Falcon in the Dive
Набравшись сил и мужества продолжить чтение The Hound of the D'Urbervilles, я щедро поделюсь, пожалуй, самыми удачными - однако не всегда пристойными - моментами, дабы избавить заинтересованных от пытки, состоящей в знакомстве с книгой целиком) Цитаты посвящены, по преимуществу, профессору, полковнику и некоторым нашим любимцам и друзьям: в англоязычном тексте встречается немало откровенной пошлости, присыпанной крепким словцом, поэтому особам несовершеннолетним или же предпочитающим не видеть тексты ранга R прочтение я не рекомендую. По мере продвижения в недошедевре запись будет обновляться)
...прочесть и ужаснуться***
‘You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive,’ said the Professor.
‘How the devil did you know that?’ I asked in astonishment.
***
His eyes caught mine. Cobra eyes, they say. Large, clear, cold, grey and fascinating. I’ve met cobras, and they aren’t half as deadly – trust me. I imagine Moriarty left off tutoring because his pupils were too terrified to con their two times table.
***
[Профессор о Моране]
‘...you are retired from your regiment, resigning at the request of a superior to avoid the mutual disgrace of dishonourable discharge; you have suffered a serious injury at the claws of a beast, are fully recovered physically, but worry your nerve might have gone; you are the son of a late Minister to Persia and have two sisters, your only living relatives beside a number of unacknowledged half-native illegitimates; you are addicted, most of all to gambling, but also to sexual encounters, spirits, the murder of animals and the fawning of a duped public; most of the time, you blunder through life like a bull, snatching and punching to get your own way, but in moments of extreme danger you are possessed by a strange serenity which has enabled you to survive situations that would have killed another man; in fact, your true addiction is to danger, to fear – only near death do you feel alive; you are unscrupulous, amoral, habitually violent and, at present, have no means of income, though your tastes and habits require a constant inflow of money...’
***
He kept no notes, no files, no address book or appointment diary. It was all in his head. Someone who knows more than I do about sums told me that Moriarty’s greatest feat was to write The Dynamics of an Asteroid, his magnum opus, in perfect first draft. From his mind to paper, with no preliminary notations or pencilled workings, never thinking forward to plan or skipping back to correct.
***
[Причудливая, но нежданно милая манера профессорского разговора]
‘Didn’t you think to tail these, ah, varmints, to their lair?’
***
Then the Professor rattled on about airguns, which lost me. Only little boys and poofs would deign to touch a contraption which needs to be pumped before use and goes off with a sad phut rather than a healthy bang.
***
[О местной Ирен]
To Professor Moriarty, she is always that bitch.
***
The Professor had me on an honorarium of six thousand pounds per annum. Scarcely enough to make anyone put up with Moriarty, actually, but it serviced my predilection for pursuits the naive refer to as ‘games of chance’.
***
That morning, the Professor was thinking through two problems. A portion of his brain was calculating the timings of solar eclipses observable in far-flung regions. (...) The greater part of his attention, however, was devoted to the breeding of wasps.
***
Even Moriarty was impressed, and he could keep up a lecture on the grades of paper used in the forgery of high-denomination Venezuelan banknotes while walking down the secret corridor with the row of one-way mirror windows into the private rooms where Mrs H.’s girls conducted spectacularly indecent business day and night.
***
[Ирен о герцоге]
Things being slow this season, I’ve been knocking around a bit with Black Mike. They call him that because of his hair, which is dark where the rest of his family’s is flame-red. He’s a gloomy, glowering type as well so it suits him on temperamental grounds too. As it happens, photographs were taken of the two of us in the actual pursuit of knocking around. Artistic studies, you might say. Six plates. Full figures. Complete exposures. It would ruin my reputation should they come to light. You see, I’m being blackmailed!’
***
‘I see,’ I said, ‘this Sapt thinks to blacken Michael’s name – further blacken, I suppose – so the duke will never be king.’
Irene Adler looked at me with something like contemptuous pity.
‘Horse feathers, Colonel of the Nuts. If those pics were seen, Black Mike’d be the envy of Europe. He’d be crowned in a wave of popularity. Everyone loves a randy royal.
***
[Автор считает, это важно знать]
In the original manuscript, the allusion is followed by a parenthesis which has been heavily scored through. From the few discernible words, the redacted section seems to be a homophobic rant. Other passages in the memoirs, especially those concerning his time at Eton, indicate Moran shared his era’s prejudice against homosexuality, but didn’t despise gays more than he hated anyone else. Equally, his bile against ‘natives’ and foreigners is tempered by general misanthropy.
***
[Профессор пишет письма]
First, he wrote to the Westminster Gazette, which carried his angry letter in full. He harped on about the sufferings of the slum-dwellers of Strelsauer Altstadt – some of which weren’t even made up, which is where the clever part came in – and labelled Ruritania ‘the secret shame of Europe’.
***
Moriarty rarely smiled, and then usually to terrify some poor victim. The first time I heard him laugh, I thought he had been struck by deadly poison and the stutter escaping through his locked jaws was a death rattle.
***
Moriarty was in a black thinking mood. He chewed little violet pastilles of his own concoction – a substitute for the cigarettes which had yellowed his fingers and teeth but were now abandoned because he’d taken it into his head to deem tobacco a threat to human health – and paced his room, hands knotted in the small of his back, brow set in a crinkled frown.
***
I would wager several pawn tickets held on the family silver that you lot have little or no interest in fractional calculus or imperfect logarithms.
***
By now, you’ve heard the twaddle... vast spider squatting in the centre of an enormous web of vice and villainy... Napoleon of Crime... Nero of Naughtiness... Thucydides of Theft, et cetera, et cetera.
***
Throughout his dual career – imagine serpents representing maths and crookery, twining together like a wicked caduceus – the Prof was locked in deadly survival for supremacy – nay, for survival – with a human creature he saw as his arch-enemy, his eternal opposite, his nemesis.
Sir Nevil Airey Stent.
***
Stent and Moriarty were at each other’s throats well before I became Number Two Big-ish Chief in the Firm. Whenever the Stent issue was raised, Moriarty turned purple and hissed – and was in no condition to elucidate further. I know they first met as master and pupil: Moriarty supervised young Nevil when the lad was cramming for an exam. Maybe the Prof scorned the promising mathematician’s first quadratic equation in front of the class. Maybe Stent gave him an apple with a worm in it.
***
1863 – Boyish twenty-three-year-old Nevil Stent, former pupil of James Moriarty, rocks the world of astronomy with his paper ‘Diffractive Properties of an Object-Glass with Circular Aperture’. Not a good title, to my mind – which runs more to the likes of Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas or My Nine Nights in a Harem (both, as it happens, written by me – good luck finding the latter: most of the run was burned by order of the crown court and the few extant volumes tend to be found in the collection of the judge who made the ruling).
***
Now... imagine how you’d feel about Stent if you were a skull-faced, reptile-necked, balding astronomical-mathematical genius ten years older than the Golden Youth of Greenwich Observatory.
***
My understanding was that my flatmate and I were due to attend an exclusive sporting event in Wapping. Contestants billed as ‘Miss Lilian Russell’ and ‘Miss Ellen Terri’ in the hope punters might take them for their near look-alikes Lillian Russell and Ellen Terry were to face off, stripped to drawers and corsets, and Indian-wrestle in an arena knee-deep in custard.
***
‘Has it not been said that The Dynamics of an Asteroid “ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics there is no man in the scientific press capable of criticising it”?’
Sir Nevil Stent smiled and held up a thick volume.
I was familiar with the blasted book. At least a dozen presentation copies were stuffed into the shelves in our study. It was the Professor’s magnum opus, the sum total of his knowledge of and contribution to the Whole Art of Mathematical Astronomy. In rare moments of feeling, Moriarty was wont to claim he was prouder of these 652 pages (with no illustrations, diagrams or tables) than of the Macao-Golukhin Forgery, the Bradford Beneficent Fund Swindle or the Featherstone Tiara Theft.
***
[На этом месте я возрыдала]
A tide of tittering ran through the audience. Stent raised his eyebrows, and shook the book in humorous fashion, as if hoping something would fall out. Chuckles ensued. Stent tried to read the book upside down. Something which might be diagnosed as a guffaw erupted from an elderly party near us. Moriarty turned to aim a bone-freezing glare at the old gent – but was thwarted by his disguise. He wore opaque black spectacles and held a white cane in order to pass himself off as a blind scholar from Trinity College, Dublin.
***
The handle of the Professor’s cane snapped. He’d been gripping it with both knotted fists. The sound was like a gunshot.
‘So you have joined us, James,’ Stent said. ‘I rather thought you might.’
A sibilance escaped Moriarty’s colourless lips.
‘We shall have need of you later,’ Stent said, producing a long thin knife – which he proceeded slip into the book, cutting at last its virgin leaves. ‘You can take off those ridiculous smoked glasses. Though, if you have suffered some onset of blindness which has not been reported in the press, it would explain a great deal.
***
[Каждому пережившему защиту диссертации будут понятны эти чувства]
At every point, Stent invited a response from Moriarty. None came. The Professor sat in silence as his theorems were shredded, his calculations unpicked, his conclusions burst like balloons.
***
Moriarty remained in his seat as the room emptied.
‘James,’ Stent said cheerfully from the podium as he gathered his notes, ‘it’s pleasant to see you in such evident health. There’s actually some colour in your cheeks. I bid you a respectful good night.’
***
First thing he did was whip out a well-worn copy of The Dynamics of an Asteroid (with all its leaves cut) and beg Moriarty for a personal inscription. I think the thing the Professor did with his mouth at that was his stab at a real smile. Trust me, you’d rather a vampyroteuthis infernalis clacked its beak – buccal orifice, properly – at you than see those thin lips part a crack to give a glimpse of teeth.
***
It was apparent that, as a breed, mathematician-astronomers were more treacherous, determined and murder-minded than the wounded tigers, Thuggee stranglers, card-sharps and frisky husband-poisoners who formed my usual circle of acquaintance.
***
Then Moriarty laughed.
Pigeons fell dead three streets away. Hitherto-enthusiastic customers in Mrs Halifax’s rooms suddenly lost ardour at the worst possible moment. Vampire squid waved their tentacles. I quelled an urge to bring up my mutton lunch.
***
‘Yes-s-s,’ he hissed. ‘Paper hats-s-s.’
***
I’ve rarely had cause to remark upon Professor Moriarty’s genius for disguise. There’s good reason for that. Anyone less wholly shoved up his own bum than Sir Nevil Stent would have seen through Moriarty’s beards and hoods and skullcaps and spectacles in a trice. That snake-oscillation mannerism always gave him away. He didn’t list card-sharping among his favoured crimes, or he’d have known about ‘tells’ and taken steps to suppress his. On one occasion, I tried to raise the matter in as tactful a fashion as possible, venturing to suggest that the Professor moderate his ‘cobra-neck tell’ when incognito.
‘What are you talking about, Moran? Have you been at the diacetylmorphine hydrochloride again?’
There was no sense in pressing the matter further. Genius or no, Moriarty truly didn’t know about the thing he did with his neck. I wondered if he was unconsciously trying to make it difficult for the hangman. Probably not. It was just a habit.
***
Nevertheless, Moriarty acquitted himself adequately in the multiple roles of ‘C., Cave’, filthy shopkeeper, ‘long-necked cabbie’, dispenser of jovially ominous sentiments, and ‘Hooded Man of Mystery’, mouth-piece of Martian Royalty. (Stent never did persuade anyone else to say ‘Marsian’.)
***
Moriarty’s facial tendons were tight as leather drum skin dried in the sun, making his face a skull-mask rictus of glee. His eyes lit up like Chinese lanterns. I’d wager every muscle in the old ascetic’s stringy body was tight with sordid pleasure. He got like that when he had his way. Other fellahs might pop a bottle of fizz or nip down to Mrs H.’s for a turn with a trollop, but the Professor just went into these brain-spasms of evil ecstasy.
***
[А вот это - мило]
There are idiot Englishwomen (of both sexes) who would be generally happier to see children whipped, starved, laughed at, shot and mounted in the Moran den than brook any abuse of their ‘furry or feathered friends’...
***
When Moriarty handed over coin and told you to bowl a squid at an astronomer, your wisest course was to ask ‘over-arm or roundarm?’ and get on with play.
***
As I entered our reception room, a slicing noise alerted me. A stick slashed at my head. I arrested its arc with a quick grab. As part of an unending ‘testing process’, Moriarty often tried to catch associates off guard. Some, not having my jungle-honed instincts, got broken heads.
***
In a long life spent at gaming tables, in brothels, up mountains and in the bush, I’ve gained valuable insights into human nature. Anyone called ‘Jasper’ is an arrogant, untrustworthy scoundrel. Anyone called ‘Cedric’ is liable to be worse. And anyone called ‘Piers’ should be shot on sight.
***
Moriarty was impatient with this legal footnote. ‘What can we do for you, Mr Stoke-d’Urberville?’
One of Stoke’s brows flicked up.
‘Professor Moriarty, I want a dog killed.’
***
Before you ask – yes, Moriarty did ponder that particular lay. Rather than pull off the coup bungled by Thomas Blood [3], he negotiated quietly with a terrifying Fat Man in Whitehall.
***
‘That’s all you can say for Saul Derby,’ conceded Stoke. ‘He rubs along with Dan’l. He even cosies up reasonably with the Albino, who frightens most as much as... well, as much as you do, Professor.’
Moriarty smiled, not unpleased.
***
In clubrooms, I’ve run across the odd sportsman – Long John Roxton comes to mind – obsessed with hunting specimens which aren’t in the books.
***
I believe that – in his tiny, shrivelled, eight-months-gone apple of a heart – the Professor got spasms of enjoyment from his crimes, for it’s a sad rogue who strives his life long to increase the miseries of his fellow man without getting at least a warm feeling when he sees others beggared or dumped in unmarked graves on his account. Everyone knows I’m a sentimental soul.
***
‘I am currently much involved,’ he announced. ‘Several crimes require my presence in London...’
This was news to me.
‘...you will soon read of the Barrie-McTrostle disinheritance... the Clapham Gas House atrocities... and the Winklesworth & Company stock malfeasance...’
He was making this rot up, but Stoke’s eyes goggled – imagining vast feats of inconceivable criminality. Moriarty was not above puffing up his feats by reference to imaginary crimes. Usually, he was deceiving someone about something and had a long game in mind, so I played along.
‘There’s the abduction of the Ranee of Ranchipur, too,’ I put in.
The ‘Ranee of Ranchipur’ was the professional name of Molly Duff, one of Mrs Halifax’s girls. She stained herself brown to pass as a Hindu princess.
Moriarty nodded sagely. ‘Yes, an exacting proposition. The Ranee is to be taken from under the Rajah’s nose and sold to a Scottish peer during her birthday party. That will require my personal attention.’
***
‘However,’ said the Professor, ‘in this instance, I can with full confidence entrust your dog to my associate, Colonel Moran. He is known far and wide as the greatest hunter of the age. If an animal draws breath, he’s killed it.’
The old chest fairly swelled with pride, though I knew the Prof was stroking the client while palming the job off on me.
***
‘Prometheus’, custom-made by George Gibbs of Bristol, is sadly lost. Having served me better than any woman I’ve ever paid for, the rifle suffered tragically when pressed into service as a crutch as I hobbled out of an East African jungle on a broken leg. I laid the gun to rest in a grave with the three bearers who deserted me.
***
I’d not named a gun since ‘Prometheus’, but I’d a rack to choose from. Elephant, lion, tiger, bear, native and witness widows across the Empire could attest to their reliability.
***
Before leaving, I conferred with Moriarty in the windowless study where he experimented. He was not busy with other crimes, imaginary or genuine. He was dissecting a violin. An Amati of Cremona, if that means anything. He had secured it at auction for a fabulous sum – solely, I believe, to keep it from a rival bidder for whom he had a particular dislike. With dressmakers’ scissors and a surgeon’s scalpel, he anatomised his fiddle, snipping strings, sundering joins. Perhaps the Prof hoped to find out where the tunes came from.
***
From this, I knew Moriarty was playing his own game. When he rattled on, he was mesmeric. He could convince you Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – also the product of ‘a mathematical mind’, remember – made sound sense.
***
It was, of course, raining.
***
I ignored Tringham and maintained attentions to Mod. I had every reason to anticipate private entertainment from that direction.
It nagged, however, that Moriarty had charged me with making detailed observations. Encomia to Modesty Derby’s teats would not interest the cold, sad maniac. No, the Professor would rather have the ramblings of a crackpot genealogist.
***
It takes little to make me happy – something new to kill today, and someone new to bed tonight.
***
[Негодяи!]
The gun’s bag ran to six tigers, nine lions, a few Welshmen and one Honourable Lord brought down in testing circumstances from the visitors’ gallery to save the House from an excessively dull speech on the subject of Irish Home Rule. Never let it be said that Moriarty & Moran made no contribution to politics.
***
[Профессор поддается современным веяньям]
The curtain rustled. A white, long-fingered hand gathered a fold and switched it aside. Into Red’s Hole came the Brokeneck Lady...
A wet dress dragged on the ground. The veil hung to the waist on one side but almost up to the ear on the other. I’ve seen hanged men. Their heads loll just the same.
Venn glanced up, but kept stirring.
The ghost’s head rolled, as if it were trying to set skull on spine like a cup and ball game. For a moment, the head was in its proper position. Then it inclined in the other direction. And back again. Then, evenly, it nodded from side to side. The veil swung.
I knew that cobra-neck wobble!
The veil was lifted.
‘Moriarty,’ I shouted. ‘You f---ing c--t!’
***
[Как нам это знакомо!]
Mod swarmed up at me in a froth of concern.
‘Sebastian,’ she cooed, ‘it’s such a relief you are living! We thought you’d perished in The Chase. Another victim of the Curse of the d’Urbervilles.’
‘No, that was Nakszynski.’
She touched my bandaged head and kissed my cheek.
‘You’ve been heroically wounded. Who did those splints for you? I’ll change them properly. You’ll take brandy, of course. And supper.’
***
‘This is Professor Moriarty,’ I said. ‘My associate.’
She curtseyed and extended a hand which the Prof did not take. He sized Mod up with a single watery-eyed glare.
Moriarty distrusted and disliked women. I only distrust them.
***
Professor Moriarty did not readily admit his mistakes. Oh, he made ’em. Some real startlers. You were well advised not to bring up the Tay Bridge Insurance Fiasco in his gloomy presence. Or the Manchester and Provincial Bank Robbery (six months’ brain work to set up, a thousand pounds seed money to pull off: seven shillings and sixpence profit). The Professor was touchy about failures. Indeed, he retained me to keep ’em quiet.
***
In our Conduit Street rooms, we were doing the books, perhaps the least glamorous aspect of running a criminal empire. Once a mathematics tutor, Moriarty enjoyed balancing ledgers – as much as he could enjoy anything, the sad old sausage – more than robbing an orphanage trust fund or bankrupting a philanthropic society.
***
[Лицо ирландской революции!]
Nowadays, America employs – which is to say, enslaves – the Irish for such low purposes. A sammy takes only so much field-slog before up and cutting your throat and heading into the bush. Your bog-trotter, on the other hand, grumbles for 700 years, holds rowdy meetings, then decides to get very, very drunk instead of doing anything about it.
***
[Родные корни]
Yes, I know Moran is an Irish name. So is Moriarty. That comes into it later, too.
***
Just to rub it in, this Birdy flew off to England with Baldwin’s sweetheart. Hot on the trail and under the collar, Baldwin came to London and called on the Firm. A wedge of greenback dollars hired us to locate the Pink, which we did sharpish. Sporting the more plausible incognito of John Douglas, Edwards was sunning himself at Birlstone, a moated manor.
An easy lay! Shin up a tree in the grounds and professionally pot the blighter through the leaded library window as he sits at his desk, perusing La Vie Parisienne. Aim, pull, bang... brains on the wall, ‘Scotland Yard Baffled’, notice in The Times, full fee remitted, thank you very much, pleasure to do business with you!
***
We could have shoved Birdy off the dock at Southampton and been home for tea and – ahem, encore – crumpet in Mrs Halifax’s establishment for licentious ladies. Not obtrusive enough, though. Nothing would do for the Prof but that the corpse be aimed at the isle of Napoleon’s exile. He spent hours with charts and tide-tables and a sextant to make sure of it. Moriarty was thinking, as usual, two or three steps ahead. There was only one place on Edwards’ escape route anyone – specifically, anyone who scribbles for the London rags – has ever heard of. A mysterious corpse on St Helena gets a paragraph above the racing results. A careless passenger drowned before embarkation doesn’t rate a sentence under the corset endorsements. Advertising, you see: Moriarty strikes! All your killing needs satisfied!
***
He looked as if I’d just shot him. Which is to say: he looked like some of the people I’ve shot looked after I’d shot them.
***
Listeners at the keyhole used to be a problem, but a bullet hole two inches to the left indicated Moriarty’s un-gentle solution to unwanted eavesdroppers.
***
Oh, I have done more than my fair share of thieving. I’ve robbed, burgled, rifled, raided, waylaid, heisted, abducted, abstracted, plundered, pilfered and pinched across five continents and seven seas.
***
[Современные мотивы]
Moriarty was unruffled by the objection.
‘If there’s no fog on the Channel, the Templar Falcon should join the collection by tomorrow morning. I have cabled the Grand Vampire in Paris with details of the current location of this rara avis. It has been in hiding. A soulless brigand enamelled it like a common blackbird to conceal its value.’
***
‘What about item six?’ Carne chipped in.
‘The Eye of Balor,’ Moriarty said. ‘A gold coin, named for a giant of Irish mythology, reputed to have been taken from a leprechaun’s pot... Lately the “lucky piece” of “Dynamite” Desmond Mountmain, General-in-Chief of the Irish Republican Invincibles, which brought him only poor luck, since last week an infernal device of his own manufacture went off in his face when he thumped the table too hard at a meeting of his Inner Council of Immortals.’
I told you Ireland would come into it.
***
[Очень жаль!]
It was an irritant when the misconception set in that we were in sympathy with the working man. That inconvenience was as nothing beside the notion that fellows with names like Moriarty or Moran must support Irish Independence.
***
When a bold Fenian's proposal of an alliance - with our end of it providing the funds - is rejected, he acts exactly like a music hall mick refused credit for drink. Hearty, exploitative friendliness curdles into wheedling desperation then turns into dark threats of dire vengeance. Always, there's an appeal to us as ‘fellow Irishmen'. If the Prof or I have family connections in John Bull's Other Island, we'd rather not hear from them. We've sufficient unpleasant English relatives to be getting on with.
***
It is possible the Professor is a distant cousin of Bishop Moriarty of Kerry, though rebels know better than to raise that connection. The Bishop - in one of the rare sensible utterances of a churchman I can recall - once declared: ‘When we look down into the fathomless depth of this infamy of the heads of the Fenian conspiracy, we must acknowledge that eternity is not long enough, nor Hell hot enough to punish such miscreants.' Far be it from me to agree with anything said in a pulpit, but the Bish was not far wrong.
***
[Вспомним об Имоне]
A paddy intolerant of strong drink is as common as a politician averse to robbing the public purse. An Irishman who goes around smashing bottles and barrels has few comrades and fewer friends.
***
[И "Диззи" не забыт]
As has been said about any number of conflicts, including the Franco-Prussian War and the Gladstone-Disraeli feud, it's a shame they can't both lose.
***
Ireland! I ask you, was ever there such a country of bastards, priests and lunatics?
***
‘Ye'll not be regrettin' this at all at all, Colonel, me darlin",' Leopold said. His brogue was so thick the others couldn't make out what he was saying. He was an Austrian who liked to pretend he was an Irishman. After all, whoever heard of a Dubliner called Leopold?
***
As I entered the foyer of the Opera House, I thought the banshee associated with the Eye of Balor had pursued me. A wailing resounded throughout the building.
Then I recognised the racket as that bloody ‘Jewel Song'.
A commissionaire was worried about a chandelier, which was vibrating and clinking. A small, crying boy was led out of the auditorium by an angry mama and a relieved papa. I swear they were bleeding at the ears. In the garden, dogs howled in sympathy. The silver plugs in my teeth hurt.
***
By a side door, I went backstage. In a hurry, I picked up items as I found them on racks in dressing rooms. When I told the story later, I claimed to have donned complete costume and make-up for the role of Mephistopheles. Actually, I made do with a red cloak, a cowl with horns and a half-facemask with a Cyrano nose.
***
I boomed out the Barrack Room lyrics to ‘Abdul Abulbul Amir', lowering my voice to deep bass and drawing out phrases so no one could possibly make out the words or even the language.
***
Most of the audience, who knew the opera by heart, were surprised at the sudden reappearance of Mephistopheles but, after eight renditions of the ‘Jewel Song', were happy to accept whatever came next, just so long as it wasn't a ninth.
‘Those joooo-oooo-wels you muuuuu-ust give baaaa-ack,' I demanded. ‘Your beau-uuuuu-ty needs no suuuu-ch adorn-meeee-ent!'
I picked up the prop casket in which the jewels had been presented and pointed into it.
***
So I made my exit across the orchestra pit, striding on the backs of chairs, displacing musicians, knocking over instruments. I didn't realise until I was among the audience that I had trailed my cloak across the limelights and was on fire.
I paused and the whole audience stood to give me a round of applause.
***
That is how I made my debut at the Royal Opera.
***
Finding the celebrated circles and clown-smile squiggles named for the mathematician John Venn inadequate to the task, he had invented what he said - and I've no reason to doubt him - was an entirely new system for visually representing complex processes. He was delighted with his incomprehensible arrays of little ovals with symbols in them, stuck together by flowing lines interrupted by arrows.
***
He patted me warmly on the chest - a unique gesture from him, with which I was not entirely comfortable - and disappeared back into his den.
***
Queen Victoria could unroll a map of the world and take pride in the extensive red patches which mark the Empire; the Prof had similar ambitions for the globe in his study. Stuck with red-headed needles wherever a Moriarty crime had been accomplished, the globe increasingly resembled a pincushion.
***
Then, early in January, Professor Moriarty asked me to accompany him to the Xeniades Club to meet with his brother, Colonel Moriarty.
Are you familiar with that breed of novel heroine who prefaces a chapter of awful experiences with ‘had I but known...'? Well, had I but bloody known, I'd have stayed in bed with or without a tweeny foot warmer.
***
[Правда о полковнике]
Instead, the Colonel was a sallow, slouching fellow with a sunken chest, the ill-cared-for clothes of a clerk who no longer has hopes of advancement, a perpetual cold which required odd poultices and compresses which afforded no appreciable benefit, and a little square of moustache like a patch he'd missed with his cutthroat three days ago. He was seven years younger than the Professor, but seemed nearer death.
***
‘My youngest brother is a stationmaster in the west of England, Moran,' the Professor stated.
‘Fal Vale Junction, in Cornwall,' said the Colonel.
‘Where he can't do any harm,' said the Professor.
‘So you say, James.'
‘I do say, James.'
***
At that, the Professor's head began its familiar oscillation. Unnervingly, the Colonel began to sway his head from side to side in mirror of his brother. It was a family habit!
***
‘Moriarty, does your brother... your brother, the Colonel... have any idea of your real business?'
The Professor cocked his head to one side, smiling unpleasantly.
‘James is not the most perceptive of us.'
***
[Начнем сочувствовать]
When we returned to Conduit Street, a telegram awaited. From the third James Moriarty. The Professor read the wire, and passed it to me.
JAMES - FAL VALE TERRORISED BY GIANT WORM! - COME AT ONCE - JAMES.
***
‘A giant worm?' the Professor said. ‘What, pray, does James expect me to do about it?'
I considered the matter.
***
The Professor was, in his way, a great man. Yet, despite what many who encountered him said, he was still a human man.
***
I'll warrant Gladstone, Palliser and Attila were the same - in command of their destinies and fixed on their great goals, but red-faced and sputtering when joshed by some sibling who remembered when nursie smacked their bottoms for making sicky-sicky on their bibs.
***
So, we were hunting dragons. With no payday in sight.
***
I'd known him not speak for a week, then arrange the removal of a human obstacle to one of his designs and become almost morbidly cheerful. I'd seen his crazes start up like a sudden summer storm, ending in ruination of one stripe or another for someone who had crossed him.
***
Even the Red Planet League business pales beside the fate of Fred Porlock, convicted in a court convened in our basement of a capital crime for selling information about the Firm's dealings to outside interests. What was done to the traitor made the Lord of Strange Deaths seem lenient, and stood as a serious disincentive to anyone else who might consider following his unhappy path of collaboration with the law.
***
But this was different. His head was not bobbing. His chin was clamped to his chest. He was still grinding his teeth. He would not be spoken to.
I'd never seen Moriarty like this. I concluded that only family could put him in such a black humour.
***
Moriarty wasn't in conversational mood and I'd not packed anything to read. Railway bookstalls tend not to stock Mistress Payne's Rollicking Academy or R.G. Sanders' Natives I Have Shot, my favoured perusing material.
***
‘Oh,' I said, as if remembering there was one more introduction to be made. ‘This is Professor Moriarty.'
Moriarty didn't come out of his thought fugue.
‘The mathematician?' the parson said. ‘Author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid?'
‘No, the master criminal, author of ransom notes and blackmail demands,' I didn't say - though it did spring to mind.
***
Moriarty walked nearly to the end of the platform, and peered into the dark as if through a telescope. Could he discern life on some far-distant star? Or was he just fixed on some theoretical point half a mile into the tunnel?
***
‘James, is that you?' the Professor shouted.
‘Yes, James,' came the answer.
***
[Несчастные!]
‘I say, do you two know each other?' Lucas asked. ‘I only just realised, same name and all that. Stationmaster Moriarty. Professor Moriarty. You must be father and son?'
At this suggestion, the Jameses made faces as if they'd bitten something sour.
***
‘I suppose James told you to keep away from Fal Vale,' Stationmaster Moriarty said to the Professor. ‘He's made his position clear, as usual.'
‘I thought you were James?' Madame Valladon said.
‘No, he is James,' Doone said. ‘Professor James Moriarty.'
Neither brother explained. Our fellow travellers were left in confusion.
***
Professor and Stationmaster smirked together, almost undetectably - a family expression which excluded the rest of us. I got a chill from more than the night air.
***
With the appearance of Moriarty's brothers, I realised there were those closer to his cold heart. Family by blood, not association. I'd thought the Professor invincible, beyond human hurt or harm, but it seemed the other Jameses could prick him.
***
‘The legend of the Fal Vale Worm is well known,' he said. Stepping aside, he pointed to an indifferent, faded picture hung over the fireplace. It showed a creature slithering white coils among green Cornish hills. Hairless and earless, it had a catlike snarl and human eyes. A knight in armour raised a lance against plumes of flame pouring from the beast's nostrils. Rude peasants sensibly scattered away from the titanic combat. The creature had no legs, but from the peculiar way the unknown artist had depicted the running peasants I judged legs weren't his strong suit, so he might have been tempted to leave them out.
***
Evidently, lecturing was a Moriarty family trait.
***
He smiled, readily. Not an expression I associated with his brothers. From his waistcoat pocket, he produced a railwayman's watch.
‘If we forsake the comfort of this room for a few moments, we may bear witness to an, ah, occult phenomenon.'
‘...Which runs on a timetable, James?'
***
It seemed a comedown that a family which could produce a Professor Moriarty and a Colonel Moriarty should run to a mere Stationmaster.
***
For a moment, I was worried this Sophy Kratides person had slit my throat. They say you don't feel it if the knife is sharp enough, though who ‘they' might be who've lived to pass on this intelligence, I couldn't say.
***
[Безумие!]
‘James?' sputtered Stationmaster Moriarty.
I looked at the Professor, who raised his shoulders in a ‘not me' shrug.
‘Yes, James,' said the voice.
Out of the fog stalked Colonel James Moriarty.
We had the full set.
***
So this is what the Colonel meant by ‘supplies'. Secret weapons. I should have known no Moriarty would spend his life on bully and boots.
***
‘James,' the Stationmaster appealed to the Professor, ‘tell James about human nature.'
***
All three heads oscillated as they stared at each other, like a convocation of cobra.
***
Professor Moriarty, who had science instead of a soul, was interested in the Kallinikos.
***
I did not recall. Quite often, I didn't pay attention when the Professor was off on one of his tears. I'd probably been waiting for him to hand over the paper so I could see how much I'd lost at the races the day before.
***
[Братец Майкрофт смотрит строго]
‘I'm not in the British army,' he said, with a Moriartian gleam in his eyes. ‘I am the British army.
***
All three Moriarty brothers crammed into the aperture like Siamese triplets, jostling to board the war train. The Professor established seniority with sharp elbows, and was inside the Kallinikos ahead of the Colonel and the Stationmaster. None of them needed to be on the worm, but no James could have borne it if another were on board and they were left behind. Brothers, eh?
***
[Тяжко Себастьяну]
‘James, James, James,' I shouted. ‘Everyone on the crew is dead.
***
[Представится ли вам такое?]
There was some precariousness in getting out of the engine. There was no side door, just an egress to the rest of the train... so, the Moriarty brothers had to clamber down onto the rail bed and then make their way up onto the platform. They could have walked to the far end of the station, and taken the gentle slope up, but Young James pulled himself up to the platform, tearing his uniform at the knees, to show how limber he was. After that, his older brothers grimly followed suit, despite aged bones, tight waistcoats and a seeming unsuitability for such physical action. The Colonel grunted, went red in the face as he lifted his feet off the rails, and had to be pulled up by Stationmaster Moriarty and Berkins. He lost some buttons, and the last vestiges of his commanding manner.
Both brothers stuck out hands to assist the venerable Professor, but Moriarty couldn't resist letting a card he rarely showed fall out into the open.
After taking a step or two back, the Professor rushed forward, and swarmed out of the rail bed up onto the platform with the agility of a young monkey. He might give the impression of being like a dry stick, with bent shoulders and fragile bones. In fact, he had a wiry, cultivated strength and physical aptitude which - on several occasions - proved a fatal surprise to people who thought he'd be easy pickings in a straight-up punching match. He had some Eastern tricks - nobody knows more about dirty fighting than the Chinese, who've made a religion out of pokes, kicks and gouges which would get you barred in disgrace from a British boxing ring - and held by a peculiar diet involving melon seeds and carrot shavings.
***
You know how this ends. Someone goes over a waterfall.
***
A lot of rot has been spouted about what happened to Moriarty in Switzerland. One of his brothers and that medical writer in The Strand muddied the waters with a public row [1]. It was a surprise to me when Colonel Moriarty of ‘f--k off back to your blackboard' fame put the Professor up for posthumous sainthood.
In letters to the press, Moriarty medius tossed off accusations about his brother's demise, which he laid at the door of ‘an unlicensed, semi-professional adventurer'. This Watson oik piped up with a spume of ‘most dangerous man in London' piffle to exonerate his long-nosed, trouble-making former flatmate. Lawsuits were threatened. Arguments raged in clubs, letter columns and the streets.
***
The third James Moriarty - with bloody cheek! - sold the Pall Mall Gazette personal, intimate memoirs of all the wickedness his brother the Professor was behind. Even with an Irish spinster scribbler as a ghost [2], Young James was unable to cough out anything publishable and became the only Moriarty ever convicted in court of anything. The Gazette had him up for breach of contract and reclaimed the advance fee.
***
Colonel Moriarty and the Fat Man of Whitehall - who turned out to be the brother of the Thin Man of Baker Street - exchanged cryptic, terse, bitter communiques under the letterheads of the Department of Supplies and the Diogenes Club, respectively. No one outside ‘most secret' circles will be allowed to read these until one hundred years after the death of someone called ‘Billy the Page' [3].
***
During his long career as an evildoer, Moriarty shrugged off rumours about his true enterprise and maintained a respectable false front to the outside world. All through our association, even as he cut himself into crimes and netted one of the highest private incomes in the Empire, he kept at a dull teaching job which brought in just ?700 per annum. The Devil knows where he found the time to give lectures, mark papers and expel slackers, but he did.
None of his former students or present colleagues spoke up in his favour when the press had a field day maligning him. I gather the inkies were as terrified of the dear old soul as anyone who met him in his criminal capacity - once, I know for certain, he slowly put a youth to death for misplacing a decimal point - even before it came out that he was, as the sensation papers have it, ‘a diabolical mastermind'.
***
Sophy opened her pocketbook and handed me a newspaper clipping from an English language periodical published in Hungary. The news item involved Harold Latimer and Wilson Kemp, two dissolute Englishmen, who were reckoned to have quarrelled and stabbed each other to death [4].
***
I own I might have twirled my moustache. I know it's a tiresome old look-at-me-I'm-a-roue stage gesture, but - dash it - I've got a moustache (a big one too), and it's there for the twirling.
***
"...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... Miss Margaret Trelawny and the Hoxton Creeper... Doctor Mabuse of Berlin and Fraulein Alraune ten Brincken... Arthur Raffles of the Albany and his, ah, friend, Mr Manders... Theophraste Lupin and Josephine, Countess Cagliostro... Doctor Jack Quartz of New York and Princess Zanoni... Rupert, Count of Hentzau, and... Miss Irene Adler.'
***
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...!
***
‘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.
***
[Учительские привычки]
Moriarty, head oscillating, was deep in thought again. With him, it was either a lecture lasting for pages and pages or pin-drop dead silence.
***
The cake was sawed into chunks. Moriarty didn't trouble to conceal his impatience with this social occasion. It was my birthday, but Mrs Halifax followed the chain of command and offered the Prof a slice of cake first. Brusquely, he turned it down.
***
It would be just like the Prof to test out some new explosive device - a bomb, sent through the mail! - on whoever happened to be handy, i.e. me.
***
I had confidence in Von Herder's sensitive fingers when it came to mechanical parts, but knew better than to trust a blind engineer with optical jiggery-pokery, even if he did get his lenses ground in Venice.
***
The company looked at me. Mrs Halifax said, ‘Aren't you going to thank the Professor?'
Moriarty looked sour and turned away.
Something was called for, something needed to be said. No words came.
‘I shall be in with my wasps,' he announced, and abandoned the party for his private study, the windowless room.
***
‘He wishes to steal everything from me. He wants to be me.'
My jaw was slack, and I dribbled tea.
Why on earth would anyone want to be Moriarty?
***
[Вспомним же Genesis]
An all-comers bare-knuckles contest in Epping Forest was raided.
***
Moriarty had nervous energy now. For months he had accepted each blow and merely oscillated, thinking thinking thinking... I hoped we were at the point of doing doing doing.
***
The Professor wiped wasps off his long canvas gloves, brushing them into the funnel of the glass and wood nest-maze he had constructed. He took down his best hat and pulled on his coat.
‘I have a call to pay, Moran,' he said. ‘In Baker Street. A minor nuisance on the point of becoming a middle-sized obstacle must be bent to our purpose...'
***
[Несчастный Порлок!]
Our real arch-enemy was ‘Fred Porlock'.
***
Moriarty was the shark now, scores of teeth in his smile.
***
That brothel in Conduit Street was the nearest thing I'd had to a home.
***
A voice boomed from the room beyond an inner door. Instructions were being issued in deep, rasping German. Someone - Mabuse as Lavenza, I supposed - outlined a plan for a daring robbery. Jewels from the Royal Collection of Ruritania, kept in Swiss vaults, were to make a rare public appearance at the coronation. An opportunity existed to seize them in transit from Geneva to Strelsau.
***
I'd not forgotten what a nuisance Irene Adler could be if she put her mind to it. In theory, she was in Ruritania with Rupert. There was a god-awful mess about the succession, with Rudi, Michael and a red headed dark horse named Rassendyll making bids while the crown was in play [13].
***
The Yard was clearing its books, pinning decades of unsolved crimes on ‘the Conduit Street Ring'. I admit most of the ones from the last ten years were ours, but the 1809 disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst was almost certainly not Moriarty's doing since he'd not yet been born.
...прочесть и ужаснуться***
‘You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive,’ said the Professor.
‘How the devil did you know that?’ I asked in astonishment.
***
His eyes caught mine. Cobra eyes, they say. Large, clear, cold, grey and fascinating. I’ve met cobras, and they aren’t half as deadly – trust me. I imagine Moriarty left off tutoring because his pupils were too terrified to con their two times table.
***
[Профессор о Моране]
‘...you are retired from your regiment, resigning at the request of a superior to avoid the mutual disgrace of dishonourable discharge; you have suffered a serious injury at the claws of a beast, are fully recovered physically, but worry your nerve might have gone; you are the son of a late Minister to Persia and have two sisters, your only living relatives beside a number of unacknowledged half-native illegitimates; you are addicted, most of all to gambling, but also to sexual encounters, spirits, the murder of animals and the fawning of a duped public; most of the time, you blunder through life like a bull, snatching and punching to get your own way, but in moments of extreme danger you are possessed by a strange serenity which has enabled you to survive situations that would have killed another man; in fact, your true addiction is to danger, to fear – only near death do you feel alive; you are unscrupulous, amoral, habitually violent and, at present, have no means of income, though your tastes and habits require a constant inflow of money...’
***
He kept no notes, no files, no address book or appointment diary. It was all in his head. Someone who knows more than I do about sums told me that Moriarty’s greatest feat was to write The Dynamics of an Asteroid, his magnum opus, in perfect first draft. From his mind to paper, with no preliminary notations or pencilled workings, never thinking forward to plan or skipping back to correct.
***
[Причудливая, но нежданно милая манера профессорского разговора]
‘Didn’t you think to tail these, ah, varmints, to their lair?’
***
Then the Professor rattled on about airguns, which lost me. Only little boys and poofs would deign to touch a contraption which needs to be pumped before use and goes off with a sad phut rather than a healthy bang.
***
[О местной Ирен]
To Professor Moriarty, she is always that bitch.
***
The Professor had me on an honorarium of six thousand pounds per annum. Scarcely enough to make anyone put up with Moriarty, actually, but it serviced my predilection for pursuits the naive refer to as ‘games of chance’.
***
That morning, the Professor was thinking through two problems. A portion of his brain was calculating the timings of solar eclipses observable in far-flung regions. (...) The greater part of his attention, however, was devoted to the breeding of wasps.
***
Even Moriarty was impressed, and he could keep up a lecture on the grades of paper used in the forgery of high-denomination Venezuelan banknotes while walking down the secret corridor with the row of one-way mirror windows into the private rooms where Mrs H.’s girls conducted spectacularly indecent business day and night.
***
[Ирен о герцоге]
Things being slow this season, I’ve been knocking around a bit with Black Mike. They call him that because of his hair, which is dark where the rest of his family’s is flame-red. He’s a gloomy, glowering type as well so it suits him on temperamental grounds too. As it happens, photographs were taken of the two of us in the actual pursuit of knocking around. Artistic studies, you might say. Six plates. Full figures. Complete exposures. It would ruin my reputation should they come to light. You see, I’m being blackmailed!’
***
‘I see,’ I said, ‘this Sapt thinks to blacken Michael’s name – further blacken, I suppose – so the duke will never be king.’
Irene Adler looked at me with something like contemptuous pity.
‘Horse feathers, Colonel of the Nuts. If those pics were seen, Black Mike’d be the envy of Europe. He’d be crowned in a wave of popularity. Everyone loves a randy royal.
***
[Автор считает, это важно знать]
In the original manuscript, the allusion is followed by a parenthesis which has been heavily scored through. From the few discernible words, the redacted section seems to be a homophobic rant. Other passages in the memoirs, especially those concerning his time at Eton, indicate Moran shared his era’s prejudice against homosexuality, but didn’t despise gays more than he hated anyone else. Equally, his bile against ‘natives’ and foreigners is tempered by general misanthropy.
***
[Профессор пишет письма]
First, he wrote to the Westminster Gazette, which carried his angry letter in full. He harped on about the sufferings of the slum-dwellers of Strelsauer Altstadt – some of which weren’t even made up, which is where the clever part came in – and labelled Ruritania ‘the secret shame of Europe’.
***
Moriarty rarely smiled, and then usually to terrify some poor victim. The first time I heard him laugh, I thought he had been struck by deadly poison and the stutter escaping through his locked jaws was a death rattle.
***
Moriarty was in a black thinking mood. He chewed little violet pastilles of his own concoction – a substitute for the cigarettes which had yellowed his fingers and teeth but were now abandoned because he’d taken it into his head to deem tobacco a threat to human health – and paced his room, hands knotted in the small of his back, brow set in a crinkled frown.
***
I would wager several pawn tickets held on the family silver that you lot have little or no interest in fractional calculus or imperfect logarithms.
***
By now, you’ve heard the twaddle... vast spider squatting in the centre of an enormous web of vice and villainy... Napoleon of Crime... Nero of Naughtiness... Thucydides of Theft, et cetera, et cetera.
***
Throughout his dual career – imagine serpents representing maths and crookery, twining together like a wicked caduceus – the Prof was locked in deadly survival for supremacy – nay, for survival – with a human creature he saw as his arch-enemy, his eternal opposite, his nemesis.
Sir Nevil Airey Stent.
***
Stent and Moriarty were at each other’s throats well before I became Number Two Big-ish Chief in the Firm. Whenever the Stent issue was raised, Moriarty turned purple and hissed – and was in no condition to elucidate further. I know they first met as master and pupil: Moriarty supervised young Nevil when the lad was cramming for an exam. Maybe the Prof scorned the promising mathematician’s first quadratic equation in front of the class. Maybe Stent gave him an apple with a worm in it.
***
1863 – Boyish twenty-three-year-old Nevil Stent, former pupil of James Moriarty, rocks the world of astronomy with his paper ‘Diffractive Properties of an Object-Glass with Circular Aperture’. Not a good title, to my mind – which runs more to the likes of Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas or My Nine Nights in a Harem (both, as it happens, written by me – good luck finding the latter: most of the run was burned by order of the crown court and the few extant volumes tend to be found in the collection of the judge who made the ruling).
***
Now... imagine how you’d feel about Stent if you were a skull-faced, reptile-necked, balding astronomical-mathematical genius ten years older than the Golden Youth of Greenwich Observatory.
***
My understanding was that my flatmate and I were due to attend an exclusive sporting event in Wapping. Contestants billed as ‘Miss Lilian Russell’ and ‘Miss Ellen Terri’ in the hope punters might take them for their near look-alikes Lillian Russell and Ellen Terry were to face off, stripped to drawers and corsets, and Indian-wrestle in an arena knee-deep in custard.
***
‘Has it not been said that The Dynamics of an Asteroid “ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics there is no man in the scientific press capable of criticising it”?’
Sir Nevil Stent smiled and held up a thick volume.
I was familiar with the blasted book. At least a dozen presentation copies were stuffed into the shelves in our study. It was the Professor’s magnum opus, the sum total of his knowledge of and contribution to the Whole Art of Mathematical Astronomy. In rare moments of feeling, Moriarty was wont to claim he was prouder of these 652 pages (with no illustrations, diagrams or tables) than of the Macao-Golukhin Forgery, the Bradford Beneficent Fund Swindle or the Featherstone Tiara Theft.
***
[На этом месте я возрыдала]
A tide of tittering ran through the audience. Stent raised his eyebrows, and shook the book in humorous fashion, as if hoping something would fall out. Chuckles ensued. Stent tried to read the book upside down. Something which might be diagnosed as a guffaw erupted from an elderly party near us. Moriarty turned to aim a bone-freezing glare at the old gent – but was thwarted by his disguise. He wore opaque black spectacles and held a white cane in order to pass himself off as a blind scholar from Trinity College, Dublin.
***
The handle of the Professor’s cane snapped. He’d been gripping it with both knotted fists. The sound was like a gunshot.
‘So you have joined us, James,’ Stent said. ‘I rather thought you might.’
A sibilance escaped Moriarty’s colourless lips.
‘We shall have need of you later,’ Stent said, producing a long thin knife – which he proceeded slip into the book, cutting at last its virgin leaves. ‘You can take off those ridiculous smoked glasses. Though, if you have suffered some onset of blindness which has not been reported in the press, it would explain a great deal.
***
[Каждому пережившему защиту диссертации будут понятны эти чувства]
At every point, Stent invited a response from Moriarty. None came. The Professor sat in silence as his theorems were shredded, his calculations unpicked, his conclusions burst like balloons.
***
Moriarty remained in his seat as the room emptied.
‘James,’ Stent said cheerfully from the podium as he gathered his notes, ‘it’s pleasant to see you in such evident health. There’s actually some colour in your cheeks. I bid you a respectful good night.’
***
First thing he did was whip out a well-worn copy of The Dynamics of an Asteroid (with all its leaves cut) and beg Moriarty for a personal inscription. I think the thing the Professor did with his mouth at that was his stab at a real smile. Trust me, you’d rather a vampyroteuthis infernalis clacked its beak – buccal orifice, properly – at you than see those thin lips part a crack to give a glimpse of teeth.
***
It was apparent that, as a breed, mathematician-astronomers were more treacherous, determined and murder-minded than the wounded tigers, Thuggee stranglers, card-sharps and frisky husband-poisoners who formed my usual circle of acquaintance.
***
Then Moriarty laughed.
Pigeons fell dead three streets away. Hitherto-enthusiastic customers in Mrs Halifax’s rooms suddenly lost ardour at the worst possible moment. Vampire squid waved their tentacles. I quelled an urge to bring up my mutton lunch.
***
‘Yes-s-s,’ he hissed. ‘Paper hats-s-s.’
***
I’ve rarely had cause to remark upon Professor Moriarty’s genius for disguise. There’s good reason for that. Anyone less wholly shoved up his own bum than Sir Nevil Stent would have seen through Moriarty’s beards and hoods and skullcaps and spectacles in a trice. That snake-oscillation mannerism always gave him away. He didn’t list card-sharping among his favoured crimes, or he’d have known about ‘tells’ and taken steps to suppress his. On one occasion, I tried to raise the matter in as tactful a fashion as possible, venturing to suggest that the Professor moderate his ‘cobra-neck tell’ when incognito.
‘What are you talking about, Moran? Have you been at the diacetylmorphine hydrochloride again?’
There was no sense in pressing the matter further. Genius or no, Moriarty truly didn’t know about the thing he did with his neck. I wondered if he was unconsciously trying to make it difficult for the hangman. Probably not. It was just a habit.
***
Nevertheless, Moriarty acquitted himself adequately in the multiple roles of ‘C., Cave’, filthy shopkeeper, ‘long-necked cabbie’, dispenser of jovially ominous sentiments, and ‘Hooded Man of Mystery’, mouth-piece of Martian Royalty. (Stent never did persuade anyone else to say ‘Marsian’.)
***
Moriarty’s facial tendons were tight as leather drum skin dried in the sun, making his face a skull-mask rictus of glee. His eyes lit up like Chinese lanterns. I’d wager every muscle in the old ascetic’s stringy body was tight with sordid pleasure. He got like that when he had his way. Other fellahs might pop a bottle of fizz or nip down to Mrs H.’s for a turn with a trollop, but the Professor just went into these brain-spasms of evil ecstasy.
***
[А вот это - мило]
There are idiot Englishwomen (of both sexes) who would be generally happier to see children whipped, starved, laughed at, shot and mounted in the Moran den than brook any abuse of their ‘furry or feathered friends’...
***
When Moriarty handed over coin and told you to bowl a squid at an astronomer, your wisest course was to ask ‘over-arm or roundarm?’ and get on with play.
***
As I entered our reception room, a slicing noise alerted me. A stick slashed at my head. I arrested its arc with a quick grab. As part of an unending ‘testing process’, Moriarty often tried to catch associates off guard. Some, not having my jungle-honed instincts, got broken heads.
***
In a long life spent at gaming tables, in brothels, up mountains and in the bush, I’ve gained valuable insights into human nature. Anyone called ‘Jasper’ is an arrogant, untrustworthy scoundrel. Anyone called ‘Cedric’ is liable to be worse. And anyone called ‘Piers’ should be shot on sight.
***
Moriarty was impatient with this legal footnote. ‘What can we do for you, Mr Stoke-d’Urberville?’
One of Stoke’s brows flicked up.
‘Professor Moriarty, I want a dog killed.’
***
Before you ask – yes, Moriarty did ponder that particular lay. Rather than pull off the coup bungled by Thomas Blood [3], he negotiated quietly with a terrifying Fat Man in Whitehall.
***
‘That’s all you can say for Saul Derby,’ conceded Stoke. ‘He rubs along with Dan’l. He even cosies up reasonably with the Albino, who frightens most as much as... well, as much as you do, Professor.’
Moriarty smiled, not unpleased.
***
In clubrooms, I’ve run across the odd sportsman – Long John Roxton comes to mind – obsessed with hunting specimens which aren’t in the books.
***
I believe that – in his tiny, shrivelled, eight-months-gone apple of a heart – the Professor got spasms of enjoyment from his crimes, for it’s a sad rogue who strives his life long to increase the miseries of his fellow man without getting at least a warm feeling when he sees others beggared or dumped in unmarked graves on his account. Everyone knows I’m a sentimental soul.
***
‘I am currently much involved,’ he announced. ‘Several crimes require my presence in London...’
This was news to me.
‘...you will soon read of the Barrie-McTrostle disinheritance... the Clapham Gas House atrocities... and the Winklesworth & Company stock malfeasance...’
He was making this rot up, but Stoke’s eyes goggled – imagining vast feats of inconceivable criminality. Moriarty was not above puffing up his feats by reference to imaginary crimes. Usually, he was deceiving someone about something and had a long game in mind, so I played along.
‘There’s the abduction of the Ranee of Ranchipur, too,’ I put in.
The ‘Ranee of Ranchipur’ was the professional name of Molly Duff, one of Mrs Halifax’s girls. She stained herself brown to pass as a Hindu princess.
Moriarty nodded sagely. ‘Yes, an exacting proposition. The Ranee is to be taken from under the Rajah’s nose and sold to a Scottish peer during her birthday party. That will require my personal attention.’
***
‘However,’ said the Professor, ‘in this instance, I can with full confidence entrust your dog to my associate, Colonel Moran. He is known far and wide as the greatest hunter of the age. If an animal draws breath, he’s killed it.’
The old chest fairly swelled with pride, though I knew the Prof was stroking the client while palming the job off on me.
***
‘Prometheus’, custom-made by George Gibbs of Bristol, is sadly lost. Having served me better than any woman I’ve ever paid for, the rifle suffered tragically when pressed into service as a crutch as I hobbled out of an East African jungle on a broken leg. I laid the gun to rest in a grave with the three bearers who deserted me.
***
I’d not named a gun since ‘Prometheus’, but I’d a rack to choose from. Elephant, lion, tiger, bear, native and witness widows across the Empire could attest to their reliability.
***
Before leaving, I conferred with Moriarty in the windowless study where he experimented. He was not busy with other crimes, imaginary or genuine. He was dissecting a violin. An Amati of Cremona, if that means anything. He had secured it at auction for a fabulous sum – solely, I believe, to keep it from a rival bidder for whom he had a particular dislike. With dressmakers’ scissors and a surgeon’s scalpel, he anatomised his fiddle, snipping strings, sundering joins. Perhaps the Prof hoped to find out where the tunes came from.
***
From this, I knew Moriarty was playing his own game. When he rattled on, he was mesmeric. He could convince you Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – also the product of ‘a mathematical mind’, remember – made sound sense.
***
It was, of course, raining.
***
I ignored Tringham and maintained attentions to Mod. I had every reason to anticipate private entertainment from that direction.
It nagged, however, that Moriarty had charged me with making detailed observations. Encomia to Modesty Derby’s teats would not interest the cold, sad maniac. No, the Professor would rather have the ramblings of a crackpot genealogist.
***
It takes little to make me happy – something new to kill today, and someone new to bed tonight.
***
[Негодяи!]
The gun’s bag ran to six tigers, nine lions, a few Welshmen and one Honourable Lord brought down in testing circumstances from the visitors’ gallery to save the House from an excessively dull speech on the subject of Irish Home Rule. Never let it be said that Moriarty & Moran made no contribution to politics.
***
[Профессор поддается современным веяньям]
The curtain rustled. A white, long-fingered hand gathered a fold and switched it aside. Into Red’s Hole came the Brokeneck Lady...
A wet dress dragged on the ground. The veil hung to the waist on one side but almost up to the ear on the other. I’ve seen hanged men. Their heads loll just the same.
Venn glanced up, but kept stirring.
The ghost’s head rolled, as if it were trying to set skull on spine like a cup and ball game. For a moment, the head was in its proper position. Then it inclined in the other direction. And back again. Then, evenly, it nodded from side to side. The veil swung.
I knew that cobra-neck wobble!
The veil was lifted.
‘Moriarty,’ I shouted. ‘You f---ing c--t!’
***
[Как нам это знакомо!]
Mod swarmed up at me in a froth of concern.
‘Sebastian,’ she cooed, ‘it’s such a relief you are living! We thought you’d perished in The Chase. Another victim of the Curse of the d’Urbervilles.’
‘No, that was Nakszynski.’
She touched my bandaged head and kissed my cheek.
‘You’ve been heroically wounded. Who did those splints for you? I’ll change them properly. You’ll take brandy, of course. And supper.’
***
‘This is Professor Moriarty,’ I said. ‘My associate.’
She curtseyed and extended a hand which the Prof did not take. He sized Mod up with a single watery-eyed glare.
Moriarty distrusted and disliked women. I only distrust them.
***
Professor Moriarty did not readily admit his mistakes. Oh, he made ’em. Some real startlers. You were well advised not to bring up the Tay Bridge Insurance Fiasco in his gloomy presence. Or the Manchester and Provincial Bank Robbery (six months’ brain work to set up, a thousand pounds seed money to pull off: seven shillings and sixpence profit). The Professor was touchy about failures. Indeed, he retained me to keep ’em quiet.
***
In our Conduit Street rooms, we were doing the books, perhaps the least glamorous aspect of running a criminal empire. Once a mathematics tutor, Moriarty enjoyed balancing ledgers – as much as he could enjoy anything, the sad old sausage – more than robbing an orphanage trust fund or bankrupting a philanthropic society.
***
[Лицо ирландской революции!]
Nowadays, America employs – which is to say, enslaves – the Irish for such low purposes. A sammy takes only so much field-slog before up and cutting your throat and heading into the bush. Your bog-trotter, on the other hand, grumbles for 700 years, holds rowdy meetings, then decides to get very, very drunk instead of doing anything about it.
***
[Родные корни]
Yes, I know Moran is an Irish name. So is Moriarty. That comes into it later, too.
***
Just to rub it in, this Birdy flew off to England with Baldwin’s sweetheart. Hot on the trail and under the collar, Baldwin came to London and called on the Firm. A wedge of greenback dollars hired us to locate the Pink, which we did sharpish. Sporting the more plausible incognito of John Douglas, Edwards was sunning himself at Birlstone, a moated manor.
An easy lay! Shin up a tree in the grounds and professionally pot the blighter through the leaded library window as he sits at his desk, perusing La Vie Parisienne. Aim, pull, bang... brains on the wall, ‘Scotland Yard Baffled’, notice in The Times, full fee remitted, thank you very much, pleasure to do business with you!
***
We could have shoved Birdy off the dock at Southampton and been home for tea and – ahem, encore – crumpet in Mrs Halifax’s establishment for licentious ladies. Not obtrusive enough, though. Nothing would do for the Prof but that the corpse be aimed at the isle of Napoleon’s exile. He spent hours with charts and tide-tables and a sextant to make sure of it. Moriarty was thinking, as usual, two or three steps ahead. There was only one place on Edwards’ escape route anyone – specifically, anyone who scribbles for the London rags – has ever heard of. A mysterious corpse on St Helena gets a paragraph above the racing results. A careless passenger drowned before embarkation doesn’t rate a sentence under the corset endorsements. Advertising, you see: Moriarty strikes! All your killing needs satisfied!
***
He looked as if I’d just shot him. Which is to say: he looked like some of the people I’ve shot looked after I’d shot them.
***
Listeners at the keyhole used to be a problem, but a bullet hole two inches to the left indicated Moriarty’s un-gentle solution to unwanted eavesdroppers.
***
Oh, I have done more than my fair share of thieving. I’ve robbed, burgled, rifled, raided, waylaid, heisted, abducted, abstracted, plundered, pilfered and pinched across five continents and seven seas.
***
[Современные мотивы]
Moriarty was unruffled by the objection.
‘If there’s no fog on the Channel, the Templar Falcon should join the collection by tomorrow morning. I have cabled the Grand Vampire in Paris with details of the current location of this rara avis. It has been in hiding. A soulless brigand enamelled it like a common blackbird to conceal its value.’
***
‘What about item six?’ Carne chipped in.
‘The Eye of Balor,’ Moriarty said. ‘A gold coin, named for a giant of Irish mythology, reputed to have been taken from a leprechaun’s pot... Lately the “lucky piece” of “Dynamite” Desmond Mountmain, General-in-Chief of the Irish Republican Invincibles, which brought him only poor luck, since last week an infernal device of his own manufacture went off in his face when he thumped the table too hard at a meeting of his Inner Council of Immortals.’
I told you Ireland would come into it.
***
[Очень жаль!]
It was an irritant when the misconception set in that we were in sympathy with the working man. That inconvenience was as nothing beside the notion that fellows with names like Moriarty or Moran must support Irish Independence.
***
When a bold Fenian's proposal of an alliance - with our end of it providing the funds - is rejected, he acts exactly like a music hall mick refused credit for drink. Hearty, exploitative friendliness curdles into wheedling desperation then turns into dark threats of dire vengeance. Always, there's an appeal to us as ‘fellow Irishmen'. If the Prof or I have family connections in John Bull's Other Island, we'd rather not hear from them. We've sufficient unpleasant English relatives to be getting on with.
***
It is possible the Professor is a distant cousin of Bishop Moriarty of Kerry, though rebels know better than to raise that connection. The Bishop - in one of the rare sensible utterances of a churchman I can recall - once declared: ‘When we look down into the fathomless depth of this infamy of the heads of the Fenian conspiracy, we must acknowledge that eternity is not long enough, nor Hell hot enough to punish such miscreants.' Far be it from me to agree with anything said in a pulpit, but the Bish was not far wrong.
***
[Вспомним об Имоне]
A paddy intolerant of strong drink is as common as a politician averse to robbing the public purse. An Irishman who goes around smashing bottles and barrels has few comrades and fewer friends.
***
[И "Диззи" не забыт]
As has been said about any number of conflicts, including the Franco-Prussian War and the Gladstone-Disraeli feud, it's a shame they can't both lose.
***
Ireland! I ask you, was ever there such a country of bastards, priests and lunatics?
***
‘Ye'll not be regrettin' this at all at all, Colonel, me darlin",' Leopold said. His brogue was so thick the others couldn't make out what he was saying. He was an Austrian who liked to pretend he was an Irishman. After all, whoever heard of a Dubliner called Leopold?
***
As I entered the foyer of the Opera House, I thought the banshee associated with the Eye of Balor had pursued me. A wailing resounded throughout the building.
Then I recognised the racket as that bloody ‘Jewel Song'.
A commissionaire was worried about a chandelier, which was vibrating and clinking. A small, crying boy was led out of the auditorium by an angry mama and a relieved papa. I swear they were bleeding at the ears. In the garden, dogs howled in sympathy. The silver plugs in my teeth hurt.
***
By a side door, I went backstage. In a hurry, I picked up items as I found them on racks in dressing rooms. When I told the story later, I claimed to have donned complete costume and make-up for the role of Mephistopheles. Actually, I made do with a red cloak, a cowl with horns and a half-facemask with a Cyrano nose.
***
I boomed out the Barrack Room lyrics to ‘Abdul Abulbul Amir', lowering my voice to deep bass and drawing out phrases so no one could possibly make out the words or even the language.
***
Most of the audience, who knew the opera by heart, were surprised at the sudden reappearance of Mephistopheles but, after eight renditions of the ‘Jewel Song', were happy to accept whatever came next, just so long as it wasn't a ninth.
‘Those joooo-oooo-wels you muuuuu-ust give baaaa-ack,' I demanded. ‘Your beau-uuuuu-ty needs no suuuu-ch adorn-meeee-ent!'
I picked up the prop casket in which the jewels had been presented and pointed into it.
***
So I made my exit across the orchestra pit, striding on the backs of chairs, displacing musicians, knocking over instruments. I didn't realise until I was among the audience that I had trailed my cloak across the limelights and was on fire.
I paused and the whole audience stood to give me a round of applause.
***
That is how I made my debut at the Royal Opera.
***
Finding the celebrated circles and clown-smile squiggles named for the mathematician John Venn inadequate to the task, he had invented what he said - and I've no reason to doubt him - was an entirely new system for visually representing complex processes. He was delighted with his incomprehensible arrays of little ovals with symbols in them, stuck together by flowing lines interrupted by arrows.
***
He patted me warmly on the chest - a unique gesture from him, with which I was not entirely comfortable - and disappeared back into his den.
***
Queen Victoria could unroll a map of the world and take pride in the extensive red patches which mark the Empire; the Prof had similar ambitions for the globe in his study. Stuck with red-headed needles wherever a Moriarty crime had been accomplished, the globe increasingly resembled a pincushion.
***
Then, early in January, Professor Moriarty asked me to accompany him to the Xeniades Club to meet with his brother, Colonel Moriarty.
Are you familiar with that breed of novel heroine who prefaces a chapter of awful experiences with ‘had I but known...'? Well, had I but bloody known, I'd have stayed in bed with or without a tweeny foot warmer.
***
[Правда о полковнике]
Instead, the Colonel was a sallow, slouching fellow with a sunken chest, the ill-cared-for clothes of a clerk who no longer has hopes of advancement, a perpetual cold which required odd poultices and compresses which afforded no appreciable benefit, and a little square of moustache like a patch he'd missed with his cutthroat three days ago. He was seven years younger than the Professor, but seemed nearer death.
***
‘My youngest brother is a stationmaster in the west of England, Moran,' the Professor stated.
‘Fal Vale Junction, in Cornwall,' said the Colonel.
‘Where he can't do any harm,' said the Professor.
‘So you say, James.'
‘I do say, James.'
***
At that, the Professor's head began its familiar oscillation. Unnervingly, the Colonel began to sway his head from side to side in mirror of his brother. It was a family habit!
***
‘Moriarty, does your brother... your brother, the Colonel... have any idea of your real business?'
The Professor cocked his head to one side, smiling unpleasantly.
‘James is not the most perceptive of us.'
***
[Начнем сочувствовать]
When we returned to Conduit Street, a telegram awaited. From the third James Moriarty. The Professor read the wire, and passed it to me.
JAMES - FAL VALE TERRORISED BY GIANT WORM! - COME AT ONCE - JAMES.
***
‘A giant worm?' the Professor said. ‘What, pray, does James expect me to do about it?'
I considered the matter.
***
The Professor was, in his way, a great man. Yet, despite what many who encountered him said, he was still a human man.
***
I'll warrant Gladstone, Palliser and Attila were the same - in command of their destinies and fixed on their great goals, but red-faced and sputtering when joshed by some sibling who remembered when nursie smacked their bottoms for making sicky-sicky on their bibs.
***
So, we were hunting dragons. With no payday in sight.
***
I'd known him not speak for a week, then arrange the removal of a human obstacle to one of his designs and become almost morbidly cheerful. I'd seen his crazes start up like a sudden summer storm, ending in ruination of one stripe or another for someone who had crossed him.
***
Even the Red Planet League business pales beside the fate of Fred Porlock, convicted in a court convened in our basement of a capital crime for selling information about the Firm's dealings to outside interests. What was done to the traitor made the Lord of Strange Deaths seem lenient, and stood as a serious disincentive to anyone else who might consider following his unhappy path of collaboration with the law.
***
But this was different. His head was not bobbing. His chin was clamped to his chest. He was still grinding his teeth. He would not be spoken to.
I'd never seen Moriarty like this. I concluded that only family could put him in such a black humour.
***
Moriarty wasn't in conversational mood and I'd not packed anything to read. Railway bookstalls tend not to stock Mistress Payne's Rollicking Academy or R.G. Sanders' Natives I Have Shot, my favoured perusing material.
***
‘Oh,' I said, as if remembering there was one more introduction to be made. ‘This is Professor Moriarty.'
Moriarty didn't come out of his thought fugue.
‘The mathematician?' the parson said. ‘Author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid?'
‘No, the master criminal, author of ransom notes and blackmail demands,' I didn't say - though it did spring to mind.
***
Moriarty walked nearly to the end of the platform, and peered into the dark as if through a telescope. Could he discern life on some far-distant star? Or was he just fixed on some theoretical point half a mile into the tunnel?
***
‘James, is that you?' the Professor shouted.
‘Yes, James,' came the answer.
***
[Несчастные!]
‘I say, do you two know each other?' Lucas asked. ‘I only just realised, same name and all that. Stationmaster Moriarty. Professor Moriarty. You must be father and son?'
At this suggestion, the Jameses made faces as if they'd bitten something sour.
***
‘I suppose James told you to keep away from Fal Vale,' Stationmaster Moriarty said to the Professor. ‘He's made his position clear, as usual.'
‘I thought you were James?' Madame Valladon said.
‘No, he is James,' Doone said. ‘Professor James Moriarty.'
Neither brother explained. Our fellow travellers were left in confusion.
***
Professor and Stationmaster smirked together, almost undetectably - a family expression which excluded the rest of us. I got a chill from more than the night air.
***
With the appearance of Moriarty's brothers, I realised there were those closer to his cold heart. Family by blood, not association. I'd thought the Professor invincible, beyond human hurt or harm, but it seemed the other Jameses could prick him.
***
‘The legend of the Fal Vale Worm is well known,' he said. Stepping aside, he pointed to an indifferent, faded picture hung over the fireplace. It showed a creature slithering white coils among green Cornish hills. Hairless and earless, it had a catlike snarl and human eyes. A knight in armour raised a lance against plumes of flame pouring from the beast's nostrils. Rude peasants sensibly scattered away from the titanic combat. The creature had no legs, but from the peculiar way the unknown artist had depicted the running peasants I judged legs weren't his strong suit, so he might have been tempted to leave them out.
***
Evidently, lecturing was a Moriarty family trait.
***
He smiled, readily. Not an expression I associated with his brothers. From his waistcoat pocket, he produced a railwayman's watch.
‘If we forsake the comfort of this room for a few moments, we may bear witness to an, ah, occult phenomenon.'
‘...Which runs on a timetable, James?'
***
It seemed a comedown that a family which could produce a Professor Moriarty and a Colonel Moriarty should run to a mere Stationmaster.
***
For a moment, I was worried this Sophy Kratides person had slit my throat. They say you don't feel it if the knife is sharp enough, though who ‘they' might be who've lived to pass on this intelligence, I couldn't say.
***
[Безумие!]
‘James?' sputtered Stationmaster Moriarty.
I looked at the Professor, who raised his shoulders in a ‘not me' shrug.
‘Yes, James,' said the voice.
Out of the fog stalked Colonel James Moriarty.
We had the full set.
***
So this is what the Colonel meant by ‘supplies'. Secret weapons. I should have known no Moriarty would spend his life on bully and boots.
***
‘James,' the Stationmaster appealed to the Professor, ‘tell James about human nature.'
***
All three heads oscillated as they stared at each other, like a convocation of cobra.
***
Professor Moriarty, who had science instead of a soul, was interested in the Kallinikos.
***
I did not recall. Quite often, I didn't pay attention when the Professor was off on one of his tears. I'd probably been waiting for him to hand over the paper so I could see how much I'd lost at the races the day before.
***
[Братец Майкрофт смотрит строго]
‘I'm not in the British army,' he said, with a Moriartian gleam in his eyes. ‘I am the British army.
***
All three Moriarty brothers crammed into the aperture like Siamese triplets, jostling to board the war train. The Professor established seniority with sharp elbows, and was inside the Kallinikos ahead of the Colonel and the Stationmaster. None of them needed to be on the worm, but no James could have borne it if another were on board and they were left behind. Brothers, eh?
***
[Тяжко Себастьяну]
‘James, James, James,' I shouted. ‘Everyone on the crew is dead.
***
[Представится ли вам такое?]
There was some precariousness in getting out of the engine. There was no side door, just an egress to the rest of the train... so, the Moriarty brothers had to clamber down onto the rail bed and then make their way up onto the platform. They could have walked to the far end of the station, and taken the gentle slope up, but Young James pulled himself up to the platform, tearing his uniform at the knees, to show how limber he was. After that, his older brothers grimly followed suit, despite aged bones, tight waistcoats and a seeming unsuitability for such physical action. The Colonel grunted, went red in the face as he lifted his feet off the rails, and had to be pulled up by Stationmaster Moriarty and Berkins. He lost some buttons, and the last vestiges of his commanding manner.
Both brothers stuck out hands to assist the venerable Professor, but Moriarty couldn't resist letting a card he rarely showed fall out into the open.
After taking a step or two back, the Professor rushed forward, and swarmed out of the rail bed up onto the platform with the agility of a young monkey. He might give the impression of being like a dry stick, with bent shoulders and fragile bones. In fact, he had a wiry, cultivated strength and physical aptitude which - on several occasions - proved a fatal surprise to people who thought he'd be easy pickings in a straight-up punching match. He had some Eastern tricks - nobody knows more about dirty fighting than the Chinese, who've made a religion out of pokes, kicks and gouges which would get you barred in disgrace from a British boxing ring - and held by a peculiar diet involving melon seeds and carrot shavings.
***
You know how this ends. Someone goes over a waterfall.
***
A lot of rot has been spouted about what happened to Moriarty in Switzerland. One of his brothers and that medical writer in The Strand muddied the waters with a public row [1]. It was a surprise to me when Colonel Moriarty of ‘f--k off back to your blackboard' fame put the Professor up for posthumous sainthood.
In letters to the press, Moriarty medius tossed off accusations about his brother's demise, which he laid at the door of ‘an unlicensed, semi-professional adventurer'. This Watson oik piped up with a spume of ‘most dangerous man in London' piffle to exonerate his long-nosed, trouble-making former flatmate. Lawsuits were threatened. Arguments raged in clubs, letter columns and the streets.
***
The third James Moriarty - with bloody cheek! - sold the Pall Mall Gazette personal, intimate memoirs of all the wickedness his brother the Professor was behind. Even with an Irish spinster scribbler as a ghost [2], Young James was unable to cough out anything publishable and became the only Moriarty ever convicted in court of anything. The Gazette had him up for breach of contract and reclaimed the advance fee.
***
Colonel Moriarty and the Fat Man of Whitehall - who turned out to be the brother of the Thin Man of Baker Street - exchanged cryptic, terse, bitter communiques under the letterheads of the Department of Supplies and the Diogenes Club, respectively. No one outside ‘most secret' circles will be allowed to read these until one hundred years after the death of someone called ‘Billy the Page' [3].
***
During his long career as an evildoer, Moriarty shrugged off rumours about his true enterprise and maintained a respectable false front to the outside world. All through our association, even as he cut himself into crimes and netted one of the highest private incomes in the Empire, he kept at a dull teaching job which brought in just ?700 per annum. The Devil knows where he found the time to give lectures, mark papers and expel slackers, but he did.
None of his former students or present colleagues spoke up in his favour when the press had a field day maligning him. I gather the inkies were as terrified of the dear old soul as anyone who met him in his criminal capacity - once, I know for certain, he slowly put a youth to death for misplacing a decimal point - even before it came out that he was, as the sensation papers have it, ‘a diabolical mastermind'.
***
Sophy opened her pocketbook and handed me a newspaper clipping from an English language periodical published in Hungary. The news item involved Harold Latimer and Wilson Kemp, two dissolute Englishmen, who were reckoned to have quarrelled and stabbed each other to death [4].
***
I own I might have twirled my moustache. I know it's a tiresome old look-at-me-I'm-a-roue stage gesture, but - dash it - I've got a moustache (a big one too), and it's there for the twirling.
***
"...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... Miss Margaret Trelawny and the Hoxton Creeper... Doctor Mabuse of Berlin and Fraulein Alraune ten Brincken... Arthur Raffles of the Albany and his, ah, friend, Mr Manders... Theophraste Lupin and Josephine, Countess Cagliostro... Doctor Jack Quartz of New York and Princess Zanoni... Rupert, Count of Hentzau, and... Miss Irene Adler.'
***
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...!
***
‘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.
***
[Учительские привычки]
Moriarty, head oscillating, was deep in thought again. With him, it was either a lecture lasting for pages and pages or pin-drop dead silence.
***
The cake was sawed into chunks. Moriarty didn't trouble to conceal his impatience with this social occasion. It was my birthday, but Mrs Halifax followed the chain of command and offered the Prof a slice of cake first. Brusquely, he turned it down.
***
It would be just like the Prof to test out some new explosive device - a bomb, sent through the mail! - on whoever happened to be handy, i.e. me.
***
I had confidence in Von Herder's sensitive fingers when it came to mechanical parts, but knew better than to trust a blind engineer with optical jiggery-pokery, even if he did get his lenses ground in Venice.
***
The company looked at me. Mrs Halifax said, ‘Aren't you going to thank the Professor?'
Moriarty looked sour and turned away.
Something was called for, something needed to be said. No words came.
‘I shall be in with my wasps,' he announced, and abandoned the party for his private study, the windowless room.
***
‘He wishes to steal everything from me. He wants to be me.'
My jaw was slack, and I dribbled tea.
Why on earth would anyone want to be Moriarty?
***
[Вспомним же Genesis]
An all-comers bare-knuckles contest in Epping Forest was raided.
***
Moriarty had nervous energy now. For months he had accepted each blow and merely oscillated, thinking thinking thinking... I hoped we were at the point of doing doing doing.
***
The Professor wiped wasps off his long canvas gloves, brushing them into the funnel of the glass and wood nest-maze he had constructed. He took down his best hat and pulled on his coat.
‘I have a call to pay, Moran,' he said. ‘In Baker Street. A minor nuisance on the point of becoming a middle-sized obstacle must be bent to our purpose...'
***
[Несчастный Порлок!]
Our real arch-enemy was ‘Fred Porlock'.
***
Moriarty was the shark now, scores of teeth in his smile.
***
That brothel in Conduit Street was the nearest thing I'd had to a home.
***
A voice boomed from the room beyond an inner door. Instructions were being issued in deep, rasping German. Someone - Mabuse as Lavenza, I supposed - outlined a plan for a daring robbery. Jewels from the Royal Collection of Ruritania, kept in Swiss vaults, were to make a rare public appearance at the coronation. An opportunity existed to seize them in transit from Geneva to Strelsau.
***
I'd not forgotten what a nuisance Irene Adler could be if she put her mind to it. In theory, she was in Ruritania with Rupert. There was a god-awful mess about the succession, with Rudi, Michael and a red headed dark horse named Rassendyll making bids while the crown was in play [13].
***
The Yard was clearing its books, pinning decades of unsolved crimes on ‘the Conduit Street Ring'. I admit most of the ones from the last ten years were ours, but the 1809 disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst was almost certainly not Moriarty's doing since he'd not yet been born.
@темы: Птичий мозг, History of madness, Вавилонская библиотека, Falcon in the Dive, ШХ, ...since 1916
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10.06.2013 в 01:10-
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10.06.2013 в 01:17Момент с "Динамикой" был ужасен - мне известно, каково это, и я от всего сердца сочувствовала профессору)
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12.06.2013 в 15:49Профессор и Моран определённо на свой лад милы сердцу автора - иначе он бы вряд ли так их описывал.)
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12.06.2013 в 17:01-
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13.06.2013 в 14:36Ах вот оно что! xD Несколько кардинальный метод отбора персонала, зато эффективный - не поспоришь)
Эпизод со скрипкой не только кошмарен, но и ужасно смешон xD Даже не знаю, какая версия полковника мне больше по душе - исследовательское желание профессора узнать, из какого такого места этой конструкции берутся звуки, или же стремление в свободное от злодеяний время подпортить кровь своему архиврагу)
Вообще, полковник, конечно, страшный человек, но слушать его рассказы, изложенные честно и по-свойски, интересно и в чём-то даже приятно)
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13.06.2013 в 17:35Профессор препарировал скрипку, дабы изобрести оружие против псевдо-собаки)
Да, местами Себастьян бывает очень мил - к примеру, когда зовет свою ладонь paw xD
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20.07.2013 в 13:30И что это за гигантский червь? "Роковые яйца" на британский манер? XD-
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20.07.2013 в 13:43-
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20.07.2013 в 14:03А описания внешности самого младшего братца там ещё не встретилось? XD
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20.07.2013 в 14:17Описание имеется - сейчас попробую найти)
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25.07.2013 в 00:57After all, whoever heard of a Dubliner called Leopold? - Джеймс Джойс следует примеру сэра Седрика, прижимая к груди любимое творение. XDD
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25.07.2013 в 01:04В книге много вывернутых наизнанку мотивов расизма (тм), поэтому намеки и упоминание, кажется, Австрии могли быть не случайны
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25.07.2013 в 01:45Мм, кстати, очень может быть.) Я, если честно, остановилась на джойсовских ассоциациях. поскольку отец Леопольда Блума был австрийский еврей.)
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25.07.2013 в 01:48