Moriarty shrugged, ‘My feelings are that the wealthy ones should assist those who are not so well provided for.’
‘I know my people,’ said Segorbe firmly. ‘When we met to form the alliance in ’94, I felt that it was worth while. I am not so certain now, particularly if we return to a leadership which has already been found wanting.’
‘I will brook no refusal in this matter,’ snapped Moriarty angrily.
‘I cannot see how you can force me. Or my people.’ Segorbe looked, and sounded, complacent.
For an hour they pleaded, cajoled, flattered and persuaded, but the Spaniard would not budge.
‘Perhaps,’ he conceded towards the end, ‘if I think it over, talk with my own people, for a month or so, I could return and we might speak of this again.’
‘I think not, Esteban. There is much to do. Time has already been wasted and lost. I am anxious to proceed with my grand design for the European underworld.’
‘Then I must reluctantly refuse to be part of it.’
It was obviously final.
Moriarty rose to his feet. ‘We are all sorry. However, if you have made up your mind, and we cannot move you, then that is how it must end. Allow me to see you to the door. The cab will take you back to your hotel.’
Segorbe made his farewells and the Professor shepherded him from the room. There was not over much activity in the street outside. Terremant stood by the hansom, and as Segorbe shook hands with the Professor, turning towards the vehicle, the big punisher looked meaningfully at Moriarty.
The Professor gave him one downward nod accompanied by a steady look which spoke of hideous retribution.
Terremant nodded in return, assisted the Spaniard into the cab and walked unhurried to the rear. Before climbing onto the driver’s seat, the punisher bent under the framework and felt for a hook which hung in readiness by the axle. He found it immediately and slipped it around one of the spokes of the wheel nearest to the curb. Then, mounting into his seat, Terremant gently eased the horse into Praed Street, having set a simple, yet ingenious, timing device in motion.
The hook, now fast around the spoke, was attached to a length of strong sheep’s gut fishing line, which ran free through several other hooks under the cab. The other end of this line disappeared into a sizeable wooden box positioned directly below the passenger seat.
Inside the box were two deadly objects: the first, an old flintlock pistol mechanism, cut away at butt and barrel, screwed down firmly in an upright position with the trigger downwards; the second, and most deadly, item was a tightly-packed bundle of dynamite.
Moriarty himself had designed this method, not trusting the cumbersome weight of electric batteries so often used in the manufacture of explosive devices. The technique was simple and almost foolproof. The end of the fishing line was tied strongly to the trigger of the flintlock mechanism which was cocked and primed. As the cab’s wheels turned, so the line was pulled in until at last it jerked on the trigger. The hammer then dropped forward, striking a spark and igniting a quantity of powder which would flare strongly for some seconds. A length of fast-burning fuse ran from a percussion cap set in the dynamite, its end resting among the powder on the flintlock mechanism, tied securely in place with strong twine. Once the powder was ignited, so the fuse would start to burn.
Terremant knew, from previous experiments, that he had a little over three minutes after urging the horse forward. He did not like the thought of having to activate the device in a normally busy thoroughfare, but Moriarty had been adamant that, if its use became inevitable, the bomb would have to be fired in the vicinity of the other leaders. ‘Harsh lessons must be seen in order to be believed,’ he had told the punisher.
Though the traffic was sparse in Praed Street, Terremant did his best to direct the horse along the most open way. There were still a few quite innocent people on the pavements, and, as they gathered speed going down towards the railway terminus, he saw to his dismay that a group of nurses, presumably bound for duty at St Mary’s Hospital, were gathered on the pavement, about to cross the road. A large, two-horsed cart was pulling up ahead of him, forcing him to slow. He reckoned he had only a minute, now, to leap clear.
Terremant hauled on the right rein, at the same moment flicking his whip over the horse’s flanks to drive it forward around the cart. He heard one of the nurses, crossing in front of the cart, cry out in anger, but by this time he was guiding the vehicle into an open pathway between the traffic.
Letting the reins go, Terremant, swivelled in his seat and then leaped for the pavement. The horse feeling that it now had its head, began to canter fast. There were shouts of dismay from alarmed people, one man even throwing himself forward to grasp the dangling reins, but to no avail.
Terremant rolled over, picked himself up and ran, pell mell, down nearby Cambridge Street.
The cab bumped on for another block, and was adjacent to the railway terminus when it exploded.
A sheet of scarlet flame enveloped the entire vehicle, and at the same moment came the roar of the explosion. Fragments flew in all directions – a piece of metal shattering through a nearby greengrocer’s display of fruit, lumps of wood curving into the air, or being projected with great force, slamming between pedestrians and traffic alike.
There were screams and the desperate whinny of the horse. One wheel was to be seen still bowling along the road, and, as the smoke and fragments died, so the horse was visible, snorting forward in a panic-stricken gallop still pulling the blazing shafts which were all that was left of the hansom.
Men of metal leaped to grab at the still flowing reins, but the terrified animal swerved out of reach, narrowly missing another hansom, the driver of which was having the greatest difficulty in restraining his beast which was rearing up in the shafts.
The noise, shrieks and shouts were as horrible as a sound picture of hell itself, as the wretched animal careered onwards, the flaming shafts dragging on the ground with a loud scraping noise.
On the other side of the station, a small boy had somehow wandered into the road and now stood as though rooted to the spot in terror. He could not have been more than two years of age, and the poor mite whimpered as the horse galloped towards him, the child’s nurse, as terror-struck as her charge, immobile on the pavement.
It was at this point that a constable, on normal beat duty, saved the day, running with all his force and launching himself at the reins. His hands grasped at the leather, from which he swung with all his weight, turning the horse from its natural path, missing the frightened child by a hair’s breadth, and gradually slowing the animal to a trot, and then a walk as he was dragged some fifty yards down the street, the metal studs on his boots striking sparks from the road.
In the room so recently vacated by Segorbe, they heard the mighty explosion and stood, stock still, white-faced with alarm.
All but Moriarty.
‘Gott im Himmel,’ from Schleifstein.
Sanzionare crossed himself.
‘The Irish Dynamiters again?’* queried a visibly shaken Grisombre.
‘I think not,’ Moriarty spoke quietly. ‘I fear that little bang was of my making, gentlemen. You may now mourn the passing of Esteban Segorbe who has gone by way of hansom cab to Kensal Green.’*
‘You had him …?’ Grisombre.
‘If there is one thing this society now needs,’ the Professor still did not raise his voice, ‘it is discipline. Mark well, my fine coves and be prepared to use the same extreme measures if there is no other way. Tell me Jean, in my position, what would you have done by way of revenge against the lot of you?’
Grisombre shuffled his feet. ‘I suppose I would have sought you out and dealt with each in turn just as you, Monsieur le Professeur, have dealt with Segorbe.’
‘Quite so. Gee-Gee?’
Sanzionare nodded gravely. ‘The same. You have been merciful to us, Professore. I would have been ruthless.’
‘Wilhelm?’
‘I too would have s
laughtered all, in anger and for the need of revenge, Herr Professor.’
‘So, lest you should think I was weak-willed, you can see what would have happened to all, or any of you, had you not seen the obvious sense of reuniting under my leadership. I suggest, gentlemen, that we now leave this house with some haste. You will all be required to return to your native cities ere long, and there is much to discuss regarding ways and means.’
That evening, the Professor sat opposite Sal Hodges before the fire in the drawing-room at Albert Square.
‘You look as though you’ve supped cream today,’ Sal smiled.
‘Capital. Capital,’ Moriarty mused almost to himself, gazing into the flames, trying to spot faces and shapes among the coals.
Sal moved uncomfortably in her chair, her legs stretched out onto a leather footstool.
‘I shall be glad when it is all over,’ she sighed, patting her swollen belly.
‘I also. Yes.’ But Moriarty was not thinking of the impending arrival of their child, his mind far away among other matters.
Sensing his distraction, Sal Hodges frowned slightly, small crows’ feet etching around her eyes. She pouted, smiled, and then returned to totting up the week’s accounts from her two houses. Moriarty’s coffers would make a tidy profit from them this week. The girls had been hard at it. Day and night. Momentarily Sal was distracted by the noise of cards being shuffled.
The pack of cards in the Professor’s hands was constantly moving as he shuffled, passed, cut with one hand, changed suits and colours, palmed packets from both top and bottom. Yet his mind drifted far away from the fifty-two pasteboards. For a moment he imagined that he could glimpse Segorbe’s face, racked with pain at his moment of extremity, in the fire.
Earlier that evening, he had taken his pen diagonally over the pages of notes on the Spaniard. Another account closed and only one set of notes left. Revenge, he considered, was sweet as a nut. He grimaced into the flames. Revenge and its accomplishment had a satisfying sensation to it. Schleifstein, tricked with that enormous robbery; Grisombre caught after stealing what he thought was the Mona Lisa; the despicable nosey Scot, Crow, put out to grass, trapped into adultery and, from thence, into a kind of madness; and Sanzionare, also lured by lust, but this time with a fair tincture of greed to boot. Segorbe, dead. Now only Holmes was left, and the screws were already on him. After Holmes, Moriarty would begin again. He could feel the power already. Not one sizeable robbery in Europe without his support, nor a single fraud, burglary or decent forgery. His control would reach everywhere: lying on the pickpocket’s fingers, the whore’s legs, the cracksman’s hand and the demander’s menaces.
It would all come, just as it had done already in London. But now for Sherlock Holmes. The fire flared and spurted a small shower of glowing fragments against the soot of the chimney-back, like red stars in a black void. James Moriarty’s head began to move in the reptilian oscillation as he reflected on the downfall of Holmes.
Four days earlier, two men had made their way through the quaint cobbled streets of the old quarter of Annecy. There was pleasant peace here, beside the calm lake with its backdrop of the Savoy mountains. The pair walked, as though at leisure, towards the Pension Dulong, situated right on the lake side, at the far corner of the town where the road moves on towards the village of Menthon-St-Bernard.
The two men did not appear to be in any hurry as they came close to the pink house, with its neat shutters, the wide balconies empty of guests – the season was yet to begin for Annecy.
In fact, they had timed their walk most carefully, in order to arrive at the pension a little before five o’clock: the time at which they knew the woman would be preparing for her late afternoon promenade.
‘It will be best to take her then,’ Bob the Nob had suggested to Ember after they had received the Professor’s telegraph. Ember agreed, but then he was prepared to agree to anything, so out of sorts was he with this quiet watching game they had been playing in the unfamiliar French town.
After the intense and active life these two villains had been leading in London, it was indeed tame to act as secret nursemaids to a woman who led a routine, if not dull, life centred around the small pension.
Yet being Moriarty’s men, and knowing that much may hang on their activities, Ember and the Nob had meticulously followed their instructions, reporting back to the Professor with regularity, and never letting a day pass without being certain of the woman’s movements.
This did not stop them grumbling over the boredom, and speculating on how the woman would receive the contents of the envelope they now carried, and which Moriarty had entrusted to their care until the time was ripe.
Inside the main door of the Pension Dulong, Ember and the Nob encountered what at first sight looked like the long entrance hall of an ordinary private residence. But, as their eyes became accustomed to the less glaring light – for the spring sun had not yet sunk below the mountain tops outside – they perceived a small hatch set in the wall, in front of which a brass spring bell was placed on a ledge, and a neatly written card invited visitors to ring for service.
The Nob brought the fleshy base of his thumb down upon the bell push, sending a loud tinging tone echoing through the empty hall.
A few moments later the hatch was thrust back to reveal a grey-haired man of rosy complexion, with the shrewd eyes of one who has been in business on his own acount for a considerable time.
‘You speak English?’ asked the Nob with a smile.
‘You require rooms?’ The proprietor – for that was undoubtedly who he was – replied.
‘No, sir, we wish to see one of your guests. A permanent guest. A Mrs Irene Norton.’
‘I will see if she is in. Wait. Who shall I announce?’
‘Friends from England. Our names would mean nothing to her.’
The proprietor gave a short somewhat curt nod, and slammed the hatch close. Some three minutes later he reappeared.
‘Madam Norton is about to go out, but she will spare you a few moments. You are to wait in the parlour.’ He indicated a door on the far side of the hall.
The Nob thanked him, and the two men crossed to the door. It was a large airy room strewn, almost haphazardly, with armchairs and occasional tables upon which books and magazines had been placed for the convenience of guests – who, at that moment, were notable for their absence.
Ember sank into one of the armchairs while the Nob walked over to the large window and gazed out at the glassy waters of the lake.
A few moments passed before the door opened to reveal a woman dressed for the street: a cream skirt and blouse showing beneath an open cloak of similar hue. A matching bonnet graced her head, under which dark tresses were clearly visible.
Ember gauged her to be in her mid-thirties, but still handsome with a pair of eyes that might well tantalize any red-blooded male.
‘You wish to see me?’ She looked with some hesitation at the men, taking in each of them with a long stare, as though memorizing their features.
‘If you are Mrs Irene Norton,’ the Nob replied with a gracious gesture.
‘I am.’ The voice sweet and melodious, yet a hint of alarm in her eyes.
‘Mrs Irene Norton whose maiden name was Irene Adler?’
‘That was my name before marriage, yes.’
Both the Nob and Ember caught the slight American inflection in her voice.
‘Who are you, and what do you require with me?’ the lady asked.
‘We come as emissaries.’ The Nob crossed to stand in front of her. ‘There is a gentleman who has been seeking you for some considerable time.’
‘Well, he has found me. Whoever he is.’
‘I think this will explain, Ma’am.’
The Nob drew out the envelope entrusted to them by Moriarty, placing it in the woman’s hands, in the manner of a summons server.
She turned it over, seeing that the seal was intact, looking almost reluctant about opening it.
‘How di
d anyone find me?’ Her voice dropping to a whisper. ‘It has been put about that I am dead.’
‘Read the letter,’ said Ember.
Her eyebrows lifted for a second before she plied her dainty fingers to the envelope, slitting it open and drawing out the heavy sheet of paper.
Both men could glimpse the letterhead which signified that the paper had come from 221 B Baker Street, London.
‘Sherlock Holmes,’ Irene Adler gasped. ‘After all these years he has sought me out?’ She raised her head to look at the Nob. ‘He asks me to return to London with you.’
‘That is so. We are instructed to give you our utmost attention, and guard you with our lives.’
But she was reading though the letter a second time, her lips moving silently.
Dear Lady – the script ran – I can only trust that you remember me from the business in which we both figured some years ago, and in which, I cannot deny, you bested me. Some time ago it came to my notice that your husband, Mr Godfrey Norton, had been killed in an avalanche near Chamonix, and that you were also feared dead. It was, therefore, with great joy that I stumbled upon the fact that you still live, even in the somewhat reduced circumstances in which I have now found you.
It may not have escaped your notice, from the public jottings of my friend and companion, Dr John Watson, that I have, from our first meeting, held you in the greatest regard. I only wish to help, dear, dear lady, and offer what assistance I can. If it is not too forward of me, I ask you to accompany the two gentlemen whom I have sent with this letter. They will bring you back to London where I have prepared a small villa for your use in Maida Vale. I ask nothing more than to be of service to you, and see that you are looked after in the manner to which you were formerly accustomed.
Your dearest friend, who has nothing but admiration for you – Sherlock Holmes.
‘Is this true?’ she asked in bewilderment, ‘or can it be some trick?’
‘There is no trick, Ma’am. We have money and the facilities for travelling back to London.’