The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus (95 page)

             
"The letters
HC
on the reverse tell all," Moriarty said. "It is an example of the extreme conceit of those we're dealing with that they left the initials."

             
"HC?"

             
"Hellfire Club," Moriarty said. "A new incarnation of a three-hundred-year-old disgrace."

             
"The Hellfire Club?" Barnett looked thoughtful. "It rings a faint bell," he said. "Sometime in the past I have come across the name before, but for the life of me I can't recollect specifically where or when."

             
"There's usually a line or two in the history books," Moriarty said. "An amusing sidelight to the time of the Restoration. When Charles the Second returned to England, ten years after his father lost his head, and wondered why he'd been away so long. As a reaction to ten long years of rule by the stuffy old Puritans, a bunch of the young sprigs of the nobility went around raising hell. After all, they hadn't been allowed to so much as dance while the dour old Cromwells made the rules. So they called themselves the Hellfire Club. They drank, and they gambled, and they wenched, and they rode all over other people's fields, and they thoroughly enjoyed themselves."

             
"Boys will be boys," Barnett murmured.

             
Moriarty nodded. "And it seems that some boys will be boys at forty if they haven't been allowed to at twenty. But at forty, some of them have developed very advanced ideas of raising hell.

             
"Gradually the Hellfire Club became something other than it had been at the beginning. I imagine it happened as the 'boys' who just wanted a chance to run around a bit and sow an occasional wild oat had their fill of the missed excitement of youth and dropped out of the club to take up more serious pursuits. Those who remained were, let us say, more seriously dedicated to the single-minded pursuit of pleasure. And the pleasures they pursued gradually became more and more selfish, illegal, and sadistic. They went in for abduction, rape, torture, and murder."

             
"A lovely-sounding lot. Whatever happened to them?" Barnett asked.

             
"They were suppressed at the direct order of King Charles himself, who was never one to confuse freedom with license. They were suppressed again by a royal commission appointed by King William. It is believed that at this time they saw the wisdom of becoming a thoroughly secret society."

             
"That's it, then?" Barnett asked, when Moriarty paused.

             
"The club surfaced again briefly about sixty-five years ago, during the reign of George the Fourth. It was not identified by name at that time. A house in Cheswickshire burned to the ground, purely by accident as far as was known. In the burned rubble of the house, which was believed to be unoccupied, were found an exemplary collection of apparatus designed to restrain and torture human beings, along with the burned bodies of three young women. Subsequent investigation turned up the fact that several men, described as looking like gentlemen, were seen running away from the building at the time of the fire. One of the items rescued from the fire was an amulet with a strange design on it—a design much like that which you now hold in your hand."

             
"So that's what you meant when you said you've been expecting this?" Barnett asked.

             
"Indeed," Moriarty answered. "Ever since I learned of the events concerning the house in Cheswickshire, and realized the connection with the supposedly extinct Hellfire Club, I have expected someday to come across this medallion. There are some malignancies that do not die of their own accord, but have to be excised time and time again. I'm convinced that this is one such."

             
Barnett stared at the gold sigil he held, flipping it from back to front and peering closely at it as though he expected to read some great secret from its depths. What a catalog of horrors was represented by this small device. The devil on the front—Azazel, according to Moriarty—seemed to Barnett to be smirking at him in the gaslight. "It would seem," Barnett said, "that Chardino has been doing an efficient job of excising all by himself."

             
Moriarty nodded. "He has been going through the membership of the Hellfire Club like a scythe through wheat," he said. "In a way, it will seem a pity to stop him; in fact, I'm not altogether sure that there isn't a better solution."

             
"What would that be?" Barnett asked.

             
"I don't know yet," Moriarty admitted. "It is true that on humanist grounds our friend the magician should be discouraged from indiscriminate killing; but is his killing really that indiscriminate? And is it not equally true that the gentlemen-members of the club in question should be discouraged from—whatever it is they are doing?"

             
"You think that the Hellfire Club is responsible for the death of Chardino's daughter?" Barnett asked. "Don't you?" Moriarty replied.

             
"How do you suppose he knows who the members are and where to find them?"

             
Moriarty shook his head. "It is pointless to suppose," he said. "We must discover!"

             
Barnett nodded. "And just how are we going to do that?" he asked. "It doesn't seem to me that we're really much further forward.

             
We know who the killer is, and who he's killing, and we can surmise why; but we don't know
where
he is, or where his victims can be found before they become his victims. I suppose we could always put an advertisement in the paper for members of the Hellfire Club to come forward and be saved, or put a twenty-four-hour watch on the churchyard, in hopes that Chardino will visit his daughter again before he kills too many more of these charming people."

             
"It's not really as bad as all that," Moriarty said. "I believe I can locate the Hellfire Club."

             
"You can?"

             
"Yes. I think so. The club's location is almost certainly transient, but I believe I have the key to their travels."

             
"The key—
that's
what you said about Cecily's location. My God! You don't mean you think they have her?"

             
"I'm sorry, I thought you had already guessed that," Moriarty said. "It is the only logical answer. Of course, I didn't know until you walked in that these people we are after are the newest incarnation of the Hellfire Club."

             
Barnett took a deep breath. "I didn't want to think about it," he said. "I mean, I knew
somebody
had to have her, as it's clear that she was abducted. If anything else had happened the authorities would have found her—or her body—by now. But I didn't want to think about by whom—or why—she was taken away. What do you suppose is happening to her?"

             
"It is just as pointless to suppose that as to suppose anything else," Moriarty said. "We will find her and take her away from her abductors. With any luck, we'll do it before the day is out. Now, since morning approaches rapidly, I am going to get some sleep."

             
"How do you know where Cecily is?" Barnett asked.

             
"I don't—not yet. But I shall. Join me in here after breakfast, say at nine-thirty."

             
"What about eight-thirty?" Barnett suggested.

             
"The most useful thing we could do with that extra hour," Moriarty told him, "is sleep. And I, for one, intend to do so."

             
Barnett had to be content with that, but he did not sleep well. Along about morning he finally did fall into a deep sleep, and then he had to drag himself out of bed a few hours later when Mrs. H pounded on his door and told him that breakfast was ready.

             
Moriarty was not at breakfast. Barnett could feel the tension rising in him while he ate, the tension he had become so familiar with in the past few days. Compounded of all the emotions that cramp the muscles and hit at the pit of the stomach: frustration, guilt, rage, fear, anxiety, and an increasing sense of helplessness. The feeling had by now become a permanent knot of pain, twisting away deep inside of him. Thoughts that he was not allowing himself to think were expressing themselves as sharp knives digging into his belly. He did not eat well.

             
As he was finishing, Moriarty entered the room. To Barnett's surprise, he could see that the professor had already been out of the house, and was evidently just returning. "A quick cup of coffee," Moriarty said. "We have work to do!"

             
Barnett rose. "What sort of work?"

             
"Sit down," Moriarty insisted. "I need my coffee." He dropped into his chair. "I have broken the code," he said. "I was just out checking my results and now I am sure."

             
"What code?" Barnett asked, fearful that Moriarty had gone off on some entirely new tack and had lost interest in the Hellfire Club and the missing Cecily. The professor's interest in any subject outside of mathematics and astronomy was all too likely to prove evanescent.

             
"Think back," Moriarty said. "Do you remember that among the effects of the late Lord Walbine there was a scrap of newsprint?
"

             
"
Vaguely," Barnett said.

             
"It was from the agony column of the
Morning Chronicle,"
Moriarty reminded him, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the large silver urn in front of him. "On one side it said, 'Thank you St. Simon for remembering the knights.' On the other: 'Fourteen point four by six point thirteen, colon, three-four-seven.' "

             
"Something like that," Barnett agreed.

             
"I assure you, it was that, exactly," Moriarty said. "Now, on reading the report on the death of Quincy Hope—whose mysterious profession, by the way, turns out to have been quack doctor—"

             
"Quack?"

             
"Indeed. He cured people of any disease by placing bar magnets on various parts of their anatomy and taping them in place. At any rate, on reading the report of his death I noted that one of the items found in his room at the time of his death—some sort of anteroom or waiting room, I believe—was a morning newspaper. I procured a copy of that paper from our basement file and perused the agony column. I found no mention of St. Simon, or any of the knights, but
I did find this: 'Nine point eleven by five point two, colon, red light.' "

             
Barnett nodded. "You think that's a code?
"

             
"
It is."

             
"How is the Count d'Hiver involved in this?" Barnett asked. "If he's the one who attacked Sherlock Holmes, he must know something."

             
"I have had people watching his house since yesterday," Moriarty said. "He has not yet returned home."

             
"Do you think he's one of them?" Barnett asked. "Is he a member of the Hellfire Club?"

             
Moriarty pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I believe he is," he said. "Moreover, I believe d'Hiver, himself, is the Master Incarnate."

             
"The what?"

             
"The Master Incarnate, which is what the leader of this devilish organization calls himself. You may wonder why I believe this of d'Hiver on so little apparent evidence. The inductive chain is a strong one, and the links are sound. The members—if I may call them that—of the Hellfire Club must wear masks when physically present at the club, and thus do not know one another's identities. It is one of the strictest of this despicable organization's rules. The only person who knows the name of a member, except for the one who proposed him, is their chief, the Master Incarnate."