The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus (60 page)

             
"What do you expect to learn from these balloon experiments, Professor?" Barnett asked. "And please don't just fob me off with your usual reply that you're furthering human knowledge. I'm sure you are. But as an answer, you will have to admit it is rather vague."

             
Moriarty snorted. "You, a journalist, are concerned about an answer being 'rather vague'? Truly the millennium has arrived."

             
"I ask purely out of my own interest, Professor," Barnett assured him. "The great newspaper-reading public will not concern itself with staring at Mars unless it feels that something up there is staring back."

             
Professor Moriarty made the final adjustment on the aluminum-bronze telescope mounting and put the tiny screwdriver back in its small case. He turned and regarded Barnett with interest. "Now that," he said, "is a truly fascinating notion!"

             
"How's that?"

             
"Ah, Benjamin, you know not what you say," Moriarty replied. "For some time I have been pondering ways to interest the common man in the abstruse sciences. You may have just given me a valuable suggestion: 'Something is staring back.' I like the sound of that! And, indeed, there is a good chance that something
is
staring back."

             
"I assume that you are not speaking religiously, Professor," Barnett said.

             
"Religiously? Indeed, no. Neither religiously nor metaphorically nor psychically nor figuratively. Somewhere out there, Mr. Barnett, there are intelligences greater than our own. How could it be else? And these beings might, even now, be watching us with the same diligence that a hymenopterologist studies a colony of ants. And for purposes as far beyond our understanding as the hymenopterologist's purposes are beyond the understanding of the ant."

             
"You really believe this?"

             
"I am forced to this conclusion by the inescapable logic of the universe," Moriarty said.

             
"But intelligences superior to our own?"

             
Moriarty smiled. "I am very afraid," he said, "that any intelligences we find—or who find us—will be superior to our own."

             
"You speak as a confirmed atheist," Barnett said as he sat on the wooden bench running along the great worktable.

             
Moriarty shrugged. "It is not that I disbelieve in God," he said, "it is merely that I see no need to drag some immortal being into the equation in order to explain the universe."

             
Moriarty's housekeeper, Mrs. H, appeared on the landing leading down to the basement. "I trust you are ready with your drayage, Professor," she said, folding her arms across the severe bosom of her stiffly starched black dress. "The dray awaits."

             
"Splendid," Mrs. H," Moriarty said, rolling his sleeves down and shrugging his arms back into his gray frock coat. "The instrument is ready, and the packing is prepared. It only remains to lower the telescope into the crate and nail it shut."

             
Mrs. H sniffed. "I shall inform the drayman that you will be within the hour," she said.

             
"I trust my instructions were followed?" Moriarty asked.

             
"Implicitly, Professor," Mrs. H told him. "The dray is around the corner on Montague Street, by the hotel. Mr. Maws awaited its arrival."

             
"Excellent!" Moriarty said. "Then this large crate, which will almost immediately contain the telescope, and these other five crates which are already nailed down, are to be taken out through the accommodation exit and loaded into the dray. Great care is to be taken; this is delicate apparatus."

             
"I shall see to it, Professor."

             
"I know you will, Mrs. H. You are a paragon of getting-it-done-properly. You run this household with an efficiency which amazes even me. It is a constant delight to be associated with you. Please send the Mummer down to me now."

             
"Very well, Professor." Mrs. H nodded and withdrew.

             
What Moriarty called the "accommodation exit" was a back way that led, through a twisting maze of alleys and two subtly concealed doors in separating walls, to the side entrance to the hotel on Montague Street. "Why are you going out that way, Professor?" Barnett asked. "Are you sneaking this equipment out?"

             
"I never sneak," Moriarty said firmly. "Since my business is nobody else's affair, I fail to see how my effort to avoid prying eyes can be considered 'sneaking.' "

             
"I take it back, Professor," Barnett said. "I wasn't aware that we had any prying eyes about. Whose eyes are they, and what are they trying to find out?"

             
"A good question," Moriarty said, "and one deserving of a factual answer. At the moment I have only conjecture, but I expect— Ah! Perhaps we can find out now; here is the Mummer."

             
"I didn't want to disturb you while you was at work down here, Professor," the little man said, bounding down the wooden staircase.

             
"Thoughtful of you, Mummer," Moriarty said. "Did you succeed?"

             
" 'Course I did, what do you think?" the Mummer said, looking offended.

             
"With what result?"

             
"I buzzed the tall gent what's been mucking about outside keeping the admiral company, and found a rozzer in his poke."

             
"You see," Moriarty said, turning to Barnett. "It is as I suspected."

             
"What is?" Barnett asked.

             
"This house has been being watched for the past two days. Three men at least, at all times. Now Tolliver has picked the pocket of the tall gentleman who was loitering across the street by the statue of Lord Hornblower, and found a police badge in his wallet."

             
" 'At's right," Tolliver agreed. " 'Oo says I didn't?"

             
"This sudden interest in our doings corresponds with your visit to the CID," Moriarty told Barnett. "There may be some connection between that correspondence and the fact that Mr. Sherlock Holmes has been retained to assist the police in the matter of those murders that so fascinate you."

             
"How do you know that?" Barnett asked. "Sherlock Holmes certainly didn't tell you. He doesn't seem to have a very high opinion of you."

             
"Every time a purse is snatched anywhere in the greater London area, Holmes is certain that I am behind it," Moriarty said. "It gets tiresome."

             
"How do you know that he is helping Scotland Yard solve the murders?"

             
Moriarty chuckled. "I spoke to his landlady.
"

             
"
His landlady?"

             
"Yes. Mrs. Hudson, by name. Charming lady. A bit deaf. I dressed myself as a nonconformist clergyman and went to Baker Street at a time I knew Holmes would be out. I told Mrs. Hudson that I needed the great man's services immediately. I was very put out that he wasn't at home. I told her I needed Holmes in relation to a case involving a politician, a lighthouse, and a trained cormorant. She told me that it was just the sort of thing that Mr. Holmes would be happy to take up, but that at the moment he was working with the police on the baffling murders of those aristocrats."

             
"I see," Barnett said.

             
"I told the charming lady how sorry I was to have missed Mr. Holmes, and that I was unable to wait. She begged me to stay, saying she was sure Holmes would want to talk with me. I said something to the effect that I thought so myself, but I really couldn't stay."

             
Barnett shook his head. "There is a certain justice in all of this, you will have to admit," he said. "While you are out with a false beard questioning Sherlock Holmes's landlady, he is having your house watched by Scotland Yard."

             
"There is indeed an elegant symmetry," Moriarty admitted. "But I assure you there was no false beard. Ecclesiastical muttonchops was as far as I went."

             
The Mummer hopped down from the bench, where he had been examining the telescope. "Quite a pickle you've got there, Professor," he said. "Is there anything else you need of me?"

             
Moriarty thought this over for a minute. "Yes," he said. "Go to that cupboard in the corner and open it up. Mr. Potts, please give the Mummer your key."

             
Tolliver took the key from old Potts and skipped over to the corner. He opened the cabinet, and for a second Barnett felt his heart rap against his chest and he caught his breath. There, inside the cabinet, was Professor Moriarty!

             
Barnett half turned to make sure that the professor was still, in reality, standing alongside of him, and then he approached the cabinet to figure out what he had just seen. It still, even from four feet away, appeared to be Moriarty closeted within the narrow confines of the small cabinet. He bent down to examine the apparition. "A dummy!" he exclaimed.

             
"Indeed," Moriarty said. "It was made at my direction some time ago. Amberly, the forger, did the face of
papier-mâché
,
with the coloring accomplished with stage makeup dissolved in wax. Do you think it is good? You are a better judge than I, as my face is seldom visible to me except reversed in a glass."

             
"Good?" Barnett cried. "It is excellent! Remarkable!"

             
"I am glad to hear that," Moriarty said. "Because for the next two weeks, that dummy will be me." He turned to old Potts. "Do you think you can make a frame for it that the Mummer can wear on his shoulders?"

             
Old Potts looked reflectively at Tolliver and at the dummy. "Take a couple of hours," he said.

             
"Excellent," Moriarty said. "Then I leave with my telescope. Mummer, you will be me while I am gone. Follow Barnett's suggestions in that regard. That should keep the hounds away from Crimpton Moor while I complete these observations."

             
"I'll do my best, Professor," the Mummer said.

             
Moriarty turned to Barnett. "I leave you in charge of such of my activities as come within your purview in my absence," he said. "Do not get overenthusiastic. I shall see you in a fortnight."

             
"Goodbye, Professor," Barnett said. "Good luck!"

             
"Indeed?" Moriarty said. "Let us hope that luck plays small part in either of our endeavors for the next two weeks. For if you invoke the good, you may have to settle for the other. Goodbye, Mr. Barnett."

Thou wilt not with predestined evil round Enmesh, and then impute my fall to sin!

—Edward Fitzgerald

             
By ten-thirty in the evening he was done with his day's work, which had been his life's work; the daily repetition that had been his life, and was now but a senseless blur that marked the passing time. At ten-thirty he would be able to come to life; the new life that spread its endless days before him: days of seeking, days of hunting, days of revenge, days full of the infinite jest that had become his life, the jest that was death. At ten-thirty, with the sun safely down, the creature of the night that he had become could once more roam the streets of London and stalk its prey.