The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus (14 page)

             
"I'd like to know what the job is," Barnett said. "I have gathered over the past few weeks that you are no ordinary professor. What is this consulting business of yours?"

             
"First we must have an understanding. All else is open to discussion, save this one thing only: you must never divulge anything that you learn while in my employ—not about me, my associates, my activities, my comings and goings, my possessions, my household, nor indeed anything at all related to your employment. This ban does not terminate when and if your employment terminates, but is to continue throughout the remainder of your life. And beyond."

             
"Beyond?"

             
"Words outlive people. You must not keep a diary or write an autobiography or memoir that in any way touches upon the time you spend with my organization."

             
"That's quite a ban," Barnett said.

             
"Can you keep it?"

             
"I reckon so."

             
"Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with any of my activities, whether you find them in opposition to your religion or ethics or even morally repugnant to you?"

             
Barnett gave a low whistle. "That
is
quite a ban!" he said.

             
"Can you keep it? Can you give me your unqualified word?"

             
"What if I say no?"

             
"I dislike indulging in idle supposition, Mr. Barnett. Say either yes or no, and we shall continue the discussion on that basis."

             
"Well, about these, ah, morally repugnant acts—if I find any of your activities to be offensive to me, am I obliged to engage in them myself?"

             
"Certainly not, by no means. It would not be to my interest to employ a man for a job he finds offensive."

             
"Well, with that understanding I guess I can keep my mouth shut about your doings. And I confess that with this preamble you've got me mighty curious as to just what these doings might be."

             
Professor Moriarty slipped a pair of pince-nez glasses onto his nose and peered through them at Barnett. "You swear to keep your silence?" he asked.

             
"Cross my heart, Professor," Barnett said, with a wide smile.

             
"There is less humor in this than you think," Moriarty said, "for I shall hold you to that oath. So think on it seriously and give me a serious answer."

             
Barnett raised his hand. "You have my word, Professor Moriarty, that I shall never speak of your affairs to anyone. I swear this on the memory of my mother, which I hold sacred. And if that's not good enough for you, I can't offer anything better."

             
"That completely satisfies me. As you become privy to my affairs, you will see why I require such an affirmation from all my associates. And you will also see how seriously I regard it." He took a pocket-watch from his waistcoat pocket and snapped it open. "We shall regard your employment as commencing now," he said. "It is five past two in the afternoon of Tuesday, May fifth, 1885."

             
"Is it?" Barnett asked. "I had quite lost track of the days."

             
"On the hour of two
P.M.
on May fourth, 1887—which will be, I believe, a Wednesday—you are quits with me. Until then you are in my employ at an annual salary of—let me see—how much were your New York City employers paying you?"

             
"Ten dollars a week," Barnett said. "They discourage anyone from thinking of his employment on an annual basis."

             
"I shall make it five pounds a week," Moriarty said, "if that is satisfactory."

             
"Satisfactory?" Barnett laughed. "Why, that's well over twice as much. I'll say it's satisfactory!"

             
"And then, of course, there's your room," Moriarty said. "Since it is at my request that you'll be living in this house, I can't very well charge you rent. So you may consider your room and such meals as you eat here as complimentary. And incidentally, I think you'll find Mrs. Randall a more than adequate cook."

             
"Then you want me to keep that room?"

             
"Is it satisfactory?" Moriarty inquired. "If so, I would have you keep it."

             
"Exactly what is my position to be in your organization?" Barnett asked. "And exactly what sort of organization do you have?"

             
"I solve problems," Moriarty told him. "I am a consultant, taking on my clients' problems for a fee. Some of them are purely cerebral, and I solve those by sitting in my study, or working in my laboratory, or taking a long walk through London; I find walking very stimulating to the mental processes. But other problems require deductive or inductive reasoning from facts, from evidence; and that evidence must be assembled. And each glittering fact must be tested, like a gold sovereign, to see if it rings true."

             
"I see," Barnett said.

             
Moriarty smiled, "By which you mean you do not see. But you soon will, you soon will." He removed his pince-nez glasses, cleaned them with a piece of flannel from his desk, and then replaced them firmly on his nose. "Your hours are to be those required to accomplish your assignment, when you have one," he continued. "In recompense, when you have no assignment you are free to do as you like whatever the time of day. We have not allowed the concept of 'office hours' to infiltrate our little domain."

             
"That's agreeable," Barnett said. "I much prefer that scheme, as a matter of fact. Do you have anything for me now?"

             
"Anything for you ..." Moriarty rubbed his chin with his left hand. "I think you'd better use the first few days to get acquainted with my household and my organization. If you need anything, ask Mrs. H, the housekeeper, or Mr. Maws, the butler. I shall arrange to have someone
show you around the rest of the organization and introduce you to those whom you should know or who should know you."

             
"Very good, Professor. And I haven't as yet had a chance to thank you for rescuing me from that Turkish jail. I have no doubt that you saved my life."

             
"I think we shall both benefit from your, ah, timely release," Moriarty said. He offered Barnett his hand, which was firmly taken. "Welcome to my employ, Mr. Barnett," he said.

             
"I trust you don't have to go quite so far afield for all your employees, Professor."

             
"If you mean Constantinople," Moriarty said, "that is unique. If you mean prison, you would be surprised at the number of people working for me in one capacity or another who were found in prison. There is one characteristic you do not share with the others. You were innocent."

             
With that, Moriarty dismissed Barnett and returned to his scientific note-taking.

-

             
Barnett returned to the ground floor and hunted up Mrs. H, who was in a small room off the pantry. "You're in my office, Mr. Barnett," she told him as he looked curiously around the room. "What may I do for you?"

             
"I was wondering if it was too late to get some lunch," he asked her. "I spent the morning wrapped up in a rug."

             
"Go into the dining room, Mr. Barnett," she said. "I shall see that you are served."

             
"Thank you, Mrs. H," he told her. "I appreciate it."

             
"Humpf," she said.

             
Barnett retreated to the dining room, where he was shortly served a large omelette with jam, by a somber-looking maid-of-all-work who curtsied before scurrying out of the room. He found the omelette excellent, and as he sat eating in comfort for the first time in over a month, he fell to musing over his recent past and his probable future.

             
As much as it might smack of involuntary servitude, working for Professor Moriarty for the next two years promised to be quite interesting. Barnett still didn't have any clear idea of what Moriarty did, or what he would be expected to do for Moriarty, but he had formed the notion that it wasn't quite proper and might be quite exciting. And Barnett, who had just passed his twenty-eighth birthday, was of the opinion that a bit of impropriety and a dash of adventure were the salt and leavening that made the load of life worth eating. Barnett was one of those souls who often felt oppressed by the straitlaced notions of the times he had been born into, and although he would not—at least he was firmly convinced he would not—condone outright immorality, there was something about the touch of impropriety that appealed to him.

             
When Barnett had finished his omelette and was beginning to wonder what to do next, the hall door opened and a small, almost tiny man wearing a natty fawn-colored suit and yellow spats and carrying a spotless brown bowler tucked under his left arm glided into the room. "Afternoon, afternoon," he said. "Permit me to introduce myself. The name is Tolliver; 'Mummer' Tolliver, they calls me, or just 'the Mummer.' "

             
"I'm Benjamin Barnett," Barnett said.

             
" 'Course you are," Tolliver said. "And welcome to our little
ménage
, I says. The professor, he asked me to show you around, seeing as how you're to be a fellow resident."

             
"Oh," Barnett said. "You live here, then?"

             
" 'Course I do. Up in the attic. I've got my little room up there. Closer to the sky, you know." He pulled out one of the chairs and reversed it, then jumped up on it, straddling the seat and leaning his chin on the top bar of the straight back. "First off, I should tell you who else shares this impressive abode with us. There's the professor himself, of course; and Mr. Maws, the butler; and Mrs. H, the housekeeper; and Mrs. Randall, the cook; and Old Potts."

             
"Old Potts?"

             
"Right. He has a room in the basement, he has. Spends his days blowing glass and suchlike for the professor's scientifical experiments."

             
"He's really into this science stuff, then?" Barnett asked.

             
" 'Course he is. He's a genius, the professor is. A scien-bleeding-tifical genius. He's always writing things and figuring things, you know. And he studies little things that you can only see under a microscope, and great tremendous things like the distance from here to the Moon or the Sun. A couple of years ago, when we was out at his cottage on Crimpton Moor, he had a couple of us measure off five miles professional-like with instruments so he could set up some sort of apparatus and determine the proper distance of the Moon and Mars and some stars what he thought might be closer than the others.

             
"And then sometimes he gets to talking about his work and the way them other professors don't understand him and laugh at his theories 'cause they're too blind to see what's right under their very noses, and he's going to get the last laugh when someone else smart enough to understand his theories comes along, even if it takes a hundred years. And then he gets into the technical stuff, all about waving lights, even though there isn't any e-ther, and nobody alive has any idea of what he's talking about, but it for certain does make you feel important just to listen to him."