The Return of Moriarty (46 page)

“Mary Malloney, my private secretary,” Moriarty said, quite unconcerned by Wotherspoon's attitude. “I wanted to show off to somebody and thought she'd make a perfect audience.”

Wotherspoon softened. “Of course, of course. You've let her into our little secret then?”

“Naturally. She is my
private
secretary.”

“Well …” The magician rubbed his hands. “Well, my dear, your employer is very good, an apt pupil. Do you know that he can perform my act nearly as well as I can do it myself.”

“Not the new one though.” Moriarty indicated the two slim, almost coffinlike boxes that stood upended on the stage.

“Ah, well.” Wotherspoon tapped his nose with a long forefinger. “I'm not sure that
I
can do that yet. Rosie and I have just been rehearsing it. I'm saving it for when we start at one of your halls.” He beamed, and then addressed Mary. “It will be most spectacular, my dear.” He became conspiratorial. “We shall get members of the audience to come up on the stage and examine the boxes—I call them the Transmogrification Cabinets. Then Rosie is placed in the one on the right, and it is roped up and tied. I am put into the one on the left, which is treated in a similar manner. The audience count to five after I have knocked on the inside of my box. Then the cabinets are untied and opened. I appear from the one in which Rosie was placed, and she steps from mine. What do you think of that?”

“Amazing!” gasped Mary. “How's it done?”

“Ha! That would be telling. I'll say one thing though, nobody could possibly get out of one of those boxes while the ropes are around it.”

“Good gracious!”

Moriarty shushed her. Mary was overacting. “I wonder if Rosie could, perhaps, take Miss Malloney to … er … to wash her hands, while we talk for a moment. In private.” He looked hard at Mary and then back at Wotherspoon.

“Of course.” Wotherspoon smiled nervously, his dark beard twitching. “Rosie, show the lady up to your dressing room.”

When they had gone, Moriarty sat down on a wooden stand chair that was part of Dr. Night's equipment.

“You must be getting most excited about Friday,” he said amiably.

“Yes, yes indeed. Getting stage fright, if you want to know—something I've never suffered from in my life.”

“Do they take you down on a special train or anything?”

“Oh my, do they not. They've got another act to replace me here for Friday night—the Elliotts and Savonas musical act. Perhaps you've heard of them?”

Moriarty nodded. Heard of them? He had employed them at one of his own music halls.

“I have to be here, with all my apparatus at the stage door, for three o'clock. Special coaches to Shoreditch and then a train down to Wolferton. There'll be an equerry traveling with us.”

He made it sound very grand, and it was all Moriarty needed to know.

The stage curtain was down and nobody else in the vicinity, but for the stage-door keeper. Dr. Night's time had come.

“I was practicing that cut-and-restored-rope trick you showed me yesterday.” Moriarty rose, quiet and slow—there was no sense in causing alarm. “I don't think I've got the moves quite right. I wonder if you could show me again before the girls come back.”

“Yes, of course. There is a knack to it.” Wotherspoon went over to one of his many tables. “Here, you take one piece of rope and follow the moves as I do them with this one.”

He tossed a three-foot length of soft rope to Moriarty and began to walk toward him. When he was only a couple of paces away, Moriarty pointed across the room.

“Is that cabinet all right?” He sounded concerned.

Wotherspoon turned. Quicker than any magician, Moriarty lifted his hands. The rope was grasped tightly in each, passing around the fists, while the wrists were crossed.

The noose fell, exact, over Dr. Night's head, and Moriarty pulled outward and hard. He had learned the garrotte long ago.

The magician gave one low gurgle, like an airlock clearing in a water tap, his hands scrabbling at the curtailing rope, legs threshing, his whole body heaving, but it took no more than a minute before he went limp, dropping to the floor like a pile of clothes put out for the rag-and-bone man.

Moriarty, breathing hard from the exertion, rested for a moment before walking slowly to one of the Transmogrification Cabinets and opening the lid.

He dragged the body across the stage and pushed it, all of a heap, into the cabinet, reaching in to clear out the keys, watch and wallet from the pockets before shutting the door. It took some five or six minutes to rope and secure the cabinet. Dr. Night was correct when he said nobody could get out once the box was roped. He won't anyway, thought the Professor.

He was sorry about the girl but there was no other way the matter could be accomplished, and he consoled himself with the thought that she was running to fat, would have been out of a job soon anyway, and appeared to have a vulgar streak.

“There ain't half a pong down here,” she said when she returned with Mary. “Where's the great doctor?”

“In the cabinet,” smiled Moriarty. “He wants you in the other one.”

When it was all done, Moriarty dragged both cabinets into the wings, piling them against a convenient wall. He then took a pair of large labels from among Wotherspoon's effects, spent a few moments writing in plain capitals, and affixed one to each cabinet. They read:

DR NIGHT. ILLUSIONIST AND
PRESTIDIGITATOR EXTRAORDINARY
NOT WANTED AT SANDRINGHAM.

Moriarty had no doubt that Mary was truly frightened, but his mesmeric influence was still upon her, and there would be ample time to reinforce it during the days ahead. In the meantime she helped him pile Dr. Night's equipment in its usual position off stage. Moriarty had an eye for detail, and during the previous week he had made certain of the correct manner in which the magician kept his apparatus.

Once it was done, Moriarty led the girl up to Wotherspoon's dressing room. He was approaching the most difficult phase.

On the previous afternoon, the Professor had espied one of Wotherspoon's atrocious check suits hanging in the dressing room. It was still there and with Mary's help Moriarty changed. As he had guessed, they were about the same size, and although the effect was far from immaculate, there were no unseemly bags or bulges. He then opened his briefcase, removed the disguise material, and sat down in front of the mirror to complete the already much-practiced transformation.

It took a little less than half an hour, and when he was finished, Moriarty turned to face Mary.

“I can hardly believe—”

“You have to believe it.” He spoke sharply. “From now on you have to believe that I am Dr. Night. You understand?”

She nodded meekly.

“Good. And you know what to do next?”

“I know.”

“Then go to it.”

Mary left the dressing room, passing down toward the stage door. The keeper did not seem to be about, but she waited for a moment before leaving quickly to join Harkness in Leicester Square, whence they drove to an appointed rendezvous.

Moriarty allowed another half hour to elapse before following her, but this time he paused at the stage door—it was the first test of his disguise.

The old keeper was there, sitting in his cubbyhole, all snug with a cup of tea and a pipe.

“Anyone using the stage in the morning?” Moriarty inquired.

“Not so far as I know, Mr. Wotherspoon.” The old boy hardly looked up.

“Well, will you tell the stage manager I may need to use it all day,” he said sharply. “I'll be rehearsing a new girl.”

“New girl?” This time he did look up. “What's happened to our Rosie?”

“Didn't she tell you before she left?”

“Haven't seen her.”

“Well, you won't now. I've had to fire her. Getting a bit above her station, that one.”

The keeper nodded his head. “I had noticed, so I'm not surprised. Right, I'll tell him. You got anyone in mind?”

“A girl that's worked for me before. I'll have her in temporary anyway.”

Moriarty walked casually through the stage door. He felt safer now—a new man almost.

Mrs. Sylvia Cowles opened the door.

“Inspector Crow?” asked Paget, smiling comfortably while inside he trembled, aspenlike.

“Who wishes to see him?”

“Inspector Crow, is he in?” he repeated.

“He is in, but who wishes to see him?”

“Me.”

Paget drew the revolver: a movement of the hand and wrist only, no flamboyance or dramatics as he stepped inside, Mrs. Cowles backing away, her mouth gaping open and eyes screwed up as though the scream she wanted to let loose had actually broken from her vocal chords.

Paget kicked the door closed behind him. Now he could afford to menace.

“Where is he? No shouting or you'll get this in your pretty belly.”

Her mouth opened wider; she swallowed, closed the lips again, then gaped once more.

“Come on, come on,” Paget said gruffly.

She was not to know that the last thing he would have done was pull the trigger. She kept looking to her left, toward the second door along the passage.

“In there, is he?”

The look in Mrs. Cowles' eyes told Paget the truth. He prodded the unhappy lady with the barrel of his revolver, easing her forward and into the room.

Crow was sitting in an easy chair, turning the pages of some catalogue—for the couple were in the process of choosing items for the refurbishing of their home: garnering for domestic bliss.

Paget had to admit the copper was a cool one. He turned, almost lazily, taking in the situation at a glance, his eyes resting first on the revolver and then on Paget.

“Mr. Paget, I think,” said Crow.

Paget tried not to sound alarmed. “You know me?”

“I was at your wedding, Paget. What's the meaning of this?”

Paget gave Mrs. Cowles a slight push toward her intended husband. “Both of you get over there.” He indicated the corner of the room. “I won't keep you long.” Then, as they obeyed his command, “You looking for me, are you?”

“You and several others.”

“Professor Moriarty?”

“Naturally.” Crow showed no sign of fear. “I would advise you, Paget, to put the gun down. If you do anything foolish, you'll not get far; that I'll promise.”

“I'm not doing anything foolish, Inspector. I've come to make an arrangement with you.”

“We don't make arrangements—as you put it—you should know that.”

“Not even to lay hands on the Professor?”

His eyes strayed for a second to the ornate timepiece on the mantel. It showed almost half-past two.

“Give me the gun,” said Crow calmly. “Then you can tell me what you know: turn Queen's evidence, and I'll do what I can for you.”

“You think I was born on a Friday and brought up by candlelight? No, Inspector. I want my liberty. My freedom—”

“And your bride's?”

“Hers also.”

“I see no way. We'll get Moriarty, you know. If not today, then tomorrow, or next week, or next year. It makes little difference to us. We'll get him.”

All this time, Inspector Crow held Mrs. Cowles, an arm crooked around her shoulders, while she sobbed quietly from shock and fear.

“I've never blown on anybody yet, Mr. Crow. But now I'm forced to because I want to live for me—and Fanny. I want to get away, out of it, without your crushers pounding after me.”

“And what of Moriarty's crushers? Will they not be pounding after you also?”

“Not if we're fast.”

Crow gave a small shrug.

“I know coppers aren't gents,” continued Paget. “But I have to take the chance. There are men around the house, back and front.” He lied with the ease of one long practiced in the art. “Here's my offer: I'll direct you to Moriarty's hideout. Like you, I can't make no promises, because he'll know by now that I've gone. He'll probably have half London looking for me at this very moment, and I've only got a handful that's loyal to me.”

“You're a damned traitor. A turncoat. A blower.” Crow sounded disgusted.

“I value my future and I'm bidding all on it. I'll tell you where the Professor's headquarters are located, how to get in—everything. I'll give you that, if you'll give me an hour's start.”

The possibilities whirled in Crow's head. This was a gift: unexpected manna from heaven. They could catch Paget later, for if the man were offering Moriarty's den on a plate, all the police resources would have to be directed toward scouring it out. There would not be time even to start looking for Paget—not yet anyhow; and that was exactly what Paget had wagered upon.

Slowly Crow nodded. “I'll give you an hour.” He spoke evenly.

Paget's stomach turned over: a wave of hope so strong he nearly relaxed the grip on his revolver.

“All right, Inspector. It's a mutual trust. We have to take each other at face value.”

He paused for what seemed a long period; then quietly, lucidly, and without any trace of guilt, Paget gave the policeman precise instructions concerning the warehouse. He spun it out for as long as possible, telling how to get to the place, painting, in words, the way to breach the wicket, describing the locks and bolts on the big double doors, and then outlining how the interior was arranged. It took some ten minutes during which Crow's concentration never wavered.

“Is there anything more you need know?” Paget finally asked.

“How many men might I expect to find there?”

“I can't say. There was confusion when I left. As I said, your birds may have flown. If not, there could be up to twenty or thirty—more if he's going to stand and fight. The entrances will be covered also from the outside. Moriarty has and excellent system of spies and watchers.”