The Best British Mysteries III

I

To Professor Moriarty, she is always that bitch.

Irene Adler arrived in our Conduit Street rooms shortly after I undertook to assist my fellow tenant in enterprises of which he was the pre-eminent London specialist. In short, sirrah, crime.

The old ‘bread and honey’ came into it, of course. The professor had me on an honorarium of six thousand pounds per annum. Scarcely enough to make anyone put up with Moriarty, actually, but it serviced my prediliction for pursuits the na’ive refer to as ‘games of chance’. Chronic cash shortage set in early, when Pater cut me off without a sou for an indiscretion involving a matched pair of Persian princesses. Libertinage on an heroic scale is my other expensive vice. However, I own that the thrill of do-baddery attracted me, that blood-running whoosh of fright and delight which comes from cocking repeated snooks at every plod, beak and turnkey in the land. When a hunting man has grown bored with bagging tigers, crime can still jangle the nerves and keep up the pecker. Moriarty, frankly bloodless, got his jollies in the abstract, plotting felony the way you might fill in a crossword puzzle. I’ve known him scorn an easy bank raid that would have netted millions and devote weeks to the filching of a tiny item of little worth that happened to be a more challenging snatch.

That morning, the professor was thinking through two problems simultaneously A portion of his brain was calculating the timings of solar eclipses observable in far-flung regions. Superstitious natives can sometimes be persuaded a white man has power over the sun and needs to be given handy tribal treasures if bwana sahib promises to turn the light on again. Bloody good trick, if you can get away with it. The greater part of his attention, however, was devoted to the breeding of wasps.

‘Your bee is a law-abiding soul,’ he said, in his reedy lecturing voice, ‘as reverent to their queen as the clods of England, dedicated to the production of honey for the betterment of all, buzzing about promiscuously pollinating to please addle-minded poets. They only defend themselves at the cost of their lives, for they sting but once. Volumes are devoted to the care of bees, and apiculture exists to exploit their good nature. Wasps do nothing but sting. Persistently venomous, they fly from one assault to the next. Unwelcome everywhere. Thoroughly nasty sorts. We are not bees, Moran.’

He smiled, a creepy thing for a man with lips as thin as his. His near-fleshless head moved from side to side. I was reminded of a cobra I chopped into three wriggling sections in the Hindu Kush. I couldn’t follow Moriarty’s drift, but that was usual. I nodded and hoped he would come eventually to a point. A schoolmaster before taking to villainy, his rambles tended to wind towards some inverted moral.

‘Summer will be upon us soon,’ he mused, ‘the season for picnicking in the park, for tiny fat arms to go bare, for governesses to sit and gossip unveiled, for shopgirls and their beaux to spoon in public. This will be a bumper year for our yellow-and-black-striped friends. My first generation of polistes pestilentialis is hatching. The world is divided, Moran, between those who sting and those who are the stingees.’

‘And you would be the sting-ers,’ shrilled that voice.

The American Nightingale had been admitted by Mrs Halifax, the superannuated harlot who kept a brothel on the lower floors. Moriarty had persuaded Mrs H to let us have the flat rent-free. Following the interview at which this matter was arranged, she wore a bandage on her right hand. He acquired a neatly amputated little finger which, in a vial of brine, he used as a paperweight. In these rooms, the Consultantship of Moriarty and Moran received ‘clients’.

‘Miss Irene Adler,’ acknowledged Moriarty. ‘Your Lucia di Lammermoor was acceptable, your Maria Stuarda indifferent and you were perhaps the worst Emilia di Liverpool the stage has ever seen.’

‘What a horrible man you are, James Moriarty!’

His lips split and sharp teeth showed.

‘My business is being horrible, Miss Adler. I make no effort at sham or hypocrisy.’

‘That, I must say, is a tonic.’

She smiled full-bore and arranged herself on a divan, prettily hiking her hemline up over well-turned ankles, shifting her décolletage in a manner calculated to set her swanny mams a-wobble. Even Moriarty was impressed, and he could keep up a lecture on the grades of paper used in the forgery of high-denomination Venezuelan banknotes while walking down the secret corridor with the row of one-way mirror windows into the private rooms where Mrs H’s girls conducted spectacularly indecent business day and night.

I still maintain all would have been well if only I’d shown the Adler minx what was what straight off, tossed her skirts over her head, plonked her fizzog-down on the reception room rug (a tiger whose head snarled as if he still bore a grudge from that tricky shot I made bringing him down) and administered one of my famous ‘Basher’ Moran Specials. Had I but properly poked that Yankee popsy, she might have broken the habit which eventually set all manner of odd bods scurrying around trying to clear up her confounded messes.

Irene Adler had the face of an angel child, the body of a full-grown trollop and a voice like a steel needle slowly sliding into your brain. Even warbling to an audience of tone-deaf polacks, she hadn’t lasted as prima donna. After her Emilia flopped so badly the artistic director of the Warsaw Opera had to blow his brains out, the company cut her adrift, leaving her on the loose in Europe to the disadvantage of several ruling houses.

And here she was on our settee.

‘You are aware that the services I offer are somewhat unusual?’

She fixed Moriarty with a steely glint that cut through all the sugar.

‘I am a soprano from New Jersey,’ she began, pronouncing it ‘Noo Joisey’. ‘I know what a knob crook looks like. You can figure all the sums you like, Professor, but you’re as much a capo di cosa nostra as the Moustache Petes in the back-room of the Burly-Cue. Which is dandy, because I have a job of burglary that needs doing urgently. Capisce?’

The professor nodded.

‘Who’s the military gent who hasn’t taken his glims off my teats for the last minute and a half?’

‘Colonel Sebastian Moran, the best heavy-game shot our Eastern Empire has ever produced.’

‘Good with a gun, eh? Looks more like a shiv-man to me.’

She pointed her index fingers at her cleavage, which she thrust out, then angled her fingertips up to indicate her face.

‘That’s better. Look me in the lamps, Colonel.’

I harrumphed and paid attention. If she hadn’t wanted fellows to ogle, she shouldn’t have worn that dress. There’s no reasoning with women.

‘Here’s the thing of it,’ she said. ‘Have you heard of the Duke of Strelsau?’

‘Michael Elphberg, so-called “Black Michael”, second in line to the throne of Ruritania.’

‘That’s the fellow, Prof. Things being slow this season, I’ve been knocking around a bit with Black Mike. They call him that because of his hair, which is dark where the rest of his family’s is flame-red. He’s a gloomy, glowering type as well so it suits him on temperamental grounds too. As it happens, photographs were taken of the two of us in the actual pursuit of knocking-around. Artistic Studies, you might say. Six plates. Full figures. Complete exposures. It would ruin my reputation should they come to light. You see, I’m being blackmailed!’

Her voice cracked. She raised a kerchief to her eye to quell a tear, then froze, a picture of slighted maidenhood. Moriarty shook his head. She stuffed the hankie back into her sleeve and snorted.

‘Worth a try just to keep my hand in. I’m a better actress than critics say, don’t you know? Obviously, I’m not being blackmailed. Like you said, there are stingers and stingees. We are stingers.’

‘And the stingee?’

‘Another bloody colonel. Colonel Sapt. Chief of the Ruritanian Secret Police. Which has been a dozy doddle for the last thirty years, since it’s one of the most peaceable, least-insurrection-blighted spots on the map. Not so much as a whiff of dissent since ‘48. When, admittedly, the mob burned down the old White Palace. There are very scenic gardens on the site. Anyway, intrigue stirs. King Rudolf is getting on, and two sons have claims to the throne. Rudolf the Red, the older, is set on shoring up his case by marrying his cousin, Princess Flavia. Where do they get these names? If you put them in an opera, you’d be laughed off stage. Sapt is loyal to Rudolf. Lord knows why, but there you are. Some people are like that. He’s also a keen appreciator of the aesthetic worth of a fine photo.’

‘I see,’ I said, ‘this Sapt thinks to blacken Michael’s name – further blacken, I suppose – so the duke will never be king.’

Irene Adler looked at me with something like contemptuous pity.

‘Gilbert the Filbert, Colonel of the Nuts, if those pics were seen, Black Mike’d be the envy of Europe. He’d be crowned in a wave of popularity. Everyone loves a randy royal. Look at Vicky’s brood. No, Sapt wants the photographs off the market, so Mikey can be nagged into marriage by Antoinette de Mauban, his persistently pestering mistress. Which would scupper any chance he might have with Flavourless Flavia.’

‘You said Rudolf was engaged to the princess?’

She made a gesture, suggesting the matter was in the balance. ‘Whichever Elphberg marries Flavia is a cert to be king. Black Michael is scheming to cut his half-brother out. Are you following this?’ ‘

Moriarty acknowledged that he was.

‘Why do you want those photographs?’

‘Sentimental value. I come off especially well in Study No. 3, where the light catches the fall of my hair as I lower my… No? Not convinced? Rats, I must work on this acting lark. Obviously, I want to blackmail everyone - Colonel Sapt, Black Mike, Red Rudi, Mademoiselle Toni, Princess Lavatoria… With half Ruritania paying me to keep quiet and the other half to speak up, I should be able to milk the racket for a good few years – at least, until succession is settled – and secure my comfortable old age.’

She could not have been more than twenty-five.

‘And where might these “artistic studies” be found?’ Moriarty asked.

She dug into her reticule and produced a paper with a map drawn on it.

‘The Ruritanian Embassy in Belgravia,’ she said. ‘I have a collector’s interest in floor plans, schedules of guards, and the like.’

‘What’s this?’ the professor indicated a detail marked with a red circle.

‘A safe, hidden behind the portrait of Rudolf III, in the private office of Colonel Sapt. If I had the key, I wouldn’t be here. I’ve been driven to associate with criminals by the need for skills in cracksmanship. You come highly recommended by Scotland Yard.’

Moriarty sniffed haughtily. ‘Scotland Yard have never heard of Professor Moriarty, except in my capacity as a pure mathematician.’

‘For someone as crooked as you, I call that a recommendation.’

Moriarty’s head started bobbing again. He was thinking the thing through, which meant I had to look after practicalities.

‘What’s in it for us, missy?’ I asked.

‘A quarter of what I can screw from the Elphbergs.’

‘Half.’

‘That’s extortion!’

‘Yes,’ I admitted with a wink. ‘We’re extortion men, you might say. Half.’

She had a little sulk, made a practised moue, shimmied her chest again, and bestowed a magnificent smile that warmed my insides. At some point in this business, I knew the old ‘Basher’ Moran Special would be required.

‘Deal,’ she said, sticking out a tiny paw to be shaken.

I should have shot her then and there.

II

The Ruritanian Embassy is a mansion in Boscobel Place. Belgravia fairly crawls with embassies, legates and consulates. The streets throng with gussied-up krauts strapped into fancy uniforms, tripping over swords they wouldn’t know what to do with if a herd of buffalo charged them. I’ve no love for your average Johnny Native, but he bests any Frenchy, Sausage-Eater or Dutchman who ever drew breath. Never go into the jungle with a Belgian, that’s my motto.

If Irene Adler had gone to a run-of-the-mill safe-breaker like that cricket-playing fathead, the caper would have run to after-midnight window-breakage and a spot of brace-and-bit boring, with perhaps a cosh to Colonel Sapt’s dome as an added extra.

Moriarty scorned such methods as too obvious and not sufficiently destructive.

First, he wrote to the Westminster Gazette, which carried his angry letter in full. He harped on about the sufferings of the slum-dwellers of Strelsauer Altstadt some of which weren’t even made up, which is where the clever part came in – and labeled Ruritania ‘the secret shame of Europe’. More correspondence appeared, not all from the professor, chiming in with fresh tales of horrors carried on under the absolute monarchy of the Elphbergs. A long-nosed clergyman and an addle-pated countess formed a committee of busybodies to mount a solemn vigil in Boscobel Place. The protest was swollen by less-dignified malcontents – Ruritanian dissenters in exile, louts with nothing better to do, crooks in Moriarty’s employ.

Hired ranters stirred passersby against the vile Ruritanian practice (invented by the professor) of cleaning the huge cannons of Zenda Castle by shoving little orphan girls into the barrels and prodding them with sticks until their wriggling wiped out the bore. A few of the Conduit Street Comanche – that tribe of junior beggars, whores, pickpockets and garotters whose loyalty the professor had bought – got themselves up as Zenda Cannon Girls, with soot on their faces and skirts, and threw dung at anyone who so much as dared step outside the Embassy.

After typical foreign bleating and whining, Scotland Yard sent two constables to Boscobel Place to rap truncheons against the railings and tell the crowd to move along quietly. To the Comanche, a bobby’s helmet might as well have a target painted on it. And horse dung is easily come by on the streets of London.

So, within three days, there was the makings of a nice pitched battle outside the Embassy. Moriarty and I took the trouble to stroll by every now and then, to see how the pot was boiling.

Hawk-eyed, the professor spotted a face peering from a downstairs window.

‘That’s Sapt,’ he said.

‘I could pot him from here,’ I volunteered. ‘I’ve a revolver in my pocket. It’d be a dicey shot, but I’ve never missed yet.’

Moriarty’s head wavered. He was calculating odds.

‘He would only be replaced. We know who Sapt is. Another Secret Police Chief might not be such a public figure.’

My right hand was itching and I had a thrill in my water.

I had a notion to haul out and blast away, just for sport and hang the scheme. There were enough bearded anarchists about to take the blame. Sometimes an idea takes your fancy and there’s nothing to do but give in.

Moriarty’s bony hand was on my wrist, squeezing. Hard.

His eyes shone. Cobra eyes.

‘That would be a mistake, Moran.’

My wrist hurt. A lot. The professor knew where to squeeze. He could snap bones with what seemed like a pinch. He let me have my hand back.

Moriarty rarely smiled, and then usually to terrify some poor victim. The first time I heard him laugh, I thought he had been struck by deadly poison and the stutter escaping through his locked jaws was a death-rattle. That day’s Times report from Ruritania solicited from him an unprecedented fit of shoulder-shaking giggles. He wound his fingers together like the claws of a praying mantis.

The prompt for this hilarity was Black Michael’s vow to free the Zenda Cannon Girls!

‘Let us wish him luck in finding them,’ said the professor. ‘How delicious that the duke should be our staunch ally in this enterprise. Then again, Queen Victoria has also expressed sympathy for our imaginary orphans.’

Flashes came from the Embassy. My hand was on my revolver.

‘More photographs,’ said the professor. ‘Colonel Sapt’s hobby.’

Sapt’s face was gone, but a box-and-lens affair was pressed against the window. Moriarty and I had coats casually up over our faces, against the wind.

‘The Secret Police Chief likes to know his enemies. A man in his position collects them.’

‘Why’s Sapt in London anyway? Shouldn’t he be crackin’ down on bomb-throwers on his home turf?’

Moriarty pondered the question.

‘If we are to believe Miss Adler, Sapt can best serve his cause here.’

‘His cause, Moriarty?’

‘Up the Red, down the Black. But the Elphberg Brothers are halfway across Europe. So, Sapt’s attention is directed here on subtler business.’

‘The woman?’

Moriarty’s shoulders lifted and dropped.

‘The old goat probably hopes she’ll give him a tumble to get her snaps back,’ I suggested. ‘I’ll wager he pulls the pics out of the safe every night and gives ‘em a proper lookin’ over.’

‘If that were the case, she wouldn’t have engaged us. Miss Adler does not strike me as a lady who likes to share. Yet she has willed over half the earnings of a profitable enterprise to us.’

‘No choice, Moriarty. Who else could get her what she wants?’

The professor tapped his teeth.

‘No one but us, Moran. Evidently.’

Moriarty’s fingers went to his watch-pocket. In my years of association with the professor, I never saw him pull out the timepiece I presume anchored the chain across his flat middle. Once an associate understood the import of timekeeping, everything went to schedule. Otherwise, there might have been consequences.

He had barely stroked his chain when Filthy Fanny dashed from the crowd and began kicking the police guard.

Fanny had been successfully presenting herself as a ten-year-old waif for a full two decades without anyone being the wiser. It was down to the proper application of dirt, which she arranged on her face with the skill other tarts devote to the use of paints and powder.

Now, Filth wore the sooty skirts of a Zenda Cannon Girl. And heavy shinkicking clogs.

She harangued in backslang (‘Reggub the Esclop!’) that sounded mighty like Ruritanian, or whatever heathen tongue they use.

After some painful toe-to-shin business, the plod got his truncheon out.

With a command of the dramatic that would put a Drury Lane tragedienne to shame, Filth tumbled down the Embassy steps, squirting tomato juice from a sponge clapped over her eye.

Moriarty handed me a cobblestone and pointed.

I threw the stone at the gawking copper, and fetched off his helmet. I’d once brought down a Bengal tiger with a cricket ball in exactly the same manner.

Then, the mob rose and rushed the Embassy. Moriarty hooked me with an umbrella handle and we milled in with the crowd.

The front doors caved, and the first rush of intruders slid about on the polished marble foyer floor like drunken skaters. Three guards tried to unscabbard sabres, but the Comanche set about stripping them – and the environs – of anything redeemable. Pawnshop windows would soon display cuirasses, plumed helms and other items stamped with the Elphberg Seal.

Sapt poked his head out of his door. Moriarty signalled. A couple of bruisers laid hands on the Secret Police Chief.

The professor sidled next to the anarchist with the biggest beard and suggested he draw up a list of demands, phrasing it so the fellow would think the whole thing was his idea.

Sapt looked about furiously, moustaches twitching. Dirty hands held him fast.

A bunch of keys rattled on Sapt’s belt. Moriarty pointed them out, and an urchin brushed past, deftly relieving Sapt of the keys.

‘Give him a taste of what the cannon girls get,’ I shouted.

We left the mob happily shoving the Secret Policeman feet-first up the nearest chimney. The anarchist had posted lookouts at the doors, and was waving an ancient revolver at the still-surprised constables.

‘You can’t rush us,’ said Comrade Beard. ‘This Ruritanian territory is claimed by the Free Citizens’ Committee of Strelsauer Altstadt. Any action against us will be interpreted as a British invasion.’

The average London crusher isn’t qualified to cope with an argument like that. So they bullied someone into making them tea, and told the anarchist to hang fire until someone from the foreign office turned up. In return, Beard promised not to garotte any hostages just yet.

Sapt, it appeared, had got stuck.

With all this going on, it was a simple matter to slip into Sapt’s private office, take down the portrait and open the safe. It contained a thick, sealed packet – and, disappointingly, no cash box or surplus crown jewels. Moriarty handed me the goods, and looked about, brows knit in mild puzzlement.

‘What? Too easy?’

‘No, Moran. It’s just as I foresaw.’

He locked the safe again.

There was a clatter of carriages and boots outside. Boscobel Place was full of eager fellows in uniform.

‘They’ve called out the troops.’

‘Time to leave,’ said the professor.

Back in the foyer, Moriarty gave the nod. Our Comanche confederates left off pilfering and detached themselves from those still intent on making a political point.

Sapt had fallen head-first out of the chimney, blacked like a minstrel. The professor arranged the surreptitious return of his keys.

We left the building as we came, through the front door.

The Comanche melted into another crowd.

I came smack face-to-face with a junior guards officer, who was about to set diplomacy aside and invade. I stiffened my neck and snapped off a salute, which was smartly returned. Once you’ve worn the colours, they never wear off.

‘Carry on, lieutenant,’ I said.

‘Yes, sir,’ he responded.

As so often, Moriarty had contrived not to be noticed. Like those lizards who can blend into greenery, he had the knack of seeming like a forgettable clergyman or a nondescript tutor, someone who has got off the omnibus two stops early and wandered into a bloodbath which was none of his doing.

We strolled away from the battle. Shouts, shots, thumps, crashes and bells sounded. Nothing to do with us.

A cab waited on the corner.

III

Moriarty was in a black thinking mood. He chewed little violet pastilles of his own concoction and paced his room, hands knotted in the small of his back, brow set in a crinkled frown.

I was still full of the thrill of jizzwhackery, and minded to pop downstairs to call on Flossie or Pussie or whatever the tiny blonde with the lazy eye said she was called. After the hunting grounds, the boudoir – I’d learned that in India, along with how to keep an eye on your wallet in the back of your trousers while they’re draped over a chair.

But the professor was preoccupied.

The evening papers were in, along with tear-sheets of fuller reports that would be in tomorrow’s editions. Sapt was claiming that dangerous Ruritanian revolutionary movements needed to be exterminated. He called upon Great Britain, Ruritania’s ancient ally, to join the crusade against insurrection, alleging that the assault upon the Embassy (and his person) had been equally an insult to Victoria and Rudolf. Typical foreign sod, wanting us to fight his battles for him.

Back in Streslau, there had been street skirmishes between Michaelists and Rudolfites. Many arrests had been made, and Sapt was expected to return to his country with information which would lead to a complete sweep of the organised troublemakers.

The packet of photographs lay on our bureau. It seemed that reclaiming this property of a lady had interesting side-effects – Moriarty’s imaginary revolution had genuinely to be put down.

‘I hope the blasted country don’t go up in flames before Irene can cash these chips, Moriarty. She’ll get no blackmail boodle out of ‘em if they’re hangin’ from lamp posts in the public gardens.’

Moriarty growled. He left the room, and closeted himself in the dark, buzzing space where he raised his wasps and plotted the courses of heavenly bodies.

Speaking of heavenly bodies, my eyes went to the packet.

The seal was nice and red and heavy and official.

I remembered the line of Irene Adler’s throat, the trim of her calves under silk, the swell of…

No one had said anything about not examining the merchandise.

I listened out – Moriarty was whistling to his wasps, likely to be absorbed for hours; there was no tread on the stair and Mrs Halifax was ordered to keep all callers away. So, no chance of interruption.

I sat at the bureau, and turned up the gas-lamp to illuminate the blotter.

With a deft bit of penknifery, I lifted the seal intact so it could be re-attached with no one the wiser. My mouth was dry, as if I’d been in a hide for hours, watching a staked-out goat, awaiting the pad of a big cat. I poured a healthy snifter of brandy, an apt accompaniment to this pleasurable perusal.

With a warm pulse in my vitals, I slid the contents out of the packet.

It was like iced water tipped into my lap.

‘Disgustin’,’ I blurted.

A sheet of paper was slipped into the sheaf of photographs.

MY DEAR COL. MORAN

I knew you’d not be able to resist a peek at these ‘artistic studies’. Sorry for the disappointment.

For what it’s worth, you may keep all monies which can be raised from them.

If b____________________l proves unprofitable, I suggest you license them to a manufacturer of postcards.

My very best to the Prof. I knew I could rely on him to toss a pebble in the pond, sending out ripples enough to make a maelstrom. An ordinary workman would just have secured the package and been done with it. Only a genius on the level of a Buonaparte could turn a simple task into the prompt for turmoil raised across a whole continent.

Please convey the thanks of another colonel. Being Chief of Secret Police in ‘one of the most peaceable, least-insurrection-blighted spots on the map’ was not a career with a future. The Elphbergs were intent on retiring him, but now – I fancy he’ll be kept on with an increase in salary.

I expect you to retain the last figure for sentimental reasons, and I remain, dear Colonel Moran, very truly yours,

IRENE ADLER

I flipped through several more entirely innocent tourist photographs of picturesque Ruritania, until – at the bottom of the stack – I beheld the full face of the American Nightingale. In this final, studio-posed photograph she wore the low-cut bodice she’d affected on her visit to Conduit Street, somewhat loosened and lowered, though – dash it! – artistic fogging around the edges of the portrait prevented complete immodesty. Through the fog was scrawled her spidery autograph, ‘as ever, Irene’. Even thus frozen, she looked like the sort who would be much improved by a ‘Basher’ Moran Special. I gulped the brandy, and chewed my moustache for a few moments, contemplating this turn of events.

Behind me, a door opened.

I swivelled in the chair. Moriarty looked at me, eyes shining – he had thought it through, and was unhappy. When the professor was unhappy, other creatures – animals, children, even full-grown men – tended to learn of it in extreme and uncomfortable manners.

‘Moriarty,’ I began, ‘I’m afraid we’ve been stung.’

I held up Irene’s photograph.

He spat out a word.

And that was how a great shambles broke out in Belgravia, shaking the far-off kingdom of Ruritania, and how the worst plans of Professor Moriarty were exploited by a woman’s treachery. When he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always as that hitch.