Read Online Moriarty by John Gardner - Free Book Online

spat at the boy, leaning over and taking a handful of the boy’s sopping jacket, dragging him across the table. “You’re Paul Walker’s little brother, always pestering me, wanting to be a lurker. What you doing out this time of night?”
    Terremant touched Ember’s arm. “Hear him out, can’t you? Since he’s been back, the Professor’s brought in some of the keen street kids. Them what can run and are brave. Calls them his shadows. The lad’s jonnick.”
    â€œWhat’s the message, boy?”
    â€œYou’re to go to Hoxton. Quick as greased lightning, he said.” He gave the address and added that they had to take Daniel Carbonardo.“You got to take him alive and breathing, bring him to the Professor. And you’ll be fighting time: Get to him before he has it away on his toes.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œI know where,” Terremant told them as they reached for their coats and Spear instructed the rampsman, Will Brooking, who had come through from the other bar, to look after the boy, get his clothes dry, then make certain he got back to the Professor, put him in a hansom.
    As they hurried out to the waiting hansom, Ember asked Spear if he knew who Daniel Carbonardo was.
    â€œI know him alright.”
    â€œYou know his trade?”
    â€œI do, God help us.”
    Spear was not a religious man, but Ember noticed that he crossed himself as he climbed into the hansom. “Amen,” he said as they moved off, the cabbie urging his horse forward.

4
The Professor Reminisces
    LONDON: JANUARY 16–17, 1900
    S PEAR SENT THEIR CABBIE in search of a second hansom when they arrived in Hoxton, stopping near the church of St. John the Baptist and walking through to Carbonardo’s nice little villa. There were three ways in or out of Hawthornes: the front door; the area steps behind the railings to the kitchen door; and through the gate in the garden wall at the rear of the property and across the lawn, past flower beds and a giant oak tree, to the back door, which led into a small utility and cold room behind the kitchen. To the right of the back door there was a wash house where, on Monday mornings, Tabitha could be found stoking the little fire below the “copper” and stirring the week’s wash with wooden pincers and the like in the soapy, scummy, steaming water, the walls rivering with condensation, the air heavy with the scent of the green washing soap.
    As was his right, Spear took charge, sending Ember and Lee Chow around to the back. “Into the garden,” he ordered. “Walk right up to the house and show yourselves. He’s in there, upstairs at the moment unless he’s got a wife. Show yourselves but don’t precipitate anything.” If nothing else, Spear used caution with men like Carbonardo, or anyone else with a deadly reputation.
    â€œNo wifee,” Lee Chow said confidently. “Daniel ’ive a’one except when he get woman in.”
    â€œWhat did he say?” Spear asked Ember, cocking his head to one side and frowning.
    â€œHe says Carbonardo has no wife; and that he lives alone, apart from when he has a pusher in.”
    Lee Chow had known about the rear of the house and gave the impression of having worked with Carbonardo; he knew Hoxton and the area and Carbonardo’s standing as a man to whom life was cheap.
    The rain had stopped, leaving a cold, glistening slick on the roads and pavements, the gutters running, and a clean smell in the air, the storm having passed violently on, moving north.
    As they travelled in from Poplar, Albert Spear had showered Terremant with questions:
    â€œWhat’s all this about the Prof using boys? Shadows, you called them?”
    â€œHe’s been seriously incommoded.” Terremant shifted on the bench seat, embarrassed by his words, uncertain for a moment whether he had used them correctly.
    â€œSeriously incommoded?” Spear’s