The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus (59 page)

             
"What did it say?" Cecily asked.

             
"It was ripped from the middle of the classified pages. One column wide by about half an inch high. On one side it said, 'Thank you St. Simon for remembering the knights.' On the other side it said, 'Fourteen point four by six point thirteen: three-four-seven.' Written out, you know; not just the numbers."

             
"Two separate advertisements?"

             
"That is right, miss. One on each side of the paper, as you might expect. As far as we know, unconnected. Which one had relevance to poor Lord Walbine, I have no idea. But you must admit they are both odd. Put one in mind of some sort of secret society."

             
"How does this affect the two butlers?" Cecily asked.

             
"Well, you see, miss, they are both members of the same club."

             
"Club?" Barnett asked. "I didn't know there were clubs for butlers."

             
"There is a club for butlers and valets," Lestrade told him. "It is known as the Gentlemen's Gentlemen, and it is located off Oxford Street in Soho. Margery, who was the butler
to the deceased Honorable George Venn, and Lizzard, who was the personal valet to the late Mr. Stanhope, are both members of the said Gentlemen's Gentlemen in good standing."

             
"Come now, Inspector," Barnett said, "you can't seriously believe that these two men murdered their employers simply because they are members of the same club?"

             
"That was merely the starting point for what I would like to refer to as a fine example of the value of good methodical police work. With that fact to work on, my men went out and knocked on doors and asked questions. No fancy staring at footsteps under a microscope or examining the dirt under the victim's fingernails or any of that nonsense. Very quickly we discovered that Margery spends his afternoons off at the racetrack, and that Lizzard has a lady friend in Wembley."

             
"Surely even valets are allowed to have lady friends," Cecily said. "I would have thought that having a lady friend was one of the indelible rights of man."

             
Lestrade smiled tolerantly. "Yes, but the lengths that a man will go to keep a woman have, on occasion, been known to approach the criminal."

             
"Oh, was he keeping her then?" Cecily asked.

             
"I meant that figuratively, miss," Lestrade said. "He was most assuredly trying to keep her interest. At any rate, he was spending far beyond what one would assume his means to be, as was Margery."

             
"So you think they killed their employers for money?"

             
"We don't think that they did it themselves," Lestrade said. "Not at all. The similarity of methods used in the two murders would seem to indicate that one man had done both. Our theory is that Margery and Lizzard each, either with the other's knowledge or without, hired the same man to do the killing. After we've picked them up, we should be able to frighten one of them into revealing who the actual killer was. And, when we have him, we may well have the killer of Lord Walbine."

             
"So you
do
think it was the same man," Cecily asked.

             
"Yes, miss. But not, if you take my meaning, part of the same conspiracy. We haven't been able to get anything on Lord Walbine's butler, one Lemming by name; and at the time of the murder his lordship was quite without a valet, the last one having left for Chicago to open a haberdashery with his brother-in-law two weeks before."

             
"Well, I'm glad to see that Scotland Yard is so efficient." Barnett said. "Miss Perrine or I will keep in touch with you as the case progresses. That is, if you don't mind having your name in print in two hundred American newspapers."

             
"Well, now," Lestrade said, "the Yard discourages personal publicity; but if it's to be in American newspapers, I don't see how there could by any problem. I will, naturally, be delighted to keep you and Miss Perrine fully informed as to the progress of the investigation."

             
"I thank you, Inspector," Barnett said. "Our American readers will be fascinated to read all the little details as to how a Scotland Yard investigation is carried out."

             
"I think I can give them a pretty fair example," Lestrade said, trying not to look too self-important. "It is not a matter of brilliance—I don't claim to be brilliant—but a matter of following established procedure and taking care that all the detail work gets done. That's what captures your murderers."

             
"Well, thank you very much, Inspector," Barnett said. "We shall be going along now. One or the other of us will be visiting you daily to hear the latest details."

             
"I shall be happy to oblige."

             
"Thank you. If it's all right with you, I think we shall go now to visit the scenes of the crimes, so that we can better describe them to our readers."

             
"Certainly," Lestrade said. "The Yard always tries to help out journalists, when it can. You won't let on now about the arrests?"

             
"My word, Inspector. Not a mention of either of their names until we hear that they are safely behind bars."

             
"It has been delightful meeting you, Inspector Lestrade," Cecily said. "It is comforting to know that our safety lies in such capable hands."

             
"We do our best, miss," Lestrade said, escorting them to the door and beaming at them as they left.

-

             
"You
are
an ass, Lestrade," a voice behind the inspector said as he gazed down the hall. He turned to find Sherlock Holmes sitting in the chair he had just vacated.

             
"Holmes! Where did you come from? I thought you had left."

             
"I got bored sitting there waiting for you to return," Holmes said, "so I started going through your files. When I saw your company approaching, I concealed myself between the filing cabinet and the wall, over there."

             
"I see," Lestrade said. "And why did you do a thing like that?"

             
"That young man, Barnett, is in the employ of Professor Moriarty, as you well know. It occurred to me that it might be a good idea to hear what he had to say when he thought himself unobserved."

             
"So? And what did he say?"

             
"Nothing. That imbecile of a constable never left them alone. What a shame—it might have been quite instructive."

             
"You still have that bee in your bonnet about the professor, eh, Holmes?" Lestrade chuckled. "Well, I don't fancy that he's your killer this time. I can't quite see him as an
habitué
of the Gentlemen's Gentlemen."

             
"Lestrade, you are incorrigible," Holmes said. "You really believe those poor butlers had something to do with the crimes?"

             
"I believe it well enough so that I'm having them held on suspicion," Lestrade said. "I don't take such action as a joke."

             
"Well, do that if it pleases you," Holmes told him. "But there is another action that I want you to take. You are obliged to follow my instructions, I believe?"

             
"We are," Lestrade said. "Orders is orders, whatever I think of them, and I have been so ordered. What do you want me to do?"

             
"I think those two came to pump you for information," Holmes said. "And, if that's so, then Moriarty is up to his neck in this in some way, and I intend to find out how. I want you to detail ten of your best plainclothesmen to follow Moriarty wherever he goes from now on, and report to you on his every move."

             
"If you say so, Mr. Holmes," Lestrade said. "Ten of my best it is. He won't make a move without our knowing of it."

             
"Nonsense," Holmes said. "Of course he will. I'm just hoping that this will annoy him sufficiently that he'll make a mistake. A small mistake, that's all I ask."

             
"Um," Lestrade said.

Was it a friend or foe that spread these lies? Nay, who but infants question in such wise, 'Twas one
of
my most intimate enemies.

— Dante Gabriel Rossetti

             
Old Potts had been with Moriarty from the beginning, and there were few around who knew how far back that went. Slowly, and with great love, over the course of many years, he had converted the upper cellar in the house at 64 Russell Square into a huge, well-equipped basement laboratory and workshop.

             
The old man had his bed in a corner of the workshop. He seldom came upstairs, and almost never left the house, except for occasional visits to the professor's observatory on Crimpton Moor. And he was happy thus. Professor Moriarty spent much time in the basement with old Potts. It was here that he designed the delicate apparatus with which he studied the cosmos and tested his physical and astronomical theories.

             
Within the past year, old Potts had helped Moriarty fabricate a mechanism which could determine the speed of light to better than three parts per thousand. Together they had experimented with a series of evacuated glass valves with sealed electrodes of various rare materials, and observed fascinating and as yet inexplicable results when an electric current was passed through. It may be that they also had constructed a device which would enable one to bypass an electrical alarm system without setting off the alarm, and an instrument which would allow one to hear the tumblers falling in the latest model wall safe. If so, it is perhaps reprehensible that such mundane practical engineering projects were necessary to support the professor's flights of pure science. But that is the way of the world.

             
When Barnett came down into the workshop a few days after
his visit to Scotland Yard, he found Moriarty and old Potts working together on a new design of light-frame astronomical telescope, specially constructed to be carried high above the earth in a giant hydrogen balloon. The telescope was strapped into a great jig on the central table while Professor Moriarty, with his shirtsleeves rolled up, made final adjustments in a series of setscrews around the telescope's rim. Old Potts, with his lab smock wrapped around him, followed behind the professor and put little dabs of cement on each screw to lock it permanently in place.

             
"Well, it looks as if you've got it just about finished, Professor," Barnett commented, strolling over to inspect the intricate, spidery mechanism that held the highly polished mirror.

             
"It had better be," Moriarty said. "It lofts next week, if the weather on the moor stays clear."

             
"You are going off to Crimpton Moor, then?" Barnett asked.

             
Moriarty nodded. The estate he maintained on Crimpton Moor included a residence, a workshop, and an observatory housing his precious twelve-inch reflector. This was the site of most of his astronomical observations. "Prince Tseng Li-Chang is already in residence, preparing
the balloon," he said. "His son claims to have perfected a new emulsion for the photographic plates that will more than double their sensitivity. If it performs as promised, we should get some fascinating pictures."