Professor Moriarty: The Hound Of The D’urbervilles (7 page)

‘Jim, they’re out there,’ Jane said.

‘Asty mans,’ Rache said, peeved by the interruption.

There was a crack. More glass broke behind the curtains. A ragged hole appeared in the velvet. I’d not heard the shot. Another shattering and the curtain whipped with the impact. And again.

‘Untie me and I can help,’ I said.

Lassiter wasn’t sure but Jane fell for it. She did my hands while Rache unpicked the knots at my ankles. I took my Webley from the floor, shaking off the flakes of plaster. Of course, it was empty.

The curtain rail, rope still attached, fell off the wall as another silent fusillade came. Cold wind blew through the ruined window. More panes were shot out.

The neighbours would be around again soon. This was not the thing for a respectable street.

Bullets ploughed into the floor, rucking the carpet, and the opposite wall. Our sniper had an elevated position.

I waved my gun, to attract Lassiter’s attention.

He dug into his pocket and brought out a handful of bullets, which he poured into my palm. I loaded and closed the revolver. I noticed Lassiter noticing how practiced I was. Algy Arbuthnot, VC, was an old soldier and daring detective so that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

‘Where is the gunman? Top floor of the house on the corner?’

Lassiter shook his head.

‘Tree on the other side of the road?’

Lassiter nodded.

I’d been behind that tree earlier. It had been twilight when Lassiter conked me and was full dark now. No one was about when I took my watching spot; now, there were armed hostiles.

‘How many?’

Lassiter held up four fingers, steadily. Then another three, with a wriggle at the wrist. He
knew
there were four men – Danites? – out there, and
felt
there might be another three besides.

I’ve come through scrapes with worse odds. From Moriarty’s background check, I knew Jim Lassiter had too.

‘This might be a moment for one of your famous rockslides,’ I ventured.

Lassiter cracked a near-smile.

‘Yup,’ he said.

As Drebber had mentioned, Lassiter was once chased up a mountain by a mob and precipitated a rocky avalanche to sweep them away. His history was studded with such dime-novel exploits.

Was Drebber out there? And Stangerson? With other guns?

My suspicion was that, weighing up their contract with Moriarty & Co., the Danites decided £205,000 was a mite steep for an evening’s work. They had come to us in the first place not because they were leery of doing their own murdering but because this wasn’t their city and they didn’t have any idea how to track Lassiter and his women to their hole. The Professor had come straight out and announced where they were to be found, to show off how bloody clever he was. No thought as to whether Basher might get caught ’twixt the guns. My only consolation was that Moriarty undoubtedly meant what he said about Higher Law. For breaking the deal, he’d probably exterminate the Danite Band to the last man (their horses and dogs too), then arrange a cholera outbreak in Salt Lake City to scythe through the Latter-day Saints.

I, of course, would still be dead.

Lassiter and I were either side of the window, just peeking out at a sliver of night.

Another shot.

I heard a rattling about from one of the nearby houses. A spill of light lay on the street as a front door opened. In that illumination, I glimpsed a figure in rough work clothes. A pointed red hood covered his entire head, big circles cut out for the eyes, gathered at the neck by a drawstring. Our shy soul froze a moment in the light and stepped back, but Lassiter plugged him anyway, reddening one of his eyeholes. He collapsed like an unstrung puppet.

An irritated, bald man in a quilted dressing gown came out of his house, to make further complaint about the infernal racket. He was surprised to find a masked gunman lying dead over his front gate, obscuring the ‘no hawkers or circulars’ sign. The neighbour looked around, astonished.

‘What the devil...’

Someone shot him. Oops, it might have been me. I was always one to blaze away without too much forethought.

Lassiter looked disapproval at me.

A great many curtains fell from fingers in nearby houses.

The neighbour was only winged, but made a noise about it. The fellows who had accompanied him on his earlier deputation put cotton in their ears and went back to bed.

So my shot had accomplished something.

Lassiter looked out of the window, searching for another target.

From where I was, I could easily shoot him in the stomach and try to hold Drebber to coughing up the agreed fee.

Evidently he could hear the wheels turning in my head.

‘Algy,’ he drawled, gun casually aimed my way, ‘how’d you like to go through the winder and draw their fire?’

‘Not very much.’

‘What I reckoned.’

Another bomb sailed through the window, without meeting any obstruction, and rolled on the carpet, pouring thick, nasty smoke. They’d let the fuse burn down before lobbing this one.

‘Is there a back door?’ I asked.

Lassiter looked at me, pitying.

Upwards of four men could surround a villa, easily.

Jane looked at Lassiter like a pioneer wife who trusts her man to save the last three bullets to keep the women out of the clutches of Injuns. I always wondered why those covered wagon bints didn’t backshoot their pious pas and learn to sew blankets and pop out papooses, but I’m well known for my shaky grasp of morality.

Bullets struck the piano, raising strangulated chords.

‘This is London, England,’ Jane said. ‘We left all this behind. Things like this don’t happen here.’

Lassiter looked at me.

We both knew
everywhere
was like this, herbaceous border in the back garden and ‘Goodbye, Little Yellow Bird’ sheet music propped on the piano or no. He’d have done better going to ground in the Old Jago or Seven Dials, where life was more obviously like this – those rookeries had well-travelled rat runs and escape routes.

The smoke was getting thick and the carpet was on fire.

I saw an empty bucket lying by the grate. The water had been used earlier to douse the fire. That was my fault.

Lassiter chewed his moustache. That was his ‘tell’, the sign he was about to ‘go off’.

‘I’m goin’ out the front door,’ he said.

‘You’ll be killed for sure,’ Jane pleaded.

‘Yup. Maybe I can take enough of ’em with me so’s you and Little Fay can get away clean. You’re a rich woman, Jane. Buy this man, and men like him, and keep buyin’ them. Ring yourself with guns and detectives. The Danites will run dry afore the gold.’

I peeked into the road again. The groaning neighbour was doubled over on the pavement, but the dead Danite had been dragged off.

Fire was coming from at least two points. Just harrying, not trying to hit anyone.

There was someone on the roof. We could tell by the creaking ceiling.

Lassiter filled his guns. He had two Colts with fancy-dan handles. He ought to have had holsters to draw from, but would have to carry them both. Twelve shots. Maybe seven men. He’d get hit several times, no matter how good he was. I might even be able to put a couple in his spine as he strode manfully down the path of The Laurels and claim it was a fumble-fingered accident.

He was an idiot. If it’d been me, I’d have picked up Jane and tossed her, in a froth of skirts, through the window. She was the one they wanted, heiress to the Withersteen property. At the very least, she’d be a tethered goat to draw the big game into range.

I was cold and clear and clever again. The Professor would have been proud.

‘They can’t afford to kill the women,’ I said. ‘That’s why they didn’t throw dynamite. They want someone alive to inherit, someone they can rob through Mormon marriage.’

Lassiter nodded. He didn’t see how that helped.

‘Stop thinking of Jane and Rache as your family,’ I said. ‘Start thinking of them as hostages.’

If he didn’t take umbrage and shoot me, we might have a chance.

‘We’re coming out,’ I announced. ‘Hold your fire.’

Rache giggled. I held the baggage round the waist, gun in her ear, and stood in the doorway.

To the girl, it was a game. She had Missy Surprise hugged to her chest.

Lassiter and Jane were more serious, but desperate enough to try.

They had objected that the Danites would never believe their man would harm his beloved wife and daughter. I told them to stop thinking like their upright, moral, tiresome selves and put themselves in the mind-skins of devious, murderous, greedy blighters. Of course they’d believe it – they’d do the same thing with their own wives or daughters. Unspoken but obvious was that I would too.

Indeed, here I was – ready to spread a pretty little idiot’s brains on the road.

It’d be a shame, but I’ve done worse things.

I took a step out into the garden. No one killed me, so I took another step down the path.

Lassiter and Jane came after me, backwards. The Danite perched on the roof wouldn’t have a shot that didn’t go through the woman.

Hooded men came out of the shadows. Five of them, carrying guns. All their weaponry was kitted out oddly. The barrels were as long again as they ought to be, and swelled into thick, ceramic Swiss-roll shapes. Silencers. I’d heard of the things, but never seen them. Cut down the accuracy, I gathered. The cat couldn’t hear you firing, but you’d probably miss. I’d rather use one of Moriarty’s airguns than a ridiculous contraption like that.

‘Parley,’ I said.

The leader of the band nodded, silly hood-point flopping.

The funny thing was that the hood was useless as disguise. Most masks are. You remember faces first of all, but people are a lot more than their eyes and noses – hands and legs and stomachs and the way they stand or hold a gun or light a cigar.

I was facing Elder Enoch J. Drebber.

I assumed our agreement was voided.

‘You don’t want these lovely ladies harmed,’ I said.

‘I only need one,’ Drebber responded, raising his gun.

At this range, he could plug Rache in the breast and the shot would plough through her and me, killing us both.

‘Rache not like mans,’ she said. ‘Rache poo on you!’

Drebber’s eyes widened in his hood-holes. Rache held up Missy Surprise, and angled the rag-doll, her fingers working the hard metal inside the soft toy.

Lassiter’s second gun went off and Missy Surprise’s head flew apart.

The Danite on Drebber’s right fell dead.

‘You’re next,’ I told Drebber.

I was sure she’d been aiming at him in the first place, but he wasn’t to know that.

The man on the roof decided it was time to take his shot. His finger had probably been itching all evening. I’ve had trouble with fools like that on safari, so keen on not coming home without having cleaned the barrel, they need to fire an elephant gun at the regimental water bearer just so they could say they’ve killed
something.

Lassiter was quicker than a Bhishti, and not struggling with a ridiculously overweighted yard-and-a-half of rifle.

The keen rifleman tumbled dead into the flowery bower around the front door.

Seven, minus three. Four.

‘Drop the ironmongery, Elder,’ I ordered.

Rache blew a loud raspberry.

Drebber was shaking. He nodded, and guns fell onto the road.

‘All of them,’ I said.

Hands went to belts and inside pockets and boots and special compartments and a variety of hold-out single-shots and throwing knives rattled down as well.

‘Now, take your dead folks and scarper.’

The four surviving Danites did as they were told. The fellow in the bower was a sixteen-stone lump of his many wives’ cooking and it took two to lift him.

They had a carriage down the road, and it trundled off.

Not a bad night’s work, I thought. Providing it was over.

Rache was dancing around, and I thought it a good idea to relieve Missy Surprise of her .45 calibre insides. I gave the doll back and the girl loved it none the less for not having a head.

Jane was looking at me with something like rapt gratitude. Usually a good moment to make a proposition. I doubted my currency with Jim Lassiter stood as high as that.

‘Colonel Arbuthnot, what can we ever do to repay you?’

‘You can die,’ said a voice I recognised. ‘Yes, die.’

I was fuming.

Moriarty didn’t deign to explain, but I had caught up on it.

Of course,
he knew the Danites would try to save the fee and go for the kills on their own.

Of course,
he had mentioned the Laurence address deliberately, to prompt fast action.

Of course,
he had followed me and watched my travails all evening long, not intervening until the danger was over.

Of course,
he had found a way to profit.

He strolled up the street, head bobbing. He was dressed all in black, for the night-time. He also had a carriage parked nearby, with Chop, his Chinese coachman, perched up on the box. He enquired solicitously after the neighbour, who was still making a performance of being slightly shot. Somehow, the man got the notion he had been saved by my intervention from a conspiracy of high-ranking Masons who wanted him dead over some imagined slight. It would be a risky proposition to complain officially about such well-connected villains since they owned the police. He bustled inside and drew his curtains, hoping to hide from inescapable doom under his coverlets.

Then Moriarty applied himself to the murders.

I was not privy to the arrangements the Professor made with Lassiter and Jane. I had to be in the still-smoky parlour, while Rache – excited to be up long past her bedtime – banged at the gutshot piano while singing more verses of her butterfly song.

At the conclusion of negotiations, Moriarty was proud owner, through hard-to-trace holding companies, of the Surprise Valley Gold Mine. Amusingly, he was now a major employer in Amber Springs, Utah.

Jim Lassiter/Jonathan Laurence, Jane Withersteen/Helen Laurence and Little Fay Larkin/Rachel Laurence were dead, burned to crackling in the smoking ruins of The Laurels, Streatham Hill Road. It was the gas mains, apparently. And the neighbours had some stories to tell.