Professor Moriarty: The Hound Of The D’urbervilles (6 page)

The girl was demonstrating some dance now. Really, I would do the couple a favour by getting them out of this performance.

I reached into my coat pocket and gripped my Webley. I took it out slowly and carefully – no nose-ectomy shot for Basher Moran – and cocked it with my thumb. The sound was tinier than a click you’d make with your tongue against your teeth.

Suddenly, Lassiter wasn’t in view. He was out of his chair and beyond sight of the window.

I was dumbfounded.

Then the lights went out. Not only the gas, but the fire – doused by a bucket, I’d guess. The womenfolk weren’t in evidence, either.

One tiny click!

A finger stuck out from a curtain and tapped the windowpane.

No, not a finger. A tube. If I’d had the glass out, I could confirm what I intuited. The bump at the end of the tube was a sight. Lassiter, the fast gun, had drawn his iron.

I had fire in my belly. I smelled the dying breath of Kali’s Kitten.

I changed my estimate of the American. What had seemed a disappointing, drab day outing was now a worthwhile safari, a game worth the chase.

He wouldn’t come out of the front door, of course.

He needn’t come out at all. First, he’d secure the mate and cub – a stronghold in the cellar, perhaps. Then he’d get a wall behind his back and wait. To be bearded in his lair. If only I had a bottle of paraffin, or even a box of matches. Then I could fire The Laurels: they’d have to come out and Lassiter would be distracted by females in panic. No, even then, there was a back garden. I’d have needed beaters, perhaps a second and third gun.

Moriarty had said he could put reliable men at my disposal for the job, but I’d pooh-poohed the suggestion. Natives panic and run, lesser guns get in the way. I was best off on my tod.

I had to rethink. Lassiter was on his guard now. He could cut and run, spirit his baggages off with him. Go to ground so we’d never find him again.

My face burned. Suddenly I was afraid, not of the gunslinger but of the Prof. I would have to tell him of my blunder.

One bloody click, that was all it was! Damn and drat.

I knew, even on brief acquaintance, Moriarty did not merely dismiss people from the Firm. He was no mere theoretician of murder.

Moran’s head, stuffed, on Moriarty’s wall. That would be the end of it.

I eased the cock of the Webley shut and pocketed the gun.

A cold circle pressed to the back of my neck.

‘Reach, pardner,’ said a deep, foreign, marrow-freezing voice. ‘And mighty slow like.’

My father always said I’d wind up with a noose around my neck. Even Sir Augustus did not predict said noose would be strung from a pretentious chandelier and attached firmly to a curtain rail.

I was stood on a none-too-sturdy occasional table, hands tied behind my back with taut, biting twine. Only the thickness of my boot heels kept me from throttling at once.

Here was a ‘how-d’you-do?’.

The parlour of The Laurels was still unlit, the curtains drawn. Unable to look down, I was aware of the people in the room but no more.

The man, Lassiter, had raised a bump on my noggin with his pistol butt.

I had an idea this was still better than an interview with a disappointed Professor Moriarty.

On the table, by my boot toes, were my Webley, broken and unloaded, the flask-glass, my folding knife, my (emptyish) notecase, three French postcards and a watch which had a sentiment from ‘Violet, to Algy’ engraved inside.

‘Okay, Algy,’ drawled Lassiter, ‘listen up...’

I didn’t feel inclined to correct his assumption.

‘We’re gonna have a little talk-like. I’m gonna ask questions, and you can give answers. Understand?’

I tried to stand very still.

Lassiter kicked the table, which wobbled. Rough hemp cut into my throat.

I nodded my understanding, bringing tears to my eyes.

‘Fine and dandy.’

He was behind me. The woman was in the room too, keeping quiet, probably holding the girl to keep her from fidgeting.

‘You ain’t no Mormon,’ Lassiter said.

It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer.

The table rocked again. Evidently, it
had
been a question.

‘I’m not a Mormon,’ I said, with difficulty. ‘No.’

‘But you’re with the Danite Band?’

I had to think about that.

A loud noise sounded and the table splintered. A slice of it sheared away. I had to hop to keep balance on what was left.

My ears rang. It was seconds before I could make out what was being said.

‘Noise-some, ain’t it? You’ll be hearin’ that fer days.’

It wasn’t the bang – I’ve heard enough bangs in my time – it was the smell, the discharged gun smell. It cleared my head.

The noose at my throat cut deep.

I had heard – in the prefects’ common room at Eton, not any of the bordellos or dives I’ve frequented since those horrible days – that being hanged, if only for a few seconds, elicits a peculiar physiological reaction in the human male. Connoisseurs reckon this a powerful erotic, on a par with the ministrations of the most expert houri. I was now, embarrassingly, in a position to confirm sixth-form legend.

A gasp from the woman suggested the near-excruciating bulge in my fly was externally evident.

‘Why, you low, disgustin’ snake,’ said Lassiter. ‘In the presence of a lady, to make such a...’

Words failed him. I was in no position to explain this unsought, involuntary response.

Arbuthnot, captain of the second eleven, now active in a movement for the suppression of licentious music hall performance, maintained this throttling business was more pleasurable if the self-strangulator dressed as a ballerina and sucked a boiled sweet dipped in absinthe.

I could not help but wish Arbuthnot were here now to test his theory, instead of me.

‘Jim, Jim, what are we to do?’ the woman said. ‘They know where we are. I told you they’d never give up. Not after Surprise Valley.’

Her voice, shrill and desperate, was sweet to me. I knew from the quality of Lassiter’s silence that his wife’s whining was no help to him.

I began to see the advantages of my situation.

I had been through the red rage and fear of peril and come to the cold calm clearing.

‘At present, Mr and Mrs Lassiter,’ I began in somewhat strangulated voice, giving them their true names, ‘you are pursued only by foreign cranks whose authority will never be recognised by British law. If your story were known, popular sympathy would be with you and the Danites further frustrated. Those I represent would make sure of that.’

‘Who do you represent, Algy?’

That was the question I’d never answer, not if he shot all the legs off the table and let me kick. Even if I died, Moriarty would use spiritualist mediums to lay hands on my ectoplasm and double my sufferings.

‘If I step off this table, your circumstances will change,’ I said. ‘You will be murderers, low and cowardly killers of a hero of the British Empire...’

Never hurts to mention the old war record.

‘Under whatever names you take, you will be hunted by Scotland Yard, the most formidable police force in the world...’

Well, formidable in the size of the seats of their blue serge trousers...

‘All hands will be against you.’

I shut up and let them stew.

‘He’s right, Jim. We can’t just kill him.’

‘He drew first,’ Lassiter said.

‘This isn’t Amber Springs.’

I imagined the climate was somewhat more congenial in Amber Springs, wherever that might be. The community’s relative lack of policemen, judges, lawyers, gaolers, court reporters and engravers for the
Police Gazette –
which in other circumstances would have given it the edge over Streatham in my book – was suddenly not a point in its favour.

Even with my ringing ears, I heard the
click.
Lassiter cocked his gun.

He walked around the table, so he could at least shoot me to my face. It was still dark, so I couldn’t get much of a look at him.

‘Jim,’
protested Jane-Helen.

There was a flash of fire. For an instant, Lassiter’s fiercely moustached face lit orange.

The table was out from under me, and the noose dragged at my Adam’s apple.

I expected the wave of pain to come in my chest.

Instead, I fell to the floor, with the chandelier, the rope-coil and quite a bit of plaster on top of me. I was choking, but not fatally. Which, under the circumstances, was all I could ask for.

A tutu and a sweetie would not have made me feel more alive.

Lassiter kicked me in the side, the low dog. Then the woman held him back.

That futile boot was encouraging. The fast gun was losing his rag.

Gaslight came up. Hands disentangled me from the brass fixtures and the noose, then brushed plaster out of my hair and off my face.

I looked up, blinking, at a very pink angel.

‘Wuvvwy mans,’ said the glassy-eyed girl, ‘Rache want to keep um.’

Though still tied – indeed, with my ankles bound as well – I was far more comfortable than I had been.

I was propped up on a divan in the parlour of The Laurels. Rache – the former Little Fay – was playing with my hair, chattering about her new pet. She must have been fifteen or sixteen, but acted like a six- or seven-year-old. I remembered to smile as she cooed in my ears. Children can
turn
suddenly, and I had an idea this child-minded girl could be as deadly as her foster father if prodded into a tantrum.

She introduced me to her doll, Missy Surprise. This was a long-legged, homemade, one-armed ragdoll with most of her yellow wool hair chewed off. She got her name because there was a hiding place in her tummy, where Rache kept her ‘pweciousnesses’ – cigar-tubes full of sweets.

The ‘Laurences’ were still undecided about what to do with me.

It’s all very well being a gunslinger, but skills that serve in the Wild West – or the jungle, come to that – need to be modified in Streatham. At least, that was the case if you were a fair-play fathead like Jim Lassiter.

These were truly good, put-upon people. That made them weak.

Rache kissed my ear, wetly.

‘Stop that, darling,’ said her mother.

Rache stuck out her lower lip and narrowed her brows.

‘Don’t be a silly, Rache.’

‘Rache
not
a silly,’ she said, knotting little fists. ‘Rache
smart,
’oo knows it.’

Jane-Helen melted, and pulled the girl away from me, hugging her.

‘Not so tighty-tight,’ protested Rache.

Lassiter sat across the room, gun in hand, glowering.

Earlier, he had been forced to tell a deputation of concerned neighbours that Rache had dropped a lot of crockery. No one could possibly mistake gunshots for smashing plates, but they’d retreated. Blaming the girl had put her in a sulk for a moment, and inclined her even more to take my part.

This blossoming idiot was heiress to a fabulous gold mine.

‘We could offer him money,’ Jane-Helen said, as if I weren’t in the room.

‘He won’t take money,’ Lassiter said, glumly and – I might add – without consulting me for an opinion.

‘You, sir, Algy...’ began the woman.

‘Arbuthnot,’ I said,
‘Colonel
Algernon Arbuthnot, Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers...’

A right rabble, that lot. All their war wounds were in the bum, from running away.

‘Hero of Maiwand and Kandahar...’

I’d have claimed Crécy and Waterloo if I thought they’d swallow it.

‘Victoria Cross.’

‘’Toria Ross,’ echoed Rache, delighted.

‘Colonel Arbuthnot, what is your connection with the Danite Band?’

‘Madam, I am a detective. Our agency has been on the tracks of these villains for some months, with regards to their many crimes...’

She looked, hopeful, at Lassiter. She wanted to believe the rot, but he knew better.

‘...when we were alerted to the presence in London of dangerous Danites, well off their usual patch as you’ll agree, we made a connection. Of course, we knew you were here under an alias. We had no reason to bother you, but the movements of incognito Americans – possessed of fabulous riches, but content to live in genteel anonymity – are noticed, you know. If we could find you, so could they. We’ve had men on you round the clock for two weeks...’

That was a mistake. Lassiter stopped listening. Anyone who could hear a cocking pistol through a window and across the road would have noticed if he were being marked.

‘...if I’m not at my post when my replacement arrives, the agency will know something is amiss.’

Jane-Helen looked hard at me. She hadn’t bought it either.

Still, in the short term, my story would be hard to
dis
prove. I had introduced a notion that would snag and grow. That I was to be
relieved,
that confederates would be arriving soon.

Lassiter’s sensitive ears would be twitching.

Every cat padding over a garden wall or tile falling off an ill-made roof would sound like evidence of a surrounding force to our rider of the purple sage.

‘Algy wants to see Rache ’utterflee dance now,’ announced the girl.

She fluttered dramatically about the room, trailing ribbons, inflating sleeves and lifting skirts. One of her stockings was bagged around her ankle.

‘’Utterflee ’utterfly, meee oh myyy,’ she sang.

Lassiter’s face was dark and heavy. I was quite pleased with myself.

I snuck a peek at the clock on the mantel and made sure I was noticed doing it.

‘’Utterfly ’utterflee, look at meee...’

Lassiter chewed his moustache. Jane-Helen seemed greyer. And I was almost starting to enjoy myself again.

Then the front window smashed in and something black and fizzing burst through the curtains.

I saw a burning fuse.

Lassiter got his boot on the fuse, killing the flame.

‘That’s not dynamite,’ I said, helpfully. ‘It’s a smoke charge. They want you to run out the front door. Into the line of fire.’

I didn’t mention that I’d thought of something similar.