“Conover said you helped him…
“Advised him.
“…with a robbery. You — what? —drew up plans he followed? Like an engineer?”
“Like a playwright, Major Carew. A dramatist. Conover’s problem required a certain flamboyance. Parties needed to be distracted while work was being done. I suggested a means of distraction.”
“For a cut?”
“A fee was paid.”
The Prof was being cagey about details. We arranged for a runaway cab to collide with a crowded omnibus at the corner of Leather Lane and St. Cross Street. This convenient calamity drew away night-guards at Tucker & Tarbert’s Gemstone Exchange long enough for Conover to nip in and abstract a cluster known as ‘the Bunch of Grapes’ or, more vulgarly, ‘the Duchess of Borset’s White Piles’. Nobody died except a drunken Yorkshireman, but seven passengers were handily crippled — including a Member of Parliament who couldn’t explain why he was in the hansom with two tight-trousered post office boys and had to resign his seat. A fine night’s work, all round.
Carew thought about it for a moment.
“They are in London. The brown priests. The yeti. They mean to kill me and take back their green eye.”
“So you have said.”
“They nearly had me in Paddington two nights ago.”
The Professor said nothing.
“Consider this an after-the-fact consultation, Moriarty,” said Carew, taking a plunge. “I don’t need help in planning a crime. The crime’s done with, months ago and on the other side of the world. I need your help in getting away with it.”
It became clear. The Professor ruminated. His head oscillated. Carew hadn’t seen that before and was startled.
“You will be killed,” said the Professor. “There’s no doubt about it. In all parallel cases — you have heard of the Herncastle heirloom, I trust — the, as you call them, “little brown men” have prevailed. Unless some other ironic fate overtakes him first, the despoiler is routinely done to death by the cult. Did Conover tell you of the Black Pearl of the Borgias?”
“He said he’d lost the use of his legs and been driven from England because of the thing, and he didn’t have it in his hands for more than a minute or two.”
“That is so,” Moriarty confirmed. “There are differences between your circumstances, between your Green Eye and his Black Pearl, but similarities also. With the Borgia pearl, the attendant problem was not presented by brown men, but by a white man, if man he can truthfully be called. The Hoxton Creeper. He has haunted the pearl through its unhappy chain of ownership, breaking the backs of all who try to keep hold of it. He crushed Conover’s bones to powder, though the prize was already fenced. I dare say the Creeper, a London-born Neanderthal atavism, is as abominable as any Himalayan Snowman.”
Some in dire situations are gloomily happy to know others have been in the same boat. Not Carew.
“Hang the Creeper,” he exclaimed. “There’s only one of him. I’ve a whole congregation of Creepers, Crawlers and Crushers after me!”
“So, you must die and that’s all there is to it.”
The last remaining puff went out of Mad Carew. He might as well change his daredevil nickname to Dead Carew and be done with it.
“…and yet…”
Now the Prof’s eyes glowed, as other eyes glowed when the emerald was in view. His blood was up. Profit didn’t really stir Moriarty. He loved the numbers, not the spoils they tallied. It was the problem. The challenge. Doing that which no one else had done, which no one else could do.
“All indications are that you must die, Carew. The raider of the sacred gem is doomed, irrevocably. Yet, why must that be? Are we not greater than any fate or superstition? I, Moriarty, am not content to let little brown men or a big white man or whatever size man of whatever color decree what must be. I refuse to accept any so-called inevitability. We shall take your case, Major Carew. Give Colonel Moran a hundred pounds as a retainer.”
Surprised and suspicious, Carew blurted out ‘gladly’ and produced a cheque-book.
“Cash, old fellow,” I said.
“Of course,” he nodded glumly, and undid a money-belt. He had the sum about him in gold sovereigns.
I piled them up and clinked them a bit. Sound. Coin, I can appreciate!
“You are to take lodgings in our basement. There is a serviceable room, which has been used for the purpose before. Meals are provided at eight shillings daily. Breakfast, dinner, supper. Should you wish high tea or other luxuries, make private arrangements with Mrs. Halifax. I need not tell you only to eat and drink what comes to you from our kitchen. We must preserve your health. I prescribe scotch broth.”
Now, he was talking like a doctor. The Moriarty Cure, suitable for maiden ladies and gentlemen of a certain age.
“One other thing…”
“What? Anything?”
“The Green Eye. Sell it to me for a penny down and a penny to pay at the end of the week, with the stone returned to you and the first penny forfeit if I fail to make the second payment. I shall have a legal bill of sale drawn up.”
“You know what that would mean?”
“I know what everything would mean. It is my business.”
“I’ve sold it before. It comes back, and the buyers … well, the buyers are in no position to come back, ever.”
The Professor showed his teeth and wrote out a legible receipt.
“Moran, give me a penny,” he said.
Without thinking, I fished a copper from my watch-pocket and handed it over. Seconds later, it struck me! I’d roped myself in along with Moriarty on the receiving end of the curse. Don’t think the Prof hadn’t thought of that, because — as he said — he thought of bloody everything.
Moriarty exchanged the coin for the emerald.
It lay on his desk like a malign paperweight.
So, we were all for the high jump now.
V
Our client was snug in the concealed apartment beneath the store-rooms — a cupboard with a cot, where we stashed tenants best-advised not to show their faces at street-level. Mrs. Halifax, alert to the clink of a money-belt, supplied tender distractions and gin at champagne prices. When Swedish Suzette (who was Polish) went downstairs, Mrs. H called it a ‘house call’ and charged extra. If Mad Carew wasn’t dead by the end of the week, he’d be dead broke.
Professor Moriarty disappeared into the windowless room where he kept his records. We were up to date on the Newgate Calendar, the Police Gazette and Famous Murder Trials. The Professor knew more about every pick-pocket and high-rip mobster than their mothers or the arresting officers. The more arcane material was in code or foreign languages, or translated into mathematics and written down as page after page of numbers. He said he needed to look into precedents and parallels before deciding on a plan. I had an intimation that would be bad news for some — probably including me.
While the Prof was blowing the dust off press cuttings and jotting down cipher notes, I had the afternoon to myself. Best to get out of the flat and beetle about.
I decided to scratch an itch. On constitutionals through Soho, I had twice had my trousers-cuffs assaulted by a pup in Berwick Street market. The tiny creature’s excessively loud yapping was well-known. It was past time to skewer the beast. You could consider it a public service, but the truth is — and I don’t mind if it shocks more delicate readers — killing an animal always perks me up. I’d prefer to stalk big game in the bush, but there’s none of that in London except at the zoological gardens. Even I think it unsporting to aim between the bars and ventilate Rajah the Lion or Jumbo the Elephant, though old, frustrated guns have tried to swell their bags this way when gout or angry colonial officials prevent them from returning to the veldt.