive, suspecting any who might approach. Yet he leaves his doors unlocked. His lodgings are open to any who might wander in. In his present state, failing to assassinate him will be a challenge. We’ll have to shield him from harm he might do himself. I intended to present my card and confront him in his hallway. But I was un-greeted and unopposed. I climbed the stairs to his flat but held back at the doormat. Surely, the extraordinary lack of security was a lure for an ingenious trap…? But, no, he offers open invitation. I found the Great Detective shrinking in his study, surrounded by scribbled notes. He has an untidy mind, reflected in his surroundings. There is no logic to the clutter. His interests are higgledy-piggledy. He is not an impressive specimen.

Startled at my presence on his threshold, he reached into his pocket as if caught doing something unmanly by a schoolmaster.

‘“You have less frontal development than I should have expected,” I said. “It is a dangerous habit to finger loaded firearms in the pocket of one’s dressing gown.”

‘He wasn’t even dressed for the day. At eleven-thirty in the morning. His hair a rats’ nest, he was in pyjamas under that vile grey gown. He took out a revolver and put it on the table.

‘“You evidently don’t know me,” I said.

‘“On the contrary,” he answered, “I think it is fairly evident that I do. Pray take a chair. I can spare you five minutes if you have anything to say.”

‘“All that I have to say has already crossed your mind,” I said.

‘“Then possibly my answer has crossed yours,” he replied.

‘“You stand fast?”

‘“Absolutely.”

‘I took out my memorandum book, which startled him into making a grab for the gun. He almost shot himself, Moran. Or shit himself. One or the other — or both. That such a creature should esteem himself capable of destroying me! I allowed him the comfort of the weapon. I enumerated dates upon which he had meddled in our affairs, emphasising occasions when he thought his part unknown to me. You should have seen his eyes. He has a drug addict’s eyes. He uses cocaine, and lies to his doctor about the dosage. Thirty-seven per cent solution, I should say. I told him he must drop the case.

“After Monday,” he said.

“‘I am quite sure that a man of your intelligence will see that there can be but one outcome to this affair,” I told him. “It is necessary that you should withdraw. You have worked things in such a fashion that we have only one resource left. It has been an intellectual treat to me to see the way in which you have grappled with this affair, and I say, unaffectedly, that it would be a grief to me to be forced to take any extreme measure. You smile, sir, but I assure you that it really would.”

‘“Danger is part of my trade,’ he remarked, sweat on his brow.

‘It was not danger I offered him, I said, but inevitable destruction. Having flattered him with weasel words about his intellect, I crushed him. He must stand clear or be trodden underfoot. I hinted, Moran, at matters I knew would run through his brain — even if he chooses to keep them private from his closest confidantes. I let him know he did not yet perceive the extent of the forces he was meddling with. For the sake of what he took to be a smart retort, he had come out and told me when the axe would fall. We are to expect raids on Monday. That is when Scotland Yard will swoop, will attempt to net our entire organisation. They will knock before dawn, as usual, kickin doors, roust felons from beds, and slap the darbies [56] on us. This honest, unimaginative soul has not the wit to keep back vital intelligence. If I were to tell a man I would murder him on Monday, it would be a ruse. I’d strike on Sunday, before he was prepared, or Tuesday, while he congratulated himself on besting me. The Thin Man is so confident in his victory, he cannot help but celebrate the win before the race is finished.

‘I did not tell him about Dr Mabuse, but talked up the “duel between us” in such a way as to let him glimpse the possibility he was acting in another’s interests. I could see him pick up the clues I scattered like spittle on the carpet. He thinks slowly, Moran. He forges chains of reason, link by link. It is a simple matter to nudge, to steer his course. I know his every move, his every thought. I saw a realisation dawn that there was a Great Unknown in the game… that this shadow man might not be an abstract servant of justice, but a subtle criminal. I let him see that the smashing of Moriarty would create a vacuum, inviting in a successor who would credit him, the servant of justice, with clearing the way for a lasting empire of crime. I gave him the scent, Moran. The merest whiff. I named no names, though “Fred Porlock” hung in the air. He has had report of the Kallinikos. He has file-cards on major European criminals. Little notes to himself. On yours, he has scrawled “the second most dangerous man in London”. Under “Dr Mabuse”, he has written a question mark. My visit has underlined that question mark.

‘“You hope to place me in the dock,” I said. “I tell you that I will never stand in the dock. You hope to beat me. I tell you that you will never beat me. If you are clever enough to bring destruction upon me, rest assured that I shall do as much to you.”

‘“You have paid me several compliments, Mr Moriarty,” said he…

‘“Professor Moriarty,” I corrected him.

‘“Let me pay you one in return when I say that if I were assured of the former eventuality, I would, in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept the latter.”

‘There is no reason with such a man, Moran. “I can promise you the one, but not the other,” I said calmly, and left him to his funk. A morning’s work. I trust you have done as well.’

Moriarty’s smug air of having effected a major coup rubbed me the wrong way. All he’d done was exchange schoolboy ‘yah boo to you’ taunts with the Thin Man in his den. In contrast to his gloating, I merely gave a statement of what had been arranged for the afternoon’s entertainment.

The rule of three applied. This afternoon, our man would survive convincingly serious encounters with a runaway van, falling masonry and Bruiser Downes. The bandages were off and the wounds healed, but Downes was broken — his reputation would never recover from the Tite Street rout. If the Bruiser were taken in on an assault charge, it would be no loss. These trifling gestures should chivvy along the detective. Moriarty said he’d scurry for his doctor like a maiden aunt with the sniffles. Just to put a cherry on top, Benny Blazes was due to set light to the Thin Man’s digs that evening. Those damned index cards, the Persian slippers full of shag and the dusty back-editions of the Police Gazette — I’m sure the Great Detective said he subscribed for the articles and ignored the illustrations — had the makings of a fine old bonfire, though our reliable arsonist was under orders not to do too much damage.

‘Now, we have played the part of “Fred Porlock”, Moran. We have fed the dog scraps. He will pick up the trail, I’ve no doubt. He’s not unintelligent and his brain will be spurred by the shame. He’ll never tell his Boswell how Mabuse has used him against me. But he’ll need to know the truth. I’ve spoiled his coup, Moran. He’d intended to be in at the kill on Monday. In his head, he had composed the modest comments he intended to make to the press. Now, he knows he wins only a phantom victory. He will leave the prosaic business of making arrests to Inspector Patterson, and go in search of the Great Unknown. The bloodhound is off his leash. We may follow him at our leisure.’

Moriarty was the shark now, scores of teeth in his smile.

I did not raise the matter foremost in my mind as these subtle, cruel, cunning, logical madmen entered into the final phase of their protracted dance. Whichever mind mastered the others, the Firm would — unless drastic measures were taken — be practically extinct come Monday morning.

And since when was I only the second most dangerous man in London?!

XII

So, to Switzerland…

I have no idea how the Thin Man tracked Mabuse to Meiringen. Thanks to the bloodhound’s (if I might say) Moriartian habit of not telling his number two anything important, J.H. Watson, Medical Dolt, is in the dark too. In his scandal sheet write-up, Watson presents his friend’s bizarre decision to hare off across Europe, rather than stay in London to close his greatest case, as a spur-of-the-moment decision to take a pleasant holiday. Of course, this is from the man who claimed he hadn’t heard of Moriarty until that week… then later ‘remembered’ he’d been made aware of the Professor, ‘Fred Porlock’ and the Firm much earlier [57]. As I’ve said, the detective was in that bad business at Birlstone Manor. Not to do speak ill of the annoying, but note: when the Thin Man cracked the case, he announced the supposed victim was still alive. I’m sure Birdy Edwards, when thrown into the sea, found time to thank the sleuth for deigning to solve the mystery of his fake murder so Moriarty could commit his real one.

As then, the Thin Man was flushing out our quarry for us. We really should have bunged him some cash for services rendered.

Moriarty told me to pack the Von Herder for a hunting trip. He had spies at all the transport terminals and, after supper, a message came in from Victoria Station that our bloodhound had reserved a carriage on the next morning’s boat-train to Paris. The Prof seized on this intelligence with a troubling glee. I’d seen it on tiger hunts: some idiot is so high on the idea of bagging a prize cat, he doesn’t much care if he comes back from the jaunt in one piece. The lives of native bearers — even other white guns — become a currency to be spent freely for a chance of a clean shot. On occasion, I have been that idiot. Now, I found myself thrust into the unwanted role of sensible companion.

All the while Moriarty was playing silly beggars, the Firm was coming apart. Our lieutenants were assailed by summonses to appear in court, notifications of legal action, constables brandishing fresh search warrants, and the sudden refusals of bought-and-paid-for officials to lose paperwork. When Patterson of the Yard showed up in his outer office, Nathaniel Rawlins squeezed through a tiny rear window. After wandering the streets in a tizzy, he hanged himself with his college scarf in a stall in the Theobald’s Row conveniences. Opinion differed as to whether Rawlins took the easy way out to avoid disgrace or knew that turning Queen’s Evidence to get off would earn him the ‘Fred Porlock’ treatment.

As it stood, I don’t know if the Prof had attention to spare for keeping the help terrified. He was busy giving a bewildered Polly instructions for the care of his wasps while he was away. He was most insistent the inconvenience of a police raid should not disturb the insects’ routine, and assured her that she’d be out on bail in time for their midday feed. I didn’t mention that our brief was dangling in a public bog and might not be at his best when delivering bonds.

Sophy was to be included in our party. It turned out, in one of those small-world-isn’t-it? — type things, she had cause to blame the Thin Man for failing to prevent her brother’s murder. Another instance of his habit of curing the disease only for the patient to die anyway. The Great Detective hadn’t even bothered to bring the killers of Paul Kratides to book, which is why Sophy had to do for Latimer and Kemp herself. I told her that the Prof wanted the boob alive for the moment. A disappointment, I fancy. I said it was probably all right if she wanted to cut Watson’s throat, but she shrugged that off as a distant second best. Women, eh?

If you want railway timetables, you’ll have to dig out The Strand. I’ve not the patience. The next day, the Thin Man and the Fat Head tried to shake us off by sending their luggage on to Paris while they hopped off the boat-train at Canterbury and took the Newhaven ferry to Dieppe. Moriarty saw through the trick, but decided our hound would sniff better if he thought he’d lost us. The Professor and I followed the trunks to Paris and spent a few days there as guests of Les Vampires. Sad to report, the Grand Vampire who’d come to Kingstead had just died in a fall from the Eiffel Tower, but his replacement was suitably hospitable. He only tried to murder us once, and then with little conviction, merely as a formality.

We all drank champagne out of Napoleon’s skull. I squired Irma Vep to the Moulin Rouge, where I merrily purloined the evening’s take as she performed a service for one of the first families of France. Jewels were abstracted from a dressing room before they could fall into the dainty clutches of a dancer who’d worked for a month to seduce a young vicomte to get them. Of course, Irma switched the sparklers and gave the old comte fakes, then whisked me off to after-hours anis in a den of apache.

While we were enjoying la vie Parisienne, the Thin Man spent two days in Brussels. That’s something of a record: I don’t know another Englishman who’s stuck Belgium for more than a single day without getting drunk on their beer, sick on their chocolate or in trouble with their schoolgirls. We knew what he was up to because Sophy, who’d stuck with him quietly while we ostentatiously lost his trail, sent telegrams every few hours. We also had word from London, via Simon Carne: Patterson had made his raids, most of the Firm were locked up, Margaret Trelawny was en route to Egypt, Mrs Halifax’s house was shuttered, the Creeper was reported drowned (a likely story) and Raffles found it expedient to spend some time in the nets. All this put me in an ill-humour. I know I was only an employee, but I’d put a great deal into the enterprise. I’d been on Moriarty’s rolls longer than I served with the bloody Bangalore Pioneers. I’d killed more people for him than for the Queen. The Firm meant more to me than f-king Eton! Since Sir Augustus turfed me out of the family pile, I’d messed temporarily all over the show. That brothel in Conduit Street was the nearest thing I’d had to a home. I didn’t care to think that was all over and ashes.

Moriarty betrayed no trace of feeling. He asked after his wasps, but that was all…

Seeing my concern, he set out his position.

‘When I return to London, Moran, I shall start again. From nothing. Free and clear. Unimpeded by fallible subordinates. Without clutter. This time, I shall follow strict mathematical formulae. I have involved myself in matters superfluous to the equation. This is an opportunity to wipe the blackboard clean. Within a year, I shall be able to concentrate. All possible threats to me will be eliminated. The work will continue, in a purer sphere. Then I shall get real results.’

All nice and neat and dandy, I supposed. I still didn’t see what was so wrong with the clutter. Fifi was part of the clutter. Come to that, so was I.

The next telegram informed us the Thin Man was in Strasbourg.

‘Mabuse has a face in Strasbourg,’ the Prof explained. ‘As proprietor of a salle à manger. He was wearing that disguise a day after his visit to London. Many a courier of diplomatic pouches has been drugged and searched in that humble hostel by the main railway station. Our bloodhound has the scent!’

It was time to quit Paris. Our hosts knew what had happened in London, and we must have seemed like wounded beasts, fleeing. If ever there was a chance to kill us off without fear of reprisal, it was now. Irma invited me to dine in a private salon, more or less promising intimacies… even on the slim chance this was a genuine offer rather than a trap, I was inclined to make the play. Moriarty told me not to be a fool and produced tickets to Geneva.

It was our turn to leave luggage behind, but I carried the Von Herder with me.

XIII

Ever been to Geneva? It’s a clean city. The gutters are swept three times a day. On the streets the cobblestones are individually polished. The public conveniences are the most hygienic in the world. The tarts are scrubbed, efficient and copulate like the mechanical girl who comes out of the cuckoo clock. Even the rats have neat whiskers. The only thing dirty is the money.

If the Thin Man was following the money, the trail led here.

As we checked into the Hotel Beau-Rivage, Moriarty was handed a telegram. It fell to me to tip the bellboy — a French franc, hard Swiss cheese for him — while the Professor decoded the numbers and Greek letters he’d worked up as a special cipher for Sophy.

We had come to town ahead of the Thin Man, but he was on his way from Germany. Sophy reported that the detective, picking up clues found in that Strasbourg café, was interested in a Swiss banker, Adolphe Lavenza.

Without even looking at our suite, Moriarty hired a carriage to take us to the financial district — which, in Geneva, is three-quarters of the city. Zurich is worse, or better if you’ve an urge for that most overrated of criminal endeavours, bank robbery. That’s either out-and-out bandit foolishness which leads to getting shot by well-paid vigilante officers (if any institution can afford hired killers, it’s a bank — I’ve taken that shilling myself) or involves as much digging, blasting and carrying as any other kind of prospecting, with a consequent high risk of perishing in a cave-in or a mistimed detonation. Swiss banks don’t even have much negotiable loot on the premises: they bury their gold, and keep ledgers and IOUs to prove how rich their customers are.

From a coffee house across the road, we watched the Lavenza Bank for an hour. People came and went, most so respectable it was plain to the practiced eye that they were crooks, a few as close a Genevoise could be to low and shabby.

A clerical fellow took a seat at the next table, gulped a cup of molten dark chocolate, and departed without acknowledging us. I recognised Ueli Munster, the Swiss representative of Box Brothers. Whenever business brought him to London, Munster called upon Mistress Strict for a chastisement earned many times over in his financial dealings. The naughty banker left behind a copy of yesterday’s Times, which I snaffled as any Britisher curious for news from home might have. I turned with leaden heart to a notice of the Patterson raids, while the Professor slit open a packet of documents which had been concealed in the folded newspaper.

‘Adolphe Lavenza is Mabuse’s Swiss façade,’ Moriarty said, looking over Munster’s report. ‘His bank is the Great Unknown’s treasury. It played a part in the collapse of Baron Maupertuis. My disciple has ambitions to influence the economies of nations. He envisions a great bubble and crash after crash, an apocalypse of money. He sees further into the future than my brother, and marks out the real battlefields of the twentieth century: brokerages and banking houses. No armies or wonderful engines of war, but numbers. He has taken my methods, Moran. But he does not respect them. I see order. He wants chaos. Irreconcilable formulae.’

‘Bastard’s a damn anarchist!’

‘A poor label for what Mabuse is becoming. It will be almost a shame to stifle the monster in the crib. He might achieve a new kind of mathematics. But he is on the slate, Moran. The slate we shall wipe clean.’

‘Where’s the bloodhound? We’ve got to the quarry before him.’

‘I calculate the Thin Man will call on this address — without his travelling companion — in fifty minutes. We will cheat him of the kill.’

The Von Herder — our only luggage — was at the Beau-Rivage. I had my Gibbs pistol with me, though. And bare hands. The Times had put me in the mood to strangle a banker.

First, we needed to secure entry.

A respectable burgher, all pinstripes and pince-nez, emerged from the bank and strolled smartly round the corner. I held him against a wall by his throat while Moriarty determined which language to question him in. He spoke precise English. An Afghan tribal trick persuaded him to explain that a distinctive carte de visite was necessary to get past the front desk and secure audience with M. Lavenza. The card was surrendered by the caller, so he no longer had his pass. He said he could help us no more. Moriarty disagreed. We hauled him back to the main thoroughfare.

Within a few minutes, fortuitously, two men approached, carrying a wardrobe between them. One was fat, one thin. Our unwilling informant admitted he knew the men to be in Lavenza’s circle… then unwisely cried out for help. By the time the carriers had set down their burden to come to his aid, he was dead. Seconds after that, so were they. I broke the burgher’s neck and was stuck with a dead weight. Moriarty scientifically killed the workmen with his penknife. They were finished before they started bleeding. The Professor went through the fat man’s pockets and found two plain white cards punched with different queer-shaped holes.

This was all accomplished on a busy street, inside a minute. Passers-by paid no attention as we hustled slack bodies into the wardrobe — which was large and empty enough to accommodate them. Of different stations in society, they would not have sought or wished such intimacy in life. I reckoned them equals now.

A policeman marched up and I feared we’d have to cram in another, but his only interest was in making sure we did not leave furniture on the street.

‘It is untidy, an obstruction,’ he insisted.

I nodded to the Swiss constable and we hefted the wardrobe — not without difficulty, for obvious reasons — up to the entrance of the Lavenza Bank. The doors were opened by a liveried colossus. Moriarty presented the cards to a smart young lady, who posted them into a slit in a small, mechanical box. Gears ground and a red electric lamp flashed. We were told to leave the wardrobe and pass through a green-baize door.

In a small antechamber, we found upholstered chairs and a selection of German, French, Italian and English periodicals. All dull and financial. Nothing spicy. A voice boomed from the room beyond an inner door. Instructions were being issued in deep, rasping German. Someone — Mabuse as Lavenza, I supposed — outlined a plan for a daring robbery. Jewels from the Royal Collection of Ruritania, kept in Swiss vaults, were to make a rare public appearance at the coronation. An opportunity existed to seize them in transit from Geneva to Strelsau. Language aside, it could have been Moriarty talking. I sensed the Professor steaming. I was affronted on his behalf — Mabuse was plagiarising a classic Moriarty gambit. The sooner the copycat was in a bag and drowned, the better.

At the end of the speech, auditors were dismissed. Three men and a woman came out of the inner room, purposeful. They had taken no notes, but apparently committed the plan to memory. Paying us little attention, they left about their business. After a moment’s pause, the voice addressed ‘Operator number six and operator number fifty-one’. We were ordered to come in.

We had only moments before Mabuse saw we were not his delivery men.

Moriarty opened the inner door and I went through, with my Gibbs up. The room was dim. The only source of light was hidden behind a thick gauze screen which hung over an alcove. A silhouette was presented: a man sat at a desk. I shot him in the head and he keeled over. The kill made, I turned about-face and levelled my gun at the green baize door. No one came to investigate. This section of the bank was built like a vault. Soundproof.

The Professor tore away the curtain.

Triumph died. The voice of Dr Mabuse told his operators to come in, again. And again, repeating.

The dead man wore a gagging hood and a straitjacket. In falling, he had set an Edison phonograph revolving. Mabuse’s voice was on wax and came from a trumpet. I lifted the needle and shut the contraption up.

Moriarty unstuck the dead man’s hood from the mess of his head, and peeled it off.

I’d shot Ueli Munster.

‘F-k,’ Professor Moriarty said.

I agreed.

The bastard had tweaked our noses again, properly. Mabuse had sat wearing another face — after Moriarty had said he’d always recognise him if he saw him! — and enjoyed his chocolate at the next table.

The green-baize door was locked, but easily kicked open. The uniformed giant and the smart young lady had cleared off. So far as we could tell, the premises were untenanted but for the two of us and four corpses.

We got out of the Lavenza Bank quickly.

XIV

The Thin Man acquitted himself no better than us at the Lavenza Bank. I presume he found the bodies, noted an irregular curl of apple-peel in the waste-paper basket as significant and picked up a fresh scent. He didn’t alert the clean, efficient Swiss police of any crimes or mention the Mystery of the Four Dead Swiss Bankers, the Phonograph and the Wardrobe to his tag-along biographer. Claiming to be weary of cities, he proposed a bracing schedule of hiking, sightseeing and scrambling up mountains.

This is what Watson said: ‘For a charming week we wandered up the valley of the Rhone, and then, branching off at Leuk, we made our way over the Gemmi Pass, still deep with snow, and so, by way of Interlaken, to Meiringen. It was a lovely trip, the dainty green of the spring below, the virgin white of the winter above.’

Back at the hotel, we found Sophy waiting. After recent events, I was minded to look at her teeth to make sure she really was herself. I doubt Mabuse could have pulled off the imposture, despite seemingly supernatural abilities, but a female disguise merchant was floating around Europe. I’d not forgotten what a nuisance Irene Adler could be if she put her mind to it. In theory, she was in Ruritania with Rupert. There was a god-awful mess about the succession, with Rudi, Michael and a red headed dark horse named Rassendyll making bids while the crown was in play [58]. Still, I’d not put it past her to visit Switzerland to see the endgame out. At this point, I didn’t even know who that bitch was betraying. She’d done us dirty by winding around Madame Sara, but I never found out if she was a paid Mabuse confederate or just kicking our teeth on the principle that we were smiling and she had on her steel-toed pumps. We had the real Miss Kratides, though she had nothing fresh to report.

Moriarty was in a cold fury. I was in a hot one. We’d bagged a brace of Swiss apiece, but were no better for it. I imagine murder charges could have been involved. Worse, according to Swiss morés, we’d left an untidy mess. Adolphe Lavenza was a shed snakeskin. All we could do was mark the Thin Man while he sniffed over the countryside. I was no longer confident he had a hope of running down Mabuse.

Geneva is not Paris. There’s nothing to do at night.

Sophy was packed off on her travels again, following the Thin Man’s traipse through verdant snowiness or whatever. She sent back mostly incident-less reports. The only thing that suggested we might have a trail left was that some lederhosen yodeller tried to shove her out of a boat on the Interlaken. She got a knife into his neck several times, and pitched him overboard. He sank through wonderfully clear waters, ribbons of red unrolling from the gills she’d put in him. Tedium had got to her and she was waxing poetic. Not a healthy thing for a woman or a murderer. An early sign of the vapours or a perverse impulse to confess.

To remind our bloodhound of his duty, we had Sophy roll a rock off a ridge at him as he ambled along the shore of the Daubensee. His deerstalker soaked by the splash, his nerves showed. She said he jumped like a grasshopper. Moriarty was not in a much better condition. In those days, he oscillated so badly I thought he’d do himself an injury. He ground his teeth and his vertebrae creaked. He covered sheets of hotel notepaper with numbers and symbols.

The staff at the Beau-Rivage were afraid of him. He was showing his skull too much. I was just red-faced and irritable. Day-old numbers of The Times and the Gazette, with further revelations from Inspector Patterson, did nothing for my humour. The Yard was clearing its books, pinning decades of unsolved crimes on ‘the Conduit Street Ring’. I admit most of the ones from the last ten years were ours, but the 1809 disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst was almost certainly not Moriarty’s doing since he’d not yet been born. Constance Kent killed her brother without our help, though the Professor owned a mosaic — Perseus, brandishing the head of Medusa — the young murderess executed while doing her stretch in Millbank.

On the 2nd of May, Sophy’s regular cipher telegram came from the Englischer Hof in Meiringen, a small Alpine village. The Thin Man was expected to arrive on the morrow and travel on to Rosenlaui, an even smaller Alpine village, going a little out of the way to visit a tourist attraction, the Reichenbach Falls. Not one of her more interesting communiqués. On the same tray was a telegram from Peter Steiler, who represented himself as landlord of the Englischer Hof. He broke sad news. Miss Kratides had been found dead in her locked room, a knife in her breast. She was believed to have taken her own life. In her papers was found our address in Geneva. He trusted we would accept his condolences and wondered in a polite Swiss way whether we would make (i.e. pay for) funeral arrangements. He assured us there was no urgency: even at this stage of the year, there was plentiful ice for the staving off of decay.

Ah, Sophy. I considered the loss. Dead, and never the recipient of a Basher Special.

‘The Thin Man must have tumbled her,’ I said. ‘He knew she blamed him for her brother and got his blade in first. I’d have done the same. I’d not have tricked up that locked-room mystery, though. Damn ostentatious. Detectives can’t resist going melodramatic when they turn murderer.’

‘No, Moran,’ Moriarty said, eyes shining. ‘The Thin Man won’t be in Meiringen until tomorrow. Another hand did this.’

‘Not that cretin Watson!’

Moriarty breathed the name, by now an incantation: ‘Mabuse’.

He was already paging through Baedeker’s Guide to Switzerland and the Alps, calculating the fastest route by scheduled train and hired trap. He was obsessed, again. Moriarty didn’t take kindly to nemeses.

‘What about the detective?’

Moriarty was impatient with details. ‘A minor matter. His usefulness is at an end. It would be untidy to leave him alive, though. Once business with Mabuse is concluded, we shall pitch him off the waterfall. A frothing torrent at its base will make a suitable last resting place for the Thin Man of Baker Street. What say you to that, Moran?’

I laid a hand on the Von Herder case. It was long past time the air rifle saw use.

XV

Two days later, just after dawn, we entered Meiringen, a stopover for alpinists on their way to Trollenberg, waterfall aficionados on their way to Reichenbach and consumptives on their way to the grave.

The Professor called a halt just inside the village limits, and got down from the trap. He would rouse the local constabulary to enquire about the Grecian lady’s death — Moriarty going to the police! — while I was to look up this Steiler at the Englischer Hof. The Thin Man and the Thick Head were likely in residence, and Moriarty had to avoid the detective. It was less likely I would be recognised, though I’d not forgotten than impertinent index card.

‘What about Mabuse?’

‘He is either here, or he has gone,’ said the Professor, not being much help. ‘Be wary, Moran. He has proved himself incalculable.’

You can’t be as fond of dangerous pursuits as me and keep your skin without being habitually wary. Bravery is not the same as stupidity. Indeed, if you’ve the nerve to dance with the big cats you must always be alert. I resented Moriarty giving written instructions, with fifteen separate diagrams, on how to suck eggs. He should know Basher Moran better by now.

Leaving Moriarty to trudge towards the polizei, the trap rattled up the steep main road of Meiringen. Even this late in the season, snow piled on the pavements. It had been there since last autumn. The dirty, grey banks were studded with lumps of dog shit. Baedeker’s misses that detail.

Every building in sight was a hof of some sort. They competed for custom with themes and gimmicks. The Englischer Hof hoped to attract visitors from our shores with a Union Jack hung upside down, conveniences labelled ‘Victorias’ and ‘Alberts’ and a menu offering such British fare as ‘fish and chits’, ‘squeak and bubble’ and ‘plump duff’.

After the night’s travel, I was hungry. But not enough to risk Swiss chits for breakfast.

Leaving the trap, I realised another reason why Moriarty had got off first: he had stuck me with paying the coachman. Funds were becoming an issue. We’d left England with bandoliers full of sovereigns under our combinations. Unavoidable expenses had mounted. We’d skipped out of the Beau-Rivage, where we were registered as ‘Gilbert Smyth’ and ‘Sullivan Jones’, without settling the bill. Our London accounts (and cash stashes) were beyond reach. Our line of credit with any continental Box Brothers associate was cut off when someone shot Ueli Munster in the head. We were in danger of running out of money. If this holiday went on much longer, I might have to resort to picking pockets, getting up card games with strangers in hotels or lifting the wallets from any corpses we might leave in our wake.

Warily — yes, more than usually so — I did a recce. No assassins hidden in the snow piled up against the back of the Englischer Hof.

I entered the lobby, which adjoined the breakfast room, and assumed a downcast, solemn air. I was under orders to examine the body, then disclaim Sophy, leaving funeral costs to whoever might be stuck with them. More penny-pinching. Still, when you’re dead, you don’t care whether you’re under marble or in a sack…

However, when you’re alive, you eat breakfast.

Just as I was about to ring the desk bell, I happened to glance into the dining room. Among the tourists — several with limbs in plaster from skiing — sat Sophy Kratides, tucking into a kipper. The dead don’t, on the whole, have appetites.

Sophy saw me and was surprised. She coughed up a bone, delicately, into a napkin.

I couldn’t put the pieces together.

Then, I could. Meiringen was a killing box. A tiger pit.

For us.

I saw faces. English tourists, local guides, busy waiters, a smiling Swiss who had popped up behind the desk like a jack-in-the-box. Any could be Mabuse.

Anyone could be anyone.

I reached into my coat for my Gibbs.

‘I am Peter Steiler,’ said the Swiss, who hadn’t sent a telegram to Geneva. ‘How may I serve you, sir?’

I was calm. ‘I am joining that lady for breakfast,’ I said. ‘Bring me anything on the menu that isn’t English. And coffee.’

‘Certainly, sir.’

Smiling broadly, I sat down at Sophy’s table. Loudly, I said, ‘Hullo, old thing —’ not risking a name, since I didn’t know what she’d given at the hof — ‘sorry I’m late and all that. Bit of bother with trains. Too used to travelling in France and Italy, don’t you know? Swiss trains actually leave according to the timetable, would you believe it? Funny kind of foreigners, eh, what? Have you heard the cricket scores?’

‘Crick-et?’ she said, equally loud, eyes wide.

‘Yes, old thing. Raffles out for a duck against the Australians!’

Coffee arrived.

Under her breath, Sophy asked, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Waltzing into a trap, I think. You’ll note who isn’t here with me and probably saw this coming.’

Sophy took a grip on her toast knife.

All around, people were convivial. Conversation, clattering, someone trying to learn to yodel, noisome gustation. A bit too normal and busy. Then, I really saw the faces.

One of the young English lady tourists was Chinese, the Daughter of the Dragon. The dirndl-and-clogs maid who brought the coffee was Alraune, Mabuse’s odd companion. Irma Vep peeped out from behind a Times held upside down. She was sharing a plate of croissants with Princess Zanoni. Leaning on a broom and trying in vain to look inconspicuous was none other than the Hoxton Creeper, dressed in lederhosen and a sou’wester. A waiter trundled a trolley bearing a covered plate to our table. He lifted the cover and took up a revolver. It was Rupert of Hentzau.

‘Come down in the world, Rupert?’ I asked. ‘I hear the succession went badly for the Michaelists. A proper conspirator knows not to kill his favoured claimant in a fit of pique before the crown is on his head. Still, I didn’t think you’d have to go into service.’

Hentzau laughed, showing teeth. Sophy stuck her knife through his hand and he dropped the gun. He was still laughing when he got a look down the barrel of my Gibbs, but there were tears in his eyes.

All noise in the room had stopped.

‘Sebastian,’ said a familiar, feminine American voice. ‘Put the pistol away. One of these days, it’ll go off and you’ll do yourself an injury.’

‘Good morning, Irene,’ I said, not lowering the Gibbs.

Irene Adler was not dressed for the mountains, but for an opera set in the mountains: trim Norfolk jacket, tight britches, polished boots, dear little hat with a feather in the band. She sat herself down opposite Sophy and me. My companion reached for the pot, to fling scalding coffee at the New Jersey nightingale’s face. It was empty.

‘I thought of that, Miss Kratides,’ said that bitch, sweetly. ‘Rupert didn’t see the cutlery coming, though.’

The rascal was levering the knife out of his hand. I hoped marmalade would make the wound go septic. He came at Sophy, intent on cutting her nose off with her own knife.

‘Stand down, boy,’ Irene said. ‘Heel.’

Reluctantly, he stopped.

‘It’s just hired guns, then,’ I said. ‘No Jack Quartz or Nikola or Mabuse. This is below stairs.’

‘No Moriarty, either,’ she said.

I knew I could shoot Hentzau. His swordsmanship would avail him little with that injured paw, though he was a left-hand-dagger-in-the-clinch sort of fellow. With mixed feelings, I could pot Irene from where I sat. Sophy had more knives. And forks and spoons — people forget you can do damage with them too. She could take Alraune, probably Zanoni. But we’d go under. Force of numbers. Irma Vep. The Daughter of the Dragon. The Creeper. Younger, stronger, less vulnerable — plain better.

If this was Basher Moran’s last stand, come on and let it be…

‘We want to talk about Professor Moriarty and Dr Mabuse,’ Irene said. ‘We want to talk about diabolical masterminds, in general. Are you prepared, Sebastian, to talk with us?’

There was a fuss at the door, which was locked.

‘I am sorry, sir,’ Peter Steiler said, out in the lobby. ‘A private party.’

‘This note says an Englishwoman needs a doctor,’ said a fatuous British voice.

Dr Watson had arrived.

Irene cocked her head. It seemed Watson had been halfway to Reichenbach with his chum, when he was recalled to Meiringen by a bogus summons to the bedside of a lady in distress. Watson was as partial to the bedsides of ladies in distress as I am to the beds of ladies who’ll probably end up in distress but won’t care about it for the next hour or two. He exchanged gasps of astonishment with Steiler as he tumbled that he’d been rooked. He used language in person that he’d never put in the Strand.

Throughout this performance, the ‘private party’ was silent. Rupert wrapped a towel around his hand to stanch the bleeding. Irma stood up and — showing nursing skill surprising in someone who kept failing to keep her chiefs alive — made a good field dressing out of the towel. She licked her lips at the sight of blood and her eyes shone. Les Vampires was just a name, though — right?

Eventually, Watson cleared off.

‘We should have let him join us,’ Irene said. ‘He’s properly of our party, too. In thrall to… well, we could hardly say an angelic mastermind, could we? Not of someone who ditches his own sidekick as he goes to confront his destiny.’

XVI

What of Moriarty and Mabuse?

I wasn’t there, so I can’t tell you of their last encounter. And neither left a record.

Mabuse had a face in Meiringen, of course. The police captain — captain of two constables and a carthorse, at least — Moriarty had called on. Alraune, Mabuse’s date at the Thoroughgood funeral, told Irene that much, though she was as in the dark about his stratagems as we all were about those whose standards we flew. Ties of blood, bed, tradition and terror did not entitle us to be in the know.

Not all of those present at breakfast in the Englischer Hof were declaring independence. The Daughter of the Dragon, though she later set herself against her father for the love of some white fool, thought a thinning out of the lesser mastermind population would benefit the Si-Fan. It was a Moriarty trick: the Battle of the Six Maledictions all over again. This time, only two — three, if we counted the Thin Man — players were to take each other off the board.

Moriarty knew who he was facing.

Mabuse knew what to expect.

Theirs was a brief meeting, over by the time Irene sat down at our table. It left Mabuse naked in the face — layer upon layer of make-up flayed away — and broken in mind. I don’t know how Moriarty did it, or at what cost to himself. I fancy he just uttered a formula, forcing into his pupil’s mind an addictive, insoluble equation Mabuse was compelled to devote all his intellect to working out, but which opened up vast chasms of uncertainty. The man who was no one was condemned to a world where nothing was anything. Babbling in several languages, the nameless man was found by the bewildered constables, and taken away to an asylum… Later, he was let out, and returned to Berlin and his old tricks. However, he was never the same again, and was eventually defeated by his own madness.

If no one stopped them, bested them or killed them, the clever ones all drive themselves mad in the end. They look for nemeses, and — if none are available — make them up. I’ve heard it said that Moriarty was the Thin Man. I understand why people jump to that conclusion, for the one needed the other. In the way neither needed anyone else, not Dr Watson… and not Colonel Moran.

That was what Irene wanted to talk about.

I don’t know if any of the big brains put her up to it — the ones who are so clever they can put an idea into another person’s head without them knowing it — or if it was something she’d come up with on her own one-tier-down level of cunning and self-interest. A lot of it came, I think, from trying to get close to men — or a man — who would not let her in. That’s above my level, though.

She knew how to put it to me.

‘Hunter and hunted,’ she said. ‘You say in your book — which could afford to lose the chapters about guns, by the way — that the world is divided between the two types. To avoid becoming one, you must become the other. Do you still believe that, Sebastian?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘The hunter and the hunted. Predator and prey. Alive and dead. The guns and the bag.’

‘At present, I have a gun. Aimed at you, Irene.’

‘It hasn’t escaped my notice. But, Sebastian, you miss a category. Native bearers. Guides. Orderlies. Hounds. Where do they fit in? Neither hunter nor hunted. Of the party of the hunter, but not the hunter. Small lives. To quote you, “a currency to be spent freely for a chance of a clean shot”. In this coming world Moriarty outlined, of very great villains and equally magnificent heroes, are you — are we — not such a currency? Are we not native bearers?’

I might have shot her. My finger tightened, involuntarily, on the trigger. It would have been only fair, for she had shot me. With the worst, most deadly ammunition. Purer than a silver bullet.

The truth.

Steiler came into the breakfast room, with another of his notes. This time, for me. From Moriarty.

Mabuse broken. Come to the Falls. The hide we scouted. Bring the Von Herder. On my signal, take the shot.

M.

On the journey, we had discussed this. The hide he mentioned was a perfect lay, marked on a tourist map Moriarty had given me.

‘Sebastian,’ Irene said. ‘Your master whistles.’

XVII

So, we come to it. Above the Reichenbach Falls.

I had my lay. I set out well after Watson, who was rushing back up the mountain, but was at the Falls comfortably before him. Forward planning, you know. Always a good idea. Moriarty was a master at it. From my snug nest in the snow, I had a good view. The roar of the torrent was muted. I saw the narrow path, and judged where the antagonists might meet. A ledge, cropping out, with a grassy patch. No easy way to avoid a determined enemy there.

The Thin Man thought a few Japanese wrestling tricks would serve him in a fight with an old maths tutor. He’d not seen the Professor kill two Swiss wardrobe-carriers — the only souls I ever saw him personally murder, by the way — with a letter opener. If it came to a grapple, it would be a more even contest than the detective knew. With dead-eye Moran in hiding to ensure the outcome, it was no contest at all.

The Von Herder was assembled, loaded and primed. It took twenty minutes’ vigorous pumping for a single shot. Once the gun was discharged, I’d be reduced to chucking rocks. As I said, I usually only need a single shot. I had a small pile of rocks ready, though. More planning.

I was flat out, on a blanket of fresh snow. Not the foul stuff back at the village, but a white, crisp, cold virgin fall. The air was thin and I was quite merry. Your brain gets like that in the mountains. You can hear bells and birdsong and voices in the waterfall if you let yourself.

I had the stock to my cheek, the telescope sight to my eye.

There was no more Firm. It was smashed and scattered. In his talk of starting anew, Moriarty had spoken in the singular person. There was no ‘we’ in his world.

I had prospects. Even without funds, I had my wits. And Sophy was handy. I had not been netted by Scotland Yard and even had the last of my reputation as a hero of the Empire and a cool hand in a crisis. In time, London would welcome Basher Moran. I could always get up a hand of high-stakes whist at the Bagatelle Club.

Tiny figures were struggling down the mountain path.

Through the telescope sight, I saw the antagonists come face to face. They had words. They broke off. One scribbled a note he left on a rock — a notice of the cancellation of milk delivery in Baker Street?

I saw two masterminds, two hunters, two tigers. From my perch, above them, they were small boys playing fight. A red and a white ant. Bacteria.

Then, it was on.

Professor Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes rushed at each other.

Moriarty raised his arm — the signal!

I took my shot.