The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus (64 page)

             
"What are you talking about, Sherlock Holmes?" Mrs. H asked. "Never in fifteen years has Professor Moriarty so much as lifted a finger to harm you, and yet you continue this senseless vendetta past all reason. And now you bring in the police on some kind of trumped-up warrant! I rather think that is going too far, and I'm sure that the professor will think so also."

             
"What Professor James Moriarty thinks is of no concern to me," Holmes said. "Not now, and not ever again. Will you show us around, Mrs. H, or shall we find our own way?"

             
Mrs. H sniffed. "This way," she said. "Mind your boots on the rug."

             
The search began on the top floor, where Mummer Tolliver slept under the eaves, and slowly worked its way downstairs. Large policemen were stationed at each landing of both the front and rear staircases to make sure nothing was removed in one direction while the searchers looked in the other.

             
Nothing of interest was found on the top floor.

             
On the second floor Mrs. H protested loudly when Holmes's minions stamped their big feet into Professor Moriarty's bedroom. Barnett merely watched with interest as the search proceeded. He thought that Moriarty would be more enraged at the coming invasion of his laboratory than at the search of his bedroom.

             
Sherlock Holmes directed the endeavor, and kept himself busy tapping on walls and measuring the space between closets in search of hidden passageways or secret panels. The search seemed thorough and complete, but Barnett became more and more convinced, watch-ing Holmes, that the detective's heart was not in it. Holmes went through the gestures with the regard for minutia that was his hallmark, having every drawer pulled out and looked under, peering under rugs, thumping at cracks in the flooring, sending someone down the dumbwaiter to see what might be concealed in the shaft. But somehow Barnett sensed that he knew he was beaten before he began; that the professor was not lurking about the house and that there was nothing in the dunnage to connect Moriarty with any crime.

             
The search of the house took most of the day. Holmes himself spent two hours in the basement laboratory, poking into retorts, peering into dusty jars and canisters, looking through stacks of photographic plates, and otherwise searching for clues.

             
The Mummer insisted upon following two of the policemen about, telling them that they were getting warmer or colder at random until they finally tried to chase him away. At which he indignantly reminded them that it was his house, after all, not theirs, and he would go where he liked. Mr. Maws settled down to ostentatiously count the silver service in the pantry after the policemen had finished searching in there. Mrs. H stayed ahead of the group, pointing out things they should examine and sniffing with disdain when they did. She kept warning them to mind their feet, and not brush things with their shoulders, until she made one constable so nervous that he knocked over a four-foot Tseng vase while trying to avoid an armoire.

             
There was a flurry of excitement when one of the policemen discovered the bust of Moriarty in the study. Holmes went over and examined with interest the arrangement of straps that enabled Mummer Tolliver to wear the device on his shoulders. Then he called Barnett over. "What, exactly, is this doing here?" Holmes asked, pointing an accusatory finger at the offending object.

             
"It doesn't appear to be doing much of anything," Barnett replied.

             
"That may be," Holmes said, "but we both know what it has been doing for the past few hours. It and Tolliver. Exactly how long has he been parading about with that device on his shoulders?"

             
"Ask him," Barnett said.

             
The Mummer was called for, and the question was put to him. "Blimey!" he said. "Ye've discovered me secret. I goes about in me professor disguise all the time."

             
"And for how long?" Holmes demanded.

             
"Oh, years and years."

             
"I see," Holmes said. "To give Moriarty an alibi while he is off committing some deviltry, no doubt."

             
"None of that!" Tolliver said. " 'Ow dares you talk about the professor that way!"

             
"Then why do you wear the dummy?"

             
"It gives me stature," Tolliver explained. " 'Ow would you like to go about being barely four feet high all the time?
"

             
"
Bah!" Holmes said.

             
"Exactly the way I feels about it," the Mummer agreed.

             
Three hours later, Holmes, having found nothing of official interest, gathered his minions about him in the front hall and prepared to leave.

             
"I hope you are quite satisfied," Mrs. H said, her voice frigid.

             
"Not entirely," Holmes told her. "But then, we are not yet done with the investigation."

             
"What now?" Barnett asked. "Are you going to tear the house down brick by brick?"

             
"Not at all," Holmes said. "We are done with this house. But I have a second warrant, which I am now going to execute. I was, as you see, prepared for this!"

             
"What are you talking about?" Barnett asked. "What second warrant?"

             
Holmes pulled another piece of official-looking paper from inside his jacket and flourished it. "To search the premises and outbuildings of Moriarty's holdings on Crimpton Moor!" he exclaimed, a note of triumph in his voice. "Didn't think I knew about that, did you?"

             
"In truth," Barnett said, "the question had not occurred to me."

             
"There is a special train awaiting us at Paddington to take us to Crimpton," Holmes said. "We should be there at dusk. And if we have to spend the whole night and all of tomorrow searching, why then we shall do so." He turned and stalked out the door, followed closely by the Baker Street regulars.

             
Barnett turned to Mrs. H as the door closed behind the last burly man. "The professor is not going to be pleased," he said.

On approaching a cover, one whip should go on in advance and station himself on the lee side
of
it, where he may often see a fox steal away as soon as the hounds are thrown in.

— E. D. Brickwood

             
Sherlock Holmes studied the map of Devon which lay open across his knees as the special police train sped west. In the orange-yellow beam of a bull's-eye lantern borrowed from one of the constables to counter the approaching dusk, he peered through his four-inch glass at the web of black lines and crosshatches on the stiff paper. Inspector Lestrade, who had joined Holmes at Paddington, contented himself with sitting silently in the opposite corner of the carriage.

             
"Bah!" Holmes said finally, casting the map aside. "This is useless."

             
Inspector Lestrade stirred himself and eyed Holmes. "Useless?" he asked. "I could have told you that before you opened the map. What do we need a map for? We know where we're going."

             
"As you say," Holmes said. "But you have your ways and I have mine. I would give five pounds right now for a large-scale ordnance map of the area."

             
Lestrade viewed Holmes tolerantly. "Professor Moriarty's holdings are at Crimpton-on-the-Moor," he explained patiently, as one would to a bright eight-year-old. "For which we detrain at Mossback Station. The only possible confusion is with Grimpon, a hamlet on the other side of the moor, which one gets access to through Coryton Station. The house is called Sigerson Manor locally, apparently after the family which build the house and occupied it for some two hundred years. The last Sigerson passed on some fifteen years ago, and the property stood deserted until Professor Moriarty took it over."

             
He smiled a smile of quiet satisfaction, and added, "We research these things at the Yard."

             
"I know all that," Holmes said.

             
"You know?" Lestrade leaned forward and tapped Holmes on the knee. "Your obsession with Professor Moriarty is quite impressive," he said. "You must spend all your spare time and money following him around. I tell you, Mr. Holmes, I only hope you're right this time. You have made us look foolish before, acting on your accusations."

             
"I have known of Sigerson Manor all my life," Holmes told Lestrade. "The Sigersons were distant relations of mine. I knew of Moriarty's purchase of the property when it happened five years ago. And as for what you call my 'obsession' with Moriarty"—he paused to blow out the lantern—"the fact that that man is not breaking stone at Dartmoor right now instead of living in luxury in a town-house in Russell Square and a country estate at Crimpton-on-the-Moor is testimony to his genius, not his honesty. Moriarty is everything foul, Lestrade; inside that vulturelike head is the mind of a fiend incarnate. And I am his nemesis."

             
"That's all very well, Mr. Holmes," Lestrade said. "But you can't prove a word of it. We found someone murdered in an empty house, and you muttered, 'Moriarty!' But it wasn't. A girl was kidnapped, and you would have had us clap the professor in irons. But it was some Russian did it, not the professor at all. Now, the professor may be everything you say he is and more, but I, for one, am getting extremely tired of apologizing to him. If you can't get him convicted of a crime, Mr. Holmes, if you can't even get him held on suspicion, then don't it make good sense to just leave him be?"

             
Holmes folded up the map and moved over to the window seat, where he stared out at the bleak Devonshire countryside. "I cannot," he said. "As I am his nemesis, so he is my passion, the focus of my energies. Without Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes is merely a detective." He raised his right hand and balled it into a fist. "But mark this: without Sherlock Holmes to dog his steps, to intercept his secret communications, to apprehend his henchmen, to deduce his intentions and thus to foil his plans, Professor James Moriarty would by now control the largest criminal empire the world has ever seen. He would make the infamous Jonathan Wild look like a bumbling amateur!"

             
"So you say, Mr. Holmes. So you have been saying for the past seven years. And yet the fact is that if you were to say the same aloud in any public place, Professor Moriarty would have an action of slander against you. And if your friend Dr. Watson were to write one word defamatory of Professor Moriarty in any of the accounts of your cases that he has been writing for the magazines, he could be held for libel."

             
"No fear of that, Lestrade," Holmes said. "I have requested the good doctor not to so much as mention Moriarty in any of his little cautionary tales during my lifetime, unless it is to record his immediate sojourn, at her majesty's pleasure, in some penal institution."

             
"Well, let us hope that this is the time," Lestrade said. "When you were acting on your own, so to speak, as an unofficial detective, running about dogging the professor's footprints was your affair. But now you are acting with official sanction, and that brings Scotland Yard into it. The Home Secretary is not going to be pleased if a distinguished scientist brings an action against the Yard for false arrest or harassment."

             
"It was the Home Secretary who brought me into the case," Holmes reminded Lestrade. "He cannot hold the Yard culpable for my actions."