The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus (7 page)

             
"I'm sorry, but I can't possibly be quoted on this," Lieutenant Sefton said. "You'll have to get some Turkish authority to say it. But that shouldn't be too difficult." Sefton seemed nervous and distracted. "Excuse me, old chap," he said as they reached the Hotel Ibrahim. "I must dash off now. See you at dinner, what?"

             
"Very good," said Barnett, himself a little distracted by the need for sending an immediate cable to the
World
outlining what had happened. He settled himself at one of the small desks in the writing room to compose a message. The idea was to be as brief as possible. A long cablegram would follow, night rate, detailing the story, but this would serve to put the editors on guard for it and give them time to decide how much space it deserved. They could get the engraver working on the illustration. Perhaps they could even get a two-line "newsbreak" squib on the front page of an earlier edition. Barnett poised his pencil over the paper.

Garrettharris Submersible destroyed by explosion during Trial Espionage suspected more follows

BARNETT

             
That was too long. He tried again:

Submersible spy exploded testing more

BARNETT

             
There. That was the sort of economy of expression—and of the paper's money—of which the
World
cable editor approved. It was even briefer than he could do with the Royce
Telegraphers' Code. He got a cable blank from the front desk and wrote it up, then called for a page boy to deliver it to the cable office. Then he wandered into the hotel bar to have a small glass of sherry before dinner. He would work on the story after dinner, probably long into the night, and get it into the cable office before the rate change at eight the next morning.

-

             
Lieutenant Sefton returned in time to join Barnett for dinner, but his thoughts were clearly elsewhere. Barnett was getting to know him well enough to read his expression now, and he thought that Sefton looked both worried and pleased—as a reporter would when he has an exclusive on a big story and is waiting for it to come off.

             
"Do you want to tell me about it?" Barnett asked finally, over the pudding.

             
"About what?"

             
Barnett described his interpretation of the lieutenant's expression to him. Sefton thought it over. Then he said, "Yes, I think I do want to tell you about it. I wish to enlist your aid."

             
Barnett pulled in his chair and looked expectant.

             
"Can you be discreet?" Sefton asked.

             
"Half a newsman's job is
not
telling what he knows," Barnett said. "Otherwise his news sources will dry up."

             
"Will you swear to keep this a secret until I tell you otherwise and only reveal as much as I say you can?"

             
Barnett thought it over. "Unless I get it from another source," he said.

             
"Fair enough," Sefton agreed. With an elaborately casual gesture, he glanced around the room. Then he leaned back on his elbows and stared intently at Barnett. He smiled. It was the first time Barnett had ever seen him smile. "I am a spy," he said.

             
Barnett was conscious that Sefton was watching his reaction, so he did his best not to react. "How interesting," he said. "Why are you telling me?"

             
"As I said, to enlist your aid."

             
"I thought you people never asked outsiders to assist."

             
"There are no hard and fast rules. Perhaps some day there may be a rulebook for espionage, but not yet. I worship at the altar of expediency, and right now I desperately need your help. So I ask."

             
"I don't know the litany," Barnett said.

             
"What? Oh, I see. Unfortunate image, that."

             
"You didn't have anything to do with the submersible blowing up this afternoon?"

             
"No. On my honor. I would have done my best to prevent it, had I known. The Turks are our allies for the moment. We don't do things like that for practice, you know."

             
"What sort of help do you need—and why should you ask me?"

             
"A man is to deliver some information to me later tonight. I do not altogether trust him. I would like you along to, as you might say, watch my back. As to why I asked you—well, we're in the same sort of business, really. We collect information. You merely disseminate it more broadly than I do. And, in this case, there should be a good story in it for you."

             
"One I can use?"

             
"Oh, yes. But I shall ask you to suppress some small points, such as my involvement."

             
"You fascinate me," Barnett said. "I assume it involves the Garrett-Harris."

             
"Correct."

             
"Excuse me for harping on this, but why can't you get help from one of your own people?"

             
"There is no one else within a thousand miles.
"

             
"
Your embassy?"

             
"They know nothing of this. They would disapprove. The Foreign Office, under Mr. Gladstone, does not approve of gentlemen reading other people's mail."

             
"Who do you work for?"

             
"The Naval Intelligence Service."

             
"Sounds impressive."

             
"It's quite small and understaffed."

             
"Nobody," Barnett said, "has ever accused me of being a gentleman. I'm your man."

             
"Good." Sefton nodded his satisfaction. "I must go now. There is some other business I have to transact this evening. Can you meet me in my room at twelve o'clock?"

             
"Midnight it is," Barnett said cheerfully.

             
He spent the three hours until midnight writing the first draft of his story. There was no point in doing the rewrite until after the midnight meeting—when he might have a new end to the story.

-

             
It was five minutes to twelve by Barnett's pocket Ingersol when he closed his writing portfolio. He splashed some water on his face, put a fresh collar on, and slipped into his jacket. After a moment's consideration he picked up his stick and tucked it under his arm. It had no blade concealed in the shaft, but it was stout ash and would serve to turn a knife.

             
He walked down the hall to Lieutenant Sefton's room and tapped softly on the door. There was a brief scuffling sound from inside the room, and then silence. Barnett tapped again. The door swung open at his touch this time. The room was dark except for a reading lamp by the bed. In the yellow glow of the lamp Barnett saw Lieutenant Sefton lying supine across the coverlet. His head was off the side of the bed and blood from an open wound at the temple was spurting onto the polished wood floor.

             
For a moment Barnett was frozen with shock as the scene registered on his brain. Then the meaning of the still-flowing blood came through: Sefton must still be alive! Barnett pushed the door open wide and looked around. The window in the far wall was open and
the blinds were swinging gently back and forth. The assailant must have made good his escape by this path, and it must have been within the past minutes, perhaps even as Barnett knocked. But it was more important now to save Sefton's life than to pursue his assailant.

             
Barnett rushed over to the bed and pulled Lieutenant Sefton's head gently back onto the sheet. He ripped off one of the pillowcases to make a bandage.

             
There was a faint scraping noise behind him. He turned
...

Politics is a way
of
life.

—Plutarch

             
The room was large. Sunlight from the two floor-length casement windows fell into a tessellated parallelogram across the marble floor, intersecting the great oak desk in the room's center, but leaving the corners in perpetual dusk. The desk and two chairs were the only furniture in the room. The polished top of the desk was bare except for an ornate baroque inkstand and a plain, leather-framed blotter. Fifteen feet off the floor, a narrow balcony ran around three of the walls. The ceiling was lost in gloom.

             
Moriarty sat in an absurdly short chair in front of the desk and waited. Two burly men in identical brown suits had escorted him into the room, seated him in the squat, low-backed chair, then turned on their heels and marched out, their footsteps echoing across the marble. He was left alone.

             
There came occasional faint scraping sounds from above, as though someone on the balcony were observing him, but he displayed no interest in the sounds and did not look up. Shortly they ceased.

             
When the sunlight had moved from the inkwell to the edge of the blotter a man entered through a small door in the far wall. The door was instantly closed behind him.
"Sdravsoitye, Gospodine Moriarty, "
he said, taking his place behind the great desk.
"Kak vye pojyevoitye?
" He was a slender man who looked quite young, but his face was lined with his years and what he had seen and what he had done. He wore a thin mustache which looked alien to his face, as though he had put it on for the occasion.

             
"Nye panyemi Po-Russkie?"
the man said. "You do not speak Russian? I am sorry. My name is Zyverbine. I am in charge of the
Foreign Branch of the
Okhrannoye Otdelenie,
the Imperial Department of State Protection. You come to us highly recommended. Would you tell me something about yourself?
"

             
"
No," Moriarty said.

             
There was a long pause. "No?" Zyverbine repeated.

             
"You already know everything you need to know about me."

             
Zyverbine suppressed a smile. He touched a concealed stud on the desk and the top drawer slid open. He removed a folder from the drawer. "Moriarty," he said, reading from the folder, "James Clovis. Born in 1842 in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, of Thomas Moriarty, headmaster of the Bradford School, and his wife, née Anne DeFauve, a woman of French extraction. Has an older brother, James Francis, a booking agent for the Great Central Railway, and a younger brother, James Louis, a major in the Royal Gloucestershire Foote, a regiment which has the traditional privilege of remaining covered when in the Queen's presence.

             
"James Moriarty—James
Clovis
Moriarty, that is—enrolled at the University of Aberdeen at the age of fourteen, living with an uncle in that city."