“Foolishness, and a distraction,” he said.
I conceded, with a shrug, that he might be right. All the wallahs who were after these pretties grew stupider as they neared their objects of desire. Even the Creeper, who was already an imbecile. At a glimpse of the sparklers, they lost habits of self-preservation. A fanatic flame burned in the lot of ‘em. You could see it in their eyes.
“One thing puzzles me yet,” I admitted.
Moriarty raised a hawkish eyebrow, inviting the question.
“What has this collection got to do with saving Mad Carew’s worthless hide? The heathen priests are still after him. After us, too, since we’ve got their Green Eye. Now, we’ve also to worry about the Creeper, the Templars, the Fenians, the Camorra and the Ancient Egyptian Mob. We’re more cursed now than when we started and Carew’s no better off.”
Using a secret spy-glass — which meant not presenting a tempting silhouette in the front window — Moriarty had kept up with the comings and goings outside. Mostly comings.
We were besieged.
The gelato stand was still open, well after the usual hours and in contravention of street trading laws. Don Rafaele Lupo-Ferrari was at his post, though he’d dropped the tutsi-frutsi call. A gang of scene-shifters were gathered around, with dark-eyed Malilella of the Stiletto. They all stared up at the building, licking non-poisonous ice cream cornets.
The Pillars of Hercules had fallen ominously silent, but stout sons of Erin loitered outside, whittling on cudgels. Among them, I distinguished a tall, better-dressed goon with a bright green bowler hat and a temperance ribbon. Tyrone Mountmain, with a pocketful of dynamite. Aunt Sophonisiba was there too. No one quaffed from the flask she offered round, disproving the old saw that an Irishman will drink anything if it’s free.
The armored monks held their corner. Bereft of a Grand Master, they still had vows to uphold. Moriarty said a new Grand Master would be elected within hours. The Knights of St. John openly held swords and crossbows. We’d already had a bolt through the window and stuck in the ceiling.
A dark carriage was parked across the street. In it, a veiled woman — with an alabaster hand — sat alongside a grim giant. Margaret Trelawny and the Creeper remained, at least for the moment, an unlikely item. How had she got the hand made so quickly? A few of her cult-followers stood about, fancy dress under their coats. Slaves, I suppose.
As for our original persecutors, the priests of the Little Yellow God … some of the rubbish heaps stood up on brown legs. A troupe of Nepalese street jugglers put on a poor show. Did they feel crowded by the presence of so many other groups of our enemies?
A pair of constables, on their regular beat, took one look at the assembled factions, turned about-face and strolled away rapidly.
“I suppose we can only die once,” I said. “I’ll fetch out the rifle with telescopic sights. I can put half a dozen of the bastards down before they take cover. Starting with Temperance Ty, I think…”
“You will do no such thing, Moran.”
The Professor had something up his sleeve.
The doorbell rang. I adjusted the spy-glass to see which fanatic was calling. It was only Alf Bassick, with a large carpet-bag, back from Rotherhithe.
I pulled a lever which — by a system of pulleys and electric currents — unlocked our front door. Moriarty had designed the system himself. Wood panelling over sheet steel, our entrance was more impregnable than most bank vaults. Even the dynamite boyos would have trouble shifting it.
Bassick didn’t immediately come upstairs.
Moriarty told me to go down and determine the cause of the delay. Bassick was stretched out on our mat in the hallway, with a Nepalese dagger stuck between his shoulders. If we’d sent Carne on Bassick’s errand, he might have come through it — that fake hump at least protected his back. After midnight, the besieging forces were bolder.
I turned Bassick over and ignored his gasped last words — blather about his mother or money or the moon — to get the bag. Whatever Moriarty sent him for, death was no excuse for failure.
Returning upstairs, I didn’t need to tell the Prof what had happened. I assumed he’d taken it into account in his squiggle charts.
Moriarty opened Bassick’s bag and took out six identical caskets. He lined the boxes on his desk and flipped their lids open. Each was different inside to contain a different treasure, with apertures ranging from a bird-shaped hole for the Templar Falcon to a tiny recess for the Borgia Pearl. Every Jewel of the Madonna had a nook. The Professor fit his acquisitions into their boxes and shut the lids.
“There should be keys,” he said.
I rooted about in the carpet bag and found a ring of six keys. Moriarty took a single key and locked all the boxes with it.
He shuffled the boxes around on the table.
“Moran, pick any two of these up.”
They weighed the same.
“Shake them.”
They rattled the same.
“In addition to their respective jewels, each box has a cavity holding loose weights,” the Professor explained. “Any would balance a scale exactly with any other. They sound alike. They look alike. Tell me, Moran, could an object-worshipper differentiate between them?”
“If they can, they’re sharper pencils than me.”
“Is it possible some may be supernaturally attuned to the contents? They’ll be able to pick out their own hearts’ desires through magic?”
“If you say so.”
“I say not, Moran. I say not.”
I tapped a knuckle on a box. It was not just wood.
“A steel core, like our front door, Moran,” Moriarty explained. “The boxes will take considerable breaking.”
I still didn’t know what he was up to. Later, when I did, I still didn’t see what he thought it would accomplish.
He put the boxes back in the carpet bag. And pulled on his ulster and tall hat. He regarded himself slyly in the mirror, checking his appearance but also catching his own clever eye. Odd that someone so unprepossessing should be a monster of vanity, but life is full of surprises.
“We shall go outside … and surrender our collection. But, remember, only one box to a customer.”
“What’s to stop us being killed six ways as soon as we open the door?”
“Confidence, Moran. Confidence.”
Terrifyingly, that made sense to me. I stiffened, distributed three or four pistols about my person, and prepared to put on an almighty front.
XIV
Professor Moriarty opened wide our front door and held up his right hand.
Everyone was too astonished to kill him.
He walked down our front steps, casual if a little too pleased with himself. I followed, a thumb-cocked six-shot Colt Peacemaker in one hand, a Holland & Holland fowling piece tucked under my other arm. If this was where I died, I’d take a bag of the heathen down with me.
Moriarty signalled for the interested parties to advance. When they moved en masse, he shook his head and held up his forefinger. Only one of each faction was to come forward. There was snarling and spitting, but terms were accepted.
Tyrone Mountmain, chewing a lit cigar. That meant he had dynamite sticks about him, with short fuses.
Don Rafaele Lupo-Ferrari held back, and sent my old girlfriend Malilella. She spat at my boots and I noticed inappropriately that she was damned attractive. Shame she was a bloody Catholic.
A Templar Knight unknown to me crossed himself and advanced.
Margaret Trelawny let the Hoxton Creeper help her down from her carriage. She was more modestly dressed than on the occasion of our last meeting, but her veil was pinned to the snaky head-dress. She looked no fonder of me than the stiletto sister.