Who Thinks Evil: A Professor Moriarty Novel (Professor Moriarty Novels) (15 page)

“The other man?”

“Yes. The one who said, ‘Feet, feet.’”

“He was shorter, and kind of round. Not fat, as you might say, but round. About the face, you know.”

“Round face?”

“That’s it.”

“And his hair?”

“He had hair okay. It were sort of pasted down on his head, all straight-like, but there were a bit of it.”

“What color?”

“Black, I’d say.”

“Would you know him if you saw him again?”

She thought it over. “I would,” she said finally.

Moriarty nodded. “Thank you, Pamela. You’re being very helpful. We’ll go to sleep now. Just close your eyes and go to sleep. Clear your mind of the past and sleep.”

“Sleep,” she said. Her eyes closed slowly, and her head lowered.

Moriarty lifted her out of the chair and carried her to the bed, where he gently placed her, her head on the pillow. “You will sleep through the night,” he told her, “and let your mind cleanse itself of these memories. When you awaken they will seem a distant dream, unable to hurt you any longer. You will be refreshed and happy, or reasonably so, and no longer troubled by the past.”

He rose. “I think we can leave now,” he said. “I’ll have to speak to Miss Mollie and have the girl sent around to my house tomorrow.”

“Come now, Professor,” Epp said. “I don’t see why—”

“One treatment will hardly be enough to relieve her of these memories,” said Moriarty. “I owe it to her to finish what I began. Then, of course, there’s the more important reason.”

“What might that be?” asked Epp.

“She’s the only one who knows what our villains look like.”

Epp snorted. “A big nose and flat ears? A round head? Not much of a description.”

“I have no doubt that it can be improved on,” Moriarty said.

“And what was that ‘feet’ nonsense?”

“Feet, feet,” Moriarty said musingly. “It doesn’t tell us much, but it does indicate where the answer might be found.”

Epp turned to look at him. “Does it now?” he asked.

“Ipso facto,”
Moriarty told him.
“Veritas curat.”

[CHAPTER TWELVE]

THE MUMMER CREEPS

Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round,

Where’er his stages may have been,

May sigh to think he still has found

The warmest welcome at an inn.

—WILLIAM SHENSTONE

BENJAMIN BARNETT SAT AT EASE
in his accustomed chair in Professor Moriarty’s study. It
was,
he reflected, his accustomed chair, even though it had been some two years since he had last settled into it. That part of his life he had spent as the professor’s associate had not been walled off in his memory or faded away into the past; it had been set aside like a pair of once-worn shoes, ready to be stepped into when the occasion arose.

A pair of ill-fitting shoes, his wife, Cecily, would say. Barnett’s association with the professor had brought him into danger many times and face-to-face with true evil more than once, but always with the knowledge that he himself fought on the side of good. Possibly not always “good” as his stiff-necked Anglican parson brother-in-law would have it, but good nonetheless. A melodramatic way to think of it, he admitted, but there it was. He refused to think of life as a tragedy and couldn’t quite bring himself to think of it as a comedy—although he suspected that Moriarty saw all human activities as an unending source of humor—so he was left with melodrama or farce, and little to choose between them.

“So it would seem,” he told Moriarty, winding up his story of the excursion to the Fox and Hare, “that Esterman was not merely mistaken, but was certainly lying when he testified that he had seen you at the inn—and that he was doing it at the behest of his former employer, the baron.”

“Interesting,” said Moriarty.

“That ain’t the half of it,” the mummer added from his perch on the corner of the leather couch. “Baron what’s-’is-face was busy robbing himself that night, is what I sez.”

Moriarty removed his pince-nez and raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?” he asked.

“Just so.” The mummer hooked his thumbs into his green braces and struck a rhetorical pose. “You can fool some of the people all of the time, sez I, and all of the people most of the time, but you can’t nohow fool me. Not much, anywise.”

Moriarty nodded. “Indeed,” he agreed. “Just how are Baron Thornton-Hoxbary and his minions not fooling you this week?”

“Well, stands to reason, don’t it?” The mummer gesticulated with his right thumb, waggling it about in front of him. “Here are the facts what I will lay in front of you what I uncovered in my search through yon publican’s private and personal belongings while he were in a state of sublime insobriety. First, it’s the baron himself personally what actually owns the Fox and Hare.”

“How do you know that?” Moriarty asked.

“Simple enough,” the mummer said. “He has a ledger book, don’t he—”

“Who has? Esterman?” Barnett interrupted.

“Himself,” the mummer affirmed.

“I didn’t know that!” Barnett was miffed. “You didn’t tell me anything about a ledger. Is that what you went looking for while I was plying Esterman with the professor’s expensive port?”

“I would have settled for less,” the mummer said. “Anyways, I comes upon this ledger book, as I says, and I gloms onto it for long enough to take down some numbers.”

“What made you think they’d be of interest?” asked the professor.

“The very simple fact that the book was, as it were, hidden,” answered the little man. “You hides swag, you hides or locks up valuable knickknacks what you don’t rightly have the lawful possession of, you hides your professional tools and appurtenances if you happens to be a coiner or a cracksman, but whatever for would you hide a ledger book?”

“Where was it hidden?” asked Moriarty.

“It were behind a false panel under the counter,” the mummer told him.

“You got it open with us both sitting there?” Barnett asked.

“You wasn’t exactly paying attention to what was going on under the counter,” the mummer told him. “You talked and talked, and did a marvelous job of keeping him busy while I crept along on my hands and knees beneath your notice and found the panel. When yon publican laid his head on the table and entered the land of snore I went back under the counter to take a glim at whatsoever might be crouched inside the thing, and it were that there ledger book.”

“And in it you found?” Moriarty prompted.

“Every month Esterman pays out coin to one BTH.”

“Baron Thornton-Hoxbary?” suggested Barnett.

“Who else?”

“Well, the baron gave him the money to buy the place,” Barnett said. “Maybe part of it was just a loan and he’s paying it off. Or maybe the baron owns the building itself, but not the business, and it’s rent. That would still indicate a degree of familiarity in their relationship that didn’t come out at the trial.”

“It wouldn’t have meant anything if it had,” commented Moriarty. “The baron wasn’t suspected of anything. We need something of which to suspect him.”

“Well, I hadn’t finished telling you what’s what,” griped the mummer, “had I?”

“Ah!” Moriarty exclaimed. “I apologize, Mummer. We shouldn’t have interrupted you.”

“Nobody has no respect for little men,” the mummer objurgated, “but I shall go on.”

“Oh, please do,” Barnett said.

The mummer gave him a glance that would wither lupin and took a breath. “The payments weren’t for a loan or rent because they were never for the same amount. Besides, they was monthly, and rent is usually paid quarterly.”

“Still,” Moriarty said. “That makes them the baron’s share of the profits, but it’s not illegal to go into business with your ex-valet. Suggestive, but not illegal.”

“There’s more,” the mummer said. “Wait for it—wait for it.”

“Go on.”

“Some men take rooms at the Fox and Hare, and they don’t nohow pay for the rooms.”

“I don’t see—” Barnett began.

“The baron pays for ’em. Like, I’d say, half the going rate.” The mummer paused and looked around him. “Don’tcher see? The two of them, the baron and Esterman, must be a pair what delights in squeezing pennies till they squeal. Can’tcher picture the conversation? ‘I’m going to have me men staying here on occasion,’ says the baron. ‘Fine, but they’re going to pay like anyone else. I has me expenses, after all,’ says Esterman. ‘I’ll pay for them blokes as I sends here,’ replies the baron, ‘but no more than sixpence a bed.’ ‘Eight pence,’ says Esterman. ‘Seven,’ replies the baron, ‘and that includes dinner.’ ‘All right,’ says Esterman, ‘but just the ordinary. They wants a cut off the joint, they pays extra.’ ‘Done and done,’ says the baron. They shakes hands on it, and then counts their fingers.”

“So?” asked Barnett. “What of it?”

“Two of the blokes what I found in the ledger book, what the baron paid for, are ‘Groper’ and ‘Piggy.’”

Barnett shook his head. “So?”

“Cast your thoughts back,” said the mummer, “to the events surrounding the robbery. Two of the supposed robbers got themselves killed, and their monikers, according to the rozzers, were Gerald ‘Groper’ Swintey and Albert ‘Piggy’ Stain. And it’s the baron himself who’s paying for their rooms the night before the robbery.”

Moriarty pressed his hands together and rested his chin on the outstretched fingers and spent some seconds in thought. “Interesting,” he allowed finally. “Did you find any other sobriquets in the book for that evening?”

“Monikers, you mean? I thought of that,” said the mummer, “and indeed there were a few other names what were not those their mothers gave them, unless their mothers was trodding heavily on the gooseberry bush.”

Barnett looked puzzled but, as he opened his mouth, Moriarty raised a hand. “Don’t ask,” he told Barnett. “Let it pass.”

“There was ‘Yennuf Yob’ and ‘Cobow,’” the mummer said, “and ‘the Swede.’”

“Clearly persons of interest,” Moriarty said. “We’ll have to unearth these individuals and see what they have to say.”

“I hope they ain’t buried too deep,” the mummer observed.

“What sort of names are they?” asked Barnett. “Cobow? Yennuf Yob?”

“One of ’em’s a funny boy,” said the mummer, “and the other’s a bastard.”

“‘Yob’ is East End reverse slang for ‘boy,’” Moriarty explained. “Much favored among the villainous classes. Evidently someone with a sense of humor created ‘Yennuf Yob’ for ‘Funny Boy.’ Whether referring to the gentleman’s appearance or his antics or his mode of conversation, I couldn’t say. ‘Cobow’ is one step more complicated. It’s reverse for
w-o-b-o-c,
‘without benefit of clergy.’”

“Which is better, ain’t it, than calling him a bastard?” asked the mummer rhetorically.

“A distinction that should not be made,” observed Moriarty, “and that certainly shouldn’t be inflicted on the children.”

“So I says meself,” said the mummer. “I fancy these are the other lads what participated in yon robbery which went so spectacularly astray.”

“There are many other possible explanations,” said Moriarty, “but I’m rather fond of yours, so we’ll assume it is so unless further information proves it false.”

“Why would the baron be robbing himself?” Barnett asked.

The mummer raised his arm, his fist clenched except for the forefinger, which was pointed at the ceiling. “That question,” he intoned, “may be divided into two parts. The first part: ‘Why?’ Me father, a God-fearing man, used to say, ‘Never ask why, for it may come to pass that you will be answered, and you probably won’t like what you hear.’ The second part: ‘Would the baron be robbing himself?’ Well, it certainly seems that way, don’t it?”

“I doubt the baron was robbing himself,” said Moriarty. “Find out who his guests were for the weekend, and what at least one of them was carrying that the baron might covet. We might also profit by a closer look at what the morning papers called the ‘rash of robberies’ at the great houses in the baron’s neighborhood. Determining what was taken in them might give us an idea of just what it is that the baron covets.”

“How do we go about doing that?” asked the mummer. “We going to grow us a plant in the baron’s household?”

“I fancy that Mr. Barnett can find someone to handle it,” Moriarty suggested. “Perhaps one of his employees at the news service. I’ll pay his salary and expenses, of course.”

Barnett nodded. “There are certain advantages to being in the newspaper racket,” he said. “One of them being the implicit permission to be horribly nosy.”

“I’ll leave it to your people to find out what can be found out,” Moriarty told him.

“I’ll put young Blake on it,” said Barnett. “He’s a natural-born ferret.”

“Good,” Moriarty said. “Tell him to be a bit cautious in his inquiries. We don’t want them to get the wind up, and, in the fullness of time, we shall do something about the larcenous baron. For now there’s something else that may require your assistance.”

“You running about with them toffs what Mr. Maws told me about?” the mummer asked. “Dukes and duchesses and the like?”

“They took me out of prison,” Moriarty said, “in return for doing a little job. One that presents an interesting intellectual challenge, as it happens.”

“All about the missing prince, is it?” the mummer asked.

Barnett suddenly looked interested. “What missing prince?”

“Who told you about that?” Moriarty asked, frowning.

“Mr. Maws again,” the mummer said. “He heard it from the duke’s valet.”

“No secret is safe from the servants,” Moriarty said.

“Which poses a puzzle,” said Barnett. “If I may turn back for a moment to the problem of the prevaricating baron. Why did Thornton-Hoxbary’s servants not know of the impending robbery?”

“I imagine they’re mostly local people,” Moriarty surmised. “Not up to robbery and murder. Then, too, it adds to the verisimilitude to have them trussed up during the robbery and free to tell stories about the experience ever after. Besides, if they’d known about it, the whole county would have known about it right quick enough. No—the baron had to import his talent from the city, and trusted no one local except the innkeeper.”