III
Lot of rum doings in Kingstead Cemetery. The real Thomas Carnacki has a whole evening's worth of spook anecdotes about the place. The management have had to double the night guard since the Van Helsing scandal broke in the Westminster Gazette. An old Dutch crank was arrested for repeatedly breaking in, vandalising the tombs and desecrating the corpses. Especially young, relatively fresh lady corpses. No accounting for taste, but — really? — is there nothing foreigners won't sink to?
As it happens, we should have seen that coming. The degenerate quack was a regular of Fifi's in Amsterdam and London. His particular jolly involved his lady companion of the evening sitting in a bath of ice water for half an hour to get her temperature down, then lying still, cold, silent and unresponsive on a garlanded bier while he did something unmentionable with a length of wood. I suppose this performance was all very well to take the edge off, but in the long run it didn't quite slake the appetite. If I ever run into the johnny, I'll give him a length of wood all right… and fill his mouth with garlic.
The Thoroughgood funeral was at three o' clock.
From their crowded tomb in the cemetery's Egyptian Avenue, you'd reckon the Thoroughgoods must be the most unfortunate family in the land. Never were such people for dying. It seemed to be all they ever did. That was, indeed, the case. There was no Thoroughgood family. It was an account established with Bulstrode & Sons, undertakers. Said account was settled, generously and promptly, in cash.
Moriarty also supplied illicit and expensive materials to the senior Mr Bulstrode, an enthusiast of obscenity reckoned to have the finest collection of pornography in private hands in Europe. The Bulstrode Archive of Smut perhaps rivals the legendary section of the Vatican library at the personal disposal of the college of cardinals. I am proud that a presentation copy of My Nine Nights in a Harem reposes in a coffin-shaped bookcase in Bulstrode's private mausoleum between The Secret Life of Wackford Squeers and The Intimate Encounter of Fanny Hill and Moll Flanders.
The Firm was tied in with Bulstrode because, on occasion, we found ourselves inconvenienced by a corpse who would not do for the river. Those fortunates were entombed with all due solemnity, as members of the Thoroughgood family. After many an enjoyable funeral, Moriarty, Moran and party had popped into Jack Straw's Castle for pies, pints and ironic toasts to the dear departed. Not a few folk down on the lists as 'disappeared without trace' have 'Thoroughgood' in marble over their final resting places. If you ever wondered where to find Baron Maupertuis, the Belgian who tried to conquer a land filled with nightmare horrors "for England", you could have done worse than enquire after poor old Uncle Septimus Thoroughgood.
I wasn't aware of any surplus stiffs on the premises — though I'd not have been surprised if one or two decedents showed up under the sideboard or in the window-seat. That had happened before. I was given pause by the two smaller coffins sharing the second funeral carriage. To my knowledge, the Professor had only ever murdered one circus midget… and that was in the way of an experiment. He wished to determine whether a child-sized corpse 'burned beyond recognition' in a bread-oven could be proved in autopsy not to be a particular missing heir. Guess what? It can. It was back to the drawing board in the Finsbury Disinheritance Caper.
Moriarty and I, hats ringed with black crepe, sat either side of the faux widow in an open calêche, holding up black umbrellas against the drizzle. Sophy sniffled like Eleanora Duse upon learning her fiancé has been assassinated in Fédora. Chop, suitably top-hatted and dour, sat up on the box, holding the reins as two fine black horses, with plumed headdresses, drew us up Kingstead Hill. At least one of the nags from Bulstrode & Sons was dappled, but soot-blacked every morning to fit the mood. In the rain — and have you noticed how it always rains at funerals? — the blacking began to run.
Other mourners awaited in Egyptian Avenue. Select souls, mostly in crow black. Sombre faces, betokening the friends of bluff Ben Thoroughgood and poor little lost Willy and Harry. Even I was shocked to see who'd turned out. I didn't know 'em all straight off, but recognised enough faces to take a guess as to who else might be signing the condolence book. There were veiled ladies in the party, none making as much effort as Sophy.
I had, of course, brought my Gibbs side arm and pearl-handled pocket razor. In addition, a coil of piano wire nestled inside my hat — a trick I learned from the late Nakszynski, the Albino. In case of special circumstances, the ferrule of my umbrella came off to unsheath a needle which was envenomed by squeezing a bulb in the handle. Judging from the cut of everyone's mourning clothes at this send-off, I wondered if I'd not come underarmed.
Grimes, a well-paid sexton, had the tomb opened and berths cleared for the three newcomers. Coffins were stacked up like child's building bricks, suggesting that the Thoroughgood family would soon have to purchase another wing for their needs. I gallantly assisted the widow down, while Moriarty held the umbrellas. One or more of the mourners whistled.
A pair of Bulstrode sons shifted the coffins into the tomb. Mr Beebe, an entirely legitimate — if myopic in everything — clergyman, droned a sermon. We used to ask Mrs Halifax's girls to come along for a pleasant outing, but their giggles and rude remarks put the parson off his stroke. Now, only those who could remain 'in character' — like the estimable Sophy — were entrusted with invitations.
Several of the Thoroughgood men were interred anonymously by the terms of contracts they had signed with Mrs H. It was a service she provided to any clients who died of a coronary, asphyxiation or sheer exhaustion in the pursuit of their pleasures, and would rather disappear than have loved ones know the exact circumstances of their deaths.
Solemn duties done, the morticians tactfully withdrew. Beebe hung about soliciting donations to a restoration fund or home for indigent seamstresses or somesuch. A pay-off mollified him and he left too.
Inside the tomb, mourners stood around glass-topped coffins. Some doffed hats, some raised hankies, some lit cigars and muttered, impatient with the performance. The beloved dead looked like Madame Tussaud's waxworks, for the very good reason that the same artisans made both. Benjamin Thoroughgood was a spare head of General Gordon.
Moriarty told Grimes to seal the tomb doors behind us, and return in an hour. The sexton — who had never been able to account for the Dutch guilders he tried to pay for drink with on the night Van Helsing was arrested — had complied with stranger requests. I wish I could say this was the only time I'd heard the rasp and scrape of heavy stone tomb doors closing with me still on the inside and corpses for company.
'Gentlemen, ladies, I bid you welcome,' Moriarty addressed the mourners. 'You know why I've invited you here. Several of you have travelled great distances, at no little inconvenience to your continuing interests. Your presence betokens the seriousness with which you take this matter. Most of you are familiar with each other, but some are new to this rarely convened circle. We all know who we are. Do I need to make introductions? Some of us prefer titles to names… so, the Lord of Strange Deaths and the Daughter of the Dragon… the Grand Vampire of Paris and Mademoiselle Irma Vep… Doctor Nikola of Australia and Madame Sara of the Strand… Queen Ayesha, Igor and the Frankenstein Monster… Doctor Mabuse of Berlin and Fraulein Alraune ten Brincken… Arthur Raffles of the Albany and his, ah, friend, Mr Manders… Théophraste Lupin and Josephine, Countess Cagliostro… Doctor Jack Quartz of New York and Princess Zanoni… Rupert, Count of Hentzau, and… Miss Irene Adler.'
One of the veiled ladies lifted her black gauze.
'Hello, boys,' said that bitch.
So there you have it. The worst people in the world. All in the same tomb. If Grimes fell down a manhole and left us there to rot, or — more likely — eat each other, well… every detective, do-gooder and right-thinking prig in Christendom could get sloshed and break out their party hats.
I wouldn't know how to send a telegram to someone like Dr Nikola, who favoured Asian mountain fastnesses and Pacific island hideaways, and I'm not deranged enough to invite the Lord of Strange Deaths to tea. As the loyal reader knows, I'm afraid of very little, but if anyone gives me pause it's that dome-headed, bloody clever Chinaman. Being not afraid of death isn't the same thing as not caring about hours — in some cases, weeks — of preliminary discomfort. The cellars of the Si-Fan were known as places to avoid. The mad mandarin had a marmoset on his shoulder, if you can believe it. His Eurasian companion — supposedly his daughter, as if that spared her anything — occasionally fed the chittering beast nuts from a packet. The Celestial pair wore white robes, because they do everything sideways out East and that's the custom for attending the funerals of folks who aren't in your immediate family.
As for the others… by now, you've heard of most of them. Those you don't know you're better off for it, but I'll fill in the dance card anyway.
The second biggest surprise was the presence of my old friend Ayesha. The bandages were off. She now wore a smooth white alabaster mask and seemed to have grown back a hand — eyebrows and lips picked out in gold. God knew what she looked like underneath, though her luxuriant raven hair had either re-grown or was a wig left over from the Princess Theatre's last Antony and Cleopatra. I doubted she'd forgiven or forgotten our previous encounter and she can't have felt kindly towards the Professor after the mêlée in Conduit Street and the dismantling of her European front. If she was here, keeping her resentments to herself, then she must have a very good, or very insane, reason to join the circle.
I'd never seen Jack Quartz before. Can't say I was impressed. He sported an ostentatious cigar and the flashiest girlfriend. Princess Zanoni had more paint, powder and wax on her face than the fake heads in the coffins. The American mad doctor was tubby round the middle and running to jowls that made him look as if he were hiding cotton balls in his cheeks. Yanks never know when to stop, whether their passion is vivisecting beautiful women — which was how Dr Jack passed his leisure hours when running New York's criminal underworld became too burdensome — or eating yard-across slabs of beef with fried potatoes washed down with brown carbonated health tonic. Nikola sliced people and animals up alive too, with obscure scientific end — the Prof tried to explain it to me once — but Quartz played with scalpels just for larks.
Lupin and Raffles were just jumped-up thieves, useful enough if you wanted a diamond necklace abstracted, but essentially lightweights. Then again, next to Moriarty, Nikola or the Lord of Strange Deaths, I was just a jumped-up murderer, and only got to sit on a slightly higher chair than the burglars.
Title or not, Rupert Count of Hentzau — a Ruritanian Michaelist, if your memory goes back that far — was just like me. Call him a dashing rogue or laughing daredevil if you must, but he was your basic assassin in comic opera uniform. His moustache was waxed to points which could have your eye out and he seemed forever on the point of bursting out laughing. We were both all-rounders, though he was a sword and I a shot. I daresay if we met under different circumstances, we'd each cede the other supremacy with our favoured tools and look for a third weapon to settle the question of who was the deadliest man in Europe. The jaunty cad reminded me of a young version of myself, which naturally inclined me to hate the fellow. He further antagonised me by showing up with that bitch as an arm adornment.
More interesting to the connoisseur of criminal masterminds was the young German the Prof had called Dr Mabuse, though that was only one of his preferred names. I've mentioned him before. Remember, the ardent imitator who was wont to present a sham of Moriarty's own face and manner? He'd come to this party in his Moriarty costume, head bobbing atop an enormous fur collar, chalk on his cuffs and something in his eyes to make them glint. I had a sense I'd met him before, wearing another face or faces, and inwardly cursed this disguise craze… Simon Carne and Colonel Clay had started it, and now it was likely nobody was who they said they were or who you wanted them to be. Except the Frankenstein Monster — he could pass for a Stone Age Man or an Easter Island statue come to life, but otherwise had an extremely limited range. Others weren't so distinctive. Anyone could wear an alabaster glove and mask, shove footballs down her blouse and claim to be Queen Ayesha. However, most of the women in the world twisted enough to pull it off were in the present company as their own saucy selves. Mabuse's moll — who looked no more than twelve, except for eyes that might have seen Babylon fall — was a strange duck, all angles and poses, with dramatic hair. I took her for another dagger-under-the-pillow damsel. It's a sign of this age of emancipation that so many girls take to the trade.
Countess Cagliostro and Madame Sara were senior adventuresses, who had attained their station by stepping over the corpses of dozens of men who'd not thought to take them seriously. Most women — bless 'em — try to take a couple of years off their age, but Jo-Jo Balsamo put it about that she was decades older than she looked, and privy to the alchemical secrets of le Comte de Saint-Germain and her supposed ancestor the mountebank Cagliostro. Over a long weekend in a Valparaiso boudoir in '63, she'd put my back out — nearly thirty years on, she seemed not a day older, while my back hurt more with every passing year. What was she doing with a perfumed lout like Lupin?
Sara, no last name given, ran a series of odd little rackets from a beauty shop on the Strand, and had her tithe to the Firm delivered in scented envelopes nestled in gift baskets of salves, unguents and creams the Prof had no use for. I'd tried her hair-restorer on a thinnish patch on my crown, but it hadn't helped. Lately, her envelopes had been so fat I wondered if she was paying us over the odds in an attempt to persuade us she was a more notable crook than we took her for. Moriarty assured me she really was raking in as much as her payments indicated, and could claim financially to be the most successful female criminal of the age. Though she had Nikola at her side, the Madame generally had no use for masculine company. She worshipped at the altar of Sappho; or, if Sappho were unavailable, a bloomers-wearing, monocle-sporting saleslady in the bicycle department of Derry & Toms.
This Grand Vampire was new to me, successor to the fellow we'd given Napoleon's brainbox and the fellow who'd retained Sophy's stabbing prowess. Bald as an egg, he took the gang's name seriously enough to have his eye-teeth filed to points. Showing up in Kingstead surely put him at risk of getting holy water dashed in his face. No Frenchman likes to wash, so it was just as well Van Helsing had been deported. His young companion — who stuck around as Grand Vampires came and went — was dressed and coiffed as a boy. No one was fooled. Even the light-fingered Raffles and the dimwitted Manders, queer as eight-bob notes, knew Irma Vep was no lad. Madame Sara must also have noticed her tight-cut black knickerbockers and shapely silk-stockinged calves. The ephebic, anagrammatical vampire bore watching… though in this company she had stiff competition, in both the general bounce-worthiness and deadly-as-a-mamba stakes.
Ah, yes, Irma, so sorry… also, profuse apologies to elusive Alraune, Alluring Ayesha, experienced Jo-Jo, serpentine Sara (a cursory nod in her case), zestful Zanoni, and the by-no-means-hideous Daughter of the Dragon. Even Sophy Kratides, the woman I'd come with, would have to step aside.
'Hello, boys,' indeed.
So, here she was again. I knew I would forget everything I'd learned since Rosie the pot-girl in The Compasses told me she was 'with child' to get me to cough over the money I'd been sent from home for my fifteenth birthday. Which she then spent on gin and sailors before giving birth only to the bolster she'd shoved under her pinafore.
I'd rather have met Kali's Kitten again.
But, even in a tomb, surrounded by arch-fiends… that smile… those eyes… that twist of the end of the lip… that artfully stray curl…
Irene Adler. Damnation.
I'd have turfed Ben Thoroughgood out of his last resting place and stretched out in his stead if she'd asked me to.
I'd have garrotted the Lord of Strange Deaths' pet marmoset if she'd asked.
I'd have snatched the Black Pearl and swallowed it, daring the Golem of Prague to cut me open to get it back.
I'd have… well, I I'd have made a fool of myself. Again.
Hentzau offered round a hip flask, but his sardonic smirk did not inspire confidence in the gesture. With an 'oh well, more fool you' shrug, Rupert took a healthy draught, opened his mouth to show brandy sloshing about inside, gulped and pantomimed satisfaction. He opened his mouth again to show he hadn't shammed the swallow. The performance put off even those — like yours truly — who could have done with a stiff one. He might have dosed himself daily with minute portions of, say, arsenic, to build up tolerance. Such tricks have been known. Only Madame Sara took him up, taking a dainty swig. She'd probably rendered herself immune to every poison known to nature or science in the course of perfecting her 'beauty treatments'.
The Daughter of the Dragon made no attempt to share her packet of nuts with anyone but the marmoset. Quartz didn't hand out his cigars, though he had a fat case in his inside pocket. This prompted Raffles, who was puffing on a Sullivan, to show off his famous manners by passing round his cigarette case. I say his case — it had the crest of the Duke of Shires on it. That bitch, Irma and Hentzau accepted fags, and in no time at all the tomb smelled like a crematory. The snob thief waited for his Sullivans to come back — robbers always expect other people to steal from them, I know I do. Lupin didn't take a cigarette, but did hold on to the case for a moment, jokingly making a pretence of slipping it absent-mindedly into his coat pocket before handing it over. Raffles didn't look as though he found that funny.
So much for the social aspect of the gathering.
'We are the greatest criminal minds of the nineteenth century,' began Moriarty. Knowing we were in for a lecture, I settled my behind on a stack of Thoroughgood coffins. 'And yet, like the century, our days are numbered…'
No one voiced outrage. Closed-mouth crowd, of course. Deep thinkers, on the whole, disinclined to bluster until they'd heard the whole story. Still, I'd have expected an indignant yelp or two of 'I didn't come all this way from Kensington… or Pago Pago… or Berlin… to be insulted'.
'Really, we draw to the end of a golden age in our field of endeavour. Who has there been to oppose us, but ourselves? No police force constituted thus far has been more than a momentary inconvenience to our businesses, easy to thwart and easier to suborn. Not since Jonathan Wild has anyone at our level been brought to a court of law, let alone convicted and hanged. We have had an easy time of it — but it will not last. Already, some dilettantes have set about making war on us. Men — and a few women — of intellect, wealth, resource and character who have set themselves against us, not because they are supposed to, but because they must. We all know the species of law breaker who steals or murders or violates because he has not the strength of mind to resist the urge…'
The barest flicker of a lit cigarette made the Frankenstein Monster cower in fear.
'Such impulses exist also in those who will be our enemies. They have a perverse instinct, a compulsion if you will, to bring us down. Plainly put, they do not like what we do and are not prepared to let us continue without hindrance. At present, it's an easy matter to be rid of a stray honest prosecutor or police inspector. There are more than a sufficiency of our sort of public officials to thwart the efforts of such freaks. But, make no mistake, we see the dawn of a new era. Crime fighting is about to change. What will happen when civilised countries opt to devote as much to their police forces as to their armed forces? The sort of cool hand who once sought glory and fame fighting the foreign foe or discovering the source of the Nile will set out to become not a soldier or an explorer but a detective. Modern science will be turned against us. The detective of the future will be a thinking machine, as cold and effective as any of us. They will have capabilities to match, or better, our own. Let me give you an example…'
The Professor held up his hand, fingers splayed.
'The lines and whorls on your fingertips are unique to you. Touch any surface with your naked hand and you leave traces more distinctive than a signature. All of us, wherever we go, leave these calling cards. As yet, this fact is unknown to all but a few. Within twenty years, it will put an end to your kind of crime, Raffles. In terms you understand, rain will stop play. Could you open a safe while wearing gloves, or trouble to wipe clean every object touched in the process of breaking and entering a house? Even if you could, could Mr Manders? Fingerprints on windows, strongboxes, weapons… even human skin… will send to gaol or the gallows three-quarters of the professional criminals currently active — and all of the amateurs.'
That put the cricketer in his place. He wouldn't have looked half so startled if bowled out for a duck by a schoolboy.
'I have heard of zese fingerprints,' the Grand Vampire said. He had a high-pitched voice, and hissed through those teeth. 'A Frenchman 'as pestered ze Surété about using zem to identify ze criminalss. Also, ze beumps on a man's 'ead. Even ze shapess of earss.'
'I'm not prone to sticking my ears against anything in the course of a crack,' said Raffles.
'Except safes, old boy,' put in his friend. 'Sometimes you do, to listen to the tumblers. Leave a perfect impression of the lugholes, I'll be bound, eh what? If jolly old Mackenzie of the Yard had a cast of your ear, he'd nab you in no time, don't you think?'
'Shut up, Bunny,' Raffles said, irritated. I've known clever crooks undone by devotion to imbecile girlfriends. Raffles and Manders showed it was the same story among bumboys.
'Phrenology — the bumps on a man's head, as you say — has its place, too,' Moriarty said. 'Dr Mabuse, you can change many things about your appearance, but the shape of your skull, even under crepe and wax, will be apparent. The squama occipitalis is distinctive and unmistakable. I would know you…'
The two stared at each other a moment.
'And I would know you,' responded the German, exaggeratedly bobbing his head. I've seen fighting cocks look at each other like that, just before the squawking, pecking, clawing and killing flurry. I was put in mind of the Moriarty family reunion I'd attended.
Good Lord, could Mabuse be some long-lost Moriarty bastard! If not the Professor's, then the Colonel's? No, such twists only happen in three-volume novels. Besides, well, really…!
'I have considered fingerprints too,' Dr Nikola said, breaking the moment. 'Such things will first take hold in Europe and America, but will reach my quarter of the world in time. I agree we must pay attention to developments in detection, must not underestimate the scientific method. Moreover, we must not ignore the quality I think you do not fully appreciate, Moriarty. Idealism. Altruism. To label such things a mere compulsion is to simplify dangerously. Heroism is not susceptible to mathematics. It is not a condition to be cured, like a fever. Like all faiths, it is mysterious and strong. I daresay we shall have to get used to it. If we do not understand, appreciate and admire idealism, we shall lose.'
Hentzau got his cynical snort in before I did. Like me, he could show off a chestful of medals, mentions in dispatches and fancy write-ups in the press. We've both been called heroes by our nations and adoring multitudes, but we couldn't scrape up a jot of idealism between us. What we had wasn't heroism, but daring. Not the same thing, though it's an easy mistake. In the army and the bush, I'd sneered at heroes — mostly at their wakes — but I'd moderated my opinion at about the time Jim Lassiter put a gun to the back of my head. That gun-fighter had something. Diggory Venn, too, dash his red skin and stout heart. Even the real Carnacki was a different breed. Men like that were out there, and would always be tough nuts for men like Bloody Basher and gallant Rupert.
Moriarty just looked blank at Nikola's speech. Quartz was bored and impatient. The Lord of Strange Deaths was inscrutable, as if that were a novelty. Countess Cagliostro was counting her pearls. If you've heard anything about the later careers of all these individuals, you'll know they should have paid more attention to the little dark chap who warned against heroes. All of our masterminds had a Jim Lassiter — or nearest offer — in their future. Not everyone in the circle got tossed off a waterfall, but we all got bloody noses. Some of us went to prison.
'Heroism is an attractive quality,' Irene said, mischievously.
'Everyone can be bought, sister,' Quartz snarled. 'Or intimidated. Or dropped in the East River in a sack. Cut into an idealist and you find they bleed and die like all undermen.'
'I disagree, Mr Quartz,' Nikola said, warmed to the subject and pointedly not recognising the Yank's academic qualification. 'Idealism exists, as surely as terror, greed and lust. We deny it at our peril.'
'Are you a tiny bit of an idealist yourself, Doc?' Irene asked.
The minx was flirting with Nikola, who was — under the manners, clothes and intellect — still at bottom just a native. I squeezed my umbrella handle involuntarily, filling the ferrule with poison.
'Not at all, Miss Adler,' he responded. 'I am a pragmatist, in search of enlightenment. I am not a romantic.'
That was a cup of cold water in her flirty face. Was Nikola one of Raffles' lot? Didn't seem likely. Exquisites, in my experience, tend to be randy sods, not 'thinking machines'. In the end, the cracksman who stayed three steps ahead of Mackenzie of the Yard while burglarising the best houses in London had to flee to South Africa and get himself shot in one of those coming wars to avoid ending up jugged on charges of sodomy like Oscar Wilde. Those who sat at the top table, like the Prof and the Lord of Strange Deaths, seemed practically sexless. No one ever mentioned the mother of the Daughter of the Dragon. Would Mabuse's need to emulate Moriarty extend to sawing off his own pecker? It was put about that Alraune, his present consort, was grown in a petri dish from mandrake root and protoplasm. That was one scientific way forward for the breed, though it takes a lot of the fun out of it to my thinking.
'At the highest level of our calling,' went on Moriarty, back to his memorised lecture notes, 'most of us are scientists, even if we call it alchemy or vivisection or pursuing the secrets of the ancients…'
Sage nods from doctors, professors, sorceresses and quacks. The Lord of Strange Deaths got his degree from Edinburgh University, and both Moriarty and Nikola were pukka qualified brains. However, like Nikola, I was sure Jack Quartz had got his doctorate by collecting coupons from fudge tins and posting them off, with a dollar handling fee, to an outfit in Oklahoma who sent back the fancy sheepskin he had framed in his laboratory.
'Unencumbered by morality, unhindered by Dr Nikola's bugbear idealism, science has shown us the way,' Moriarty continued. 'Advances in warfare, medicine, engineering, transport, communications and economics have all contributed to the modernisation of crime. We have built upon the achievements of our predecessors. Where once a Dr Syn, a Dick Turpin or a Blackbeard had smuggling rings, outlaw bands or pirate ships, we have armies, businesses and fleets. My Lord of Strange Deaths, you are more truly an emperor than your ancestors who styled themselves as such. Dr Quartz, your operations extend from the Canadian Northwoods to Tierra del Fuego, an entire hemisphere. Monsieur le Vampire, wherever French is spoken, half of every louis d'or stolen passes into the coffers of your group. I am not flattering any of you. We could do better. The nations of Europe have carved up Africa, but — aside from the Si-Fan's presence in Palestine and the Queen Ayesha's Cult's limited operation in Kor and Cairo — an entire continent is not represented here. As yet, sub-Saharan Africa has produced no one like us. That will come — ten years hence, should we gather again, there will be a black face among us.'
…and it'd be my job to shoot him, I didn't add.
'Like the other empires of the world, we do not always rub along. Countess, you have murdered two previous Grand Vampires that I am aware of. Dr Nikola, you oppose the interests of the Si-Fan in Northern India…'
'…and you did me dirt in Panama, Prof,' Quartz said. 'Don't think I didn't know about that!'
'You sent me Jasper Stoke-d'Urberville,' Moriarty countered, coldly. 'I have not convened this meeting to hash over old scores.'
Ayesha gave a slow handclap. She was less chatty since she retreated behind the mask.
'Good job too,' Irene said. 'Or we'd all need coffins.'
'Thank you, Miss Adler…'
'I heard you'd another term of endearment for me, Prof…'
She winked, and a string in the old vulture's cheek went tight.
'To move on,' Moriarty insisted, 'many thinkers believe the old powers of the world are marching towards a cataclysmic conflict which will bring ruination to established order and further only the cause of revolution.'
It surprised me that Professor Moriarty was quoting from Colonel Moriarty's copybook. As we knew from the Kallinikos affair, the Department of Supplies was busy preparing for the coming wars.
'We too risk such a world war.'
'Some of us might welcome it,' Dr Mabuse said. He even did Moriarty's voice. 'It is the way of empires to fall, and leave ruins.'
'…and new outfits take over,' Quartz said.
'This is of no concern to my father,' the Daughter of the Dragon suddenly piped up. 'In the East, the Si-Fan is eternal.'
A snort came from behind Margaret Trelawny's mask.
'Ladies, ladies…' I put in. 'Play nice.'
It struck me that I'd never heard the Lord of Strange Deaths actually called 'the Dragon'. That was another of those questions no one asked. He discouraged even trivial curiosity.
'None of us have reached our present position without struggle,' Moriarty said. 'You know how Queen Ayesha came to be in her present position. She and I — and several other factions not represented here — had differences of opinion about how the business of crime might be conducted, particularly in London. Les Vampires, also, were involved, at one remove, in that battle. Alone of those who stood against me then, Queen Ayesha has made treaty, and been willing to adjust her methods to serve under me as regents of crown colonies serve under queens or emperors. She has seen the advantage. She is, for all the set-dressing, a reasonable woman.'
That was news to me. Which stung. Alluring Ayesha might be happy to throw in with the Firm if it meant she could return unhindered to her high old pharaonic life. But I would bet tuppence to a silver tiara she was less happy that the fellow who had chopped off her favourite hand was walking about unpunished. Moriarty must have offered her something while negotiating the 'treaty' which brought her into the fold. If that secret clause turned out to be my head on a dinner salver, I'd be steamed about it — especially if she was lining up that crap hunter Allan Quatermain to take my job. Him being dead probably won't stop her.
While in the mood to brag about his status as Fagin to a band of grown-up pickpockets, Moriarty declared, 'Madame Sara and Mr Raffles, among many others who have profitable endeavours in Great Britain, may also attest to the benefit they derive from operating under my umbrella.'
'You've never offered little me a position under the bumbershoot, Prof…' Irene said.
'I can think of several,' I put in.
'Ah-hah, the organ-grinder's monkey can speak,' she said. 'How're your wounds, Basher Boy? Still sore? So, Jim, why haven't you come to me to make a treaty as you did with Queenie here? My fizzog didn't get burned off, so I might be even more disposed to take a proposition seriously.'
'You are not to be trusted, Miss Adler,' the Professor said.
'And you are?' she snapped back.
For an instant, I thought Moriarty would throttle her there and then. His fingers opened and closed, as if he were wringing the necks of invisible chickens. His head stopped moving, and he stared fire at the Jersey nightingale. She did something pretty with a handkerchief and smiled sweetly. Hentzau's fingers drifted to the pommel of his dress sword — Ruritanian funeral gear runs to full honours and a sabre — and I saw why Irene had brought the lad along. Our Miss Adler had got about the world a bit since we'd met, not exactly leaving satisfied customers in every port. I'd guess most of the men present — and all of the women — wouldn't mind leaving her locked inside one of the handy Thoroughgood coffins. Since infatuation is passing, even without poison or picked pockets, her present protection wouldn't last. In six months, or six minutes, Rupert would knock along with prevailing opinion and join the queue of frustrated former partners who'd like to sheath steel in whatever that bitch had in place of a human heart. Just now, however, he was favoured in her eye and befuddled enough to put his sharp sword at her disposal. Could I slip inside his guard with a thrust from a poisoned brolly? In confined space, best not to chance it.
Moriarty, with a force of will greater than mine, answered Irene politely.
'None of us is to be trusted, Miss Adler. At the risk of stating the obvious, we are criminals. To the world, we are villains.'
'My father does not accept that Western definition,' said the Daughter of the Dragon.
'"To the world",' I said. Not to me. Not among ourselves. I hope that, here, in this tomb, we can be honest at least with each other. For, if we are not, then we shall fail and fall. We must find common cause.'
'With you as chairman of the board, of course,' Quartz said.
'I have no interest in such a position. Only the insecure would need a title. I do not suggest we become one combine. Such would be unwieldy, and as prone to internal rifts and failings as, say, the British Empire. I merely suggest we divide the world, not simply according to geography and politics, but race and creed. We shall have a commonwealth of criminal empires. To have hope of victory, ultimately of survival, in a world where the police aren't corruptible fools, we must be more than robber barons. Make no mistake, the world has always been against us. For an age, we have thrived because the world was divided between those who were afraid of us and those who didn't believe in us. We cannot rely on that situation persisting much longer. We will stay in our shadows. We cannot operate openly, no matter how much some of us might like the limelight, Count Rupert. Name a famous criminal, and you'll name someone who got caught. Light will be shone at us, but we shall have to remain invisible. Quartz, if you wish to be, as you say, Chairman of the Board, be my guest. You have my vote. If such a chair existed, I should not care to sit in it. To the Übermenschen of the law, the holder of such an office would be a challenge. And knights errant can't resist a challenge.'
Quartz puffed more smoke. '"Übermenschen of the law"? That's putting the case a bit strong, ain't it, Moriarty? Pinkertons and vigilantes and flatfeet…'
'They are coming, Quartz. We will face them. Agencies are being constituted in all our countries. In America, more than anywhere else. Individuals will hear a call. Detectives, adventurers, superior policemen, prosecutors. Men with unique abilities. Men who have badges, men who wear masks, men who are — and I do not exaggerate for effect — a match for us. Some will rise to fight for abstract notions of justice… some to protect the downtrodden… some to seek revenge. The most dangerous will be dispassionate thinkers for whom solving a mystery will be reward enough. We have all been setting puzzles which are to the scientific investigator what an unclimbed peak is to a mountaineer.'
'Moriarty, you truly think the barbarians are at our gates?' Raffles asked. 'Is there nothing that can be done?'
'We have to strike now,' Moriarty insisted. 'We must not wait to be crossed, inconvenienced, incommoded, hampered or persecuted. We must single out our enemies and smash them before they make their first moves. We must find these heroes… yes, Nikola, heroes… in their cribs and strangle them or beat their brains out. Kill their parents, assistants, comrades, sympathisers in the police or the press. They must never come to be. If we are to enjoy a utopia of crime, we cannot allow our adversaries to rise. Do you understand?'
A pause. Goggle eyes all around. People who impressed, hypnotised and terrified everyone they met were impressed, hypnotised and terrified. I felt the chill of the grave, but then again I was sat on a coffin in a tomb after a funeral. As always, I'd had no idea what had been going on in Moriarty's brain.
Unsurprisingly, it was Irene who dared speak first.
'Prof, I take it all back. That thing they call you. I always took it for a joke, but you're the silver dollar. Rupe, gimme that jug, I want to — no, I have to — raise a toast. To Professor James Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime!'
She took Hentzau's flask and drained it at a gulp.
