As I said, he had me sold already. If a great deal of money was to be had, Moran was in.
‘The Firm is available for contract work. You understand? We have clients who bring problems to us. We solve them, using whatever skills we have to hand. If there is advantage to us beyond the agreed fee, we seize it…’
He made a fist in the air, as if squeezing a microbe to death.
‘…if our interests happen to run counter to those of the client, we settle the matter in such a way that is ultimately convenient to us, while our patron does not realise precisely what has happened. This, also, you understand?’
‘Too right, Professor,’ I said.
‘Good. I believe we shall have satisfaction of each other.’
I sipped my tea. Too milky, too pale. It always is after India. I think they put curry powder in the pot out there, or else piddle in the sahib’s crockery when he’s not looking.
‘Would you care for one of Mrs Halifax’s biscuits?’ he asked, as if he were the vicar entertaining the chairwoman of the beneficent fund. ‘Vile things, but you might like them.’
I dunked and nibbled. Mrs H. was a better madame than baker. Which led me to wonder what fancies might be buttered up in the rooms below the Professor’s lair.
‘Colonel Moran, I am appointing you as head of one of our most prestigious divisions. It is a post for which you are eminently qualified by achievement and aptitude. Technically, you are superior to all in the Firm. You are expected to take up residence here, in this building. A generous salary comes with the position. And profit participation in, ah, “special projects”. One such matter is at hand, and we shall come to it when we receive our next caller, Mister — no, not Mister, Elder — Elder Enoch J. Drebber of Cleveland, Ohio.’
‘I’m flattered,’ I responded. ‘A “generous salary” would solve my problems, not to mention the use of a London flat. But, Moriarty, what is this division you wish me to head? Why am I such a perfect fit for it? What, specifically, is its business?’
Moriarty smiled again.
‘Did I omit to mention that?’
‘You know damn well you did!’
‘Murder, my dear Moran. Its business is murder.’
III
Barely ten minutes after my appointment as Chief Executive Director of Homicide, Ltd., I was awaiting our first customer.
I mused humorously that I might offer an introductory special, say a garrotting thrown in gratis with every five poisonings. Perhaps there should be a half-rate for servants? A sliding scale of fees, depending on the number of years a prospective victim might reasonably expect to have lived had a client not retained our services?
I wasn’t yet thinking the Moriarty way. Hunting I knew to be a serious avocation. Murder was for bounders and cosh-men, hardly even killing at all. I’m not squeamish about taking human life: Quakers don’t get decorated after punitive actions against Afghan tribesmen. But not one of the heap of unwashed heathens I’d laid in the dust in the service of Queen and Empire had given me a quarter the sport of the feeblest tiger I ever bagged.
Shows you how little I knew then.
The Professor chose not to receive Elder Drebber in his own rooms, but made use of the brothel parlour. The room was well supplied with plushly upholstered divans, laden at this early evening hour with plushly upholstered tarts. It occurred to me that my newfound position with the Firm might entitle me to handle the goods. I even took the trouble mentally to pick out two or three bints who looked ripe for what ladies the world over have come to know as the Basher Moran Special. Imagine the Charge of the Light Brigade between silk sheets, or over a dresser table, or in an alcove of a Ranee’s Palace, or up the Old Kent Road, or… well, anywhere really.
As soon as I sat down, the whores paid attention, cooing and fluttering like doves, positioning themselves to their best advantage. As soon as the Professor walked in, the flock stood down, finding minute imperfections in fingernails or hair that needed rectifying.
Moriarty looked at the dollies and then at me, constructing something on his face that might have passed for a salacious, comradely leer but came out wrong. The bare-teeth grin of a chimpanzee, taken for a cheery smile by sentimental zoo visitors, is really a frustrated snarl of penned, homicidal fury. The Professor also had an alien range of expression, which others misinterpreted at their peril.
Mrs Halifax ushered in our American callers.
Enoch J. Drebber — why d’you think Yankees are so keen on those blasted middle initials? — was a barrel-shaped fellow, sans moustache but with a fringe of tight black curls all the way round his face. He wore simple, expensive black clothes and a look of stern disapproval.
The girls ignored him. I sensed he was on the point of fulminating.
I didn’t need one of the Professor’s ‘background checks’ to get Drebber’s measure. He was one of those odd godly bods who get voluptuous pleasure from condemning the fleshly failings of others. As a Mormon, he could bag as many wives as he wanted — on-tap whores and unpaid skivvies corralled together. His right eye roamed around the room, on the scout for the eighth or ninth Mrs Drebber, while his left was fixed straight ahead at the Professor.
With him came a shifty cove by the name of Brother Stangerson who kept quiet but paid attention.
‘Elder Drebber, I am Professor Moriarty. This is Colonel Sebastian Moran, late of the First Bangalore…’
Drebber coughed, interrupting the niceties.
‘You’re who to see in this city if a Higher Law is called for?’
Moriarty showed empty hands.
‘A man must die, and that’s the story,’ Drebber said. ‘He should have died in South Utah, years ago. He’s a murderer, plain and flat, and an abductor of women. Hauled out his six-gun and shot Bishop Dyer, in front of the whole town. A crime against God. Then fetched away Jane Withersteen, a good Mormon woman, and her adopted child, Little Fay. He threw down a mountain on his pursuers, crushing Elder Tull and many good Mormon men[9]. Took away gold that was rightful property of the Church, stole it right out of the ground. The Danite Band have been pursuing him ever since…’
‘The Danites are a cabal within the Church of Latter-day Saints,’ Moriarty explained.
‘God’s good right hand is what we are,’ insisted Drebber. ‘When the laws of men fail, the unworthy must be smitten, as if by lightning.’
I got the drift. The Danites were cossacks, assassins and vigilantes wrapped up in a Bible name. Churches, like nations, need secret police forces to keep the faithful in line.
‘Who is this, ah, murderer and abductor?’ I asked.
‘His name, if such a fiend deserves a name, is Lassiter. Jim Lassiter.’
This was clearly supposed to get a reaction. The Professor kept his own council. I admitted I’d never heard of the fellow.
‘Why, he’s the fastest gun in the South West. Around Cottonwoods, they said he struck like a serpent, drawing and discharging in one smooth, deadly motion. Men he killed were dead before they heard the sound of the shot. Lassiter could take a man’s eye out at three-hundred yards with a pistol.’
That’s a fairy story. Take it from someone who knows shooting. A side arm is handy for close work, as when, for example, a tiger has her talons in your tit. With anything further away than a dozen yards, you might as well throw the gun as fire it.
9
A more balanced account of these incidents can be found in