‘Heroism is an attractive quality,’ Irene said, mischievously.
‘Everyone can be bought, sister,’ Quartz snarled. ‘Or intimidated. Or dropped in the East River in a sack. Cut into an idealist and you find they bleed and die like all undermen.’
‘I disagree, Mr Quartz,’ Nikola said, warmed to the subject and pointedly not recognising the Yank’s academic qualification. ‘Idealism exists, as surely as terror, greed and lust. We deny it at our peril.’
‘Are you a tiny bit of an idealist yourself, Doc?’ Irene asked.
The minx was flirting with Nikola, who was — under the manners, clothes and intellect — still at bottom just a native. I squeezed my umbrella handle involuntarily, filling the ferrule with poison.
‘Not at all, Miss Adler,’ he responded. ‘I am a pragmatist, in search of enlightenment. I am not a romantic.’
That was a cup of cold water in her flirty face. Was Nikola one of Raffles’ lot? Didn’t seem likely. Exquisites, in my experience, tend to be randy sods, not ‘thinking machines’. In the end, the cracksman who stayed three steps ahead of Mackenzie of the Yard while burglarising the best houses in London had to flee to South Africa and get himself shot in one of those coming wars to avoid ending up jugged on charges of sodomy like Oscar Wilde. Those who sat at the top table, like the Prof and the Lord of Strange Deaths, seemed practically sexless. No one ever mentioned the mother of the Daughter of the Dragon. Would Mabuse’s need to emulate Moriarty extend to sawing off his own pecker? It was put about that Alraune, his present consort, was grown in a petri dish from mandrake root and protoplasm. That was one scientific way forward for the breed, though it takes a lot of the fun out of it to my thinking.
‘At the highest level of our calling,’ went on Moriarty, back to his memorised lecture notes, ‘most of us are scientists, even if we call it alchemy or vivisection or pursuing the secrets of the ancients…’
Sage nods from doctors, professors, sorceresses and quacks. The Lord of Strange Deaths got his degree from Edinburgh University, and both Moriarty and Nikola were pukka qualified brains. However, like Nikola, I was sure Jack Quartz had got his doctorate by collecting coupons from fudge tins and posting them off, with a dollar handling fee, to an outfit in Oklahoma who sent back the fancy sheepskin he had framed in his laboratory.
‘Unencumbered by morality, unhindered by Dr Nikola’s bugbear idealism, science has shown us the way,’ Moriarty continued. ‘Advances in warfare, medicine, engineering, transport, communications and economics have all contributed to the modernisation of crime. We have built upon the achievements of our predecessors. Where once a Dr Syn, a Dick Turpin or a Blackbeard had smuggling rings, outlaw bands or pirate ships, we have armies, businesses and fleets. My Lord of Strange Deaths, you are more truly an emperor than your ancestors who styled themselves as such. Dr Quartz, your operations extend from the Canadian Northwoods to Tierra del Fuego, an entire hemisphere. Monsieur le Vampire, wherever French is spoken, half of every louis d’or stolen passes into the coffers of your group. I am not flattering any of you. We could do better. The nations of Europe have carved up Africa, but — aside from the Si-Fan’s presence in Palestine and the Queen Tera Cult’s limited operation in Cairo — an entire continent is not represented here. As yet, sub-Saharan Africa has produced no one like us. That will come — ten years hence, should we gather again, there will be a black face among us.’
…and it’d be my job to shoot him, I didn’t add.
‘Like the other empires of the world, we do not always rub along. Countess, you have murdered two previous Grand Vampires that I am aware of. Dr Nikola, you oppose the interests of the Si-Fan in Northern India…’
‘…and you did me dirt in Panama, Prof,’ Quartz said. ‘Don’t think I didn’t know about that!’
‘You sent me Jasper Stoke-d’Urberville,’ Moriarty countered, coldly. ‘I have not convened this meeting to hash over old scores.’
Margaret Trelawny gave a slow handclap, flesh against alabaster. She was less chatty since she retreated behind the mask.
‘Good job too,’ Irene said. ‘Or we’d all need coffins.’
‘Thank you, Miss Adler…’
‘I heard you’d another term of endearment for me, Prof…’
She winked, and a string in the old vulture’s cheek went tight.
‘To move on,’ Moriarty insisted, ‘many thinkers believe the old powers of the world are marching towards a cataclysmic conflict which will bring ruination to established order and further only the cause of revolution.’
It surprised me that Professor Moriarty was quoting from Colonel Moriarty’s copybook. As we knew from the Kallinikos affair, the Department of Supplies was busy preparing for the coming wars.
‘We too risk such a world war.’
‘Some of us might welcome it,’ Dr Mabuse said. He even did Moriarty’s voice. ‘It is the way of empires to fall, and leave ruins.’
‘…and new outfits take over,’ Quartz said.
‘This is of no concern to my father,’ the Daughter of the Dragon suddenly piped up. ‘In the East, the Si-Fan is eternal.’
A snort came from behind Margaret Trelawny’s mask.
‘Ladies, ladies…’ I put in. ‘Play nice.’
It struck me that I’d never heard the Lord of Strange Deaths actually called ‘the Dragon’. That was another of those questions no one asked. He discouraged even trivial curiosity.
‘None of us have reached our present position without struggle,’ Moriarty said. ‘You know how Miss Trelawny came to be in her present position. She and I — and several other factions not represented here — had differences of opinion about how the business of crime might be conducted, particularly in London. Les Vampires, also, were involved, at one remove, in that battle. Alone of those who stood against me then, Miss Trelawny has made treaty, and been willing to adjust her methods to serve under me as regents of crown colonies serve under queens or emperors. She has seen the advantage. She is, for all the set-dressing, a reasonable woman.’
That was news to me. Which stung. Mad Margaret might be happy to throw in with the Firm if it meant she could return unhindered to her high old pharaonic life of blackmail and extortion in Kensington. But I would bet tuppence to a silver tiara she was less happy that the fellow who had chopped off her favourite hand was walking about unpunished. Moriarty must have offered her something while negotiating the ‘treaty’ which brought her into the fold. If that secret clause turned out to be my head on a dinner salver, I’d be steamed about it — especially if she was lining up the bloody Creeper to take my job.
While in the mood to brag about his status as Fagin to a band of grown-up pickpockets, Moriarty declared, ‘Madame Sara and Mr Raffles, among many others who have profitable endeavours in Great Britain, may also attest to the benefit they derive from operating under my umbrella.’
‘You’ve never offered little me a position under the bumbershoot, Prof…’ Irene said.
‘I can think of several,’ I put in.
‘Ah-hah, the organ-grinder’s monkey can speak,’ she said. ‘How’re your wounds, Basher Boy? Still sore? So, Jim, why haven’t you come to me to make a treaty as you did with Queenie here? My fizzog didn’t get burned off, so I might be even more disposed to take a proposition seriously.’
‘You are not to be trusted, Miss Adler,’ the Professor said.
‘And you are?’ she snapped back.