Whatever Moriarty had been expecting with regards to improved museum security, it had not been a disgruntled octogenarian with a floor mop bearing down on him.
"Get out you little bastard. I just mopped that." Billy Burke roared, almost spitting his false teeth out in his anger.
"What?" Moriarty was confused and then somewhere in the back of his mind something clicked. The lonely seven year old boy at the back of the class with his runny nose looking wistfully up into the eyes of the most magnificent creature he had ever seen. The hand reaching forward to gently stroke the leg bone. And then some nasty old man shouting at him not to touch. But he wasn't seven any more. And he wasn't going to be told what to do by any one. He was James Moriarty.
The disused station of Mornington Temple had in its heyday been a bastion of Victorian gentility. With a tea room, ladies waiting room and gentleman's smoking parlour. But now, it was a series of dusty, gloomy rooms with chipped tiles and crumbling plaster. And the distinct smell of hot chocolate and mint toothpaste in the air. Sherlock pushed against a metal clad door and entered a whole new world. A world full of computers and surveillance equipment and rather disturbingly several space hoppers.
Someone had set up an area like a living room, and a coffee table was littered with blueprints and money and chocolate biscuit crumbs. Sherlock's phone bleeped. He had signal. And he immediately dialled his brother.
"Mycroft. It's urgent. We are in the Mornington Temple station. John has hurt his shoulder. And I think you need to send some men to the Museum now. It's James Moriarty." He turned to see John sitting dejectedly on the sofa nursing his shoulder.
"Mycroft is sending a car straight away. They shouldn't be too long." Sherlock sat next to John, rather concerned for the amount of pain he was in. And also rather puzzled. He knew that Moriarty was at the bottom of the spate of Dinosaur thefts, but could not for the life of him think why. He stroked the back of John's head and puzzled it over.
"What's that over there?" John asked nodding his head in the direction of the far corner.
"Looks like some lab equipment."
"Why would he have lab equipment?"
"The same reason I do. Experiments."
"Oh my God. Jurassic Park."
"What?"
"You've not seen Jurassic Park? Dinosaur DNA? Big huge lizards stomping all over New York and Richard Attenborough?" John was clearly talking a foreign language.
"Is that a film?"
"Yes."
"So it isn't real?"
"No. But Moriarty's a genius. And if that is a DNA lab we know why he wanted a dinosaur."
"John, I think the pain is getting to you." John was about to protest when a door swung open. John moved his gun like lightening, causing the broken edges of his collar bone to rub together and make him feel rather sick.
"Please don't shoot me Doctor Watson. It's me. David McDonald." John lowered his gun. And passed out again.
