Or us, he didn’t say. He liked to think of the Firm as an academic exercise: abstruse economics, sub rosa mathematics.
‘…at bottom, the Camorra — and their Sicilian and Calabrian equivalents, the Mafia and the ’Ndrangheta — are a romantic, fanatic religious-nationalist movement, as remorseless and unreasonable as the priests of the yellow god. They care not about dying, as individuals. This makes them exceedingly dangerous.’
He let that sink in.
‘Don Rafaele Corbucci, chief of chiefs of the Camorra, has vowed to return the jewels to the Madonna. He has taken an oath on the life of his own mother. He has personally followed the jewels across Europe and is presently in London. He paid a call on the late Signor Lombardo at his place of business yesterday. Measures must be taken to pluck the fruit before he can get his hands on it.’
To scare each other, criminals told stories about Don Rafaele. You can imagine how they run. It is said that when a devoted lieutenant thoughtlessly spit out a cigar end in church on a saint’s day, the pious Don had him strangled with his only son’s entrails. He took his culture seriously, too — and had a sense of humour. While infatuated with that bitch Irene Adler — yes, he’s another of her leavings — he took against a critic who ridiculed her performance as Duchess Hélène in I Vespri Siciliani. The man wound up with his own ears cut off and a donkey’s ears nailed onto his head in their place.
I was surprised to learn this monster had a mama. If it were a matter of keeping his word, Don Rafaele would personally sink the old biddy in the Bay of Naples.
‘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.
‘The Eye of Balor is currently among Mountmain’s effects, in the possession of the Special Irish Branch of Scotland Yard. Half a dozen sons, cousins and brothers would like to obtain the coin. It’s said that, if “the wee folk” approve, the owner will ascend to the office of Mage-King of Ireland, whatever that means. The chief contestant for the position is Desmond’s son, Tyrone.’
That was foul news. Another ‘romantic, fanatic religious-nationalist movement’. Your paddy bomber though concerned with his own individual skin is too hot-headed as a rule to preserve it. Dynamite Des wasn’t the first Fenian to blow himself up with his own blasting powder.
Tyrone Mountmain, the heir apparent, figured high on my list of people I hoped never to meet again.
So, now we had to worry about brown priests and marauding mi-go, the Hoxton Creeper, Mysteries of Ancient Egypt, the Knights Templar, the Naples Mob, the little people and the bloody Fenians! It was a wonder Malvoisin’s Mirror, the Monkey’s Paw, Cap’n Flint’s treasure and Sir Michael Sinclair’s Door were off the ‘shopping list’.
How cursed did Professor Moriarty want to be by the end of the week?
VII
Recall my remarks re. nuisance value attendant on one little murder carried out in the service of a trade union?
Ask anyone who knows us (and is still in a position to talk) and you’ll be told we are a mercenary concern. We kill anyone, of whatever political stripe or social standing. For a price. It’s not true that money is all that interests us. The thrill of the chase is involved. If nothing else is on, I’d cheerfully pot someone or steal something just to keep my hand in.
Moriarty claims pure intellectual interest in the problem at hand, and can be inveigled into an enterprise if it strikes him as out of the ordinary. He feels pepper in the blood too, in the planning if not the execution. The moment of clear thrill which burns cold — as a perfect shot brings down a tiger or an archduke — is the closest I can get to the fireworks which go off in the Prof’s brain when his reptile head stops oscillating… and he suddenly knows how an impossible trick can be brought off.
We have no cause but ourselves. We have no politics. We have no religion. I believe in Sensation. Moriarty believes in Sums. That’s about as deep as it needs run.
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.
From time to time — usually when an American millionaire who’d never set foot on the isle of his ancestors for fear of being robbed by long-lost cousins decided to fund the Struggle — one or other of the many branches of Fenianism secured our temporary services. If Desmond Mountmain weren’t so all-fired certain he could handle his own bombmaking, he might have been buried in one piece. It takes a more precise touch to blow the door off a strongroom than the medals off a chief constable. Dynamiters on our books have names like ‘Steady Hands’ Crenshaw, not ‘Shaky’ Brannigan.
As a rule, Irish petitioners were much more trouble than they were worth.
Over the years, half a dozen proud rebels had tried to enlist us on the never-never in fantastic schemes of insurrection. You could separate the confidence men from the real patriots because simple crooks venture sensible-sounding endeavours like stealing cases of rifles from the Woolwich Arsenal. Genuine Irish revolutionaries run to crackpottery like deploying an especially made submarine warship to overthrow British rule in Canada. We decided against throwing in with that and you can look up how well it turned out. [40] Canada is still in the Empire last I paid attention, though I’ve no idea why. The place has nothing worth shooting (unless you count Inuit and Sasquatch which, at that, I might) and boasts 50,000 trees to every woman.
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.
So: Tyrone Mountmain.
Here’s why he wasn’t at the meeting of the Inner Council of Immortals of the Irish Republican Invincibles which ended with a bang… he was the only man in living memory to devote himself with equal passion to the causes of Irish Home Rule and Temperance.
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. If he weren’t a six-foot rugby forward and bare-knuckle boxer, I dare say Tyrone wouldn’t have lasted beyond his first crusade, but he was and he had. Dear old Da, whose favoured tipple was scarcely less potent than the dynamite which did for him, could not abide a teetotaller in his home and exiled his own son from the Invincibles. They had a three-day donnybrook about it, cuffing each other’s hard heads up and down Aungier Street while onlookers placed bets.
40
In 1881, the