Anyone who can direct a hosepipe can turn the crank of a wonder-gun and murder more heathens in a single burst than a sharpshooter with clear eye, steady nerve and taste for the kill — which is to say, Basher Moran or the nearest offer — can pot in an entire campaign. I knew how handloom weavers must have felt when factory owners installed the spinning jenny. One thing about Mr Hiram Maxim’s gun, though: a sock full of blasting powder and pebbles, shoved down a fat barrel and packed tight with a swagger-stick, makes for an amusing incident the next time the clerk in charge gives the machinegun a test-fire to impress the staff officers.
Professor Moriarty, who had science instead of a soul, was interested in the Kallinikos. He quizzed Colonel Moriarty, who — I saw — was not beyond wanting to impress his older brother.
‘You have George Lampros, then?’
‘This is a Lampros — Partington design,’ the Colonel admitted.
Now, it was the Professor’s turn to lecture. ‘The formula for “Greek Fire” has been preserved since the Byzantine Empire by a family of alchemists and engineers. George Lampros is the last of them. Moran, you will recall I drew your attention to his obituary in The Times and listed the seven significant factors that suggested his death had been faked to cover a new, secret employment…’
I did not recall. Quite often, I didn’t pay attention when the Professor was off on one of his tears. I’d probably been waiting for him to hand over the paper so I could see how much I’d lost at the races the day before.
‘Lampros is a Greek patriot,’ continued the Professor. ‘Why has he shared his secret with Britain?’
The Colonel made a pfui gesture. His face was dark red in the light of the still-burning fields. He responded, ‘As a Greek patriot, Lampros envisions a coming war between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire, in which our island fortress will be the last redoubt. He is politically naïve, of course. We have a contingency plan for modern crusades against the infidel Turk, but it is but one among many potential conflicts for which we must prepare. The Kallinikos is a prototype, the first launch of a land fleet which will take the rails against any threat to the interests of our Empire. One day, soon, half the world will be in flames thanks to the Lampros formula… I intend to make sure Great Britain is in the other half.’
Sadly, I had no sock of blasting powder about me.
‘You disagree, Colonel Moran?’ Colonel Moriarty said. ‘Does the Kallinikos offend your sensibilities?’
Like the Professor, the Colonel could read my face. It’s not such a trick. When I’m angry, I frown like thunder. When I’m enjoying myself, I grin like an ape. Only when I’ve got a better hand than the other fellow does the curtain come down and I present an aspect of stone. I was frowning, now.
‘It does take the sport out of it,’ I suggested mildly.
Three Moriarty brothers craned their necks to glare electrically at me.
‘Sport!’ spat the Stationmaster. ‘Have you missed the last fifty years of history?’
‘No, chummy, I’ve been in the thick of it, where the medals are won and the bodies are buried. I’ve had the fun, while you’ve been clipping platform tickets.’
‘In a generation, you’ll be obsolete,’ Colonel Moriarty told me. ‘The first time the Kallinikos sees off a cavalry charge, your type of soldier will be one with the dinosaurs. It may be less sporting, less fun, but we shall win.’
‘You may be right, Colonel,’ I told him. ‘But you’ll have the deuce of a battle first. Not with the enemy, with your own lot. You’re still in the British army and they’ll never stand for…’
‘I’m not in the British army,’ he said, with a Moriartian gleam in his eyes. ‘I am the British army. Just now, in command of a single train, I outgun all the medal-laden idiots who rode into the Valley of Death but didn’t learn from it.
‘You think the Empire’s war machine is still run by public school bullies who went into their father’s regiment and had a commission warm and waiting? I admit there are all too many of that breed. You can find them guzzling brandy in deadly dull clubs or sweltering in Turkish baths, swapping yarns about the wily Pathan and Johnny Zulu. They’re for show, Moran. For parades and guarding Buckingham Palace and skirmishing with brown bandits.
‘When we go against, say, Kaiser Wilhelm — and, make no mistake, we will — the Kallinikos, designed by scientists and operated by engineers, will carry the day. We’ll keep you on, of course. Your kind of soldier. We might call you a land captain and put you on top of the train like a figurehead. We’ll give you medals when you get your head shot off. But soldiers in overalls, not scarlet uniforms, will carry the fight.’
Colonel Moriarty looked at me and saw the sort of men who sneered at his precious Department of Supplies and would never let him sit at the top table no matter how many battles his choo-choo juggernaut won. He couldn’t even make or operate the Kallinikos — just fill in the forms to get it on the rails.
I took my revolver from my coat pocket and pointed it at the Colonel’s head. That shut him up.
‘Moran,’ cautioned the Professor, mildly.
In that moment, I couldn’t tell whether Moriarty would be grateful or furious if I killed his brother out of hand.
‘I could have you burned where you stand, before you manage to fire,’ Colonel Moriarty said.
I had noticed the nozzles of the flame-cannons swivelling to point at me.
Turning, I fired… and took off one of Oberstein’s kneecaps. He was felled and the palm-sized compression pistol — disguised as a big pocket watch — rolled from his grip. He had been creeping into a position where he could have shoved the thing in the small of the Colonel’s back and blasted his spine.
‘Can I have another medal for that, chief clerk?’ I asked. ‘I seem to have saved your life.’
Sophy Kratides’ face was burning. She’d been behind Oberstein and had not seen him reaching under his cassock.
At my shot, Lucas and Sabin had thrown themselves on the ground. Ilse von Hoffmannsthal, however, stood straight.
Oberstein swore in German.
Lucas and Sabin began to roll along the platform and — in a flash! — I perceived something not one of the brothers Moriarty had yet realised.
I can’t sniff dropped cigar ashes and tell you the inside-leg measurement of the smoker. But I’ve come through numerous battles with skin relatively intact because I don’t suffer from a maths teacher’s need to dwell on my workings-out. I just know things, without really troubling with how or why I know them. It’s a whiff in the air, sometimes; or a broken twig on the trail which is just too neatly snapped to be natural. Now, it was two men who — we had been told — acted for different masters moving in unison.
Stationmaster Moriarty thought he had summoned rival bidders, but his bogus psychic investigators were a spy ring. The card game which had tipped me off that Oberstein and Ilse were in cahoots was a double-bluff to convince me Sabin and Lucas weren’t in it with them.
Sophy Kratides whipped out throwing-knives, and might have skewered both the rolling men but for von Hoffmannsthal, who stepped in front of her and launched a kick which would have done credit to a cancan dancer — it turned out her skirts were loose trousers tailored to seem like conventional feminine attire, until the wearer made a move like this — and planted a boot-heel into the Greek woman’s sternum. I heard the thump of impact and Sophy staggered back.