The Revenge of Moriarty (44 page)

The thumping on the door was becoming more intense. Rats, he thought, caught fast in the devouring flames. He turned for the stairs, and then remembered Martha. Did a servant girl matter? There was another noise now, from far away the shout of ‘Fire! Fire!' If they were saved, Martha knew something of Bermondsey, and could lead the jacks to him.

The Professor turned and leaped for the upward stair, running three steps at a time to the topmost landing and the attics.

There was no ceremony in his dragging the two girls from their beds, shouting loud for them not to be concerned as to their appearance, but to grab at their robes and follow him to safety. Stunned with sleep and fright, Martha, and the child skivvy, blundered down following him. As they reached the bottom landing they could hear the flames' roar and the crash of glass from the drawing-room.

‘Hurry,' Moriarty shouted.

In the hall they heard the babble from the street, and the sound of horses' hooves, the rattle of wheels and the clang of the bell: the brigade was arriving to deal with the inferno which must now be raging above them.

Moriarty wrenched open the front door and hurried into the street, the two girls at his heels. People were clustered around the steps, two policemen pushing back the small knot of men and women. Doors had been flung open, and the other occupants of Albert Square, in motley disarray, stood at their doors, or in the street, as the two fire engines pulled up, horses snorting and helmeted men leaping for the pumps.

There was a small cheer as the Professor came down, shepherding the servants: cries of, ‘He's saved them.' ‘Well done, sir,' and offers of blankets and shelter.

But Moriarty would have none of it. He shook comforting hands from his shoulders, dragged arms from around Martha and the child, replacing them with his own hands as he hurried them from the vicinity of the house.

As they reached the centre of the square he heard someone shouting, ‘Jump into this tarpaulin and you'll be all right.' He did not look back.

The heat in the room was becoming unbearable, the smoke already starting to clog at their lungs. Still neither Crow nor Holmes could make any impact on the door.

‘It's no good, Crow,' shouted Holmes. ‘Stand back. Your pistol.' He had retrieved the revolver from where it had fallen in the middle of the room, aiming it straight at the lock.

Crow waited for the explosion, but it did not come.

‘The hammer,' Holmes yelled. ‘The hammer is jammed. The window, it's our only chance, man.'

Crow turned, searching for the right implement, then, picking up the piano stool, he hurled it with all possible force at the window nearest the piano. It crashed through, taking glass and part of the frame with it.

Holmes was by the open casement in a moment, one of the fire irons in his hand, smashing remaining glass and debris from the surround.

Below, they could hear the surge of the crowd and the sound of the engines reaching the square. Crow moved to his side, feeling the flames charring at the back of his coat, singeing the short hair on his neck. Glancing at Holmes, he saw that the detective had ripped off the bald pate Moriarty wig and clawed the make-up from his face. Below there was a drop of some twenty feet into the milling throng, through which the brasshelmeted firemen were running the hoses and manning the pumps.

In the centre of the square, arms wrapped around two young women, away from the pressing crowd, Crow saw a familiar figure hurrying towards the square's entrance.

‘Get that man,' he shouted with all the strength he could summon from his aching lungs. ‘Catch him!'

The back of his throat was seared by the acrid smoke, and he leaned forward, retching and coughing, impotent as the Professor hurried from sight.

Then, from below, came the firemen's call to jump – six of them holding a black tarpaulin firmly by rope bindings to receive Crow and Holmes.

‘You first,' gasped Holmes. ‘Jump, man.' And Crow pulled himself to the sill and leaped.

Among the dirt, flying debris and smoke pall in the square, he faced Holmes a few minutes later. The crowd had been pushed back, as the firemen bravely fought to save the whole square from total destruction.

‘I am sorry, Holmes,' Crow looked at the detective's blackened and sooty face. ‘We so nearly had him.'

‘Our time will come, Crow.' Holmes put out a hand and rested it on the Scot's shoulder. ‘It was as much my fault as yours, but do not despair. I have a feeling we shall be hearing from Moriarty again.' He frowned, uneasy for a moment. ‘Crow, you will doubtless have to do something official regarding
the
woman in Maida Vale.'

Crow nodded, the cough coming back to his throat, his lungs feeling as though they would burst.

‘Deal kindly with her, Crow.'

• • • • •

Across the city, in Bermondsey, James Moriarty ran a hand over the leather binding of his current journal. It must have been a premonition, he felt, which led him to bring the books over to this lair on his last journey. He smiled. A pity he had not brought the Jean-Baptiste Greuze and the
Mona Lisa
also.

Looking down at the book, he thought sadly that there would be no crossing out of the notes on Holmes. However, it might well have been worse, he considered. At least his family people were safe, and he once more had control of the French, German and Italian underworlds. Tomorrow they would continue, and there was a time coming when he would again meet face to face with Angus McCready Crow. And Sherlock Holmes.

He crossed to the small window, dreaming of his labyrinthine intrigues, and looked out to where the dawn began to glow across the sooty grimy roofs and spires. Out there, at this very moment, men and women would be already about his business; proud to be in his service; content to abide by his methods and be members of the Professor's family.

*
The full account of Holmes' battle of wits with Irene Adler, together with the curious cirumstances of her marriage to Godfrey Norton, can, of course, be found in Dr Watson's excellent résumé entitled
A Scandal in Bohemia
. The reader will recall that in this piece, Watson comments: ‘To Sherlock Holmes she is always
THE
woman … In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise, but admirably balanced mind.'

*
For those who have read the first chronicle, and who care about these things: at the time of receiving the Moriarty Journals from Albert Spear's grandson, I was given to understand that his father was born in the year 1895 and I have so tabled it in the preface to
The Return of Moriarty
. From the Journals it would seem otherwise.

ENVOI

The register of Marriages and Baptisms of the, now defunct, church of St Edmund The King, Bermondsey, shows three items of great interest which took place on Saturday, 14 August 1897.

A marriage between Harold William Allen and Polly Pearson.

The baptism of William Albert Spear.

The baptism of Arthur James Moriarty.

Fresh blood for the Professor's family.

APPENDIX

The Moriarty Journals and the Chronicles of Dr John H. Watson

These few notes, appended to this manuscript, will be of interest mainly to dedicated scholars of the life and work of Mr Sherlock Holmes and his chronicler, Dr John H. Watson. They are included here because of the, mercifully, few dissenting voices which were heard amidst the generous praise after publication of the first of these present volumes –
The Return of Moriarty
.

Some of those who have doubted the authenticity of the documents from which I have worked approached the subject with that charitable amusement of scholars who are aware that the subject is debatable. However, I was both shocked and surprised to find that one or two gentlemen simply dismissed aspects of the narrative with illogical and unscientific arguments like – ‘Rubbish, this could never have happened!' or, even more unlettered, ‘Junk!' So displaying a marked lack of attention to the theories and practice of Mr Holmes himself.

Four items were seized upon by these happy few:

1. The old chestnut concerning the possibility of there having been three brothers Moriarty – each named James.

2. A strange, and illogical, revulsion to the fact that Professor Moriarty appeared to be a nineteenth-century ‘Godfather' with great knowledge of the underworld, and its language.

3. The events at the Reichenbach Falls.

4. A comment reported to have been made years after the Reichenbach incident in which Holmes speaks of ‘The late Professor Moriarty …(and)… the living Colonel Sebastian Moran.'

Apart from the indisputable facts concerning real crimes, I have worked solely from the so-called
Moriarty Journals
and the private papers of Angus McCready Crow. I have personally not sought to impose my own conclusions upon Moriarty's text–yet two people, at least, have suggested that I have invented the incredible story of what, according to the Professor, happened at the Reichenbach Falls, and the other matters. This, I must dispute categorically.

But let us take the items in turn.

First, the question of the three Moriarty brothers, each named James. The evidence seems to me to be perfectly straightforward. References are made to Professor Moriarty, Mr Moriarty, the Professor and Professor James Moriarty in five of the cases written up by Watson
(The Valley of Fear, His Last Bow, The Missing Three-Quarter, The Final Problem
and
The Empty House);
Colonel James Moriarty is referred to in
The Final Problem;
and a third brother, reported to be a station-master in the West country, is spoken of in
The Valley of Fear
.

Holmesians have, to my mind, always made heavy weather over the possibility of all three bearing the same Christian name – James.
The Moriarty Journals
certainly solve the problem. I should imagine that James is a family name, possibly the middle name; and, in the journals, Moriarty makes it quite plain that the three brothers regarded this as an idiosyncrasy and spoke of each other as James, Jamie and Jim. In the journals, Moriarty claims that he is really the youngest brother, a criminal from an early age, who, incensed with jealousy at his eldest brother James' academic success, finally
framed
and murdered him, becoming a master of disguise and impersonating James Moriarty the Eldest in order to have his underworld minions stand more in awe of him. This claim does seem to me to have a certain validity, though for once Mr Holmes appears to have been taken in by the subterfuge.

Secondly, the question of Professor Moriarty the nineteenth-century ‘Godfather', leader of a vast criminal army: a man with great knowledge of crime, the underworld, its methods and language. This seems even more obvious. In
The Final Problem
, Holmes speaks of the Professor as ‘… [the] deep organizing power which forever stands in the way of the law.' He mentions Moriarty's involvement in ‘… cases of the most varying sorts – forgery cases, robberies, murders …' More, he describes him as ‘… the Napoleon of Crime … the organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected in this great city … a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans …' (If we are to believe the
Moriarty Journals
this was not quite accurate, though planning was his main preoccupation) ‘… his agents are numerous and splendidly organized …' And so on in the same manner. Is there not something incredibly familiar about this description? One has only to marry it to the criminal language of the time – including the fact (see Glossary) that the English underworld spoke of itself as The Family – and we have all the elements of present-day organized crime. Can one really believe that the organizing genius of this underworld would not have spoken to his minions in their own language, nor known the darkest methods?

Thirdly, the incident at the Reichenbach Falls, where the
Moriarty Journals
claim that there was no struggle, no death, simply an agreement between Moriarty and Holmes. I am essentially a reporter and not a commentator. As a reporter I have set down the facts, as written in the journals. If called upon to comment, I would join with those who declare that this story is rubbish. Then why does the Professor maintain that it is the truth?

If the journals are indeed the diaries of James Moriarty, Napoleon of Crime, then he certainly lived on after Reichenbach. Holmes is insistent to Watson that the evil genius died. Note that he was not so insistent to Inspector (later Superintendent) Crow. I personally suspect something more sinister, and I certainly do not believe that Holmes gave in to an agreement without some battle of wills. Moriarty, in writing his own diary, would, being the man he is, wish to put himself in the best possible light (he is always at his most arrogant when claiming victory). Something strange certainly occurred at the Reichenbach Falls and the evidence contained in this current volume may well suggest what it was – it certainly throws more light on the matter, without making direct mention of it. By the time we have deciphered the whole journal, and I have combed Crow's papers, we may have something approximating the real truth. However, in the unlikely event of the
Moriarty Journals
being forgeries, I would still submit, with my publishers, that they have an inherent interest – bringing, as I trust they do, some spark of thrill and vicarious excitement into our drab and worried lives.

Lastly, there is the question of Sherlock Holmes' comment, set down in
The Adventure of the Illustrious Client
, which took place some ten or eleven years after the Reichenbach incident. Readers of the previous chronicles will recall that Moriarty describes in some detail how Colonel Sebastian Moran met his fate, yet in
The Illustrious Client
, Holmes says ‘If your man is more dangerous than the late Professor Moriarty, or the living Colonel Sebastian Moran, then he is indeed worth meeting.'