The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty

The Caribbean Treaty Affair Jill Braden

There is no question that the Diogenes Club is superior to all other gentlemen’s clubs in London. While the younger Mr Holmes may refer to my fellow members, including his own brother, as the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town, he also rightfully praises it for comfortable chairs, the selection of periodicals and, most importantly, its silence. While a member might clear his throat in outrage at some bit of nonsense in the afternoon papers, he wouldn’t grip the pages and give them an irate snap as Colonel Moran does now to his magazine as he sits in my chambers.

Will he not be still? We are celebrating, after all. When this evening’s business is complete, he will have sufficient funds to fritter away on his habits, and I will possess an item I have coveted since I donned my professorial robes.

Nothing can go wrong. So, why does a centipede of ire crawl up my spine, each spiky leg plucking at a nerve? Every contingency has been planned for, but the details of the intricate plan set into motion this night nip at the heels of my contentment. It’s excruciating to place fate in the hands of others, but if my instructions are carried out precisely, they cannot fail. They will not fail!

It is early April, and the air still bears a chill that seeps around the windows into my lodgings. Too much warmth lures a man into a mental torpor, so I welcome the tendrils of cold occasionally caressing my neck above the collar of my dressing gown. Years of hunting in the wilds of India and Africa have inured Moran to harsh conditions and he is comfortable enough in his sporting tweeds. Yet I had the girl put on more coal and turn up the gas as this promises to be a long night.

His foot bounces in irritating jerks. The gaslight shines on the leaf of a rare flowering shrub clinging to his boot. There are only three Nepalese rhododendrons in London, and two of them are at Kew. Moran doesn’t strike me as a horticulturalist. He has been loitering outside a certain Georgian monstrosity despite being told to stay away. The match to light the flame of my temper has been struck.

Moran fidgets then slaps the page with the back of his hand like a knight brandishing his gauntlet. “Here he goes again. ‘The Adventure of the Gloria Scott’.”

“The Strand? You’ve only suffered from your own folly in purchasing it.” Rattling my own page, I turn a shoulder to him. If I’d watched his foot bounce in that uneven rhythm much longer, I would have fetched my walking stick and beaten it into stillness.

“You read the agony columns.”

There was simply no equating the two. He reads a popular periodical for entertainment. I read the agony columns because in our line of work it was important to understand the thinking process – if you can call it that! – of the ordinary Londoner. Long ago, I’d assumed I was raised by kindly, if slow-witted, aberrations and that I’d find my peers in the wider world. Sadly, I was mistaken. If Darwin had studied the population of this great city rather than finches, he never would have surmised that “fittest” described those who survived.

Moran leaps to his feet and paces past our chairs. The clutter that is so fashionable now in sitting rooms is esthetically displeasing to me. I detest flounces. My books share shelf space with specimens collected through the years and some oblique mementoes of my most stimulating capers, but there are no figur ines of shepherdesses and country lads on my mantel.

With decisive steps, Moran strides to the windows, pulls aside the curtains with two fingers, and watches the street. My lodgings are in the city. Mansions sit but a few minutes’ walk away, but so does a rookery. Hackneys, hansoms and country squires in town for the season alike stable their horses across the street at Hocking’s. The pageant of life passing on the street below presents every level of society. It is nothing remarkable to either of us. When you consult with criminals, you necessarily mix out of your own set. It’s helpful to live where the comings and goings of others arouse no curiosity from one’s neighbors.

After lowering the curtains, he takes a turn around the small room. My fingers tap against my knee. His walk ends at the mantel, which he lounges against. A semblance of calm is restored.

He laughs like a barking seal. It is an unexpected noise. My eyebrow rises but he chooses this moment to scrape the sole of his boot on the andiron. Before reluctantly closing the almanac in hand, I place a copy of the latest publication from Lloyd’s between the pages as one does to press a spring flower and hope that my train of thought will be similarly preserved. In truth, Moran doesn’t interrupt me. I’ve read the same chart of expected ship arrivals several times but cannot tell you what words were contained within it.

It is good that the sun has already set. Many people will not venture out again for the evening. In a city of two and a half million people, there’s always the random chance of someone seeing something, though. No. I can calculate the odds in my mind. It is a simple enough exercise. Most people don’t understand what they see. Tonight’s adventure will not attract attention. Even if one of those millions should happen to witness a wealthy young man in evening attire hurrying back to his chambers in a certain Ministry building, they won’t realize what they’re seeing. And even if doubt does niggle at their brain and keep them awake tonight, by morning they will either have forgotten, or it will be too late. No one will even be sure that a crime was committed. Nothing will be missing, and everything will be exactly where it should be – precisely where it was earlier in the day. The importance of that was made quite clear to our client. This affair, as precisely planned as watch works, will conclude without a trace of evidence. Of this, I am reasonably certain. Then why do I feel the need to take up the pacing that Moran has so recently abandoned?

With his hand on the mantel, Moran stares down at the fire. His shoulders hunch around his thoughts. “What would be the look on Holmes’s face if I ever wrote up your exploits?”

Moran authored two volumes recounting his hunting adventures that were a trifle too grandiose for my taste, but they excited an interest among the general public. He and Doctor Watson share that vice. It must be a malady army men suffer from. If the urge to write about me ever overtook him, I would be sorry to lose such a marksman.

“No doubt his bulldog Watson would bring it to his attention,” I say quietly.

Overwrought by his thoughts, he flings an arm out to point an accusing finger at his magazine. “That isn’t even a new case. He’s so desperate to keep Holmes in the public eye that he writes of a mystery many years past. Only old generals need to relive their glory days.”

“Hmm.”

It isn’t a remark designed to encourage further conversation. Moran isn’t the sort of man who talks, which is why we are comfortable in each other’s presence. Speaking, even more than pacing, gives away his state of mind. Mine also roils. Every detail is correct. The plan will succeed. We should be celebrating. Or, if he’s superstitious about such things, we should at least be quietly content.

Nothing will go wrong.

“Every detail,” he grumbles. “Are you sure?”

Tension worries my shoulders. “Meticulously checked.”

“There were many.”

He’s right. I hadn’t put together such a detailed lay in several years. I’d sat in my favorite chair at the Diogenes Club, where the silence – which I could not replicate in my own lodgings – and the general air of intellectual fortitude made it possible to break down the plan into its most basic components. Those, I’d assigned to various players. Chimney sweeps, a diplomat, maids, bankers – the sheer breadth of it had at first appalled me, but it excited me also, as few challenges could. Moran had asked me if I’d gone mad when I’d shared my vision with him.

Months, it took us to piece together. At times, success at even the small things had hinged on uncaring fate and we’d held our breaths until it was done. While we’d kept as much secret as we could, necessity made us risk exposure on two occasions. Even though the danger was long past, the memory of those nights still gnawed at my stomach. Most of the talent we’d hired were happy to do their part and take their coin no matter how trivial the pull seemed to be. Then there where those who could not stop asking why, who sensed there must be more to it. Those unfortunates found themselves at the fatal end of Moran’s barkers.

All totaled, it took a small fortune to put it together, and it will take a larger fortune to profit in the exchanges from the information gleaned from this night’s work. Some crimes are purely the privilege of wealthy men.

Moran lunges for the umbrella stand near the door to grab his gun. I clutch my chair as I listen intently, expecting to hear a stealthy footstep on the landing.

“Maybe I should just go have a look. To make sure,” he says.

It takes a few moments for me to realize he wasn’t reacting to a threat but rather his own impatience. A few more ticks of the clock pass before I am able to relax. “I’ve told you, we must take pains to distance ourselves. A web strand was plucked several years ago over the Netherland-Sumatra Company affair. It has not stopped reverberating since. Holmes will insist on poking around it. He doesn’t see it, but he senses it’s there. We must be discreet and not attract his interest.”

A long intake of breath betrays some worry on his account. “Does Watson exaggerate his abilities?”

“From all accounts, no. The elder brother is his superior in every way, but the younger has an annoying habit of acting on what he sees rather than letting it float past him. London is a river of crime. Only a madman casts a net to pluck out the one that glints enough to catch his eye then calls himself a dam.”

He casts a dubious glance at me before regaining his chair. He perches on the edge, knees wide apart, hands clasped between them tightly. We both glance at the clock. The minutes drag their heels in passing.

“What was your first consultation?”

I know he doesn’t care to hear my reminiscences, but we both need the distraction, so I settle back and prepare to indulge him.

“In 1852, my Treatise Upon Binomial Theorem was published to some acclaim. On the strength of it, Durham University offered me a post, and, in 1854, at the age of twenty-three, I arrived there. It was a tedious position. Few true scholars graced my lectures. Instead, I suffered the presence of young men more interested in obtaining a university bearing than knowledge.”

“I met enough of that kind in India. No stomach for soldiering, but they liked their uniforms.”

I nod. “At the break, I found myself at loose ends. A fellow professor kindly lent me his copy of Laplace’s Traité de Mécanique Céleste. Mathematics had been my sole focus since I was in the nursery, but, in reading it, I became absorbed. Since then, a sudden urge to plumb the depths of a subject heretofore unknown to me has gripped quite often—” I gesture to my collection of bottled oddities “—but at the time it was a new and exciting prospect to be driven by a seemingly unquenchable thirst for knowledge I’d not cared about only the day before. It was terrible and wonderful at the same time. I read every book I could find. Most were utter balderdash written by men who had the funds to build an observatory but not the stamina to sit night after night in them, or the mental discipline such work requires.

“Finally, I resolved that I had to observe the phenomena described for myself so that I would know the real scientists from the gentleman hobbyists. The university observatory wasn’t available to satisfy idle curiosity, so I offered my services as a computer to Albert Marth, who had just been appointed to the position of lead observer.”

Moran’s brow furrows deeply. Those ridges are as familiar to me as my own countenance, although they usually only appear as he readies his aim. “Computer?”

“The language of astronomy is mathematics. Precision is key. Someone must check each formula and calculate each answer.”

“You were a clerk, like Uriah Heep.”

Moran has an unfortunate habit of trying my patience. No wonder so many men he served with tried to kill him. He should have known better than to poke and pry at me at such a time. I have need of him though, so I ignore his jests. “Unlike his predecessors, Ellis and Rümker, Marth focused on asteroids,” I continue. “After a year of transcribing his notes, I was allowed to make my own observations in the waning hour of darkness, which led eventually to my writing The Dynamics of an Asteroid.”

Moran lights a match. The flame bends to the end of his cigar until the tobacco glows like a coal. He shakes out the match and tosses it into the grate.

“It’s cold work, but you’d find searching the heavens for bodies similar to hunting game,” I say.

“I’ve slept on the ground and looked at the night sky many times. The stars are useful to navigate by, but I’ve never been inspired to stay awake just to watch them. There’s no life to them.” He exhales a harsh cloud of smoke. I swear the blend he prefers is part gunpowder. “So what crime did you commit? Did you turn the telescope on Marth’s window? Or did you teach the Earth to go around the sun?”

We exchange wry smiles.

A glance at the clock warns me that there are still several hours to while away. There’s no need to rush through my tale, so I play the host and refill our glasses, start my pipe and sink back into the depths of my chair before continuing.

“As I said, it was cold work through a long night. We talked the entire time in an effort to stay awake. There’s only so much talk of pure science one can indulge in before the secular world creeps into the conversation, however, so—”

“You gossiped.”

The man is addicted to danger. Or he believes he has a sense of humor. Neither one is congenial to my person. As usual, I ignore him and continue my memoir.

“A sensational crime had been committed that was much in the papers. As with the search for undiscovered celestial objects, it presented an interesting puzzle.”

He sighs and crosses his legs.

“A gold shipment bound for the Crimea disappeared from bound safes in a locked train car seemingly while the train was in motion. It was estimated to be worth over twelve thousand pounds.”

Although he sucks on his cigar contemplatively, the darting of his eyes betrays his interest. When tonight’s work is done, he can expect to see five thousand pounds for his efforts. He has no interest in numbers, but even he knows that twelve is a great deal more. The Great Gold Robbery was – to use the language of the criminal class – a ream flash pull.

“Did you have a hand in it?” he asks.

“No.”

“I thought you would tell me about the first time you consulted.”

“This is better. It’s why I saw the need for my services. May I continue with my story?”

He removes his cigar from his mouth and gestures for me to go on. The flippancy of it does not make me feel more kindly toward him.

“Every three months or so, the payroll for the troops in the Crimea was sent from London to France and from there was shipped to the Black Sea where those fools Cardigan and Raglan were playing at command.”

Moran makes a noise that might be commentary on military commanders in toto, or on those two in particular. While the particulars have never interested me, he had been obliged to leave the army several years before we met. Having seen what comprises perfectly acceptable behavior by officers, I can only deduce that he either seduced someone’s wife or a commander took offense at his being Irish.

“The safes were checked at the station, and reputable men swore they were filled with gold. They were closed and secured by locked iron bands. Each safe required two keys to open. This was before Alfred Nobel gave us dynamite. Nowadays, any brute with a stick or two may blow a safe into pieces, but back then, you had to have the keys, and keys, as you are well aware, are small things easily concealed.

“The car was then closed and secured – yet another key – and the train left the station. When the safes finally arrived in Boulogne, the boxes of gold were removed from them and weighed. There was a discrepancy. The boxes were opened and found to contain lead shot of nearly equal weight to the gold that had been taken. A switch had occurred, but where, and when? The French were our allies, but just barely. The scandal was an international incident, with both sides pointing fingers across the Channel and accusing the other of being in league with the thieves.

“As you can imagine, the pressure to find the gold was intense. The police both in France and here in England arrested everyone but could pin it on none. The professional police forces then were fairly new and employed few men capable of a real investigation, but they managed to eliminate the boat that brought the shipment across the Channel and Folkestone Station as the sites where the crime was committed. Likewise, because of the matching weights, the trip from the boat to Paris to Boulogne was assumed secure. As I said, there was no question that the gold was on the train when it left London. The only remaining explanation then, no matter how extraordinary, was that the burglary must have occurred whilst the train was in motion between London and Folkestone.

“These were no ordinary criminals.”

He leans across the small table between our chairs. I’ve seen that shine to his eyes before when he’s keen on a scent. “Did you solve the case after spying reddish dirt on the conductor’s sleeve?”

“I never left Durham. All this running about town and poking about the scene of the crime is very energetic and looks good on the pages of The Strand, but it’s unnecessary. Everything I needed to know was in the papers, or easily deduced. I said as much to my colleagues. They scoffed, so I challenged them to place wagers. However, as the months passed and the right people still had not been arrested, well, I went to the police—”

“You!”

“Here is where I find myself in agreement with Mr Holmes. The detectives of Scotland Yard are at best an unimaginative lot. How he works with that buffoon, Lestrade … Bah! I gave them the solution, but they ignored it.”

He smiles around his cigar. “Until.”

It gives me great satisfaction to remember it.

“Men like you and I understand the value of silence, Moran.”

“Many a man has gone in the stir for the crime of talking.”

“There have been crimes more spectacular—”

“Vamberry,” he muttered.

The compliment was acknowledged with a slight nod. “And many have been more lucrative than Pierce and Agar’s caper. What set this crime apart was that Agar bragged about it in court. He laid out the entire scheme from start to finish in amazing detail. They matched, in essence, what I’d predicted two years before.”

I’d read the papers avidly. Each edition had carried new revelations to the readers, but they’d only confirmed what I’d already deduced. It was so obvious that to this day I am amazed that anyone could be mystified. But it also informed me that, as a whole, people are easy duped into thinking something is difficult when it is, in fact, quite simple. From their narrow brows and sloping foreheads, one must surmise that most people in London are descendants of some other strain of humanoids than myself and the Holmes brothers.

“You said the rozzers ignored you.” Moran taps his cigar against the table. An inch of downy ash drops into the Persian rug at our feet. “You were finally able to collect on your wagers though.”

Naturally, that is the part that interests him most. His evenings are spent at the card tables. The idea of refusing to honor a gambling debt offends his deepest-held sensibilities. Cheating at cards, however, does not. Several men have died for saying as much aloud, so I turn back to my story.

“Some of my colleagues had conveniently forgotten their bets. I lost my temper. It caused a small scandal and my post was no longer secure. I collected what I could, which was still considerable, and moved to London. Eventually, I extracted my due from each of those scoundrels at Durham. Not only in coin, but in reputation. I cast my web and waited for an opportunity to pluck at their strands. One after the next has been ruined by their own folly.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

Moran isn’t in my employ merely because he’s the best shot in the Empire. He’s the kind of man accustomed to, and not fazed by, certain demands of our line of business. A man of good moral character would have been useless to me.

“While there had been some unfortunate incidences that began to cloud my academic career, I’ll admit I’d never lent my prodigious mental abilities to those exploits. They were merely …”

I wave away what I cannot explain in words. Sometimes I had taken things I did not need and hadn’t even desired simply because I could get away with taking them. Regret wasn’t a word that came to mind, but I was ashamed of my lack of discipline.

“I was what I’ve come to despise the most, a lazy criminal. In reading the details of that daring escapade, clarity struck me. It was fascinating, a treatise on how to commit a crime of exquisite detail and complication, not unlike the working of the celestial plane, or the working of a watch. A thing of beauty.”

Moran puffs on his cigar. “They got caught. There’s nothing beautiful about that.”

I smile. “Yes, they did. That was the most instructive part.”

“How so?”

“Do you know what gave them away? Greed. If Pierce had only paid Agar’s woman the amount he’d promised from the haul, she never would have gone to the authorities and talked. He would have lost half, but better that than lose it all.”

“What sort of stupid thief goes to a beak and cries about not getting her cut?” He tosses down his copy of The Strand and walks over it as if it offends him. He returns to the window and peers out of it.

“That’s why I insist on silence. The man who utters my name knows he’ll die for it.”

Now there seems to be no corner unturned in our conversation. We let it cool, then die.

My thoughts stay on Agar’s Judy as the quiet curtains over our shoulders. I hadn’t thought about her for years. What had she hoped to accomplish by complaining to the prison warden, of all people? Appealing to the law for her share of the take from a robbery gained her nothing. Yet, in more than one of Holmes’s cases, thieves have stolen from maharajas, but there was never any cry to return the proceeds to those victims. Rather, the heirs of the thieves have been shown time and again to be the rightful owners of the ill-gotten gains. So why shouldn’t she have expected the same treatment?

I suppose that the difference was that the victim was an English bank this time and not some foreigner. Steal a shilling, and your reputation is forever ruined. Steal a hundred thousand pounds, and even the Bank of England will roll over and show you its belly. Or perhaps the social rank of the heir was of the utmost importance when deciding these things. Holmes, it seemed, was a better judge of what exactly defined justice than was I. My aim was to avoid the law, not to dance about its niceties like a swain at a ball.

Thoughts left unchecked tend to wander. Mine plunge into the abyss I’ve avoided while reminiscing about the Great Gold Robbery. Tonight, a certain gentleman of no discernible talent but excellent connections is at the house of Countess R—, where he is enjoying a musical evening. Will be, that is, until a letter is placed in his hands. After he reads it, I envision him questioning the men who had given it to him. I’ve trained them to convey a sense of urgency and reinforce the need for secrecy. My guess is that he will assume he can handle the situation and will follow my men without another thought. Perhaps he’ll cast a glance at his intended before he slips out. I’ve heard that she plays beautifully. Her fingers, it is said, are perfect for the demands of Liszt’s melodies. She would make a fine pickpocket.

Moran consults his pocket watch. Similarly, I check the one on the mantel and found the hour far later than I expected. We should have heard by now.

Moran shares my nagging thought: “What if they decided not to share the information with us?”

That centipede has renewed his climb up my back, and the chill settling on my spine is not from the drafty window. This time when Moran strides to the door, I do not try to stop him. He takes his gun and scope.

It seems the very air around me vibrates. Strands have been plucked in pizzicato. My imagination creeps cautiously down them and hopes to be met by news traveling in the other direction. The mute chiming of the quarter-hour and echo of passing footsteps on the street grates on my nerves.

Normally, I am not a man of action, but the growing fury at the unknown will not allow me to meditate in stillness. What has gone wrong? Nothing could have. Scenarios rising in my mind are quickly rejected. Nothing could have gone wrong.

Finally, it is too much. After telling the landlord’s boy to hail a cab, I remove two firearms from my desk and prepare them for action. While not possessing nearly Moran’s skill, I am a fair shot.

As I reach for my cloak, I hear hurried footsteps on the stair and know Moran has returned. It is a great relief to me, as I know that he must bear good news and an explanation. He and I can laugh at our folly and shake hands, knowing the night’s work is done.

Yet, something in the rhythm of his step pricks at my brain.

He flings open my door. Our gazes meet, and I know even before he says, “They had him in the coach, then he decided to act the hero. There was a fight and he escaped. Two shots were fired—”

“You saw this?”

“Collier and Black told me.” Moran pulls off his gloves and slaps them against his open palm. “Thankfully, one of the shots wounded him. I followed the trail.”

“In the dark?”

“That’s what you pay me for, isn’t it?” He makes a face. “While not fatal, the wound was enough to slow his steps.”

“Not fatal?”

He holds up a hand to stop my questions. Very well. He can tell it in his own time.

“I followed him to Baker Street.”

My knees weaken. I grip the back of my chair.

“One shot spun him around. I grabbed the key and the letter.” Moran shows me the envelope he has taken from our quarry. A corner has been ripped away. “He lurched back from me. I ducked into an alleyway when I heard people running toward us. By the time I realized it was our men, he’d already managed to draw Holmes and Watson’s attention. He collapsed at their door before he could speak and passed away at their feet. I made sure of it.” Moran grabs my cloak and shoves it at me. “But I have the key. There’s still time, if we hurry.”

Moran’s offer seems a balm for my bitter disappointment, yet I know it for what it is. At this moment, I know how Eve felt when the serpent offered her the apple. I shake my head and return to my seat before the fire.

Doctor Watson glanced up at Sherlock Holmes and shook his head before turning to the dead stranger at their feet. The gas lamps in the foyer cast Holmes’s shadow over the corpse and into the street, where it joined with the night.

“Did he say anything?” Holmes’s laconic tone indicated little interest in the answer. He hadn’t moved when they’d heard the urgent knocking, or when Mrs Hudson had screamed. He’d only come down the stairs when it seemed Mrs Hudson would remain in their rooms demanding he do something about the bleeding man at her front stoop, as she was certain her famous tenant was the cause of this latest outrage.

Watson shook his head again. “He groaned. A last death rattle and nothing more.”

Like a heron stalking the reeds at the edge of a pond, Holmes’s head suddenly tilted. In an instant, he was down on one knee with the dead man’s hand clasped in his. He forced the fist open. A scrap of paper fluttered to the step. Holmes held it up to the light and squinted at it then secured it in the pocket of his mousecolored dressing gown.

Holmes sniffed the man’s face and lapels. He rose and swiftly circled the body. After regarding the boots for a long moment, his nostrils narrowed as he inhaled sharply.

“There isn’t a moment to lose. We’ll send the boy to fetch the constable. Hail a cab. And bring your pistol.”

“Holmes!”

“I’ll spare you the obvious clues that tell me who this man is. We can talk about that in the cab. But I will explain our rush, because I know the abandonment of this still-warm corpse disturbs you.”

“At times, you’re as cold as an insect.”

“It does no good to hover over him now, Watson, but we can be of service elsewhere. A secret treaty between our government and that of the United States concerning the Caribbean and the southern Americas is currently being negotiated. Certain members of our government have been known to use their knowledge of similar negotiations to take advantageous positions in bonds and currencies before the news is made public. This young man’s uncle made his fortune with such information, and I’m sure we’ll find a copy of the uncle’s instructions to his bank in the deceased’s office. He was probably planning to emulate his uncle’s financial success. If we do not hurry, the person who did this—” he gestured to the body at his feet “—will find that letter and use it to his own gain. We must stop him.”

Holmes turned on his heel and bounded up the stairs.

Watson wearily came to his feet. Holmes was right. Nothing could be done for the young man lying at their doorstep. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, unfurled it, and drew the square of silk gently over the corpse’s face.