A small, annoying dog should take the edge off this hunter’s blood-lust. The prey would be all the sweeter because it was the pet of a small, annoying boy. I’ve a trick cane which slips out six inches of honed Sheffield steel at a twist of the knob. The perfect tool for the task. The trick was to stroll by casually and perform a coup de grâce in the busy street market without anyone noticing. In Spain, where they appreciate such artistry, I’d be awarded both ears and the tail. In London, there’d be less outrage if I killed the boy.
I swanned into the market and made a play of considering cauliflowers and cabbages — though drat me if I know the difference — while idly twirling the old cane, using it to point at plump veggies at the back of the stalls, then waving it airily to indicate said items didn’t come up to snuff under closer scrutiny. The pup was there, nipping at passing skirts and swallowing tidbits fed it by patrons with a high tolerance for noisome canines. The boy, who kept a tomato stall, was doting and vigilant, his practiced eye out for pilferers. A challenge! Much more than the fat, complacent PC on duty.
For twenty minutes, I stalked the pup. I became as sensible of the cries and bustle of the market as of the jungle.
Which is how I knew they were there.
Little brown men. Not tanned hop-pickers from Kent. Natives of far shores.
I didn’t exactly see them. But you don’t. Oh, maybe you glimpse a stretch of brown wrist between cuff and glove, then turn to see only white faces. You think you catch a few words in Himalayan dialect amid costermongers’ cries.
At some point in any tiger hunt, you wonder if the tiger is hunting you — and you’re usually right.
I approached the doggie, en fin. I raised the stick to the level where its tip would brush over the pup’s skull. My grip shifted to allow the one-handed twist which would send steel through canine brain.
From a heap of tomatoes, red eyes glared. I looked again, blinking, and they were gone. But there were altogether too many tomatoes. Too ripe, with a redness approaching that of blood.
The moment had passed. The pup was alive.
I rued that penny. Though not strictly the present possessor of the Green Eye of the Yellow God, I had financed the transfer from Carew to Moriarty. I was implicated in its purchase.
The curse extended to me.
I hurried towards Oxford Street.
The pup knew not how narrow its escape had been. I only left the market — where it would have been easy for someone to get close and slip his own blade through my waistcoat — because I was allowed to. The bill wasn’t yet due.
Eyes were on me.
I used the cane, but only to skewer an apple from a stall and walk off without paying. Not one of my more impressive crimes.
Hastening back to our rooms by a roundabout route, I forced myself not to break into a run. I didn’t see a yeti in every shadow, but that’s not how it works. They let you know there is a yeti in a shadow, and you have to waste worry on every shadow. Invariably, you can’t keep up the vigilance. Then, the first shadow you don’t treat as if it had a yeti in it is the one the yeti comes out of. Damn strain on the nerves, even mine — which, as many will attest, are constituted of steel cable suitable for suspension bridges.
Only when I turned into Conduit Street, and spotted the familiar figure of Runty Reg — the beggar who kept look-out, and would signal on his penny whistle if anyone official or hostile approached our door — did I stop sweating. I flicked him a copper, which he made disappear.
I returned to our consulting room, calm as you like and pooh-poohing earlier imaginings. Professor Moriarty was addressing a small congregation of all-too-familiar villains. The Green Eye shone in plain sight on the sideboard. Had he summoned the most light-fingered bleeders in London on the assumption one would half-inch the thing and take the consequences?
“Kind of you to join us, Moran,” he said, coldly. “I have decided we shall follow the example of the Tower of London, and display a collection of Crown Jewels. This emerald is but the first item. You might call this gem matchless, but I believe I can match it.”
He reached into his coat-pocket and pulled out something the size of a rifle-ball, which he held up between thumb and forefinger. It glistened, darkly. He laid it down beside the Green Eye.
The Black Pearl of the Borgias.
VI
Before Moriarty, the last person unwise enough to own the Black Pearl was Nicholas Savvides, an East End dealer in dubious valuables. Well-known among collectors of such trinkets, he was as crooked as they come — even before the Hoxton Creeper twisted him about at the waist. When the police found Savvy Nick, his belly-button and his arse-crack made an exclamation mark. His eyes were popped too, but he was dead enough not to mind being blind and about-face.
The peculiar thing was that the Creeper didn’t want the pearl for himself. He was the rummest of customers, a criminal lunatic who suffered from a glandular gigantism. Its chief symptoms were gorilla shoulders and a face like a pulled toffee. He lumbered about in a vile porkpie hat and an old overcoat which strained at the seams, killing people who possessed the Borgia pearl, only to bestow the hard-luck piece on a succession of ‘French’ actresses. These delights could be counted on to dispose of the thing to a mug pawnbroker, and set their disappointed beau to spine-twisting again. He’d been through most of the can-can chorus at the Tivoli, but — as they say — who hasn’t? The Creeper had been caught, tried and hanged by whatever neck he possessed, and walked away from the gallows whistling Offenbach. To my knowledge, he’d been shot by the police, several jewel thieves and a well-known fence. Bullets didn’t take. Once, he’d been blown up with gelignite. No joy there. Something to do with thick bones.
I had no idea Moriarty had the Black Pearl. Since his arse was still in its proper place, I supposed the Creeper hadn’t either. Until now. If the prize were openly displayed, the Creeper would find out. He lived rough, down by the docks. Eating rats and — worse — drinking Thames-water. Some said he was psychically attuned to his favoured bauble. Even if that was rot, he had his sources. He would follow the trail to Conduit Street. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about with the Vengeance of the Little Yellow God.
Moriarty’s audience consisted of an even dozen of the continent’s premier thieves. Not the ones you’ve heard of — the cricketing ponce or the frog popinjays. Not the gents who steal for a laugh and to thumb their noses at titled aunties, but the serious, unambitious drudges who get the job done. Low, cunning types we’d dealt with before, who would do their bit for a share of the purse and not peach if they got nobbled. When we wanted things stolen, these were the men — and two women — we called in.
“I have made ‘a shopping list’,” announced the Professor. “Four more choice items to add lustre to the collection. It is my intention that these valuables be secured within the next two days.”
A covered blackboard — relic of his pedagogical days — stood by his desk. Like a magician, Moriarty pulled away the cloth. He had written his list clearly, in chalk.
1:
2:
3: The Falcon of the Knights of St. John.