The Empress of India (6 page)

“My dear young man,” Dr. Pin said, “if I did not myself think it was, as you say, doable, then I myself would not be in. The wise man does not flee from shadows.”

McAdams crossed his arms at shoulder height, his elbows jutting forward like ram’s horns, and glared at Pin. “Let’s hear it, then,” he said.

Pin Dok Low talked slowly and continuously for the next half hour, and his companions listened, and their interest did not wane. When he finished there was much shuffling of feet and rapping of knuckles on the table as they considered what he had told them.

“So the swag’s to be divvied up even?” Cooley the Pup demanded.

“As I said,” Dr. Pin told him. “After we’ve disposed of the gold itself, which will take several months at least, the profits will be divided up five ways, one part to each of us. You, in turn, are responsible for all expenses, including paying your own men.”

“There’s the flaw,” the Artful Codger observed. “With this kind of money, someone’s going to start buying up the entire East End, and the busies are going to catch wise. And if they get one of us, the others’ll soon tumble into the net. A million pounds don’t do you no good in Dartmoor.”

“That is a problem,” Pin admitted. “One possible solution would be to withhold the profits for an extended length of time after the robbery. But which of us is prepared to do without, knowing that a vast sum of money awaits him? And which of us will the others trust to hold the loot?”

“I’ll take care of my own share, thank you very much,” McAdams growled.

“There, you see? No, each of you will receive your share as soon as it is available, as soon as the gold is turned into coin of the realm or something else immediately negotiable. After that you are each responsible for seeing that you keep away from the long arm of the authorities. And, if you are wise, you will insulate yourself from the failure of others.”

“I notice you have not given us the date the bloody boat’s coming in, or the location of the wharf at which the thing’s tying up,” the Twopenny Yob commented.

“Nor even the name of the craft,” the Artful Codger added.

“Of course not,” Dr. Pin said. “Not until I know you’re all in. Even then, not until the last minute. The best way to assure that we trust each other is to give as few opportunities as possible for deceit.”

“Yeah, there’s something to that,” Cooley the Pup agreed, looking around at his companions. “There’s something to that. There’s a couple of gents in this ’ere very room that I wouldn’t trust with the time o’ day. Mentioning no names, o’ course. And I ain’t looking at anyone in particular.”

“When you get home, look in the mirror,” the Artful Codger suggested, “if it’s clean enough to make out your own face.”

“None of that, now,” McAdams barked. “We’re all friends and companions in here, and we’re going to stay that way if I have to break a few bones to see to it.”

“No fisticuffs, please,” the Twopenny Yob said, drawing the sleeves of his immaculately tailored jacket down over his shirt cuffs just the right amount. “It’s rude!”

The Codger looked at him and snorted. “So you say,” he said. “But that sword cane you’re carrying makes a pretty rude slice in a fellow. And that palm pistol you’re wearing under your left arm makes a pretty rude hole.”

“Indeed,” the Twopenny Yob agreed, unabashed. “I don’t believe in fighting, you see. I believe in winning, and as quickly as possible.”

McAdams looked over at Pin Dok Low. “You want me to take that stuff away from him? I can do it easy, with nobody getting hurt except maybe his tender feelings.”

“If the gentleman feels safer with his impedimenta,” Pin said, “let him keep them. I assure you he will not use them in this room.”

The Twopenny Yob looked around nervously at the implied threat, examining the walls for what, or who, might be hidden behind them watching his every move. “I have no animosity toward anyone here,” he said. “The weapons are for self-defense only. And as we’re all friends here—”

“Just so,” Dr. Pin agreed.

“There’s going to be an awful shake-out among the criminal classes if this ’ere scheme of yours comes off,” the Artful Codger commented. “The rozzers will be laying their heavy hands on everyone what ever copped a apple from a pushcart, or mistook someone else’s house for his own, and that’s the truth!”

“They’ll call in Sherlock Holmes,” Cooley the Pup agreed mournfully.
“They’re bound to. A job this big. The Old Lady ’erself will put him on the case. And he can see things what others can’t.”

Dr. Pin looked from one to the other of his colleagues, and the smile on his face grew larger and more inscrutable. “Of one thing I can assure you,” he told them, “Mr. Holmes won’t be bothering us.”

“ ’Ow can you be so sure of that?” Cooley asked.

“Mr. Holmes has disappeared,” Pin explained. “And he isn’t going to reappear anytime soon.”

“And just how do you know that?” McAdams growled. “Did you disappear him yourself, by any chance?”

“Not I,” Pin said. “Indeed, I cannot say just how I know that Mr. Holmes will remain, ah, unavailable. But I feel sure that this is so. Besides, even were he to reappear, his attention and the attention of Scotland Yard will be drawn in an altogether different direction.”

“How’s that?” the Artful Codger asked.

“A small but necessary part of my modest contribution to this endeavor,” Dr. Pin told them. “In addition to obtaining the necessary information, devising the plan, and picking each of you as my, shall we say, staff—”

“Shall we say get on with it?” the Artful Codger snapped. “We all know how clever you are, don’t put your arm out of joint patting yourself on the back.”

Pin Dok Low glared at the Codger for a second before closing his eyes and doing a baritsu exercise which tensed and relaxed the muscles from his toes up through his body to his eyebrows, and removed all stress, making him once more at one with the universe. “The true master would not allow himself to get annoyed at such trivialities,” he said, sighing softly and opening his eyes. “However, there is no true master within three thousand miles of this place.”

“Well, as you’re the one we’re speaking to, master or no master, just what sort of plan do you have for taking the heat off us and getting the
busies from Scotland Yard to, as you say, look in another direction?” the Codger demanded.

“I’m going to, as you might say, Codger, throw in a ringer. I’m going to give the police someone else to suspect, along with adequate signs that he is, indeed, the guilty party.”

“And just why might they think that this gent done the deed instead of looking our way?” McAdams asked.

“Because they are already primed to believe the worst of this gentleman.”

“The worst?”

“Yes. Sherlock Holmes has been blaming him for every major crime that happens anywhere in London—in all of Europe, for that matter—for the past decade. The police will naturally think of him. I will merely reinforce that thought.”

“Professor Moriarty!” Cooley the Pup gasped.

“Just so. Professor James Moriarty. The perfect scapegoat.”

“I don’t know, Pin,” the Twopenny Yob said, shaking his head. “It ain’t smart to get on the wrong side of the professor.”

Pin leaned back in his chair. “That is why I dislike revealing my plans in advance,” he said. “Someone such as yourself always responds to the outline before hearing the details. I have thought this out carefully, and we have nothing to fear from Professor Moriarty.”

“And just why is that?” McAdams asked.

“Because he won’t know he’s being attacked. He’ll believe that it’s merely another case of the police hounding off in the wrong direction because they see evil in everything he does, even if they’ve never been able to prove it.”

“The way I hear it,” the Codger said, “it’s Holmes that sees the professor behind every bush, and he’s never been able to convince the police.”

“Yes, but now Holmes has disappeared. They’re sure to suspect Moriarty of that. And when a major robbery happens shortly after . . .”

“You have a point,” the Codger conceded.

“Of course. By the time the professor figures out that he’s being set up, he’ll be in it too deep to get out. And he won’t know from what direction the frame is coming.”

“I don’t know,” Cooley the Pup said. “The professor’s been a big help to a lot of us over the years.”

“A million pounds each,” Pin Dok Low reminded them.

“I’m in,” Angelic Tim McAdams declared.

“I suppose the professor can take care of himself,” the Artful Codger decided.

Pin Dok Low turned his gaze toward the other two, and after a few seconds received a nod from one and a shrug from the other. “Sensible,” he said. “Very sensible.”

Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retir’d;
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desir’d,
And not blush so to be admir’d.
—Edmund Waller

I
t was late afternoon on Wednesday, the nineteenth of February, when the stocky man with the sharp blue eyes presented himself at the door to 64 Russell Square. He handed his card to Mr. Maws.

“Tell the professor his old pal is back,” he said. Mr. Maws put him in the parlor and left Mummer, Moriarty’s midget-of-all-work, to watch the stranger through the spy hole in the butler’s pantry while he went downstairs to the basement laboratory, where the professor had been working since late the night before.

Moriarty, with his jacket off, his sleeves rolled up, and a laboratory apron covering his vest and trousers, was leaning over his workbench, a test tube in his hand. The area before him was clustered with bottles, retorts, flasks, metal stands, glass tubing, and a stack of reference books. Old Potts, the professor’s laboratory assistant, was napping on a cot in the far corner of the room.

“One moment,” Moriarty said, slowly passing the test tube back and forth through the flame of a Bunsen burner. “If this turns red, the Mummer is going to have to make a hasty trip to Bilstone in Leicestershire. Whereas—ah!—look; a fine royal—or at least noble—blue. It is as I hoped.” He set the test tube on the rack and turned to his butler. “The trip is unnecessary, a life is secure—at least from one of the more obscure alkaloid poisons. Although how it got into the pudding is still a question. Now . . . ?”

“A gentleman to see you,” Mr. Maws told him.

“What sort of gentleman?” Moriarty asked, hanging up his apron and carefully washing and drying his hands at the work sink.

Mr. Maws considered. “Something over forty years of age, I should say. Says he’s your ‘old pal,’ but his face is a new one to me.”

He handed Moriarty the man’s card.

Moriarty adjusted his pince-nez and peered down at the card. “Colonel Moran,” he said, flicking the pasteboard with his thumb. “I do know the gentleman.” He put his jacket on and adjusted the large knot on his red cravat. “Let’s go see what he wants.”

_______

Colonel Moran sat patiently in the red leather chair for the ten minutes he was kept waiting, hands folded in his lap, back straight and not quite touching the back of the chair. Occasionally he would twist one side or the other of his full mustache or pat the top of his head, where the carefully groomed hair beyond his receding hairline, parted precisely in the middle with a part as fine as the edge of a razor, was just a bit too black to be natural.

As Professor Moriarty entered the parlor, Moran jumped to his feet and thrust forward a tanned, muscular block of a right hand. “Good to see you again, Professor. It’s been a while, but you haven’t changed a bit. But then you never do—you never do.”

Moriarty took the hand and shook it gingerly. “Four years, or just a bit over, I fancy. I perceive that you’re quite recently back from Afghanistan, if I’m not mistaken.”

“You’re not mistaken, Professor,” Moran assured him. “But then you’re seldom mistaken, as I remember. Has someone told you of my return?”

“I was unaware of it until this moment. But the deduction was not a difficult one. The fact that you are living at your club proclaims that you haven’t been back in England long enough to settle into a flat; your tan suggests a hot climate, and a lot of time in the field. The current campaign in Afghanistan fits those requirements well, I believe.”

“Quite so,” Colonel Moran agreed. “You make these little tricks of ratiocination of yours seem simple.”

“Tricks? Come now, Colonel Moran, you must realize that the more you exercise your brain, the more you can expect from it.”

Moran smiled. “Exercise, whether mental or physical, seems to benefit some people more than others, or so I’ve noticed.”

Moriarty reached behind him and pulled the bellpull. “I’m going to have a cup of coffee,” he said. “Please join me. Coffee or tea, or something stronger if you like.”