The Return of Moriarty (43 page)

After an hour or so it was agreed that Moriarty was almost certainly using some den in the heart of the East End, probably Limehouse, as a center of operations. So the commissioner assented to have another ten men transferred to Crow's staff to be used for the express purpose of moving in disguise around the suspect area in a concerted attempt to discover the exact location of the Professor and whatever forces were at his disposal.

“I do not like the idea of my officers mixing and hobnobbing with the criminal element,” said the commissioner, “but it would seem there is no other way.”

Crow mentally raised his eyes toward heaven. How else, he silently questioned, does one gain knowledge of villains, if you do not mix with them? Progress in methods of detection, thought Crow, moved at a snail's pace here in London. Later he reflected that his own deductive methods, combined with the work Tanner and others were doing on the ground, had not seemed to accelerate matters.

By midafternoon the extra men were out and about, eyes skinned and ears cocked, their one aim being the arrest of Professor Moriarty on some major charge and the ultimate breaking of whatever criminal union he controlled.

Moriarty spent most of the day wrestling with the problems at hand, notably the decision whether to move his headquarters from the heart of things to the more lush landscape of Berkshire. The matter concerning a new housekeeper was solved at lunchtime, when Fanny came to tell him that she was prepared to take on the position. He spoke with her for some time, carefully explaining his own preferences in food and drink, instructing her in the main duties that would be expected of her and transferring custody of the house keys.

Kate Wright had run the place with the help of her husband, and Moriarty told Fanny that he would provide her with an extra pair of hands as soon as it was convenient. In the meantime Bridget would assist her, with occasional help from Mary McNiel, who had so far spent the day in the sulks.

The item in the court circular had not escaped the Professor's eager eyes, and his brain was already working days ahead, toward fullfilment of the promise he had made to his Continental colleagues.

He was anxious for the evening to come, for he could not deny an almost childlike excitement about meeting the magical Dr. Night. He dined alone on a meal Fanny had taken great pains in preparing and at about half-past ten left the warehouse, without his disguise, for the Alhambra.

The stage-door keeper had been advised of Moriarty's arrival, and a call boy led the Professor through the passages to Dr. Night's rather cramped dressing room. As he followed the lad, the Professor felt that behind the scenes, a music hall after the last performance had little magic about it.

William S. Wotherspoon (Dr. Night) had no large sense of mystery about him either. Close up he was a small man, unctuous in manner and completely lacking in the presence that radiated from him on stage. The dressing room was over-hot, smelling of a mixture of fish and chips, greasepaint and pale ale, which, if the number of empty bottles were anything to go by, the magician consumed in large quantities.

“An honor, Professor. I cannot tell you what an honor it is to receive you.” Dr. Night went through the motions of hand washing. He wore a rather loud check suit, which also seemed out of character.

“You are surprised at my getup?” He grinned. “I do it on purpose, my dear Professor. If I did not, I would have to be on show twenty-four hours a day. Some of my colleagues prefer it like that, but I find it enough strain being an illusionist on stage without having to do it off. So this is my own little illusion—a disguise, if you like. Do take a seat.” He swept some papers from the easy chair, which was badly in need of repair.

Moriarty had been unprepared for this kind of man and was forced to remind himself of how brilliant Dr. Night's act had really been.

“It is my pleasure, Dr. Night,” he said with courtesy.

“Bill. Please call me Bill. Dr. Night's for them out there.” He cocked his head in the direction of the door.

“Bill, then. I was most impressed by your performance. Most impressed.”

“That's nice of you, and gratifying. Others have been impressed also, it seems.” He lowered his voice. “Did you happen to catch the piece in today's court circular?”

“Indeed I did.”

“An honor, a very singular honor. But I hear as how His Royal Highness is most partial to conjuring and the magic arts. Does a few card tricks himself, no doubt, eh?”

Moriarty nodded. It was time for him to take over the conversation.

“What are they paying you here, Bill?”

“Well now, I don't think I—”

“I do, Bill. I have the controlling interest in a few halls myself—oh, not as grand as this, I admit, but I am willing to pay you three times as much as they're doing here.”

Wotherspoon's head came up, an avaricious glint in his eyes.

“I'm not free until next month,” he said quickly. Moriarty had struck the right chord.

“No matter. If you will agree to the proposition I am going to put to you—and I hardly think you will be able to spurn it—I shall begin payment as from Monday next.”

“What, without my appearing? I would have to talk to my agent about—”

“What?” Moriarty laughed. “And lose ten percent? Your agent does not have to know, not until I put you into one of my halls anyway. In the meantime it would be a bit of business, something between the two of us and nobody else.”

“Nobody? Not even Rosie? She's the girl I use—in the act, I mean.”

Moriarty gave him a sly, conspiratorial smile. “Not in any other way, Bill?” he asked.

Wotherspoon chuckled. “Well, maybe once in a while. But nothing regular like some of them. Oh no, that's not for me, Prof. I can see you're a man of the world anyhow.”

“You might say that, yes. You might say that I am a man of the world.”

“Well, what's the proposition then? Fire away. I'm game for most things.”

The Professor leaned back, a smile of pleasure playing around his mouth.

“I'll tell you what I want.…”

He spoke for half an hour or so, his voice soft, like that of a mesmerist, hardly believing that the great Dr. Night could be, offstage, so gullible.

When he left the theater and walked out into Leicester Square, Moriarty paused for a moment on the pavement to sniff the smells of smoke, grime and horses and look out across the square garden, with its shrubs and flowerbeds and the statue of Shakespeare, just beginning to lose its original whiteness.

He was lost for a while, his eyes taking in the bright posters, hurrying people, the rattling omnibuses and cabs. These folk, he thought, bustling and rushing along: What do they know of life? What do they really know of the world? Theirs was an existence so different from his own; their society far removed from the dark and secret ways he knew. It was like looking at two sides of a coin—and coin was the right image, for it was the one thing that bound the two worlds. One side had no experience of the other, and no stretch of the imagination could ever allow these honest, silly, people true access to his domain. When his time was over, thought Moriarty, not even the historians would really be able to reach into his world, untangle its many layers, or pick out the fabric.

For the next week Moriarty's lieutenants remarked on the fact that the Professor was absent for some three hours each afternoon. When they questioned Harkness about it, the man was dumb.

“It's the Professor's business,” he said gruffly. “You know me. He pays me to drive him and not to talk. I know my orders.”

They knew also that it was useless trying to press Harkness, he had been too long in the Professor's service to be led into temptation now.

Saturday, April 21, 1894

(THE HARROW ROBBERY)

I
T WAS NOT
much of a honeymoon for Paget and Fanny, what with Fanny's new responsibilities and Paget's normal work. Nor did Paget act at all like a carefree honeymooner. Certainly he did his duty, providing many pleasures in the marriage bed, but the rest of the time he seemed preoccupied.

Fanny became concerned and even confided in Bridget, who, being the girl she was, took the matter straight to Spear, who said there was a big caper coming up and Fanny should not be too worried.

Spear was back on his feet again, and although his hands still gave him pain he was beginning to use them a little. Indeed, on the night following the wedding—and all its attendant dramas—he and Bridget had their first taste of greens together. Paget's moroseness concerned him though, and he was not long in taking his worry to Moriarty, who put it down to the excesses of matrimony and left it at that.

If Moriarty had known, there was cause for him to be uneasy about Paget, for the events of the wedding night had plunged the man into extreme dolor, his newfound happiness with Fanny contrasting sharply with both his past and present life. The carnage of that night and the terrible deed he had been forced to perform on Kate Wright might well be described as practically the last straw. It was certainly the penultimate, for the final revulsion to his way of life was to come in connection with the robbery planned to take place on Saturday night.

The van was ready, with two good horses, and the arrangements were well rehearsed by all the participants. Paget was to go to Harrow on the Saturday morning, walk out to the Pinner estate, visit the public house, and generally sniff out the land.

In the early evening Bill Fisher was to come down with one of the Jacobs brothers, and they would meet Paget at Harrow station to get the latest news.

Clark, Gay and the other Jacobs would make their way over with the van later that night; Paget, once he had passed on the lie of the land to Fisher, would return to Limehouse.

With luck they reckoned the whole thing would be over by two in the morning, and they would be back, disposing of the loot, by half-past four at the latest.

Although she did not know the details, Fanny was aware that something big was afoot, and when Paget told her he would be away for the whole day on Saturday she pleaded to be allowed to come with him. At first he pointed out that her own duties as housekeeper would prevent her, but she so persisted that Paget, more in self-defense than anything else, went to see the Professor.

“You know I'm not happy about showing myself down there anyway,” he told Moriarty. “I might just escape suspicion if I take a woman with me. After all I posed as a man looking for a job on the estate last time; and I mentioned that I had a wife, anxious and willing to move out of the city.”

Moriarty was now even more versed in the art of misdirection, having spent a few afternoons with Dr. Night, finding him a most able teacher and a great professional showman despite the seedy offstage appearance. He could see that Paget going down with Fanny might well be an extra piece of dressing that could throw any thought of suspicion away from his man. He finally agreed, making certain that Paget would relay only the most necessary facts to his wife.

So it came about that Fanny, all done up in her new bonnet and a new cloak, which she had made for herself, went arm in arm with her husband to pose as a couple looking for work on the Pinner estate at Beeches Hall.

While it could not be called the real countryside when compared with what Fanny had been used to, the environs of Harrow were the nearest she had been to open fields, woodlands and nature since arriving in London.

She behaved with all the excitement of a child during the railway journey, and Paget had to keep reminding her of the part she had to play once they reached their destination.

It was a fine day, not over warm, but clear, with a bright sky once they were a mile or so away from the grubby smoke of the congested areas. The walk through Harrow and out toward Sir Dudley Pinner's estate, Beeches Hall, was as carefree an hour as Paget had known, what with Fanny skipping along beside him, chattering about her own life in Warwickshire, naming birds and darting into hedges to pluck and identify the occasional wildflower.

It was almost noon when they came in sight of the few clustered houses, the shop and public house. At about twenty past the hour Paget opened the door to The Bird in the Hand and ushered Fanny inside.

Mace, the landlord, was engaged in conversation with a tall man, dark haired and dressed in tweeds and leggings, like a gamekeeper. The only other occupants of the bar parlor were an elderly couple, the man with a tankard, pulling at a clay pipe; the woman, gray haired and respectable looking, sitting quietly, with hands folded on her lap.

“Well now,” said Mace, “this is the very fellow I was telling you about, Mr. Reeves. Come in. Jones, isn't it?”

Paget put on a sheepish grin. “You remembered then?”

“Out here we always remember new faces. What's it to be? This is Mr. Reeves, manages the estate.”

The man nodded amiably enough, and Paget ordered a tankard for himself, while Fanny took a little port.

“Mace says you were over a while back, looking for work,” Reeves' voice was rough, but not harsh, and Paget detected his eyes were making a thorough appraisal, as though he was looking over cattle to be bought for meat.

“My wife, Fanny,” Paget said shyly.

Mace grinned and nodded. Reeves gave a quick smile.

“Looking for work,” he repeated.

“Well, yes,” Paget contrived to sound uncertain. “I work in the docks, and Fan, well, she's done a lot of things. For a while in the kitchens—domestic service, like. I took her from that and recently she's worked in a public house. But we're both tired of the life back there. It's long hours and dirty. Fan comes from the country, you see.”

“This is hardly the country, but near enough,” said Reeves. “And as for long hours, you'd get longer out here. Sometimes five in the morning till ten at night, harvest time.”

“Yes, I know about that.”