The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty

Everything Flows and Nothing Stays John Soanes

The others filed out of the room, glancing back with barely concealed smiles; they knew what was coming, and were relieved they weren’t going to be on the receiving end.

“You know why I’ve asked you to stay behind, don’t you? You had very specific instructions, and you failed to follow them. Instead, you decided to—”

“I thought that—”

“You ‘thought’? You thought? Oh, dear me, that won’t do at all. You’re not expected to think, as well you know, and you will be punished. What do you think about that, young Master Moriarty?”

Moriarty met the tutor’s gaze, and took a deep breath. “I know I was supposed to complete the exercise from the textbook, but I thought you’d be more interested in the work I handed in. You did understand what it was, I presume?”

“Understand?” the tutor’s face reddened. “Did I ‘understand’ the nonsense you handed in? What precisely was there to understand, boy?”

Moriarty shook his head slightly. “Sir, please, hear me out. You asked me to do some basic Pythagorean calculations, but I gave you much more than that, don’t you see? I gave you the solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem.”

Moriarty folded his arms and smiled, but his mathematics tutor did not smile. Instead, he looked increasingly angry.

“Fermat?” the older man said. “Are you insane, boy? Are you seriously telling me that in half a page of foolscap, you solved—”

“I solved it, yes. I solved the final problem.”

The tutor’s face flushed a full shade of red, and he stared at this boy who stood in front of him so casually and made such unlikely claims.

“I should say,” Moriarty went on with a shrug, “that the explanation I gave was only a summation, because I had only a limited amount of space on the page, but I—”

“Silence,” the tutor growled. “You will be quiet, boy. Your insolence is … is staggering. I have heard many excuses from many boys over the years, but yours is surely the most brazen. Such misbehaviour cannot go unchecked. You will be punished.”

“But—”

“You have gone too far already, Moriarty,” the tutor warned. “Do not try my patience beyond its limits.”

Moriarty said nothing more.

The punishment was quite specific; of all the boys in the school, Moriarty would be the only one forbidden to take part in the visit to London Zoo to see the hippopotamus Obaysch, recently arrived from Egypt and already attracting vast crowds. Moriarty would instead be made to stay in his dorm room and consider what he had done, and the importance of doing as he had been instructed.

His dorm room was a poor environment in which to consider these matters, or indeed to think at all. He’d made a limited effort to personalise his living environment, merely affixing two pictures to the wall near his bed (drawings given to him as a going-away present by his family: one of a soldier, the other of a steam train), and the furniture had been scratched and battered by the room’s previous occupants, which in itself annoyed him; his predecessors at the school seemed to have aims that extended only as far as carving their names on the surfaces of desks, drawers and doors, whilst he was increasingly feeling that, with appropriate discipline and focus, a person could carve their name across the surface of the known world and become a byword for achievement, like Alexander or Napoleon.

Moriarty had, then, given scant consideration to the topic of obedience and its importance, and instead had thought about the cold smile on the tutor’s face as he had stated the punishment; a near-sneer, as if the tutor derived some pleasure from exercising the power he had over his pupil. Moriarty could only conclude that the authority the tutors had over him and the pupils – indeed, the power all adults had over boys of his age – derived from the concept of “might makes right”, a phrase he had read recently. The tutors had control over him solely because of their age and perceived seniority, he concluded; even their limited intelligence was not a hindrance, as they had the physical ability to force the pupils to obey orders, should the need arise.

Moriarty spent a full four minutes considering the imbalance of this – that lesser individuals should be able to manipulate those whose thinking was demonstrably superior – and then he had pulled on his coat and set about disobeying the terms of his punishment. Easily bypassing the groundskeeper who was supposed to be ensuring he remained within his dorm, he exited the school building.

And then he left the school grounds, and headed into London.

Whilst the others were at London Zoo in Regent’s Park, Moriarty spent a little time in Hyde Park. On the south side of the park, wooden hoardings had been erected, ahead of the Great Exhibition, which was scheduled to take place the following year. Beyond the edge of the park, horse-drawn carriages passed by in a constant creak of wheels and clip-clop of hooves. Nearer to him, a stream of people passed by the work in progress, couples and nannies pushing baby carriages made of wood and wicker. He watched them pass by, and felt no connection with them at all.

Moriarty stayed in Hyde Park for a while, standing on the Serpentine Bridge and musing about the flow of the rivers through London, how vital they were for the city and yet how they were for the most part unseen, like the blood flow Descartes had written about. As he stood on the bridge and watched the wind playing over the face of the water, a butterfly landed a short distance from him, a dash of colour against the stone of the bridge.

It occurred to him that lingering in one place might prove to be a mistake; if the school party was unable to see the fourlegged attraction in Regent’s Park, the masters might decide to take the boys for a walk elsewhere in the capital, and he might be discovered. One single person too many in the queue ahead of the pupils might lead to undesirable consequences, and he did not intend wasting his time explaining himself to the older but lesser minds of the school simply because a conjunction of unlikely events had led to him being discovered. He decided to move on, to head towards the East End, generally following the route of the rivers of London, the city’s hidden circulatory system.

He set off towards the park gates and, as he walked past the butterfly, it flew into the air, wings beating frantically.

He walked at a measured pace – he knew the length of his stride and the distance he could cover before he needed to get back to the school – and though he was still young, his height, his thin face and his high forehead made him look older. His long arms, and the subtle vertical striping of his coat, made him look even taller, and he stood out from the crowd both in appearance and bearing. His head moved from side to side as he took in all the details of his surroundings, and, as he made his way past Hyde Park Corner and on to the edge of Green Park, he realised that he was moving through the crowd unimpeded, the surrounding people leaving a space around him.

Moriarty allowed himself a flicker of amusement at this; he was happy for people to avoid him out of suspicion if not out of fear or respect, but, as he felt an east wind pick up and blow the thin strands of his hair back from his forehead, he found himself almost wishing to experience the normal Brownian motion of a body through a crowd, as others standing closer by might have afforded some protection from the wind that even now pulled at his coat.

As the carriages passed by and kicked up mud, he stood and looked across Green Park, at Constitution Hill, which was not a hill but a road; the road where Peel, the founder of the Metropolitan Police Force, had sustained a fatal wound after falling from his horse, but where all three of the attacks on Queen Victoria had failed. The moral, if one was to be sought, appeared to be that accidents were more likely to be fatal than assassination attempts, and less likely to attract further investigation.

Moving through the crowd as if in a bubble, Moriarty walked along Piccadilly, following the edge of Green Park.

Always keeping at least ten paces between them, the older boy followed, confident he had not been seen.

The crowds grew denser on Piccadilly, and Moriarty considered entering a shop to escape the throng. There was a bookshop there, and he had money enough to afford to make a purchase – having read of the recent premiere of Wagner’s Lohengrin, he was minded to see if he could find a copy of the source material, preferably in the original German – but he also knew it would be difficult to hide a new book upon returning to the school. Any new item attracted the attention of the other boys, and would lead someone to hide the book by way of playing a prank, or, worse, news of the acquisition would reach the ears of the tutors.

So Moriarty did not enter the shop, despite the appeal of the items in the window display. Instead, he stood for a few minutes, carefully looking at the titles and authors of the books on show beyond the glass of the windows. He noted the presence of new novels by Dickens and Hawthorne, and of the older, taller boy who had been following him since Hyde Park.

And then he set off walking once again.

Moriarty varied his pace now, and stopped often, ostensibly to look in shop windows, and it was clear the boy was indeed following him. A game, perhaps, or some more sinister intent, but he did not feel he had time spare to consider the matter, as he must be back at the school before he was missed.

He had vaguely decided to make his way to the Bank of England and spend some time outside the building. There, should anyone ask, he would say he was admiring the architecture, but in fact he would be considering the Walbrook River which ran beneath the area, and how its route, if accessed, might allow one to enter the Bank from beneath. This was a thought experiment, of course. Nothing more.

But now his attention was diverted by the older boy, who walked when he walked, stopped when he stopped, and held his distance no matter the direction Moriarty turned, as if in orbit around him. Time was now becoming the crucial consideration, and Moriarty wasted a full minute standing before an art dealer’s premises just off Haymarket, not even noticing that the picture he was staring at was called Le Petit Mathématicien because he was preoccupied using the glass of the window to observe behind him.

And the older boy was still there; he had produced a cap from a pocket somewhere about his person, and turned his collar up as if to protect him from the wind, but this was no disguise, and he was clearly following Moriarty. If this was some sort of game, the boy seemed intent on pursuing it. Moriarty had, however, played enough games to know that you stood a stronger chance of victory if you knew the rules. Or if you created them.

He nodded slightly to himself, then set off walking again, expecting the boy to follow; this expectation was met.

Moriarty walked at a casual pace until he reached a corner and knew he was out of sight, and then he broke into a half-run for a short distance, increasing the distance between them. As he passed through the crowds in Trafalgar Square, he paused near the base of Nelson’s Column, apparently looking at the two bronze reliefs at its base, and, yes, the older boy was still there.

He moved on, down towards Whitehall. Once more, other people seemed instinctively to clear a path for him, which gave him an advantage over his follower, and Moriarty was soon on Whitehall, just across from the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police.

He ducked into the doorway of a nearby building, and waited.

As he’d calculated, less than thirty seconds later, the older boy came along, frowning at the apparent disappearance of his quarry. He stopped and looked across the road, but when he saw Moriarty was not there either, he took off his cap and rubbed his head, as if to summon an explanation of the situation. He was staring at the police building when the voice came from the doorway behind him.

“If you’re going to keep following me,” Moriarty said, “maybe I should speak to the police about it. What do you think?”

The older boy turned round, looking both surprised and annoyed. As he struggled to form his response, Moriarty realised that the boy was tall, but not as old as he first appeared; he carried himself with an adult’s bearing, but his bright eyes suggested that childhood was not so far behind him.

“Don’t – look, no need for that,” the older boy said. “I was looking for someone to … someone to help me with something. There could be money in it.”

“You want me to help you?” Moriarty narrowed his eyes. This sounded unlikely, but he was willing to play along, and the other boy seemed sufficiently off guard that he’d struggle to formulate a lie. “Help with what?”

The older boy glanced over his shoulder at the police building, and then looked back at Moriarty, weighing up how he should answer the question.

In that instant, Moriarty deduced that the boy was telling the truth about having an enterprise in mind, and it was clearly one that, at the very least, pressed hard against the limits of activities permitted by the law.

“There’s a card game,” the boy said. “I’m part of it, but I need someone else to—”

“I don’t have money,” Moriarty cut in, “if that’s what you—”

“No, no,” the boy said firmly. “I have money, but I need someone else to be there, to help me, er …”

“To help you gain an advantage?”

“Something like that, yes,” the boy replied, looking serious. “Well?”

“I …” Moriarty paused. He had his own vague plans for the day, but was intrigued to see what the boy was talking about. It would, after all, give him first-hand experience of the world of gambling; and the money was an additional inducement.

He reached his decision, his gaze flicking across the road to the police building.

“What’s the game – and where is it?” All other considerations aside, Moriarty had to return to school before his absence was noticed.

“The game’s called Twenty-One,” the boy said, with a hint of a smile. “The Yanks are starting to call it Blackjack, I think. The aim is to—”

“To make twenty-one,” Moriarty said. “Or as close as possible to it. Yes, I’ve heard of it.” He’d read of it in Cervantes, where it was known as ventiuna.

“Good, good,” said the boy, and he stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Well then, you’ll see how a player would have an advantage if someone was giving him clues as to the cards the other players were holding.”

“Yes,” Moriarty said, nodding. More than an advantage; it would make victory almost certain.

“So I need someone in the room with me.”

“And where is this game?” Moriarty asked again.

“Clerkenwell – do you know it?”

“Only slightly,” Moriarty said. “Which part?”

“The part with the building work.” The boy grinned. “Farringdon Street. You know it?”

“As I say, only slightly,” Moriarty replied, nodding. Farringdon Street was being created as they constructed tunnels to cover and divert the River Fleet, one of the city’s largest waterways. It seemed he might yet follow his intentions for the day, to an extent. “I’ve heard about it. What would I have to do?”

“Look, if you’re in, we can talk on the way there. Come on, we need to make our way east.” He put his cap back on his head, and looked at Moriarty expectantly.

“You mentioned money,” Moriarty said, not moving.

“I did,” the older boy said with a sigh. “I’ll share my winnings with you. A quarter for you, three-quarters for me.”

Moriarty hesitated for a moment and, taking this as a sign of reluctance, the boy rolled his eyes and tutted.

“Oh, very well – a third for you,” he said. “Is that good enough?”

“That will do,” Moriarty said, aware that his receiving anything was likely to be dependent on the success of the other boy’s plan, whatever it might be.

The two of them started walking towards the Strand.

“If we’re to be partners in this,” Moriarty said, “will you at least tell me your name?”

“Of course,” the boy said. “My name’s Martin, but they call me Smiler. What’s your name, then?”

“Moriarty. They call me—”

He hesitated. After his arrival at the school, the boys had taken less than a week to find a nickname for him, and it was the obvious one given his high forehead and solemn way of talking, but he had no intention of encouraging Martin to call him Professor.

“—they call me Moriarty,” he said firmly, and Martin smiled.

“Is that a Paddy name?” Martin asked, after a moment’s thought. “Did your family come over here because of the famine?”

“So, this game,” Moriarty said, allowing a hint of exasperation to his tone. “If you want me to help you, we should discuss how to do it. My family is of no importance.”

“Blimey, don’t get all worked up,” Martin said, clearly amused by this reaction. “So, about the game. I heard about it from a builder friend of mine who lives in Norwood. The men who are working on building the Farringdon Road often stop early and play Twenty-One, and they’re playing today. You need a good sum to buy into the game, but that means the winner can take home a good amount, too.”

“What kind of amounts do you mean?” Moriarty asked, glancing at the building they were just passing: Coutts Bank, known for the large sums it handled for its illustrious clients.

“Not those sorts of amounts,” Martin said, having followed Moriarty’s gaze, “but the builders are being paid well, and so the smallest wager a player can make is a florin.”

“A florin?” Moriarty said in surprise, and Martin looked round to see if anyone had overheard him.

“Keep it quiet, will you?” Martin snapped. “Perhaps approaching you was a mistake.”

“No,” Moriarty said firmly. “No mistake. But that amount, it … do you have enough for more than one round of the game?”

Martin nodded, and Moriarty thought for a moment. A florin was not a small amount and, having only been introduced in recent times, the coin had a certain exotic novelty about it. If Martin was telling the truth, then there was much more to this enterprise – and indeed more to Martin himself – than one might initially have imagined.

“Where did you get the money?” he whispered, and Martin smiled slightly and shook his head. “Did you—”

“Don’t worry about that,” Martin said.

Moriarty deduced that this meant the money was not his, and Martin was the operative for some unseen person or persons, away from the scene of the crime and therefore apparently uninvolved if it failed or attracted police attention. This idea intrigued him, that a person might engineer events and yet be invisible.

They neared the end of the Strand, and passed a theatre called Punch’s Playhouse and Marionette Theatre; Moriarty recalled that the unseen men who manipulated the puppets whilst remaining hidden during a Punch and Judy Show were known as “professors”.

“And what do I have to do?” Moriarty asked. “I doubt I shall be playing Twenty-One with your money.”

“You’re right,” Martin said, nodding. “No, the game is held in an empty house near the building works at Farringdon, and we need someone to keep watch for the local bobbies.”

“I see,” Moriarty said. He nodded, but his tone betrayed him.

“You seem disappointed,” Martin said. “Or is it that you don’t understand me? When I say ‘bobbies’, I mean police. What is it you call them in Ireland? Peelers, is it?”

“I understand you perfectly well,” Moriarty said coldly, “but I expected you would need more from me – is this why you followed me halfway across London, and now would have me walk the other half? To be a watchman for a card game?”

“Let me finish,” Martin said, and his smile took on a sneering look. “You’re to be the watchman, yes, to make sure that no one interrupts the game, but standing at the window of the room, watching the street outside, you will also be able to see the cards of the other players, and to signal me about their hands. So, I can—”

“Will I be able to see all the other players’ cards?” Moriarty asked.

Martin looked surprised. “There will be four players,” Martin said slowly, “and I shall sit facing the window. From your position, you should be able to see at least two of the other hands, and you can signal to me—”

“And the other player? If he has a good hand, which I cannot see?”

Martin said nothing to this, and they walked in silence through Temple Bar, the gate-like structure at the point where the Strand joined Fleet Street. They were close to other pedestrians, but Moriarty knew this was not why Martin had suddenly grown so silent.

Beneath their feet, the River Fleet flowed, and only one person above it on the street that bore its name gave it any thought.

“You have a better suggestion then?” Martin said eventually.

“Yes,” Moriarty replied, “in fact, I do. Have you heard of card counting?”

“What?” Martin said, frowning. “Are you telling me you can—”

“Yes, I can,” Moriarty said. “Mathematics is my strongest subject. After a handful of rounds of Twenty-One, I will know which cards are yet to be played, and can give you an indication whether you should ‘hit’ for another card, or … is it ‘stick’? Is that the word?”

“Yes,” Martin said, sounding doubtful. “Are you certain you could keep count in that way?”

“I have done it before,” Moriarty said, and this was true: whilst watching others playing cards, he had little difficulty in calculating what the next card dealt or revealed would prove to be. “I would merely need to cough, or make some other agreed signal, to indicate whether you should take a card. And I would have no need of seeing the other players’ hands, just your cards.”

“So I would sit with my back to the window, and you would look at my hand?”

“Precisely.”

They walked down Fleet Street, closing in on Farringdon, and Martin was quiet, thinking about this proposal. He knew of card counting, but had never been able to do it. And the younger boy’s notion did remove the element of doubt about visibility of the other hands …

“We could try your suggestion,” Martin said, and in that moment Moriarty felt the balance between them shifting, as if a moon had suddenly become the focus for the rotation of a planet, or there had been a reversal in an asteroid’s dynamics. “It might work.”

Moriarty nodded, as if he was ambivalent to the approval of his proposal, despite the sensation he had of how easily one could go from being followed to leading, from puppet to professor; all one needed, it seemed, was knowledge of a particular sort, applied at the appropriate point.

“We’re nearly there,” Martin said, and they turned north off Fleet Street. Ahead of them Moriarty could see the signs of the digging and building works that were underway. “What signals should we use then?”

“A cough for hit,” Moriarty said, “and a sniff for stick? How does that sound to you?”

“Cough for a card, sniff for stick,” Martin said, nodding. “Yes, that sounds reasonable.”

They walked on, and soon started stepping round holes in the paving and road surface. In several places, there were holes big enough for a grown man to enter, carelessly covered with pieces of wood or other items. As they walked past these larger holes, Moriarty could hear the sound of water running, the river, and this reinforced that there were forces at play beneath the everyday world.

“Before we go in,” Moriarty said to Martin, “tell me, why me?”

Martin frowned at him, not understanding.

“Why did you pick me? Out of all those in Hyde Park today, why did you think I was most suitable for this – and likely to agree to it?”

Martin laughed, but it was a sound lacking in warmth or mirth.

“I saw you in Hyde Park,” Martin explained, “standing there, without family or friends. And I saw the way you looked at the people passing by – you were frowning, almost sneering, as if watching them from a distance, even when they were close by. You looked at them as if they were—” Martin shrugged “—animals in a zoo. I knew then that you were more like me than the others in the park. I guessed at your age, too, and thought that the money might appeal.”

Martin looked at Moriarty, and the sly smile on his face suggested he thought Moriarty might be disappointed by this explanation, that he might have preferred to have been told that he looked more intelligent, or even more devious, than the others in the park. But Moriarty merely nodded, his expression unreadable.

“This is the house,” Martin said, pointing to a large and dilapidated house. In truth, it was more absence than building: the top floor was lost beneath a collapsed roof and the structure had caved in, though in the mess and disruption of the surrounding street the missing three-quarters of this house was unremarkable.

The front door, its wood burned in places and scratched in others, looked as if it would prove impossible to open, but Martin stepped to the door and pushed it inwards with ease.

Martin gestured inside, and Moriarty hesitated.

“Oh, very well,” Martin said with a smile. He tugged his cap from his head and tucked it into one of the pockets of his coat – pockets that, Moriarty noted, seemed to go down a long way – and stepped over the threshold into the hallway.

Inside the house, there was a strong smell of damp plaster, and from the walls came the sound of mice, or possibly rats. Martin took a few steps down the darkened hallway, then pushed a door, and the two of them stepped into the room beyond, their footfalls noisy on the wooden floor.

The flickering of a number of candles revealed that the room had long since ceased to be a parlour, and was now devoid of furniture save for the small table and four chairs that sat at its centre. Three men stood in the room, and it seemed to Moriarty as if they represented a series of stages in an advertisement for a combined facial hair tonic and weight-loss patent medicine; the first man was clean-shaven and fat, the second man had a moustache and was stocky of build, and the third man was bearded and thin. They were all talking in low voices when Martin and Moriarty entered.

“Ah, the younger generation!” the bearded man said, and laughed. “Welcome.”

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Martin said. “Apologies if I have kept you waiting.”

“No apology is needed,” said the clean-shaven man, in a voice that was higher-pitched than Moriarty expected. “Who do you have with you this week?”

“This young man was recommended to me by an acquaintance,” Martin lied smoothly. “I did not ask his name, nor did he offer it. I told him of our game, and of our need for a watchman, and he agreed to assist.”

“He has no … shall we say, qualms about gambling?” the bearded man asked.

“None,” Martin said. “I promised him a small fee for his time, and—”

“As long as I get my money,” Moriarty growled, “I don’t care what you do here.”

“Splendid,” said the man with the moustache. “Shall we play?”

The others murmured in agreement, and sat down at the table, Martin stepping quickly to the chair with its back to the window.

Moriarty went to his position by the window. It was boarded up in places and blackened with candle smoke in others, but by perching sideways on the windowsill he could see out into the street and by turning his head also see over Martin’s shoulder. He sniffed as the first cards were dealt.

“You must excuse our watchman,” Martin said, with a vague gesture. “He has a cough and a cold. But he assured me he will not breathe his bad air in our direction.”

The three men laughed, and the game began.

Moriarty watched the first rounds without making any attempt to assist Martin, being careful to cough and sneeze only when the other men were making their plays.

After the first six rounds were complete, an impressive number of florins lay on the table in front of the men. Even without assist ance, Martin was playing well, and appeared to be breaking even, though the bearded man had lost much of his money, and was attempting to distract the other players with a limerick he claimed to have heard the previous evening.

“… told her when needs and seeds must, a man must go and sow – though his very first may be in Baker Street, and his last, Bow!”

No one thought this either clever or amusing, and the cards were dealt again.

Moriarty watched carefully, and could see over Martin’s shoulder that he had a two and an eight for a total of ten. Moriarty had kept track of the number of jacks and tens in play, and assessed that there were more of these yet undealt than any other cards – as well as two aces – and so he coughed, and looked out of the window.

Martin took another card, the other players made their choices, and the round ended. Moriarty heard Martin laugh and the sound of florins being pulled across the table to be added to his pile. Only then did Moriarty look back at the game.

The bearded man looked to have been comprehensively bearded, as he had a single florin in front of him, and a scowl on his face. The clean-shaven man had what appeared to be two coins in front of him, and Martin and the man with the moustache looked to have equal piles of coins before them.

The mood in the room was tense and, not wishing to draw attention to himself and a possible connection between his presence and Martin’s good fortune, Moriarty looked out of the window again, seeing no policemen.

The cards were dealt in silence. Moriarty glanced over Martin’s shoulder. He had two tens, which was so close to twenty-one that taking no more cards might have seemed the wisest option, but the combination of these two cards and the tens that the other players had drawn in the previous round left, Moriarty knew, two aces yet to be dealt, and so he coughed, and then peered out of the window.

At the table, Martin hesitated, but took another card. The others made their decisions and, as the round ended, Martin laughed triumphantly, and Moriarty heard the sound of coins being drawn across the table, accompanied by muttering from the other players. A quick glance revealed to Moriarty that both the bearded man and the clean-shaven man had no coins left, and the man with the moustache had one single florin left. Martin, for his part, had a large, uneven pile of money in front of him.

“I think I shall move these out of the way,” Martin said, with undisguised amusement, and swept a heavy handful of the coins off the table into the pocket of his coat, where they clinked loudly. “Shall we play one last round?”

The moustached man paused for a moment, then Moriarty heard him grunt in unhappy agreement. Moriarty, looking out of the window, frowned at Martin’s insistence on playing on. The pile of cards to be dealt was too small to make a round now, so the moustached man, dealing, shuffled the discarded cards with those yet to be dealt, effectively meaning the two players were being dealt from a fresh deck of fifty-two cards. Moriarty was now unable to derive any benefit from counting, but this fact only appeared to occur to Martin when his cards had been dealt, and Moriarty heard him shift awkwardly in his chair.

Moriarty glanced at Martin’s hand: two eights for a total of sixteen, arguably the worst hand he could have in his uncertain position. Martin hesitated.

“Well?” the moustached man prompted. “Another card?”

“I …” Martin muttered, and then forgot himself, for one critical moment. He glanced over his shoulder at Moriarty, his eyes wide and pleading. This did not go unobserved by the other players.

“What’s going on here?” demanded the bearded man.

“Nothing,” Martin replied, unconvincingly.

“Why did you look to the watchman?” the clean-shaven man asked.

“I was making sure he was still keeping guard,” Martin said, casually. “He had been so quiet – none of his usual sniffs or coughs – and I was afraid he had fallen asleep.”

“Do you not think one of us would have noticed that, if it had happened?” the bearded man snarled. “We may be unfortunate with cards, but we are not blind.”

“Of course not,” Martin said, smiling warmly. “I did not mean—”

“You looked at him as if asking him a question,” the moustached man said, firmly. “As if seeking some kind of information.”

“Not at all,” Martin replied. “As I said, I—”

“What information could the watchman have?” the bearded man asked.

“Nothing, I assure you—” Martin started to say, but he was cut off by the clean-shaven man asking a question.

“Are you two confederates? Is that what is going on here? Is the watchman monitoring the cards as well as the street outside, to ensure your victory and his fee?”

Martin said nothing.

“Well?” the moustached man said, his hand going to his last florin. “Are you two—”

Martin’s nerve deserted him, and he jumped from his chair and ran towards the door. Moriarty was taken aback for a second, but then followed him, and the two of them ran out of the room and down the hallway of the house, with the three men in close pursuit, yelling threats.

Martin and Moriarty sprinted down the pockmarked Farringdon Road. The three men gave chase and, though the clean-shaven man was held back by his corpulence, the others seemed about to catch up with them, until Martin suddenly scrambled down one of the holes in the surface of the road. Without pausing to consider, Moriarty followed.

It was like being in a cave system, but it smelled like a sewer; the stench was nauseating, and Moriarty’s senses revolted from it.

He took a few seconds to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness and, when he could see properly, he realised Martin was a short distance ahead of him, the florins clinking noisily as he moved.

“Are they following?” Martin demanded, breathlessly.

His heart racing, Moriarty glanced up and back at the way they had come, and could see no one behind them. He could hear voices, shouting, but no sounds of approach.

“No,” Moriarty said.

“Good,” Martin replied, and walked on.

Martin had clearly been down in the tunnels before, and Moriarty once more noted that one might move and act, unseen, beneath the surface of things. He allowed himself a smile in the semi-darkness.

“I know the way,” Martin said, and then added, in a more sinister tone, “it’s like the valley of the shadow of death, isn’t it? Like in the psalms they taught us at school.”

Moriarty thought that, in the close, dark environment, fear was more of a concern than the shadow of death.

Underfoot, the surface was treacherous and slippery, and Moriarty stepped with care. Martin seemed unconcerned how closely he was following, and it occurred to Moriarty that Martin would not care if he slipped and fell and was swept away. He had the money from the game, and that was as far as his interest went.

“When will I get my share of the winnings?” he asked.

Martin glanced back at him, and Moriarty could not see the expression on the boy’s face, but his tone made it clear he was scowling.

“Later,” Martin said. “When we’re back above ground.”

He said it without conviction. Moriarty frowned slightly, but still he followed, and they stepped around a corner, and came to a point where the tunnel system opened up and the flow of the Fleet dropped some twenty or so feet, like a miniature waterfall. The sound was very loud now, and the stench even more pungent and close. Moriarty tried to breathe through his mouth, but it made little difference.

Ahead of him, Martin had slowed down, and was peering over the edge of their narrow walkway into the maelstrom below.

“Quite a drop,” Martin shouted. “This path leads to the way out.”

Martin started to make his way carefully along a narrow brick ledge, and again the florins clinked in his coat.

“You could give me my share of the money,” Moriarty said, giving Martin a second chance. “It would be less heavy for you.”

Martin turned and looked at Moriarty then and, even in the near-dark, Moriarty could see the glint of his teeth as he smiled, though it was not in friendship, or even as between business associates. It was jarringly similar to the smile of the mathematics tutor as he stated the nature of Moriarty’s punishment; the smile of someone who believes he has the upper hand, and will win the argument by virtue of age and position. My might, the smile seemed to say, will serve to make me right.

And, as he recognised this and realised what it meant for his prospects of obtaining the money he had earned, Moriarty knew what he had to do.

The smile fell from Martin’s face as he saw Moriarty coming at him with his long arms outstretched. Instinctively, Martin stepped away, but this took his left foot over the brink, and his arms whirled in space for a few seconds. With the florins clinking in his pockets, he lost his balance, and over he went.

Moriarty had stopped advancing after a few steps, but was still close enough to see Martin fall back into the filthy deluge. He hit the surface with a splash, and quickly came up again, choking and spluttering, but then the current took him and bounced his head off the tunnel wall with a muted crack, and he was borne away by the tide.

Moriarty watched, seeing the unconscious boy first bobbing on the surface and then slowly sliding under, the weight of his winnings taking him down, until distance and darkness conspired to make it impossible to see any more.

After a moment of standing and looking and feeling nothing at all, Moriarty started walking once again, following the ledge in what he judged was a southerly direction. He knew he would have to surface soon, but was confident that the three men would have given up the chase by the time he did so. As he walked, he thought about what he had learned this day: that items and events which went unseen might yet have influence, that accidents could be made to happen, and that one might manipulate others through well-chosen ideas and well-timed words whilst remaining unconnected to the events that transpired.

And, he mused, fast-flowing water could swiftly remove a hindrance, leaving no trace.

Half a mile further down the road and observed by no one, Moriarty emerged from beneath the city street, and started making his way back to school. Despite going home without his share of the winnings from the card game, he knew he had gained much this day, that the lessons he had learned would prove more valuable in the years to come than anything that might be taught in a classroom.