The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus (24 page)

             
"And the burglar alarms?"

             
"He has a key."

             
"Of course. He would have."

             
Barnett shrugged. "So a first-class mystery becomes an ordinary series of misunderstandings. Luckily, the truth came out before the story was published."

             
"The truth," Moriarty said, "has yet to come out."

             
"What do you mean?"

             
"Life does not normally attain the qualities of a bad Restoration comedy. When you look at it from the far side of the mirror—that is, as a past event, the implausibility is less evident. But examine the story point by point, as it is supposed to have happened, and see what evolves. The Duke of Ipswich decides to visit his sick wife, who has chosen to be ill at her mother's house. On his way out he sees his daughter, who happens to be hiding from everyone else in the house, and invites her along. They leave, without seeing anyone else, whether friend, guest, or servant. Which has the duke opening and closing his own doors and turning off and resetting his own alarms. Did the duke give any reason for this extraordinary behavior?"

             
"No," Barnett said. "Not that I know of. Is it really that extraordinary?"

             
"For a duke to open his own front door? I should think so. That's the sort of
naiveté
that occurs in children's fairy tales. There's a knock on the castle door, and the king goes to answer it. Dukes do not open their own front doors. And if any servant had let them out, he would have mentioned it when the search for Lady Catherine began."

             
"So you conclude?"

             
"That the girl is, indeed, missing. That the Duke was notified of her absence, probably by the abductors, and was rushing back to Baddeley Hall to see if it was true. That he immediately denied her absence because he had been warned by the abductors to do so."

             
"Isn't that a slender thread upon which to hang such a weighty conclusion?" Barnett asked.

             
"It will bear the weight," Moriarty said. "I'll go further: there's at least a sporting chance that this is Trepoff's opening gambit."

             
"Why do you say that? What signs of Trepoff do you see?"

             
"None," Moriarty admitted. "But yet I see nothing to indicate that it isn't Trepoff. And my nose detects the slight odor of the bizarre that makes this one of the few events you've brought to my attention that might involve Trepoff, and therefore it warrants further investigation."

             
"Do you want me to get one of my free-lance men out there?"

             
"He would see nothing," Moriarty said. "And if you will forgive the remark, you would not see much more. Therefore, we must go together." He reached for the bell-pull on the wall behind him.

             
"You mean now?" Barnett asked. "By the time we get there it will be after ten."

             
"If I'm correct," Moriarty said, "and if the duke's daughter has indeed been abducted, then I assure you he will be awake."

             
Mr. Maws appeared at the door, and Moriarty told him to go out and procure a four-wheeler. "See if Clarence or Dermot are at their stand," he suggested. "After our recent experience, I am partial to the jarvey I know. At any rate, have one back here in five minutes if you can. We'll be ready to leave then."

             
"Very good, Professor," Mr. Maws said.

-

             
As the four-wheeler, with Clarence atop, proceeded toward Kensington, Moriarty sat stooped like a great hawk, his prominent chin resting on his folded hands above the ivory handle of his stick, his eyes narrowed in thought. Barnett, across from him, kept silent out of respect for the professor's thought processes and amused himself by trying to decide what was occupying Moriarty's mind as they sped across London. Was it thoughts of the unfortunate duke and his missing daughter? Speculations as to the current state of the mysterious Trepoff's plans against Britain in general and Moriarty in particular? Satisfied musing about the current whereabouts of the goods that until recently had occupied the vaults of the London
&
Midlands Bank? Reflections, perhaps, on his latest monograph, bound copies of which had just been delivered from the printers, entitled,
Some Considerations on the Spectral Composition
of
Certain Interstellar Nebulosities
?

             
Professor Moriarty, Barnett thought, was certainly the most complex and contradictory man he had ever known. On the surface, the tall, thin, stoop-shouldered, introspective professor appeared no more interesting and no more sophisticated than any provincial schoolteacher who might combine a proficiency in mathematics with a better than average understanding of people. Yet Moriarty combined a true brilliance in mathematics, and indeed in all the physical sciences, with an unsurpassed intuitive insight into people. From a superficial examination of the man who sat opposite him in a railroad carriage, Moriarty could state the man's profession, marital status, interests, and possibly even add a few intimate details of his private life. When pressed to explain his methods, Moriarty drew an inductive path leading from his observations to his conclusions
that made you feel foolish for not having seen it yourself. And he was usually, if not invariably, correct.

             
And yet this understanding of the actions and motives of other people did not seem to extend to any sort of empathy with or sympathy for his fellow human beings. Moriarty respected facts and admired the analytical and deductive facilities of the human animal. He had small use for any human emotion and no use at all for those people who, in his view, refused to use their brains.

             
He considered himself bound by no laws, yet would never break his oath or go back on his word. And for all that he professed a distaste for his fellow human beings, nothing could bring him more quickly to anger or provoke more of his biting scorn than an account of one person callously mistreating another.

             
Moriarty affixed his pince-nez to the bridge of his nose and turned his gaze to Barnett. "You have been staring at me for the past ten minutes," he said. "Have I suddenly developed a keratosis?"

             
"No," Barnett said. "No, sir. I apologize. But, to tell you the truth, I was thinking about you. About your attitudes."

             
"My attitudes?"

             
"Yes. Toward people."

             
"You refer, I assume," Moriarty said calmly, "to my characteristic revulsion toward my fellow man."

             
"I wouldn't have put it that strongly," Barnett said.

             
Moriarty snorted. "My fellow man is a fool," he said, "incapable of acting twice consecutively in his own interest, for the very good reason that he has only the sketchiest idea of what his interest is, or where it lies. He allows his emotions to override his puny intellect and blindly follows whichever of his fellows brays the loudest in his direction. He firmly believes in the existence of an almighty God, whom he pictures, somehow, as looking a lot like himself, and further believes that it matters to this Creator of the Universe whether He is prayed to in a kneeling or sitting position. He rejects Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin in favor of Bishop Ussher and the Davenport Brothers. He supposes that a planet a hundred times as massive as the earth, and a thousand million miles distant, was placed there solely to predict the outcome of his business affairs or his romantic dalliances. He believes in ghosts, poltergeists, mesmerism, spiritualism, clairvoyance, astrology, numerology, and a hundred other foolishnesses, but isn't sure about evolution or the germ theory of disease."

             
"Come, Professor," Barnett said, "is not that a bit broad? Surely there are exceptions."

             
"Indeed," Professor Moriarty said, nodding. "And it is the exceptions who make life interesting." He took a large handkerchief from his jacket pocket and, removing the pince-nez from his nose, polished the glasses carefully. "I am not a complete misanthrope, Mr. Barnett," he said, "and you must not imagine that I am. Indeed, it must be that on some unconscious level of my brain I am quite concerned about this hypothetical fellow man, or I wouldn't get so angry over his foibles."

             
"I thought, perhaps, it was just annoyance at recalling that you, yourself, are one of the creatures," Barnett said.

             
Moriarty considered this for a minute. "So I am," he said finally. "I had quite forgotten."

-

             
The four-wheeler turned left off Holland Park Avenue, and Moriarty pulled out his pocket-watch. "We're almost there," he said. "Strike a match, will you?"

             
Barnett obliged from the small packet of waterproofs he carried to light his occasional cigars.

             
"Ah!" Moriarty said. "It is still a quarter till the hour of ten. A bit late for calling, but I have no doubt that His Grace will see us."

             
A few minutes later they had turned past the ancient gateposts and were heading up the drive toward Baddeley Hall. As recently as fifty years before, this great three-story Tudor mansion had been the main house to the great estate of Baddeley, surrounded by hundreds of acres of well-managed land. But now Greater London had grown past Baddeley, and most of the managing was done by estate agents who collected the quarterly rents on street after street of semidetached cottages. It had ruined the duke's shooting—but had enormously increased his income.

             
Moriarty looked out of the carriage window and chuckled with satisfaction as they pulled around to the great oak doors that were Baddeley Hall's main entrance. "I was right," he said. "The trip was not in vain."

             
"What do you mean?" Barnett asked.

             
"See for yourself," Moriarty said. "Every lamp in the house must be lighted."

             
"A party?" Barnett suggested, feeling contrary.

             
"Nonsense!" Moriarty replied. "Where are the rows of waiting carriages? No, there are but two vehicles waiting in the drive: a closed landau bearing a crest I cannot make out from here and a hansom. Family friends and advisors, no doubt, come to aid the duke in his time of travail. Their drivers, I see, are warming themselves within the mansion while waiting for their passengers. However, I'm afraid that poor Clarence will have to wait out in the cold."

             
Clarence pulled up to the front steps and they dismounted. "I don't know how long we'll be," Moriarty told Clarence. "I think it wiser if you stay with your vehicle. I don't expect any trouble here now, but there's no point in taking unnecessary risks."

             
"That's quite all right, Professor," Clarence replied cheerily, taking off his bowler and scratching his bald head. "It ain't all that cold and it ain't raining. I have a flask of tea here, and there's enough light from these here gas fixtures to read the 'Pink 'un' by, so I'm content." He waved his hat at the horse. "Maud here gets nervous when I leave her alone at night, anyway."

             
"Very good, then," Moriarty said. He and Barnett mounted the steps together, and Barnett pulled the lion's-head bellpull by the door. Moriarty took out one of his calling cards and wrote "Ivan Zorta" in ink on the back.

             
The door opened, and a tall man in the Ipswich livery stared out impassively at them. "Yes?"