Professor Moriarty: The Hound Of The D’urbervilles (27 page)

There’s a bloody awful poem about him...
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He was known as ‘Mad Carew’ by the subs at Khatmandu,

He was hotter than they felt inclined to tell;

But for all his foolish pranks, he was worshipped in the ranks,

And the Colonel’s daughter smiled on him as well.

Reading between the lines – a lot more edifying that reading the actual lines – you can tell Carew knew how to strut for the juniors, coddle the men, sniff about the ladies of the regiment (bless ’em) and toady to the higher-ups. Officers like that are generally popular until the native uprising, when they’re found blubbing in cupboards dressed as washerwomen.

Not Carew, though. He had what they call ‘a streak’. Raring off and getting into ‘scrapes’ and collecting medals and shooting beasts and bandits in the name of jolly good fun. I wore the colours – not the sort of colonel with a daughter, but the sort not to be trusted with other colonels’ daughters – long enough to know the type. Know the type, I was the type! I’m older now, and see what a dunce I was in my prime. For a start, I used to do all this for army pay!

‘Mad’ sounds dashing, daring and admirable when you hold the tattered flag in the midst of battle and expired natives lie all over the carpet with holes in ’em that you put there. ‘Mad’ is less impressive written on a form by a commissioner for lunacy as you’re turned over to the hospitallers of St Mary of Bedlam to be dunked in ice water because your latest ‘scrape’ was running starkers down Oxford Street while gibbering like a baboon.

Major Humphrey Carew was both kinds of Mad. He had been one; now, he was close to the other.

‘Beelzebub’s Sunday toast fork, it’s Carew!’ I exclaimed. ‘How did you get in here?’

The blighter had the temerity to shake his lumpy fist at me.

After a dozen time-wasting socialist johnnies required heaving out, Moriarty had issued strict instructions to Mrs Halifax. No one was admitted to the consulting room unless she judged them solvent. Women in her profession can glim a swell you’d swear had five thou per annum and enough family silver to plate the HMS
Inflexible
and know straight off he’s putting up a front and hasn’t a bent sou in his pockets. So, Carew must have shown her capital.

Moriarty craned to examine our visitor.

Carew kept his fist stuck out. He was begging for one on the chin.

Mrs Halifax crowded the doorway with a couple of her more impressionable girls and the lad who emptied the pisspots. None were immune to the general sensation which followed Carew about in his high adventures. Indeed, they seemed more excited than the occasion merited.

Slowly, Carew opened his fist.

In his palm lay an emerald the size of a tangerine. When it caught the light, everyone on the landing went green in the face. Avaricious eyes glinted verdant.

Ah, a gem! So much more direct than notes or coins. It’s just a rock, but so pretty. So precious. So negotiable.

Soiled doves cooed. The pisspot boy let out a heartfelt ‘cor lumme’. Mrs Halifax simpered, which would terrify a colour sergeant.

Moriarty’s face betrayed little, as per usual.

‘Beryllium aluminium cyclosilicate,’ he lectured, as if diagnosing an illness, ‘coloured by chromium or perhaps vanadium. A hardness of 7.5 on the Mohs Scale. That is: a gem of the highest water, having consistent colour and a high degree of transparency. The cut is indifferent, but could be improved. I should put its worth at...’

He was about to name a high figure.

‘Here,’ Mad Carew said, ‘have it, and be done...’

He flung the emerald at the Professor. I reached across and caught it with a cry of ‘owzat’ which would not have shamed W.G. Grace, the old cheat. The weight settled in my palm.

For a moment, I heard the wailing of heathen worshippers from a rugged mountain clime across the roof of the world. The emerald sang like a green siren. The urge to keep hold of the thing was nigh irresistible.

Our visitor’s glamour was transferred to me. Mrs Halifax’s
filles de joie
regarded my manly qualities with even more admiration than usual. If my pisspot had needed emptying, I wouldn’t have had to ask twice.

The stone’s spell was potent, but I am – as plenty would be happy to tell you if they weren’t dead – not half the fool I sometimes seem.

I crossed the room, dropped the jewel in Carew’s top pocket, and patted it.

‘Keep it safe for the moment, old fellow.’

He looked as if I’d just shot him. Which is to say: he looked like some of the people I’ve shot looked after I’d shot them. Shocked, not surprised; resentful, but too tired to make a fuss. Others take it differently, but this is no place for digressions.

Without being asked, Carew sank into the chair set aside for clients – spikes in the backrest could extrude at the touch of a button on Moriarty’s desk, and doesn’t that make the eyes water! – and shoved his face into his hands.

‘Privacy, please,’ Moriarty decreed. Mrs Halifax pulled superfluous spectators away, not forgetting to tug the pisspot boy’s collar, and closed the door. Listeners at the keyhole used to be a problem, but a bullet hole two inches to the left indicated Moriarty’s un-gentle solution to unwanted eavesdroppers.

Carew was a man at the end of his tether and possessed of a fortune. An ideal client for the Firm. So why did I have that prickle up my spine? The sensation usually meant a leopard prowling between the tents or a lady of brief acquaintance loosening her garter to take hold of a poignard.

Before he said any more, I knew how the story would start.

‘There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,’ began Mad Carew...

Lord, I thought, here we go again.

Some stories you’ve heard so often you know how they’ll come out. ‘I was a good girl once, a clergyman’s daughter, but fell in with bad men...’ ‘I fully intended to pay back the rhino I owed you, but I had this hot tip straight from the jockey’s brother...’ ‘I thought there was no harm in popping in to the Rat and Raven for a quick gin...’ ‘I must have put on the wrong coat at the club and walked off wearing a garment identical to – but not – my own, which happens to have these counterfeit bonds sewn into the lining...’

And, yes, ‘There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu...’

I’ve a rule about one-eyed yellow idols – and, indeed, idols of other precious hues with any number of eyes, arms, heads or arses. Simply put: hands off!

I don’t have the patience to be a professional cracksman, which involves fiddling with locks and safes and precision explosives. As a trade, it’s on a level with being a plumber or glazier, with a better chance of being blown to bits or rotting on Dartmoor – not that most plumbers and glaziers wouldn’t deserve it, the rooking bastards! Oh, I have done more than my fair share of thieving. I’ve robbed, burgled, rifled, raided, waylaid, heisted, abducted, abstracted, plundered, pilfered and pinched across five continents and seven seas. I’ve lifted anything that wasn’t nailed down – and, indeed, have prised up the nails of a few items which were.

So, I admit it – I’m a thief. I take things which are not mine. Mostly, money. Or stuff easily turned into money. I may be the sort of thief who, an alienist will tell you, can’t help himself. I steal (or cheat, which is the same thing) just for a lark when I don’t especially need the readies. If a fellow owns something and doesn’t take steps to keep hold of it, that’s his lookout. But even I know better than to pluck an emerald from the eye socket of a heathen idol... whether it be north, south, east or west of Kathmandu.

Ever heard of the Moonstone? The Eye of Klesh? The All-Seeing Eye of the Goddess of Light? The Crimson Gem of Cyttorak? The Pink Diamond of Lugash? All sparklers jemmied off other men’s idols by fools who, as they say, ‘Suffered the Consequences’. Any cult which can afford to use priceless ornaments in church decoration can extend limitless travel allowance to assassins. They have on permanent call the sort of determined, ruthless little sods who’ll cross the whole world to retrieve their bauble and behead the infidel who snaffled it. That also goes for the worshippers of ugly chunks of African wood you wouldn’t get sixpence for in Portobello Market. Pop Chuku or Lukundoo or a Zuni Fetish into your game bag as a souvenir of the safari, and wake up six months later with a naked Porroh man squatting at your bed-end in Wandsworth and coverlets drenched with your own blood.

Come to that, common-or-garden, non-sacred jewels like the Barlow Rubies, the Rosenthall Diamonds and the Mirror of Portugal are usually pretty poison to crooks who waste their lives trying to get hold of ’em. Remember the fabled Agra Treasure which ended up at the bottom of the Thames?
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Best place for it.

Imagine stealing something you can’t
spend?
Oversize gems are famous, thus instantly recognisable. They have histories (‘provenance’ in the trade, don’t you know? – a list of people they’ve been stolen from) and permanent addresses under lock and key in the coffers of dusky potentates or the Tower of London where Queen Vicky (long may she reign!) can play with them when she has a mind to.

Even cutting a prize into smaller stones doesn’t cover the trail. Clots who loot temples are too bedazzled by the booty to take elementary precautions. Changing the name on your passport doesn’t help. If you’re the bloke with the Fang of Azathoth on your watch chain or the Tears of Tabanga decorating your tart’s décolletage, you can expect fanatics with strangling cords to show up sooner or later. Want to steal from a church? Have the lead off the roof of St Custard’s down the road. I can more or less guarantee the Archbishop of Canterbury won’t send implacable curates after you with scimitars clenched between their teeth.

Ahem, so, to return to the case in hand. Since the tale has been set down by another (one J. Milton Hayes – ever heard of anything else by him?), I’ll copy it longhand. Hell, that’s too much trouble. I’ll shoplift a
Big Book of Dramatic and Comic Recitations for All Occasions
from WH Smith & Sons and paste in a torn-out page. I’ll be careful not to use ‘Christmas Day in the Workhouse’, ‘The Face on the Bar-Room Floor’ or ‘The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck (His Name Was Albert Trollocks)’ by mistake. Among the set who stay away from music halls and pride themselves on ‘making their own entertainment’, every fool and his cousin gets up at the drop of a hat to launch into ‘The Ballad of Mad Carew’. You’ve probably suffered Mr Hayes’ effulgence many times on long, agonising evenings, but bear with me. I’ll append footnotes to sweeten the deal.

There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,

There’s a little marble cross below the town;

There’s a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,

And the yellow god forever gazes down.

He was known as ‘Mad Carew’ by the subs at Khatmandu,

He was hotter than they felt inclined to tell;

But for all his foolish pranks
*
, he was worshipped in the ranks,

And the Colonel’s daughter
§
smiled on him as well.

*
e.g.: setting light to the bhishti’s turban, putting firecrackers in the padre’s thunderbox... oh how we all laughed! – S.M.

§
Amaryllis Framington, by name. Fat and squinty, but white women are in short supply in Nepal and you land the fish you can get. – S.M.

He had loved her all along, with a passion of the strong,

The fact that she loved him was plain to all.

She was nearly twenty-one
*
and arrangements had begun

To celebrate her birthday with a ball.

*
forty if she was a day. – S.M.

He wrote
*
to ask what present she would like from Mad Carew;

They met next day as he dismissed a squad;

And jestingly she told him then that nothing else would do

But the green eye of the little yellow god
§
.

*
since they were at the same hill station, why didn’t he just ask her? Even sherpas have better things to do than be forever carrying letters between folks who live practically next door to each other. – S.M.

§
that’s colonel’s daughters for you, covetous and stupid, God bless ’em. – S.M.

On the night before the dance, Mad Carew seemed in a trance
*
.

And they chaffed him as they puffed at their cigars;

But for once he failed to smile, and he sat alone awhile,

Then went out into the night beneath the stars.

*
kif, probably. It’s not just the natives who smoke it. Bloody boring, a posting in Nepal. – S.M.

He returned before the dawn, with his shirt and tunic torn,

And a gash across his temple dripping red;

He was patched up right away, and he slept through all the day
*
,

And the Colonel’s daughter watched beside his bed.

*
lazy malingering tosser. – S.M.

He woke at last and asked if they could send his tunic through;

She brought it, and he thanked her with a nod;

He bade her search the pocket saying ‘That’s from Mad Carew’,

And she found the little green eye of the god
*
.

*
if you saw this coming, you are not alone. – S.M.

She upbraided poor Carew in the way that women do
*
,

Though both her eyes were strangely hot and wet;

But she wouldn’t take the stone
§
and Mad Carew was left alone

With the jewel that he’d chanced his life to get.

*
here’s gratitude for you: the flaming cretin gets himself half-killed to fetch her a birthday present and she throws a sulk. – S.M.

§
which shows she wasn’t entirely addle-witted, old Amaryllis. – S.M.