Professor Moriarty: The Hound Of The D’urbervilles (53 page)

We all drank champagne out of Napoleon’s skull. I squired Irma Vep to the Moulin Rouge, where I merrily purloined the evening’s take as she performed a service for one of the first families of France. Jewels were abstracted from a dressing room before they could fall into the dainty clutches of a dancer who’d worked for a month to seduce a young vicomte to get them. Of course, Irma switched the sparklers and gave the old comte fakes, then whisked me off to after-hours
anis
in a den of apache.

While we were enjoying
la vie Parisienne,
the Thin Man spent two days in Brussels. That’s something of a record: I don’t know another Englishman who’s stuck Belgium for more than a single day without getting drunk on their beer, sick on their chocolate or in trouble with their schoolgirls. We knew what he was up to because Sophy, who’d stuck with him quietly while we ostentatiously lost his trail, sent telegrams every few hours. We also had word from London, via Simon Carne: Patterson had made his raids, most of the Firm were locked up, Margaret Trelawny was en route to Egypt, Mrs Halifax’s house was shuttered, the Creeper was reported drowned (a likely story) and Raffles found it expedient to spend some time in the nets. All this put me in an ill-humour. I know I was only an employee, but I’d put a great deal into the enterprise. I’d been on Moriarty’s rolls longer than I served with the bloody Bangalore Pioneers. I’d killed more people for him than for the Queen. The Firm meant more to me than f--king Eton! Since Sir Augustus turfed me out of the family pile, I’d messed temporarily all over the show. That brothel in Conduit Street was the nearest thing I’d had to a home. I didn’t care to think that was all over and ashes.

Moriarty betrayed no trace of feeling. He asked after his wasps, but that was all...

Seeing my concern, he set out his position.

‘When I return to London, Moran, I shall start again. From nothing. Free and clear. Unimpeded by fallible subordinates. Without clutter. This time, I shall follow strict mathematical formulae. I have involved myself in matters superfluous to the equation. This is an opportunity to wipe the blackboard clean. Within a year, I shall be able to
concentrate.
All possible threats to me will be eliminated. The work will continue, in a purer sphere. Then I shall get real results.’

All nice and neat and dandy, I supposed. I still didn’t see what was so wrong with the clutter. Fifi was part of the clutter. Come to that, so was I.

The next telegram informed us the Thin Man was in Strasbourg.

‘Mabuse has a face in Strasbourg,’ the Prof explained. ‘As proprietor of a
salle à manger.
He was wearing that disguise a day after his visit to London. Many a courier of diplomatic pouches has been drugged and searched in that humble hostel by the main railway station. Our bloodhound has the scent!’

It was time to quit Paris. Our hosts knew what had happened in London, and we must have seemed like wounded beasts, fleeing. If ever there was a chance to kill us off without fear of reprisal, it was now. Irma invited me to dine in a private salon, more or less promising intimacies... even on the slim chance this was a genuine offer rather than a trap, I was inclined to make the play. Moriarty told me not to be a fool and produced tickets to Geneva.

It was our turn to leave luggage behind, but I carried the Von Herder with me.

Ever been to Geneva? It’s a
clean
city. The gutters are swept three times a day. On the streets the cobblestones are individually polished. The public conveniences are the most hygienic in the world. The tarts are scrubbed, efficient and copulate like the mechanical girl who comes out of the cuckoo clock. Even the rats have neat whiskers. The only thing dirty is the money.

If the Thin Man was following the money, the trail led here.

As we checked into the Hotel Beau-Rivage, Moriarty was handed a telegram. It fell to me to tip the bellboy – a French
franc,
hard Swiss cheese for him – while the Professor decoded the numbers and Greek letters he’d worked up as a special cipher for Sophy.

We had come to town ahead of the Thin Man, but he was on his way from Germany. Sophy reported that the detective, picking up clues found in that Strasbourg café, was interested in a Swiss banker, Adolphe Lavenza.

Without even looking at our suite, Moriarty hired a carriage to take us to the financial district – which, in Geneva, is three-quarters of the city. Zurich is worse, or better if you’ve an urge for that most overrated of criminal endeavours, bank robbery. That’s either out-and-out bandit foolishness which leads to getting shot by well-paid vigilante officers (if any institution can afford hired killers, it’s a bank – I’ve taken that shilling myself) or involves as much digging, blasting and carrying as any other kind of prospecting, with a consequent high risk of perishing in a cave-in or a mistimed detonation. Swiss banks don’t even have much negotiable loot on the premises: they bury their gold, and keep ledgers and IOUs to prove how rich their customers are.

From a coffee house across the road, we watched the Lavenza Bank for an hour. People came and went, most so respectable it was plain to the practiced eye that they were crooks, a few as close a
Genevoise
could be to low and shabby.

A clerical fellow took a seat at the next table, gulped a cup of molten dark chocolate, and departed without acknowledging us. I recognised Ueli Munster, the Swiss representative of Box Brothers. Whenever business brought him to London, Munster called upon Mistress Strict for a chastisement earned many times over in his financial dealings. The naughty banker left behind a copy of yesterday’s
Times,
which I snaffled as any Britisher curious for news from home might have. I turned with leaden heart to a notice of the Patterson raids, while the Professor slit open a packet of documents which had been concealed in the folded newspaper.

‘Adolphe Lavenza is Mabuse’s Swiss façade,’ Moriarty said, looking over Munster’s report. ‘His bank is the Great Unknown’s treasury. It played a part in the collapse of Baron Maupertuis. My disciple has ambitions to influence the economies of nations. He envisions a great bubble and crash after crash, an apocalypse of money. He sees further into the future than my brother, and marks out the real battlefields of the twentieth century: brokerages and banking houses. No armies or wonderful engines of war, but
numbers.
He has taken my methods, Moran. But he does not respect them. I see order. He wants chaos. Irreconcilable formulae.’

‘Bastard’s a damn anarchist!’

‘A poor label for what Mabuse is becoming. It will be almost a shame to stifle the monster in the crib. He might achieve a new kind of mathematics. But he is on the slate, Moran. The slate we shall wipe clean.’

‘Where’s the bloodhound? We’ve got to the quarry before him.’

‘I calculate the Thin Man will call on this address –
without
his travelling companion – in fifty minutes. We will cheat him of the kill.’

The Von Herder – our only luggage – was at the Beau-Rivage. I had my Gibbs pistol with me, though. And bare hands.
The Times
had put me in the mood to strangle a banker.

First, we needed to secure entry.

A respectable burgher, all pinstripes and pince-nez, emerged from the bank and strolled smartly round the corner. I held him against a wall by his throat while Moriarty determined which language to question him in. He spoke precise English. An Afghan tribal trick persuaded him to explain that a distinctive
carte de visite
was necessary to get past the front desk and secure audience with M. Lavenza. The card was surrendered by the caller, so he no longer had his pass. He said he could help us no more. Moriarty disagreed. We hauled him back to the main thoroughfare.

Within a few minutes, fortuitously, two men approached, carrying a wardrobe between them. One was fat, one thin. Our unwilling informant admitted he knew the men to be in Lavenza’s circle... then unwisely cried out for help. By the time the carriers had set down their burden to come to his aid, he was dead. Seconds after that, so were they. I broke the burgher’s neck and was stuck with a dead weight. Moriarty scientifically killed the workmen with his penknife. They were finished before they started bleeding. The Professor went through the fat man’s pockets and found two plain white cards punched with different queer-shaped holes.

This was all accomplished on a busy street, inside a minute. Passers-by paid no attention as we hustled slack bodies into the wardrobe – which was large and empty enough to accommodate them. Of different stations in society, they would not have sought or wished such intimacy in life. I reckoned them equals now.

A policeman marched up and I feared we’d have to cram in another, but his only interest was in making sure we did not leave furniture on the street.

‘It is untidy, an obstruction,’ he insisted.

I nodded to the Swiss constable and we hefted the wardrobe – not without difficulty, for obvious reasons – up to the entrance of the Lavenza Bank. The doors were opened by a liveried colossus. Moriarty presented the cards to a smart young lady, who posted them into a slit in a small, mechanical box. Gears ground and a red electric lamp flashed. We were told to leave the wardrobe and pass through a green-baize door.

In a small antechamber, we found upholstered chairs and a selection of German, French, Italian and English periodicals. All dull and financial. Nothing spicy. A voice boomed from the room beyond an inner door. Instructions were being issued in deep, rasping German. Someone – Mabuse as Lavenza, I supposed – outlined a plan for a daring robbery. Jewels from the Royal Collection of Ruritania, kept in Swiss vaults, were to make a rare public appearance at the coronation. An opportunity existed to seize them in transit from Geneva to Strelsau. Language aside, it could have been Moriarty talking. I sensed the Professor steaming. I was affronted on his behalf – Mabuse was plagiarising a classic Moriarty gambit. The sooner the copycat was in a bag and drowned, the better.

At the end of the speech, auditors were dismissed. Three men and a woman came out of the inner room, purposeful. They had taken no notes, but apparently committed the plan to memory. Paying us little attention, they left about their business. After a moment’s pause, the voice addressed ‘Operator number six and operator number fifty-one’. We were ordered to come in.

We had only moments before Mabuse saw we were not his delivery men.

Moriarty opened the inner door and I went through, with my Gibbs up. The room was dim. The only source of light was hidden behind a thick gauze screen which hung over an alcove. A silhouette was presented: a man sat at a desk. I shot him in the head and he keeled over. The kill made, I turned about-face and levelled my gun at the green baize door. No one came to investigate. This section of the bank was built like a vault. Soundproof.

The Professor tore away the curtain.

Triumph died. The voice of Dr Mabuse told his operators to come in, again. And again, repeating.

The dead man wore a gagging hood and a straitjacket. In falling, he had set an Edison phonograph revolving. Mabuse’s voice was on wax and came from a trumpet. I lifted the needle and shut the contraption up.

Moriarty unstuck the dead man’s hood from the mess of his head, and peeled it off.

I’d shot Ueli Munster.

‘F--k,’ Professor Moriarty said.

I agreed.

The bastard had tweaked our noses again, properly. Mabuse had sat wearing another face – after Moriarty had said he’d always recognise him if he saw him! – and enjoyed his chocolate at the next table.

The green-baize door was locked, but easily kicked open. The uniformed giant and the smart young lady had cleared off. So far as we could tell, the premises were untenanted but for the two of us and four corpses.

We got out of the Lavenza Bank quickly.

The Thin Man acquitted himself no better than us at the Lavenza Bank. I presume he found the bodies, noted an irregular curl of apple-peel in the waste-paper basket as significant and picked up a fresh scent. He didn’t alert the clean, efficient Swiss police of any crimes or mention the Mystery of the Four Dead Swiss Bankers, the Phonograph and the Wardrobe to his tag-along biographer. Claiming to be weary of cities, he proposed a bracing schedule of hiking, sightseeing and scrambling up mountains.

This is what Watson said: ‘For a charming week we wandered up the valley of the Rhone, and then, branching off at Leuk, we made our way over the Gemmi Pass, still deep with snow, and so, by way of Interlaken, to Meiringen. It was a lovely trip, the dainty green of the spring below, the virgin white of the winter above.’

Back at the hotel, we found Sophy waiting. After recent events, I was minded to look at her teeth to make sure she really was herself. I doubt Mabuse could have pulled off the imposture, despite seemingly supernatural abilities, but a female disguise merchant was floating around Europe. I’d not forgotten what a nuisance Irene Adler could be if she put her mind to it. In theory, she was in Ruritania with Rupert. There was a god-awful mess about the succession, with Rudi, Michael and a red headed dark horse named Rassendyll making bids while the crown was in play
^[13]
. Still, I’d not put it past her to visit Switzerland to see the endgame out. At this point, I didn’t even know who
that bitch
was betraying. She’d done us dirty by winding around Madame Sara, but I never found out if she was a paid Mabuse confederate or just kicking our teeth on the principle that we were smiling and she had on her steel-toed pumps. We had the real Miss Kratides, though she had nothing fresh to report.

Moriarty was in a cold fury. I was in a hot one. We’d bagged a brace of Swiss apiece, but were no better for it. I imagine murder charges could have been involved. Worse, according to Swiss
morés,
we’d left an untidy mess. Adolphe Lavenza was a shed snakeskin. All we could do was mark the Thin Man while he sniffed over the countryside. I was no longer confident he had a hope of running down Mabuse.