For an instant, I thought Moriarty would throttle her there and then. His fingers opened and closed, as if he were wringing the necks of invisible chickens. His head stopped moving, and he stared fire at the Jersey nightingale. She did something pretty with a handkerchief and smiled sweetly. Hentzau’s fingers drifted to the pommel of his dress sword — Ruritanian funeral gear runs to full honours and a sabre — and I saw why Irene had brought the lad along. Our Miss Adler had got about the world a bit since we’d met, not exactly leaving satisfied customers in every port. I’d guess most of the men present — and all of the women — wouldn’t mind leaving her locked inside one of the handy Thoroughgood coffins. Since infatuation is passing, even without poison or picked pockets, her present protection wouldn’t last. In six months, or six minutes, Rupert would knock along with prevailing opinion and join the queue of frustrated former partners who’d like to sheath steel in whatever that bitch had in place of a human heart. Just now, however, he was favoured in her eye and befuddled enough to put his sharp sword at her disposal. Could I slip inside his guard with a thrust from a poisoned brolly? In confined space, best not to chance it.
Moriarty, with a force of will greater than mine, answered Irene politely.
‘None of us is to be trusted, Miss Adler. At the risk of stating the obvious, we are criminals. To the world, we are villains.’
‘My father does not accept that Western definition,’ said the Daughter of the Dragon.
‘“To the world”,’ I said. Not to me. Not among ourselves. I hope that, here, in this tomb, we can be honest at least with each other. For, if we are not, then we shall fail and fall. We must find common cause.’
‘With you as chairman of the board, of course,’ Quartz said.
‘I have no interest in such a position. Only the insecure would need a title. I do not suggest we become one combine. Such would be unwieldy, and as prone to internal rifts and failings as, say, the British Empire. I merely suggest we divide the world, not simply according to geography and politics, but race and creed. We shall have a commonwealth of criminal empires. To have hope of victory, ultimately of survival, in a world where the police aren’t corruptible fools, we must be more than robber barons. Make no mistake, the world has always been against us. For an age, we have thrived because the world was divided between those who were afraid of us and those who didn’t believe in us. We cannot rely on that situation persisting much longer. We will stay in our shadows. We cannot operate openly, no matter how much some of us might like the limelight, Count Rupert. Name a famous criminal, and you’ll name someone who got caught. Light will be shone at us, but we shall have to remain invisible. Quartz, if you wish to be, as you say, Chairman of the Board, be my guest. You have my vote. If such a chair existed, I should not care to sit in it. To the Übermenschen of the law, the holder of such an office would be a challenge. And knights errant can’t resist a challenge.’
Quartz puffed more smoke. ‘“Übermenschen of the law”? That’s putting the case a bit strong, ain’t it, Moriarty? Pinkertons and vigilantes and flatfeet…’
‘They are coming, Quartz. We will face them. Agencies are being constituted in all our countries. In America, more than anywhere else. Individuals will hear a call. Detectives, adventurers, superior policemen, prosecutors. Men with unique abilities. Men who have badges, men who wear masks, men who are — and I do not exaggerate for effect — a match for us. Some will rise to fight for abstract notions of justice… some to protect the downtrodden… some to seek revenge. The most dangerous will be dispassionate thinkers for whom solving a mystery will be reward enough. We have all been setting puzzles which are to the scientific investigator what an unclimbed peak is to a mountaineer.’
‘Moriarty, you truly think the barbarians are at our gates?’ Raffles asked. ‘Is there nothing that can be done?’
‘We have to strike now,’ Moriarty insisted. ‘We must not wait to be crossed, inconvenienced, incommoded, hampered or persecuted. We must single out our enemies and smash them before they make their first moves. We must find these heroes… yes, Nikola, heroes… in their cribs and strangle them or beat their brains out. Kill their parents, assistants, comrades, sympathisers in the police or the press. They must never come to be. If we are to enjoy a utopia of crime, we cannot allow our adversaries to rise. Do you understand?’
A pause. Goggle eyes all around. People who impressed, hypnotised and terrified everyone they met were impressed, hypnotised and terrified. I felt the chill of the grave, but then again I was sat on a coffin in a tomb after a funeral. As always, I’d had no idea what had been going on in Moriarty’s brain.
Unsurprisingly, it was Irene who dared speak first.
‘Prof, I take it all back. That thing they call you. I always took it for a joke, but you’re the silver dollar. Rupe, gimme that jug, I want to — no, I have to — raise a toast. To Professor James Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime!’
She took Hentzau’s flask and drained it at a gulp.
VI
Grimes let us out of the Thoroughgood tomb, in case you were worried he’d forget. We emerged, veils lowered and hats back on, into afternoon gloom. The rain had stopped, but the bushes were dripping, the slate tombs slick and black.
The original plan for Kingstead Cemetery was to offer four distinct styles of funerary pomp. Patrons could select the Egyptian Avenue, Roman Avenue, Grecian Avenue or Gothic Avenue. Three of these imperial modes didn’t catch on, but a lasting craze for all things pharaonic prompted a proliferation of obelisks, animal-headed gods and columns etched with hieroglyphs. Marble angels, a faun or two and the odd hooded skeleton relieved the monotony, but these rare items were crowded into neglected corners.
Dominating Egyptian Avenue was a sphinx which was alarmingly stamped with the distinctive whiskered face of a certain dead banker. I knew his eternal riddle: when will you pay me? I had my own answer — which was why said moneybags was now mummy-wrapped in a gilt-covered sarcophagus under fifty tons of statuary built to thwart tombrobbers. It was not entirely pleasant to be confronted with the weathered features of a recent customer, five-times life-size, on a lion the length of a London omnibus. I blame Mad Margaret Trelawny’s fancy dress party, and not being able to forget that they’d toyed with making a mummy of me. Actually, like a great many foul things, the Egyptian rot started with that little Corsican oik — the Napoleon of Being Napoleon as we might say, if we were drinking a toast out of his brain-pan in the den of the Grand Vampire.
Founded in 1839, the cemetery had been built to seem ancient. Its artisans had skimped on materials, so there was more crumbling, cracking and moulding after fifty years than the bereaved might care for. It was one thing to want your forebears to rest in picturesque semi-ruins, yet another to find out they were interred with shoddy workmanship at an inflated price.
‘Fresh air and sunlight, eh?’ Rupert of Hentzau declared, filling his lungs. Like a lot of sword-wallahs, he had the prancing gait of an acrobat or a ballerino. He was practically jumping up and down to be out of the confined tomb. A natural show-off, he needed space and freedom to move — which was worth jotting down mentally. ‘Professor, I owe you an apology,’ he continued. ‘Irene and I idly considered that you might have some scheme in mind whereby you slipped out of the tomb alone, then shut the door on your guests, leaving us without even a cask of sherry to make our few remaining hours more pleasant. Eliminating your competition altogether. It’s not as if you’ve no history of such… amusing stratagems.’