From one whiff of him, I knew he’d never set foot on a battlefield. Asked what army line he was in, he bluntly said ‘supplies’ and left it at that. I assumed he was less a soldier than a wholesale orderer and deliverer of boots, tins of bully and those greased cartridges which make Indians mutinous. Again, I leapfrogged to a conclusion. Throughout this whole affair, I did that. I wish I could say I learned my lesson, but plainly I didn’t.
So, minimal pleasantries aside, to the point: ‘It’s James, James.’
‘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! The two bobbed heads like Peruvian llamas working up to a spitting contest. My hands convulsed in a kind of terror. Was this a tussle of fraternal wills or some species of communication beyond other mortals? The brothers kept it up for several minutes.
I wondered if it was possible to get a drink in this place.
At length, they quit playing silly beggars.
‘Through my influence,’ the Colonel said, ‘James has secured his present position…’
‘He owes you his station, you mean,’ I interjected.
‘As I said… Colonel Moran, was that one of those, what are they called, jokes?… I have gone to no little trouble to put James where he is. I gather he is not satisfied, which will scarcely come as a surprise to you.’
‘James is seldom satisfied,’ the Professor said, addressing me as an aside.
I shrugged, unsure what was required.
‘James will attempt to rope you in, James,’ the Colonel said. ‘He has ever tried to play us off, one against the other. You remember when he was expelled from Greyfriars?’
‘An incident not one of us is liable to forget.’
‘Indeed not. This time, I insist you stay out of it. No good can come of your involvement. James is hysterical and unreliable, again.’
‘In that case, I wonder you troubled to use your influence in your brother’s cause, Colonel,’ I said.
The question of how a supply officer could ‘influence’ a railway company appointment did occur to me.
‘Blood is thicker than vinegar, Colonel,’ the Colonel said.
‘True true,’ I assented, like a pious idiot.
‘James will approach you, James,’ the Colonel continued, fixing eyes on his brother. ‘You will ignore him. All will benefit. Have I made myself clear?’
‘Admirably, James.’
‘Good. Now, James, f-k off back to your blackboard.’
The Colonel turned and walked back into the noisy room. I gathered, with some astonishment, that we were dismissed.
My face burned. Professor Moriarty stood there, expression unchanged.
‘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.’
Moriarty was sensitive about defiance and discourtesy. The last man to tell him in so many words to f-k off was a cracksman who came across some jewels in a safe he was rifling for documents we had paid him to obtain, and foolishly decided no tithe was owed on them. After a week in our thick-walled basement, what was left of the poor sod was grateful to be tossed into the Thames.
‘If you want me to kill him, I’ll do it for nothing. As a favour, Moriarty. To repay your years of, ah, friendship. Bare hands?’
The Professor considered it.
‘No, Moran. It’s not yet time. And this matter is not ended.’
‘Well, any time you want it done, it’s done. You can count on me.’
‘I have often said that, Moran.’
That was news to me. He laid a cold hand on my shoulder. From him, this was almost a singular gesture. Recalling that the last time he unbent so, he palmed the cursed Black Pearl off on me, I instinctively patted my pockets. If the Professor noticed, he was too lost in his own thoughts to pass comment.
I fancied he was in a melancholy humour.
Family reunions will do that to you.
II
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.
I gave him back the telegram.
‘A giant worm?’ the Professor said. ‘What, pray, does James expect me to do about it?’
I considered the matter.
‘Tricky proposition, giant worms,’ I said. ‘Hard to know which gun to pack. Or which end to shoot. A good, sharp kris is your best tool. You have to chop the devil into slices rather than segments, or they all wriggle off separately and you’ve got a pack of little crawlers to deal with rather than the one outsize specimen.’
I knew what I was talking about. I’ve come across six-foot worms, mouths ringed with shark teeth, in South Africa. They looklike pale, boneless pythons and can eat through solid rock, let alone a man’s chest. You tend to mistake them for a thick rope or a draught-excluder, until you see a swallowing ripple run along their length or discern the disgusting brownish-pink core at the centre of the creamish translucent tube.
‘James doesn’t mean worm in that sense, Moran.’
‘Is there another?’
‘Archaic English, sometimes ourm. A synonym for dragon. The notion that such fantastic creatures breathe fire is associated with the English worm dragon rather than the Chinese lizard dragon.’
That was a different challenge.
‘I’ve never stalked dragon, but I fancy an elephant gun would suffice.’
I was not entirely serious. I mean, I’ve heard of the kuripuri of the Amazon — degenerate survivors from the prehistoric age of reptiles — and I’ve shot the head off a Komodo dragon, which is merely an overgrown iguana and poor sport. If you’ve paid attention, you’ll know I’ve tangled with several mythical species. Red Shuck and his pack turned out to be just dyed wolves, but the taxonomists were still out on the mi-go I’d run across in Nepal and Soho. Still, I wasn’t prepared to swallow a worm unknown to science in Cornwall. Moriarty’s head bobbed, though, so I knew there’d be trouble in it.
After furious oscillation, Moriarty crumpled his brother’s telegram and tossed it into the fire. It went up with a puff, like a stage magician’s flash paper.
‘More urgent matters must be attended to, Moran,’ the Professor declared, turning away from the fire. He touched fingertips to his pinpricked globe and gave it an idle spin. ‘Soon, we must consider seriously the obstacles presented to our continental expansion by the entrenched interests of our colleagues in France and Germany.’
I’d known this was coming.
In Paris, a new Grand Vampire held office. He had displaced his predecessor after the Affair of the Six Maledictions — in which Les Vampires had been involved, not very happily. Having been forced (by us) into unprofitable battle with the Knights Templar, the Frenchies had cause to feel they’d not been dealt fairly. Reprisals were expected.
In Berlin, an ambitious pup was slavishly imitating the Moriarty Method by assembling his own criminal cartel. More adept at disguising his person than the Professor, this upstart seldom showed his real face. On our books, the kraut-eating swine was marked for an eventual seeing-to because one of his favoured impostures — a shock-haired, stooped alienist with mesmeric eyes — was an impudent caricature of the man whose act he had blatantly stolen. He even guyed Moriarty’s side-to-side head wobble, which ticked off the Prof more than the arrant plagiarism of his Loughborough Diamond Coup in the Dusseldorf Marzipan Stone Substitution.