The Revenge of Moriarty (3 page)

It will suffice to state here that the honeymoon was not an unqualified success. Certainly Crow was attentive to his wife, taking her to see the sights of the great city, dining her in the restaurants he could best afford and paying her court in all the time-honoured ways long tried and tested. But there were periods when, as far as Sylvia Crow was concerned, his behaviour left much to be desired. There were, for instance, periods when he would disappear for hours at a stretch, failing, on return, to explain his absence.

These missing times were, as you will already have realized, spent with various people in the Police Judiciaire; in particular with a somewhat dour officer named Chanson who looked more like an undertaker than a policeman, and was nicknamed L'Accordeur by colleagues and criminals alike.

From the nickname alone one gathers that, whatever his personal appearance and demeanour, Chanson was a good policeman with his official ear very close to the ground. Yet, after a month, Crow was not much wiser concerning Moriarty's movements or present whereabouts.

There was some evidence indicating that the French criminal leader Jean Grisombre had assisted in his escape from England. One or two other hints pointed strongly to the possibility of some of the Professor's men having joined him in Paris. But there was also a weight of intelligence, culled mainly from Chanson's informers, that Grisombre had demanded that Moriarty leave Paris as soon as his companions arrived from England, and that, in all, the Professor's short stay in France had not been made wholly comfortable.

That he had left France was in little doubt, and there were only a few added gleanings for Crow to file away in his mind and ponder upon once back in London.

By the end of the honeymoon, Crow had made his peace with Sylvia, and on returning to London became so caught up in routine, both of his marriage and work at Scotland Yard, that the immediate problems of his vow against Moriarty slowly faded into the background.

However, his continued visits to Sherlock Holmes convinced him of something he had long suspected, and indeed worked for – that the profession of criminal detection needed a great deal of specialized knowledge and much fresh organization. The Metropolitan Police appeared slow to take up and grasp new methods (for instance, a system of fingerprinting, already much used on the continent, was not adopted in England until the early 1900s), so Crow began to build up his own procedures and muster his own contacts.

Crow's personal list grew rapidly. He had a surgeon, much experienced in post-mortem procedure, at St Bartholomew's; at Guy's there was another medical man whose speciality was toxicology; the Crows would also dine regularly with a first-rate chemist in Hampstead, while in nearby respectable St John's Wood, Angus Crow would often call upon a well-retired cracksman, happily living out his latter days on ill-gotten gains. In Houndsditch he had the ear of a pair of reformed dippers and (though Mrs Crow was ignorant of this) there were a dozen or more members of the frail sisterhood who would supply information privately to Crow alone.

There were others also: men in the City who knew about precious stones, art treasures, works of silver and gold, while at Wellington Barracks there were three or four officers with whom Crow had a constant acquaintanceship, all of them adept in some field of weapons and their uses.

In short, Angus McCready Crow continued to expand his career, solid in his determination to be the best detective in the Force. Then, in January 1896, the Professor emerged once more.

It was on Monday, 5 January 1896, that a letter was circulated from the Commissioner asking for comment and intelligence. Crow was one of those to whom the letter was sent.

It had been written in the previous December and was couched in the following terms:

12 December 1895

From: The Chief of Detectives

Headquarters

New York City Police

Mulberry Street

New York

USA

To: The Commissioner of Metropolitan Police Esteemed Sir,

Following incidents in this city during September and November, we are of the opinion that a fraud has been perpetrated upon various financial houses and individuals.

In brief, the matter is as follows: In the August of last year, 1894, a British financier, known as Sir James Madis, presented himself to various individuals, commercial companies, banks and financial houses here in New York. His business, he claimed, was concerned with a new system for use on commercial railroads. This system was explained to railroad engineers employed by some of our best known companies, and it appeared that Sir James Madis was in the process of developing a revolutionary method of steam propulsion which would guarantee not only faster locomotive speeds, but also smoother travelling facilities.

He produced documents and plans which appeared to show that this system was already being developed, on his behalf, in your own country at a factory near Liverpool. His aim was to set up a company in New York so that our own railroad corporations could be easily supplied with the same system. This would be developed in a factory built here especially by the company.

In all, financial houses, banks, individuals and railroad companies invested some four million dollars in this newly formed Madis Company which was set up under the chairmanship of Sir James, with a board of directors drawn from our own world of commerce, but containing three Englishmen nominated by Madis.

In September of this year, Sir James announced that he was in need of a rest, and left New York to stay with friends in Virginia. Over the next six weeks the three British members of the board travelled several times between New York and Richmond. Finally, in the third week of October, all three joined Madis in Richmond and were not expected back for a week or so.

During the last week in November, the board, worried as they had not heard from either Madis or his British colleagues, ordered an audit and we were called in when the company accounts showed a deficit of over two-and-a-half million dollars.

A search for Madis and his colleagues has proved fruitless, and I now write to ask for your assistance and any details of the character of the above-named Sir James Madis.

There followed a description of Madis and his missing co-directors, together with one or two other small points.

In the offices of Scotland Yard, and those of the City Police, there were many chuckles. Nobody, of course, had ever heard of Sir James Madis, and even policemen can be amused by fraudulent audacity – particularly when it is carried out with great panache, in another country, thereby making boobies of another police force.

Even Crow indulged in a smile, but there were grim thoughts in his mind as he re-read the letter and those details appertaining to Madis and his accomplices.

The three British directors of the Madis Company were named as William Jacobi, Bertram Jacobi and Albert Pike – all three coming close to answering the descriptions of men who had been at Steventon Hall. Crow was also quick to spot the irony between the name Albert Pike and Albert Spear (the man who had been married to Bridget Coyle at Steventon). That play on names was at least significant of the kind of impertinence which could well be the hallmark of Moriarty.

It did not stop there, for the description of Madis himself required examination. According to the New York Police Department, he was a man of great vigour, in his late thirties or early forties, of medium height, well built, with red hair and poor eyesight necessitating constant use of gold-rimmed spectacles.

None of that meant a great deal, for Crow knew well enough that the Moriarty he had traced in London was capable of appearing in any number of guises. Already Crow had proved, by logical deduction, that the tall, gaunt man identified as the famous Moriarty, author of the treatise on the Binomial Theorem and
Dynamics of an Asteroid
, was but a disguise used by a younger person – in all probability the original Professor's youngest brother.

But one further clue was embedded in the terse description of Sir James Madis. The one fact which linked Madis with the infamous Napoleon of Crime. The New York Police Department had been thorough, and under the heading of ‘Habits and Mannerisms' was one line:
A curious and slow movement of the head from side to side: a habit which seems to be uncontrollable, after the manner of a nervous tic
.

‘I know it is he,' Crow told Sherlock Holmes.

He had asked for a special appointment with the consulting detective on the day following his first reading of the letter, and Holmes, always true to his word, had engineered some commission for Watson so that they were assured privacy. Crow had gone with a certain amount of trepidation, for, on his two most recent visits to the chambers in Baker Street, he had been alarmed at the condition in which he found Holmes. He seemed to have lost weight and appeared restless and irritable. But on this particular afternoon, the master detective appeared to have regained all his old mental and physical vigour.
*

‘I know it is he,' repeated Crow, thumping his palm with a clenched fist. ‘I know it in my bones.'

‘Hardly a scientific deduction, my dear Crow, though I am inclined to agree with you,' said Holmes briskly. ‘The dates appear to fit, as do the descriptions of his co-directors in crime. You have, yourself, commented on Albert Pike being synonymous with Albert Spear. As for the other two, might I suggest that you examine your records for a pair of brothers: burly built and with the surname of Jacobs. As for the Professor himself, it is just the kind of cunning trick of confidence that diabolical mind would conceive. There is another point …'

‘The initials?'

‘Yes, yes, yes,' Holmes dismissed the query as being obvious. ‘More than that …'

‘The name?'

There was a short pause as Holmes looked at Crow with a somewhat challenging stare.

‘Quite so,' he said at last. ‘It is the kind of game that would also amuse James Moriarty. Madis is …'

‘A simple anagram for Midas,' beamed Crow.

Holmes' face froze into a wintry smile.

‘Precisely,' he said curtly. ‘It would appear that the Professor is intent on amassing great riches – for what purpose I will not speculate as yet. Unless …?'

Crow shook his head. ‘I do not think speculation would be wise.'

Returning to his office at Scotland Yard, Crow set to composing a lengthy report for the Commissioner. To this he coupled a request asking that he be authorized to travel to New York, consult with the Detective Force there, and give what assistance he could in apprehending the so-called Sir James Madis and identify him with Professor James Moriarty.

He also set Sergeant Tanner onto sifting the records for two brothers with the surname of Jacobs.

After instructing the sergeant, Crow gave him a dour smile.

‘I think it was that Yankee poet, Longfellow, who wrote, ‘The mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small”. Well, young Tanner, it seems to me that we of the detective force should do our best to emulate God in this respect. I do not intend blasphemy, ye'll understand.'

Tanner left to perform the task, raising his eyes to heaven as he went. In the event he could only find one pair of brothers named Jacobs in the existing records. Some two years ago they had both been serving a term of imprisonment at the House of Correction, Coldbath Fields. As that prison had now been closed, Tanner reflected that they had probably been moved to the Slaughterhouse (the Surrey House of Correction, Wandsworth). There he left the matter, little realizing that William and Bertram Jacobs had long been spirited away and at this very moment were carrying out the first step in a plot of revenge which might well shake the whole foundations of both the underworld and normal society. For the Jacobs brothers had been elevated to that select group which had the close ear of James Moriarty.

However, Crow's report was persuasive. Two days later he was required to wait upon the Commissioner, and less than a week elapsed before he was gently breaking the news to Sylvia that he would be off to America on police matters in a month or so.

Sylvia Crow did not take kindly to the prospect of remaining alone in London. At first she smouldered with resentment about her husband's job taking him such a distance from her. But the resentment soon changed to a realization that her beloved Angus might actually be putting himself in danger by journeying to the far-off continent. From there, her active imagination took over and, during the week before Crow's departure, she awoke on several occasions, anxious and hysterical, having dreamed of her husband being surrounded by hordes of yelping redskins, each one of whom was personally intent on removing the policeman's scalp. In a muddled sort of way Sylvia Crow was in reality uncertain of the true nature of a scalp, a confusion which led to the nightmares being more terrifying though vaguely erotic.

Angus Crow calmed her worst fears, assuring her that he did not expect to come into contact with any Indians. As far as he could see, his time in America would be spent in the city of New York which, surely, could not be so unlike their own London.

But, from the moment Crow set his eyes on the wooden shambles of New York's waterfront, he knew that the two cities were as different as the proverbial chalk and cheese. There were similarities, of course, but the essential heartbeats of each city were of a different speed.

Crow landed in the first week of March, after a tempestuous crossing, and for the first week or more he found himself bewildered by the bustle and strangeness of this thriving city. As he wrote to his wife, ‘While English is the, supposedly, common tongue, I find myself more a foreigner here than anywhere in Europe. I do not think you would care for it.'

It was the style of the place, he considered, that was so different. Like London, New York visibly mirrored a yawning gulf between opulent and impoverished: a strange amalgamation of vast wealth, vigorous commercialism and abject poverty, the whole played out in a dozen different languages and coloured by a range of complexions, as though the entire populace of Europe had been sampled, stirred in a melting pot and then tipped out into this extreme corner of the world. Yet even in those areas of the city which seemed to smell, and even taste, of poverty, Crow noted an underlying current of hope, absent in similar parts of London. It was as though the vigour and pulse of the place held out promise, even in the most miserable quarters.