V
I packed guns for a trip west.
Impertinent reviewers of my Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas made waggish remarks about the Moran propensity for ‘droning at length’ about guns. I still hold those seventy-eight pages, with practical footnotes, on the rifle ‘Prometheus’ a worthwhile addition to the literature and essential to the understanding of later, more immediately exciting chapters. Discerning readers have given testimonials as to the fascinating, educational and profoundly important nature of these outpourings from my pen — which not a few rank higher than anything from Dickens or Shelley.
‘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 don’t officially record those sammies, because close-up executions spat from an abused and spoiled weapon can’t be set beside the true shots of the gun’s great days. But they constituted the final bag. Had ‘Prometheus’ survived beyond publication of Heavy Game, I might have added a literary lion or two to its tally. Luckily, the Eton coachwhip was to hand when opportunity came to answer my critics.
If you’ve a fancy to hang the antlers of a Grand Duke in your lodge, you might need a recoilless pistol which looks like a pair of opera glasses and doesn’t make a noise louder than a round of applause. Then, Blind Herder’s your man. Still, if Red Shuck was actual game, I needed a game rifle. Gibbs & Co. remained my preferred supplier. 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. I took three rifles, including one calibrated for shots of up to three-quarters of a mile with an optical contraption for sighting purposes. My Webley had finally succumbed when I was forced to use its barrel as a jemmy and its handle as a hammer to extricate myself from the oubliette of Arnsworth Castle. So, I needed a side arm. Officially, Gibbs does not make a revolver — but, as a service to a valued customer, they furnished me a superbly crafted, teak-handled specimen superior to the job lots of shooting iron turned out by Yankee bodgers like Samuel Colt.
It was arranged that, three days after our first consultation, I would meet Jasper Stoke at Paddington Station and we would chuff-chuff west. 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.
Looking up from his labours, Moriarty saw me dressed for the country and raised a bony finger to signal I shouldn’t leave just yet.
He pushed away from his workbench, rolling his chair on castors across uncarpeted floor towards a cabinet of many drawers. The Professor boasted that this contained a thousand unique methods of murder — though, when someone was to be got rid of, he usually left the mamba venom envelope gum and asphyxiating orchids to his oriental peer, relying instead on tried-and-true British bludgeoning or my own marksmanship. He pulled a drawer marked ‘58’ and took out a small cardboard box.
‘It’s not a spider, is it, Moriarty? You know my opinion on arachnids!’
The Professor opened the box, which was full of apparently ordinary bullets. Moriarty plucked a rimmed.455 pistol cartridge. They make them by the thousand. But instead of dull lead, its nose gleamed sterling silver.
I whistled and commented, ‘Pricey.’
‘Indeed,’ Moriarty said. ‘Material is costly and manufacture complicated. But you lecture often on the importance of using the proper loads. The literature would have it that supernatural game such as Red Shuck requires a silver bullet. I shall want a precise account of every shot fired. Any rounds not discharged are to be returned when this matter is settled.’
I slipped the box into my pocket.
‘Moriarty, do you give any weight to the notion that there’s a ghost or goblin behind this business? Our client plainly doesn’t…’
‘Our client, though not unperceptive in some matters, is a limited man.’
‘I’ve seen mysteries beyond explanation in the East, but run into many more which turn out to be some clever fakir trying to put one over on the white man.’
‘Dullards would have you believe that once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth… but to a mathematical mind, the impossible is simply a theorem yet to be solved. We must not eliminate the impossible, we must conquer it, suborn it to our purpose. Whatever remains, however dully probable, will satisfy earthbound thinkers, while we have the profit of the hitherto inconceivable. Besides, I daresay anyone with a silver bullet in his brains couldn’t tell it from lead.’
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. Most criminals were so rapt by his phrases and his eyes and his snake-neck wobble they blithely did whatever he wanted without knowing why. I was not immune, but had been with the Firm long enough to know the Prof’s tricks.
I left Moriarty to his musical experiments, and Chop drove me to the station.
VI
In our first-class compartment on the Great Western Railways train to Stourcastle, I quizzed Jasper Stoke about the layout at Trantridge. It’s advantageous to know the territory before setting a foot there. I had conned maps, almanacs and gazetteers; now I drew Stoke out on things nobody thought to set down. You can deduce — to use the word of the week — a great deal from smells. Not a pleasant topic, especially when the odours of Wessex are under discussion, but revealing.
‘The Chase stinks like Pennsylvania,’ Stoke said. ‘Open-cast mine country.’
‘Is there any mining?’ I asked.
‘In the New Forest, towards Bramshurst, there are pits, but nothing in The Chase. I can’t even say what the luciferous stench is. Chemicals in the ground? And something rotten. Like eggs gone off.’
Stoke filled up the compartment with fug, puffing on his cheroots. He gave a lot away when smoking. He tried to exhale confident clouds, Indian signals announcing himself as Big Chief, but chewed the stub, got leaf-bits stuck to his teeth and punctured the will-o’-the-wisp. A man for putting up a front, he couldn’t keep it together. No wonder he’d been chased out of Tombstone by the improbably named Earps. He was buckling in Wessex, and — if he didn’t get his dog-pelt soon — would probably be chased out of Trantridge too.
I can’t say I took to Stoke. British-born, he might be — but American in his ways. Big-talking, craven, insensitive and miserly. In his terms, a compleat c--sucker. If he ever ran across Jim Lassiter, he’d be dead in the dust before he could clear his holsters. Still, at least he wasn’t a bloody Mormon.