The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus (43 page)

             
The cutter slid smoothly up on the beach in a screaming, billowing cloud of steam that pierced the ear and obscured all vision for fifty yards in every direction. As soon as the cutter jammed to a halt, Moriarty and Holmes leaped off and raced over the stony beach, with Watson close behind them.

             
Once clear of the billowing steam, they paused to look around. Holmes grabbed Moriarty's arm and pointed. "Look!"

             
In the clearing ahead of them the two hydrogen balloons had been winched down and had their gondolas resting on the ground. The three men from the submersible had commandeered the near balloon, and were keeping its crew away with large wicked-looking revolvers. Two of the villains had boarded the gondola, and the third was hacking it free of the heavy rope tether with an axe. Miro and his assistants were standing with their hands high over their heads, looking startled and frightened out of their wits.

             
Holmes and Moriarty raced toward the clearing, but before they arrived the balloon was free. The axe man dropped his axe and clambered aboard, pulled up by the other two, as the great balloon bounded upward, lofting into an English heaven.

             
"Here! Over here!" someone called as Moriarty and Holmes reached the clearing. "Quickly!" It was Barnett, who raised his head from where he had been hiding—in the gondola of the second balloon—and beckoned to them. "I've almost got it free," he called. "Come on. Climb in and we'll go after them."

             
Moriarty and Holmes raced across the field to the second gondola and climbed in. Watson puffed up to them a couple of seconds later.

             
"Don't get in, Doctor," Barnett said sharply. "If we're too heavy—or too light—we won't be able to match velocities with them."

             
"Notify the Navy, Watson," Holmes said. "We'll be heading out to sea. Get a ship to follow us if you can."

-

             
And with that, they were free. "I'll do my best, Holmes," Watson yelled up at them as they pulled away from the field.

             
"How'd you do that?" Moriarty asked Barnett. "They had to hack that other balloon loose."

             
"There's a release for the tether in the bottom of the gondola," Barnett said. "In case the balloon begins to drag on something, I suppose. Nobody told Trepoff. I assume that was Trepoff?"

             
"I certainly hope so," Holmes said.

             
"You've done very good work," Moriarty told Barnett.

             
The balloon was already more than a hundred feet above the ground and rising rapidly. Their quarry was a hundred yards ahead of them and several hundred feet higher. "They seem to be pulling away from us," Holmes noted.

             
"There is a steady wind of about twenty knots at roughly the five-hundred-foot level," Barnett said. "They must be in it already. When we reach it, we'll keep up with them."

             
"Keeping up isn't enough," Holmes said, fingering his revolver. "We must catch them."

             
They were heading generally southwest across the bay. Below them the white sails of the regatta yachts were circling the
Victoria and Albert.
Ahead of them, the town of Gosport, a mile or so of land, and then the Solent and the Isle of Wight. "They'll have the steam cutters out to support us," Moriarty said. "If we can force Trepoff down in the Solent, he'll be picked up by the Navy."

             
"Perhaps we can shoot him down," Holmes suggested, still clutching his silver-plated revolver.

             
"Too far for pistol shooting," Moriarty said. "Besides, a pistol bullet passing through the fabric of the balloon would merely cause a minor gas leak which would have no discernible effect on the performance of the aerostat."

             
"We must do something!" Holmes declared.

             
They passed over Gosport and the mile-wide strip of land, steadily gaining altitude. Trepoff's balloon was now several hundred yards ahead of them and holding that distance. They were over water now, and the ships below looked like precise toys, built for some hobbyist's bathtub lake.

             
A spark appeared in the gondola of the forward aerostat, which grew into a rapidly approaching arc of flame reaching out for them. It burst into a myriad of sparkling colors somewhere over their balloon. Then a second spark shot toward them, to dissolve into a cascading ribbon of red flame directly before their eyes.

             
"Trepoff has found the fireworks!" Barnett cried. "They were being loaded when he and his men appeared."

             
"Dear me," Holmes said. "This is liable to prove embarrassing."

             
"I don't suppose we have any similar cargo?" Moriarty asked, looking around the surprisingly spacious interior of the wicker gondola.

             
Barnett pointed to three wooden crates on the floor. "There," he said. "I would like to point out, however, that they are very dangerous. Miro gave me a long lecture about the folly of firing off rockets from the basket of a hydrogen balloon. He was not happy about the signal flares, and they're only half the size of these skyrockets."

             
"We must be careful," Moriarty agreed. "Let us get these crates open."

             
As he spoke a rocket burst over their balloon and released four brightly burning blue flares, which descended on silk parachutes, slowly passing in front of them. One of them hit the side of the balloon, sliding along the fabric for a few moments before bouncing off.

             
Holmes released his breath. "I have never," he said, "felt quite so helpless. Well, Professor, Barnett—dangerous as it may be, I vote for an answering fireworks barrage from this gondola."

             
They ripped the crates open. A new assault of colored balls popped toward them from the other aerostat, twisting and glowing madly, falling only a few feet short.

             
The first crate contained three boxes marked
"GERBES,"
and the illustrations on the box covers showed colored balls popping from a tube. "I think we've just seen those," Holmes said. "Next crate."

             
The second crate held finned skyrockets, packed in firing tubes. "This, I think, is what we are looking for," Moriarty said. "How many are there?"

             
"Fourteen," Barnett said.

             
"Not so deep as a well," Moriarty said, "or so wide as a church door, but that should suffice." Three points of red suddenly appeared in the sky above them and burst into a shower of sparks which cascaded over the balloon and fell on all sides of them. "Indeed," he added, "it had better suffice."

             
He took one of the skyrocket tubes in his hand and examined it. "How ingenious," he said. "The fins are on tiny springs which push them open after they pass through the tube."

             
"Perhaps," Holmes suggested, "it would be wiser to examine the contraptions later. For now let us concentrate on shooting down that balloon before its passengers succeed in doing the same for us."

             
"Take your jacket off," Moriarty told Barnett. "Be prepared to extinguish fires started by flame-back from the skyrockets."

             
"There's a damp horse-blanket here," Barnett said, producing it from a wicker basket built into the side of the gondola. "Miro had it soaked for the same purpose. I'll use it."

             
"Excellent," Moriarty said.

             
Holmes propped one of the skyrocket tubes against the side of the gondola and sighted along the top. "This should put it in the general vicinity," he said. "Here, I'll stand aside and you light the fuse." He stood to one side, holding the skyrocket tube firmly at arm's length, propped against the side of the gondola.

             
Moriarty ripped a length of fuse from one of the gerbes and lit one end with a waterproof
vespa
, which he carefully waved out and tossed over the side. "Ready?"

             
"Ready," Holmes agreed.

             
Moriarty applied the burning fuse to the short fuse of the skyrocket, which sputtered and smoldered and disappeared into the tube. Eight seconds later a blast of flame came out of the rear of the tube, and the skyrocket shot out the front. It arced across the sky, over Trepoff's balloon, and released a series of colored balls before exploding in a shower of red and green sparks.

             
An answering salvo from Trepoff put a rocket between the gondola and the balloon, but it passed harmlessly through the shrouds before disintegrating into a crowd of flame-snakes that spiraled to the sea below.

             
Holmes corrected his aim and Moriarty touched off the next skyrocket. This one fell short and exploded in a puffball of blue light that was quickly extinguished by the sea.

             
Suddenly a spark appeared in Trepoff's gondola, and a flame curved upward. And then, in a moment that etched itself in the minds of all the onlookers for miles up and down the Solent, a tracery of flame worked over the fabric of Trepoff's balloon, creating fiery designs in the rounded sides. Then it burned off, and for a second seemed to have gone out, when all at once the balloon erupted and a plume of flame spurted out the side and enveloped the whole craft.

             
Barnett saw a white, frightened face at the side of the gondola before the craft fell from the sky, a fiery comet tail streaming out behind it.

             
"Miro was right," Moriarty said calmly, as the flaming mass struck the water far below. "This is a dangerous business."

             
"I only hope they find the bodies," Holmes said, "or we shall never know if that was Trepoff."

             
Moriarty shook his head. "Only the future will tell us whether Trepoff was in that aerostat," he said. "Remember, we have no idea of what he looks like. Barnett, can you get us down?"

             
Barnett reached up and untied a rope that valved hydrogen out of the top of the gasbag. "It will be a slow descent," he said.

             
"Good," Moriarty remarked. "I have just seen a fast descent."

             
By the time their aerostat reached the water, a cutter was standing by to pick them up. The lieutenant in command saluted them as they came aboard. "Good evening, gentlemen," he said. "I have orders to take you to the
Victoria and Albert.
Her Majesty would like to have you presented. At your convenience, of course."

On earth there is nothing great but man; In man there is nothing great but mind.

— Sir William Hamilton

             
You are going out?" Moriarty asked.

             
"I am having dinner with Miss Perrine," Barnett told him.

             
"Ah, of course," Moriarty said. "
'Jedem nach seinen Bed
ü
rfnissen,'
as that strange little fellow at the British Museum put it.