The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus (83 page)

             
"I say, Barnett," said Harry Inglestone, a
Morning Chronicle
staff reporter who had just come straight down from London, pausing at their table, "Caterby-Cahors is rather perturbed at your young lady."

             
Barnett stifled the remarks that sprang to his lips at milestone's innocent use of the phrase "your young lady." A forced smile creased his face. "What is your editor concerned about?" he asked. "If you are referring to Miss Perrine, formerly of the American News Service staff, she is one of the most competent reporters I have ever known, aside from possessing sufficient organizational skills to run an office single-handedly."

             
"Which is what makes it so puzzling," Inglestone commented, sitting himself down at their table and happily accepting Moriarty's offer of a glass of something. "A nice after-dinner claret," he told the waiter.

             
"What?" Barnett asked.

             
"I beg your pardon?" Inglestone said, looking totally confused. "What is so puzzling?"

             
Inglestone thought over the recent conversation, trying to pick up the missing thread. "Oh, yes; Miss Perrine's disappearance. Thought I mentioned it, old man."

             
"What do you mean, her 'disappearance'?" Barnett demanded. "When did she disappear? What are you talking about?"

             
"Sorry again, old man. I should have realized that you'd be concerned. Ex-employer, and all that. Should have occurred to me that you didn't know. Well, I tell you, just between us, if she doesn't turn up quickly, she's going to lose her job, Lady Hogbine or no Lady Hogbine. Ah! The claret; thank you, Binns. It is Binns, isn't it? I shall mention you in the dispatches. Binns of the Railway Arms. A life-saver."

             
"Disappearance," Barnett prompted.

             
"Oh, yes. Well, it's this way, old man. The lady went out on an assignment last night. No, it would be night before last, now. Doyle went with her. Artist fellow. Fine work. Well, Doyle left to take the carriage back to the Warren." He turned to Professor Moriarty. "That's what we call the lovely common room maintained for the reporters, 'the Warren.' "

             
"How clever of you," Moriarty murmured politely.

             
"Yes, well, Miss Perrine never showed up at the carriage. Doyle finally decided that she was chasing up some information or other, and returned to the Warren by himself. And, well, to make a long story short, she never did come back."

             
"Never got back? To the office, you mean?"

             
"Yes. Caterby-Cahors sent someone around to her house, and her pater was quite concerned at her absence. Claimed that she hadn't been there, either. And it certainly wasn't her custom to stay out all night. But if a lady is going to choose to be a reporter—well, you know, exigencies of the job, and all that. At any rate, Caterby-

             
Cahors was furious. He can't even stand tardiness, so you can imagine how he feels about unexcused absence. He was ready to fire her outright until the note came.
"

             
"
The note?"

             
"Miss Perrine was considerate enough to send a note. She said she was after a very hot lead, and not to wait the story for her, but to write it as it stood. She might be a few days, she said. Well, Caterby-Cahors was fit to be tied. Had to get the information on the murder she was covering from Doyle. Nice fellow, Doyle; good sketch artist, but no reporter. Caterby-Cahors has given Miss Perrine three days to turn up with story in hand, and it had better be a dilly. That was Caterby-Cahors's term, 'a dilly.' "

             
Barnett turned to Moriarty. "Something's happened to her," he said.

             
Moriarty considered. "I believe you are right," he said. "She has been covering that series of murders?"

             
"Yes." Barnett felt the blood drain from his face. "My God! You don't think—"

             
Moriarty put out a restraining hand. "No, I don't," he said. "Stay calm."

             
Inglestone looked from one to the other of them. "I say!" he said. "You don't suppose something has happened to Miss Perrine?"

             
"Something has definitely happened to Miss Perrine," Moriarty said. "Even my rather sketchy acquaintance with her over the past two years tells me that she didn't run off. And she certainly isn't skulking about on some London street, following a suspect. If she were, she would have found a better way to communicate than a brief note. And she certainly would have informed her father."

             
"But—"

             
"On the other hand, Mr. Barnett, the pattern of this murderer we're dealing with shows that he doesn't attack women; that he doesn't make the sort of mistake that would have enabled Miss Perrine to walk in on him; and that he doesn't conceal bodies. So, as no body has been found, we must conclude that whatever happened to Miss Perrine, it was not the doing of our multiple killer."

             
"That's very reassuring," Barnett said. "She may be lying bleeding on some street, sliced up by some maniac, but at least it's a
different
maniac! I've got to get back to London!"

             
"What for?" Moriarty asked.

             
"What do you mean, what for? To find Cecily. Nobody else seems even to be looking."

             
"I shall remedy that," Moriarty said. "I'll put a telegram in at the desk, and there will be five hundred people out looking for her in an hour."

             
"I say, you chaps really do seem to be taking this thing seriously," Inglestone said. "You don't actually suppose that anything nasty has happened to the young lady, do you?" He chuckled. "Well, if it has, it would serve old Caterby-Cahors right, I'll tell you."

             
Barnett stared incredulously at Inglestone for a second, not sure he had heard right. How callous it was possible to be about someone one didn't know very well. And Inglestone didn't seem to think he had said anything at all strange.

             
"I'd better pass the telegram in now," Moriarty said, rising and heading for the door. "Meet you in the lobby, Barnett."

             
Barnett also rose. "Very good chatting with you, Inglestone," he said. "We must do it again sometime. You don't mind paying, do you? There's a good chap!" And with that, he slapped Inglestone on the back and hurried after Moriarty.

             
"I say!" Inglestone exclaimed.

             
"I really think I should go back to London," Barnett told Moriarty, catching up to him in the lobby.

             
"I have given a telegram to the porter," Moriarty said. "It will be clacking its ways over the wires in ten minutes and will be delivered to 64 Russell Square within the hour. It is now ten o'clock. Before midnight, five hundred people will be searching for the young lady. By tomorrow morning the first report on the search will be awaiting me at the desk of this hotel. If there is any definite word on her whereabouts earlier, I will be immediately notified. Believe me, Barnett, I know how you feel; but no more could be done if you were present, and I need you here."

             
"I appreciate that," Barnett said. "I certainly don't want to desert you. But we both know that any of fifty men could do what you would have me do tomorrow. I am not in any way essential to your plan. I should get on the next train to London."

             
Moriarty put his hand on Barnett's shoulder and peered at him intently. "Understand me," he said. "I am not an unfeeling man. If there were anything that you could do in London that would further the search for Cecily Perrine, I would hire a special for you and put you on it. If there were any way in which my presence would help, I would join you."

             
"Thank you, Professor," Barnett said. "I'm sure you're right; and I appreciate what you say more than I can tell you. It's just that—"

             
"Furthermore," Moriarty said, "whatever your opinion of yourself, the fact is that I
do
need you here. You are not irreplaceable, but you are intelligent, competent, and resourceful, and the man with whom I would have to replace you might lack one or more of those virtues.

             
"I pledge you this, Barnett: if any word comes of Miss Perrine— at all—and it seems desirable for you to go to London, I'll have that special put on for you immediately. In any case, we shall both be on the next regular train for London. I shall leave it midway, but you will go on through."

             
"The next train?" Barnett asked.

             
"Yes. There are no more trains scheduled tonight, and the first train out tomorrow morning is the, let's see"—he pulled out his schedule—"the six-oh-eight doesn't run on Saturdays, so we shall be on the seven-forty-two. Will that suffice?"

             
"I suppose," Barnett said unhappily, "that it will have to."

             
He slept fitfully that night. If asked, he would have sworn that he slept not at all. Complex images kept springing into his mind, unbidden. Images of the myriad ways in which Cecily, by chance or by design, could have discovered the mysterious murderer. And then the image would unfold and become horrible, as the murderer, in turn, found Cecily. Barnett's mind rebelled from the worst possibilities, but even the ones his mind would accept did not bear dwelling upon.

             
The loading of the treasure was set to begin an hour before sunrise, which, according to
Whitaker's Almanack,
would occur at 5:42. And so at a little after four in the damp, chilly morning of the first Saturday in April, Barnett found himself dressing by candlelight so that he could go to watch large, heavily guarded boxes being loaded onto goods wagons in the predawn blackness for transport to London. And do his small part in seeing that they did not arrive.

             
The reporters, sketch artists, and such of the idly curious as could drag themselves out of bed at such an hour were to be assembled on a three-tiered grandstand specially erected in the goods yard for the event. This would give them a splendid view of the proceedings and yet keep them out of the way. The real crowds would gather later in the morning, when the military guard was added and the treasure train prepared to leave.

             
Barnett had wondered how they were going to move treasure from the ship to the goods wagons in the dark; even with the route marked with a line of lanterns, it would not seem a prudent procedure from the standpoint of security. And indeed, when he and Professor Moriarty arrived and took their seats in the front row of the grandstand, the brightest object around was the conductor's lantern, which was carried by the railway guard. There was no line of lanterns, and no apparent motion from what Barnett believed to be the direction of H.M.S.
Hornblower,
a quarter mile away at Stonehouse Basin. "Are we early?" he whispered to the guard, looking around at the ten or fifteen other people already in the stands.

             
"No sir, you'm jest a'time," the guard told him in a broad north-counties accent. And as if merely waiting for his word, the entire goods yard was suddenly bathed in an intense white light.

             
Barnett blinked, squinted, and shielded his eyes from the intense glare. "What on earth is that?" he asked no one in particular.

             
"They appear to have four Drummond apparatuses mounted in towers," Moriarty said. "We are now bathed in a light as bright as the sun, if rather more limited in scope."