Gaslight Grimoire_ Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes - Barbara Hambly [141]
As for the rest of it, the Professor only let us into as much of his grand scheme as he deemed necessary. Like his imaginary Squid King, Moriarty puppeteered his subjects, speaking words through us, chivvying Stent along until the fathead fancied himself Conqueror of Mars. Of course, Ogilvy didn’t know how flammable the gunk poured on his jacket really was. The cretin hopped around outside Flamsteed House, on fire from head to foot, until a bucket of merciful water was sloshed over him. By then, he was almost in as poor shape as the ash and cinder outline laid out on the gravel to represent his incinerated remains. Threw a sulk about that, he did. Still, can’t make an omelette and all that. In Ogilvy’s case, it’s true. He lost the use of his arms and hands, and so literally can’t make an omelette, or perform many other everyday tasks. That’s what you get for volunteering.
I’ve rarely had cause to remark upon Professor Moriarty’s genius for disguise and impersonation. There’s good reason for that. Anyone less wholly shoved up his own bum than Sir Nevil Stent would have seen through Moriarty’s beards and hoods and skullcaps and spectacles in a trice. That snake-oscillation mannerism always gave him away. He didn’t list card-sharping among his favored crimes, or he’d have known about ‘tells’ and taken steps to suppress his. On one occasion, I tried to raise the matter in as tactful a fashion as possible, venturing to suggest that the Professor moderate his ‘cobra-neck tell’ when incognito.
“What are you talking about, Moran? Have you been at the diacetylmorphine hydrochloride again?”
There was no sense in pressing the matter further. Genius or no, Moriarty truly didn’t know about the thing he did with his neck. I wondered if he was unconsciously trying to make it difficult for the hangman in anticipation of an eventual date with the gallows. Probably not. It was just a habit. Other men scratch their balls, fiddle with their watch-chains or chew their moustaches. That’s when it’s a good time to double up, throw the mortgage into the pot and slide an ace out of your cuff.
Nevertheless, Moriarty acquitted himself adequately in the multiple roles of ‘C. Cave’, filthy shop-keeper, ‘long-necked cabbie’, dispenser of jovially ominous sentiments, and ‘Hooded Man of Mystery’, mouth-piece of Martian Royalty. (Stent never did persuade anyone else to say ‘Marsian’.) As you can tell from the diary, the worthy Mrs. Halifax, pouting Polly, Italian Joe (Signor Galvani), P. C. P. and some nobly self-sacrificing specimens of vampyroteuthis infernalis also strutted and fret their weary hours on the stage.
It’s a shame there wasn’t any money in it. The whole palaver cost the firm a great deal, exhausting the proceeds of five good-sized blags, and sinking Moriarty into debts we had to work hard to pay off. I know we have a reputation as rotters and crooks and all, but it doesn’t do to default on payments owed someone who likes to be called the Lord of Strange Deaths. Hellish vampire squid wouldn’t have been the half of it.
For the Prof, the pay-off came at Stent’s lecture.
This time, the Royal Astronomical Society wasn’t a grand enough platform for Sir Nevil, but we were back in Burlington House. The edifice is also H. Q. of the Royal Society, a body so sniffily superior it feels it doesn’t even need to give you the full name — which, as it happens, is The Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge — when you are expected to prostrate yourself before the hallowed altars of high science and furthermore purchase an illustrated souvenir program booklet to memorialize the hours you