The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus (26 page)

             
"That is not the same thing," she said severely, "as being without shame."

             
"I take it back," Barnett said. "It was an ignorant, boorish comment, and I withdraw it."

             
"Indeed!" she said. "As for what you call my increase in self-assurance, that, I suppose, is true. It comes of discovering that I can do the job and that I can do it quite adequately."

             
"Quite excellently," Barnett amended. "But you told me that when I hired you."

             
"Yes," she said, "but I had never actually done it. Thinking you can do something, even to the point of moral certainty, is not the same as proving you can do it."

             
"Well, you've proven it," Barnett said. "You're a born writer and editor. You have an innate word sense, and you write good clean prose."

             
"Tell me something, Mr. Barnett," Miss Perrine said, "and tell me true. You don't have the phrase 'for a woman' left unsaid at the end of any of those sentences, do you? You're not saying I write well for a woman, or I have good word sense for a woman?"

             
"Cecily," Barnett said, "a piece of paper with typewritten words on it is entirely without gender. When we cable a story to one of our client newspapers, I don't append a statement, 'done in a feminine hand.' You are a good writer."

             
"Thank you," she said. "And thank you for calling me 'Cecily.' "

             
"Well," he said. "It just slipped out. I was afraid you'd think it forward of me."

             
"I do," she said.

             
The waiter brought their lunch, and Barnett busied himself with his salmon mousseline for a few minutes before looking up. "Say," he said, "there was something I meant to tell you. We have a new writer."

             
"Who?"

             
"Fellow named Wilde. Someone at the
Pall Mall Gazette
introduced him to me, and I talked him into doing a series of articles on understanding Britain for the Americans. Actually, I suppose, he'll write about whatever he chooses. These article writers always do. He's very good. We should have no trouble selling the series."

             
She put down her fork. "Oscar Wilde?" she asked.

             
"That's right."

             
"He's brilliant," she said. "But he tends to be very eccentric and he seems to love to shock. We'll have to watch his copy."

             
"I leave that to your immense good judgment," he said. "He's not doing it under his own name; maybe that will calm him down."

             
"What byline is he using?"

             
"Josephus."

             
"Why does he choose to disguise his name?"

             
"I asked him that," Barnett said. "And he told me—let me get it straight now—he said: 'Writing for Americans is like performing as the rear end of a music-hall horse—one does it only for the money and one would prefer to remain anonymous.'"

             
"That sounds like him," she said.

             
"He said it loud and clear and without pause when I asked him," Barnett said. "He's either a natural genius at the epigram, or he spends large amounts of time in front of a mirror at home, rehearsing."

             
They finished lunch and walked back to the office, chatting amiably about this and that. As they reached the entrance to the building, Cecily clutched his arm. "There's a gentleman to my left," she said without looking around. "Can you see him? Don't make a point of it; don't let him see you looking."

             
Barnett examined the fellow lounging by the door out of the corner of his eye. "I wouldn't exactly call him a gentleman," he whispered back, noting the man's ragged slop-chest apparel and the unkempt beard that fringed his chin from ear to ear. "He looks like an unemployed bargee."

             
"I don't know his profession," Cecily said, "but he was hanging about here all day yesterday. And I'm not sure, but I think he followed me home."

             
"Oh, he did, did he?" Barnett said slowly.

             
"Now, be careful!" Cecily exclaimed, as he stalked past her toward the sinister-looking man.

             
"Here, you!" Barnett said, a harsh note in his voice. He grabbed the man by his filthy collar and pulled him upright out of his slouching posture. "What do you mean, hanging around here? Do you want me to have the law on you?"

             
"I didn't mean no 'arm, Guv'nor," the man said, holding his crumpled hand up in front of his face as if to ward off a blow. "S'welp me I didn't. Lummy! What you want to go about pickin' on the likes of me for?" He cringed and contrived to hide even more of his filthy face behind a protecting arm.

             
"Say!" Cecily Perrine said, taking a step toward them, her face showing puzzlement. "Where are you from, fellow?"

             
"What's 'at, miss?"

             
"Where were you raised?"

             
"Whitechapel, miss. Off Commercial Road, you know, miss.
"

             
"
No, you weren't!" she said positively. " 'Ow's 'at, miss?"

             
"Your accent is wrong," she said flatly. "It's close, but it's wrong."

             
Barnett looked from one to the other. "What's that?" he said.

             
"He is affecting that speech," Cecily said positively. "Doing it quite well, too. But he isn't from anywhere near Whitechapel. I'd say he was brought up in the North. Yorkshire, perhaps. He has spent some time in France, and was schooled at Cambridge."

             
Barnett released his hold on the man, who sank back down on the steps. "You're joking," Barnett said.

             
"Not at all," she assured him. "Whoever this gentleman is, he is not what he seems."

             
"Well?" Barnett said, glaring down at the man.

             
The man shook his head, a disgusted look on his face, and stood up. Without slouching over, he proved to be half a head taller than Barnett. "I should like to congratulate you, young woman," he said dryly, in quite a different accent than the one he had been assuming. "That is a remarkable talent you have."

             
Barnett started. "I know that voice!" he said.

             
"Indeed?" the man said.

             
"Yes. You're that detective—Sherlock Holmes.
"

             
"
Indeed."

             
"What are you doing skulking about here, following this young lady home?"

             
Sherlock Holmes stretched and turned his head gingerly from side to side. "Accomplishing little beyond getting a stiff neck, it would seem," he said.

             
"That's not good enough, sir!" Barnett said. "Explain yourself!"

             
Holmes regarded Barnett steadily. "Surely it should not surprise you," he said, "that I am interested in the comings and goings of the minions of Professor James Moriarty. I must admit
that I usually do not take quite so close an interest, but this American News Service has me intrigued. What nefarious function it serves in Moriarty's schemes, I confess I cannot fathom. At the moment. But, as you may discover, I am quite persistent."

             
"And
I
dislike being spied on," Barnett said. "This really must cease. And you must not annoy Miss Perrine anymore, or I'll report you to the police."

             
Holmes chuckled. "And you'd be well within your rights to do so," he admitted: "An interesting turnabout. But I am really quite determined to discover the function of this American News Service. At first I thought of coded messages
..."

             
Cecily gasped. "You're the one!" she said.

             
Barnett turned to her. "What now?"

             
"The manager of the District Telegraph office spoke to me the other day—Tuesday, I believe—when I brought in the day's traffic. He wished to know whether we were having any more trouble with garbled transmissions. I asked him what he was referring to. He said that a gentleman had come in the evening before, saying that he was from our office, and requested copies of everything that had been handed in that day. He had given the excuse that an American client had complained of garbled messages, and he wanted to check whether the fault lay with the typist in our office or the telegraph. I asked him if it was Mr. Barnett, and he said no, another gentleman. I meant to tell you about it. I thought perhaps it was someone from Reuters checking up on their new competition."

             
Barnett turned to Holmes. He felt quite calm, but a vein in his neck was throbbing. "I believe that's illegal," he said. "For someone so keen on preventing crime, you seem to indulge in a fair amount of it yourself."

             
Holmes smiled.
"Touch
é
,
" he said. "Professor Moriarty picks his henchmen well."

             
"Just who is this Professor Moriarty?" Cecily demanded.

             
"An eminent scientist," Barnett told her, his voice hard. "A mathematician and astronomer. I am proud to have him as a friend."

             
"Professor James Clovis Moriarty," Holmes said, his words coming out precise and clipped, "is a scoundrel, a rogue, and a villain. He is also a genius."

             
Cecily Perrine crossed her arms and her right foot tapped impatiently on the step. "He must be quite a man indeed," she said, "if he causes you to dress like a tramp and follow innocent working girls all over London."

             
"I take my hat off to you, young lady," Holmes said, doffing the filthy cap he was wearing. "And I give you my word never to cause you the slightest annoyance again. If you don't mind my asking, how did you catch me up on my dialect? What did I do wrong?"

             
"You did nothing wrong," she said. "It was quite good. But you see, my father is Professor Henry Perrine, the world-famous phoneticist, the developer of the Perrine Simplified Phonetical Alphabet. He began to teach it to me when I was three. When I was seven I started going around to different neighborhoods and copying down what people said. Father used me in his lectures to prove the accuracy of his system. By the time I was ten I could tell to within two blocks where anyone in London grew up."

             
"What a useful skill!" Holmes cried. "Would it take me long to learn?"

             
"It takes no more than a week or two to master the Perrine Alphabet," Cecily said. "After that, it is but a matter of practice. Your ear quickly becomes aware of the different dialectal sounds after you have been taught the technique of how to transcribe them."