Read Online Moriarty by John Gardner - Free Book Online Page A

voice went up an octave. Terremant wasn’t good with words, and these two were unlikely intruders into his vocabulary.
    â€œIt’s what he said. ‘I have been seriously incommoded, Terremant. Somebody’s skimmed the cream off of my milk.’ Meaning a lot of the lads were leaving. He holds us responsible.”
    â€œWe weren’t here. He told us to stay out. To back off.”
    â€œWell, those we left in charge have been found wanting, and he’s not a happy man. I’ve rarely seen him so unhappy. Mild as a hornet, he is.”
    â€œBeware his sting then.”
    â€œAye, indeed. The gaffer can be a cantankerous bugger when he’s a mind.”
    â€œSo he’s got a load of boys to do men’s work?”
    â€œA lot of young lads want jobs. He’s done it before. Ember’s had young ’uns working for him in the past.” He made a grunting sound from the back of his throat, trying to clear it. “If you want to know, Bert, I pointed him in that direction. There’re not enough of our lads working, so he put the boys on the lurk. He’s got young lads watching everywhere. Even watching the place where he’s living. I think one followed me down to Poplar tonight, and if he did, he’s a good boy ’cos he ain’t showed hisself.”
    â€œBut they’re untrained. Inexperienced.”
    â€œWhat’s that matter? These boys’re eager.”
    Now, outside Carbonardo’s house, Spear said, “Just let him see us, eh, Jim? Not threatening. Stand on the steps here.”
    â€œYes, that’s the way I’d do it, Bert,” Terremant said, and they saw Daniel Carbonardo come to a ground-floor bow window, probably his front room.
    The assassin twitched the net curtain and peeped out.
    Daniel Carbonardo saw them from behind the curtain covering the bay window of his front parlour. He recognized Spear and Terremant standing still and silent in the pool of light from the electric lamp standard in the street, outside his house. *
    He felt no true fear, and was happy that to a large extent his feelings were ones of safety. Of course the Professor would want to see him; of course he’d send his top men, even if he suspected them of treason. Then he wondered, for an instant, had they really come from Moriarty, or were they part of a darker game? For one fleeting moment he considered going out through the garden; he even moved to the door, then turned back. Spear and Terremant would have people at the back. They’d come to take him, and these blokes weren’t for taking chances when they were intent on stopping someone. He went to his desk, took out the keys attached to a chain running from under his waistcoat, unlocked the top middle drawer, and activated the deep secret compartment in the desk’s right-hand pillar. He took his long knife and his Italian pistol, with which he had armed himself on his return to Hoxton, and placed them carefully side by side in the secret compartment. He then slid the drawers closed and locked everything again, noting that his hand was shaking like a cornered weasel and reckoning that was a direct result of the water torture, which, in retrospect, still terrified him.
    Going from the parlour into his small hall, he looked for a second at the valise he’d already packed to assist in his escape. Another ten minutes and he would have been gone. But perhaps it was better this way. He opened the front door, pulled it back wide, and stepped forward, holding his hands away from his body.
    â€œI’m not going to resist you,” he called softly, and Terremant said, “I’ll look after him, Bert. You go out the back and bring in Ember and the Chink.” So Bert Spear stepped past him with a nod and a “Good man,” while Terremant flexed his arms as a kind of warning.
    He needn’t have bothered: Terremant was six foot three in his stocking feet with a burly body to