The Return of Moriarty (7 page)

Spear shuffled his feet. It was time to display loyalty and be damned.

“At your expense to be sure, Professor.”

The others mumbled assent.

“Everybody's expense,” hissed Moriarty. “All our family is affected if we start to lose in any racket, any lay.”

“He's spent a lot of time broading, always been a bit of a broadsman, the colonel.”

“I know about the gaming, and I'll bet he's been on the randy with the winnings. Well, that's all right. We all have to have our pleasure, but when it meddles with business, that's a different matter. There's not been one report about the Peg or Peter or Whitechapel made to me. Come to that”—he looked sharply at Paget—“there's a lot of things not been mentioned to me. Like you having a lackin of your own, here in your quarters, Paget. That's something I should at least have been told of.”

Paget came as near to blushing as any man of his persuasion could.

“I thought the colonel would've told you that, sir,” he mumbled.

“Well, he did not. Who is she, Paget? Is she a trustworthy mollisher, a flash girl or what?”

“She's out of the monkery, name of Fanny Jones, from Warwick way. I met her in a servants' lurk a year back. She'd come into service with some swells, Sir Richard and Lady Bray. Got a mansion in Park Lane, near where that Adair was done in. They sacked her for some trifle and she was down on her luck. She knew the Bray house inside out, and I thought it might come in handy. Then I got to thinkin' she'd make a toffer, even talked to Sal Hodges about it, but … well, guv'nor, you know how these things are …”

“I know how things are, my dear Paget, and I will meet the young woman in due course. What did the Brays dismiss her for?”

“It was Lady Bray, a right dowager duchess she is. Fanny took an hour off, out of the house, one night, to go and see some friend. Well, the long and the short was that the butler discovered it, and her royal highness Lady Bray dismisses her. Into the street with bag and baggage. She's a good girl, guv'nor.”

Moriarty flashed a quick look at Spear, who rightly interpreted his master and hoped Paget had missed the glance. The Professor wanted someone to ask around, making sure about Fanny's background and her story. It was something Moran had been lax about and, in a certain measure, Spear was pleased at Moriarty's thoroughness.

There was a minute or so of silence, Moriarty lost in thought. Then Paget spoke once more.

“It's true then, about the colonel, so what shall we do, Professor?”

“Why Holmes? The fool,” Moriarty mused, casting his eyes first at Paget and then at Spear. “Does he not realize the damage he could have done? After all the trouble we went to, after all that happened and was said and agreed between Holmes and myself at the Reichenbach. God knows, Holmes may even believe that I have broken the truce.” He paused, looking up from beneath lowered lids. “Well, the colonel is jugged by Inspector Lestrade, it seems. It's certain he'll be topped.…”

“Do we rescue—”

“You can ask that when you see all about you what Moran has been doing? Good Jesus, Paget, Moran is revealed as the kind of man who would not even pull a soldier off his own mother, and you talk of rescue. No, we have two problems. If Moran did not know so much, I'd say he could go to hell and pump thunder, but he knows much. Too much. He'll blow it to Lestrade, or others if he thinks it will help him.”

A slow smile spread over Moriarty's face. It had all the appearance of a smile of glee, or friendship, yet somehow the face became changed, as though another visage could be seen behind, bearing all the marks of a gargoyle.

“I suppose you could call it a rescue, after a fashion,” he continued. “A rescue for us. But more of a release for Colonel Moran.”

Spear looked seriously at his master.

“You mean we have to do for the colonel before the Topper gets at him.”

“Long before, Spear, long before. For all we know he is chaunting to the coppers at this moment; about me, this place, our family, our influence, plans, lays, rackets. He has to lose his tongue. After that we must concern ourselves with our businesses in Whitechapel.”

“With the Peg,” observed Ember tersely.

“You'll be needing to send the punishers in.”

Paget had no doubts about the action they would have to take.

“The punishers will be only part of it. We will have to use some tact.” Moriarty looked toward Spear. “I want you to take over the question of Moran,” he said. “We have to know where he is, who is with him, which police officers, when he is being brought to trial, his routine. These things we need to know quickly. The iron is hot, so we must strike before it is cold. You, Paget”—a finger stabbed toward his other lieutenant—“round up a dozen or so punishers who've served well. Have them ready. Also see if Alton can meet me early tomorrow evening. Somewhere that people would least think we would meet. I know Alton and he can, at times, contrive to look like a gentleman, so let us say I will meet him at the Café Royal at seven. And brief him well, Paget, he must glitter. I must be in disguise. Remind him of my appearance as the older Moriarty, for that is how I shall be attired, and be certain he does not look the screw that he is.”

Paget nodded. “We are to use the punishers on the Peg's men?”

“On some of them. Ember, get into Whitechapel; have Parker's lurkers working with you, into the lodging houses, the lush-kens and sluiceries. We need to know who the Peg's most important men are: his best half-dozen or so.”

Foxy little Ember grinned, showing a set of cracked and yellow teeth.

“I'll get to that.”

Moriarty's eyes were sparkling as they swung from one man to the other.

“If we pound his most able officers, then I think he'll listen to reason.”

“What kind of reason?” From Spear.

“I mean to have him out of our streets and houses, away from our people. When we've punished his people, I think I will be in a position to put a suggestion to him that he will find it hard to spurn.”

All five men chuckled.

 

*
  The description referred to is, of course, Sherlock Holmes' famous word picture, documented by Dr. Watson in
The Final Problem.
“He is extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes out in a white curve, and his two eyes are deeply sunken in his head. He is clean-shaven, pale, and ascetic-looking, retaining something of the professor in his features. His shoulders are rounded from much study, and his face protrudes forward, and is forever oscillating from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion. He peered at me with great curiosity in his puckered eyes” (
The Final Problem,
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle).

*
  It is plain, from letters now in the author's possession, that Colonel Moran was familiar with such refinements as marking by dot or puncture during a game, shading and tint-marking, and the intricacies of marking through line and scrollwork.

†
  From the above-mentioned letters it is clear that Moran consistently used a briar-root pipe reflector, this being a device whereby a “shiner” (as the reflector was known in gaming circles of the time), a small convex mirror cemented to a piece of cork, was shaped to fit inside the bowl of a briar pipe. The sharper carries the “shiner” separately from the pipe. At the required moment, he knocks the ashes from his pipe and inserts the reflector, placing the pipe on the table with the bowl facing toward him. In this position the mirror is visible to nobody but the sharp, who, with practice, can align himself so that cards dealt or passed over the table are reflected and so glimpsed. From the few facts available, the author feels that Ronald Adair's discovery of Moran's cheating at the Bagatelle Card Club (see below) was not unconnected with the pipe shiner.

*
  It is interesting to note here that this fact, together with one or two other points, appears to be inconsistent with Sherlock Holmes' own statements as recorded by Dr. Watson. In
The Final Problem
Holmes categorically states to Watson that “… the London police … have secured the whole gang with the exception of him [Moriarty].” From later evidence we know this was not the case. On his return from “the grave,” in
The Empty House,
Holmes mentions Parker, the garroter who was watching 221B Baker Street and, of course, Moran himself. It is possible that Holmes was under the impression that all Moriarty's agents had been secured in April, 1891; but it is clear that this was far from being the case. Certainly his European network was left intact, and a large number of close associates, including Ember, Paget, Spear and Lee Chow, whom Moriarty referred to collectively as the “Praetorian Guard.” As we shall see, this quartet undeniably acted as the close bodyguards and what present-day gang leaders would call “muscle.”

*
  At this point we should pause and reflect on a further inconsistency. Before his description of Moriarty in
The Final Problem,
Holmes says to Watson, “His appearance was quite familiar to me.” We are then given the description quoted in the footnote on page 19. As we have already seen, that description does not tally with Moriarty's appearance in his chambers above the warehouse on the evening of April 5, 1894. Holmes is convinced that the man he knew as Moriarty was the one he described to Watson, and the one whom Watson himself glimpsed at Voctoria and on a later occasion. Yet Moran, the four members of the “Praetorian Guard,” Mrs. Hetty Jacobs and, as we shall see, a large number of friends and criminal associates, immediately recognize the younger, shorter man as the real Moriarty. At this stage we must assume that the Moriarty Holmes knew and recognized is either another man or that the Moriarty of this manuscript, known and recognized by the criminal element, is as great a master of disguise as Holmes himself. The true facts regarding this and the puzzling questions of Moriarty's age and background, will, in due course, be revealed. This footnote is appended simply to point out the inconsistency, and assure any skeptic that the facts are fully documented later in the manuscript.

*
  While we in the 1970's fondly imagine that “pig” is a recent uncomplimentary term for a policeman, derived from American police officers' gas masks during student or race riots in the late 1960's, “pig” was a common term for police and detectives during the second half of the nineteenth century.

†
  The 'Steel: The dreaded Middlesex House of Correction, Coldbath Fields, which, during the mid-century, was the experimental site of the “Silent System.”

*
  Another interesting point emerges here. Holmes, as we know from Watson's account of
The Empty House,
had observed Parker watching 221B Baker Street. He did, however, imagine that his disguise—as the elderly, deformed book collector whom Watson met in Park Lane, and who later visited the doctor in Kensington and disclosed his true identity—had not been penetrated. It is clear from the above exchange between Parker and Moriarty that Holmes was guilty of an error of judgment. He had been followed to Kensington, but, as readers of
The Empty House
know, the great detective left little to chance and took care to shake off any would-be follower once he and Watson left Kensington for the Baker Street area. In this, as in most other things, Holmes was successful.

*
  The scene Moran watched from his hansom would be not unlike those we can still see in certain areas of London, where, in spite of the Street Offences Act 1959, women still manage to solicit publicly, though, in Moran's day, the open display was on a huge scale. Only recently, in March, 1973, the author had occasion to walk through Shepherd's Market on a Saturday night: The whores were much in evidence, as were the cash carriers, whom today we know as ponces, while rampsmen—tearways—were certainly propping up the houses around Market Mews, Curzon and Down Streets.

*
  Those who are familiar with Dr. Watson's account of the incident (
The Empty House
) will know the details of what occurred. Holmes, outthinking the Moriarty gang—or what he thought was left of it—had erected a bust of himself behind the blind in the window of 221B Baker Street, and it was at this decoy that Moran fired, Holmes and Watson already being secreted in Camden House, the empty house opposite Holmes' Baker Street chambers. Inspector Lestrade and his men were nearby and, after a blow on the head from Watson's revolver, Moran was overpowered and later charged with the murder of Ronald Adair.

*
  While the East End of London was going through great physical changes by this time—for instance, the whole of the terrible north side of Flower and Dean Street had been demolished by 1892—many of the old doss houses, the netherskens, remained, as did the shifting criminal fraternity.

Friday, April 6, 1894

(FANNY INVESTIGATED AND MORIARTY'S MEMORIES OF THE AUTUMN OF 1888)

W
HEN
M
ORIARTY FINALLY
got to his bed, in the very early hours of Friday morning, he could not sleep. The tiring events of the previous day had merged with anger upon finding that his business interests in London had been, to a large extent, neglected during his enforced stay on the Continent. With Moran in the hands of the police, the whole situation was in jeopardy, and he was particularly annoyed at the discovery that the Whitechapel area had virtually been taken over by such inferior personages as Michael the Peg and Lord Peter.

In those days Moriarty had used Whitechapel and Spitalfields as a training ground, a recruiting point and a place in which money, if only small sums, could be made. It had not been an easy matter, containing the vast and poverty-stricken, criminal-infested area, but he had done it for eight or nine years with the help of Moran—then a more agile and able man—and the abiding memory of that time was the autumn of 1888.