Read Online Professor Moriarty: The Hound Of The D’urbervilles by Kim Newman - Free Book Online
Authors: Kim Newman
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to take his shot. His finger had probably been itching all evening. I’ve had trouble with fools like that on safari, so keen on not coming home without having cleaned the barrel, they need to fire an elephant gun at the regimental water bearer just so they could say they’ve killed something.
Lassiter was quicker than a Bhishti, and not struggling with a ridiculously overweighted yard-and-a-half of rifle.
The keen rifleman tumbled dead into the flowery bower around the front door.
Seven, minus three. Four.
‘Drop the ironmongery, Elder,’ I ordered.
Rache blew a loud raspberry.
Drebber was shaking. He nodded, and guns fell onto the road.
‘All of them,’ I said.
Hands went to belts and inside pockets and boots and special compartments and a variety of hold-out single-shots and throwing knives rattled down as well.
‘Now, take your dead folks and scarper.’
The four surviving Danites did as they were told. The fellow in the bower was a sixteen-stone lump of his many wives’ cooking and it took two to lift him.
They had a carriage down the road, and it trundled off.
Not a bad night’s work, I thought. Providing it was over.
Rache was dancing around, and I thought it a good idea to relieve Missy Surprise of her .45 calibre insides. I gave the doll back and the girl loved it none the less for not having a head.
Jane was looking at me with something like rapt gratitude. Usually a good moment to make a proposition. I doubted my currency with Jim Lassiter stood as high as that.
‘Colonel Arbuthnot, what can we ever do to repay you?’
‘You can die,’ said a voice I recognised. ‘Yes, die.’
IX
I was fuming.
Moriarty didn’t deign to explain, but I had caught up on it.
Of course, he knew the Danites would try to save the fee and go for the kills on their own.
Of course, he had mentioned the Laurence address deliberately, to prompt fast action.
Of course, he had followed me and watched my travails all evening long, not intervening until the danger was over.
Of course, he had found a way to profit.
He strolled up the street, head bobbing. He was dressed all in black, for the night-time. He also had a carriage parked nearby, with Chop, his Chinese coachman, perched up on the box. He enquired solicitously after the neighbour, who was still making a performance of being slightly shot. Somehow, the man got the notion he had been saved by my intervention from a conspiracy of high-ranking Masons who wanted him dead over some imagined slight. It would be a risky proposition to complain officially about such well-connected villains since they owned the police. He bustled inside and drew his curtains, hoping to hide from inescapable doom under his coverlets.
Then Moriarty applied himself to the murders.
I was not privy to the arrangements the Professor made with Lassiter and Jane. I had to be in the still-smoky parlour, while Rache – excited to be up long past her bedtime – banged at the gutshot piano while singing more verses of her butterfly song.
At the conclusion of negotiations, Moriarty was proud owner, through hard-to-trace holding companies, of the Surprise Valley Gold Mine. Amusingly, he was now a major employer in Amber Springs, Utah.
Jim Lassiter/Jonathan Laurence, Jane Withersteen/Helen Laurence and Little Fay Larkin/Rachel Laurence were dead, burned to crackling in the smoking ruins of The Laurels, Streatham Hill Road. It was the gas mains, apparently. And the neighbours had some stories to tell.
What amazed me most was that the Professor had the corpses ready. Chop and I had to wrestle them into beds before the fatal match was struck. I suspected three strangers of the right ages had been ‘burked’, but Moriarty assured Jane the substitutes were ‘natural causes’ paupers rescued from anatomists’ tables. She believed him, and that’s what counts with women like her.
He had a satchel full of documents: passports, birth certificates, twenty-year-old letters, used steamer
Lassiter was quicker than a Bhishti, and not struggling with a ridiculously overweighted yard-and-a-half of rifle.
The keen rifleman tumbled dead into the flowery bower around the front door.
Seven, minus three. Four.
‘Drop the ironmongery, Elder,’ I ordered.
Rache blew a loud raspberry.
Drebber was shaking. He nodded, and guns fell onto the road.
‘All of them,’ I said.
Hands went to belts and inside pockets and boots and special compartments and a variety of hold-out single-shots and throwing knives rattled down as well.
‘Now, take your dead folks and scarper.’
The four surviving Danites did as they were told. The fellow in the bower was a sixteen-stone lump of his many wives’ cooking and it took two to lift him.
They had a carriage down the road, and it trundled off.
Not a bad night’s work, I thought. Providing it was over.
Rache was dancing around, and I thought it a good idea to relieve Missy Surprise of her .45 calibre insides. I gave the doll back and the girl loved it none the less for not having a head.
Jane was looking at me with something like rapt gratitude. Usually a good moment to make a proposition. I doubted my currency with Jim Lassiter stood as high as that.
‘Colonel Arbuthnot, what can we ever do to repay you?’
‘You can die,’ said a voice I recognised. ‘Yes, die.’
IX
I was fuming.
Moriarty didn’t deign to explain, but I had caught up on it.
Of course, he knew the Danites would try to save the fee and go for the kills on their own.
Of course, he had mentioned the Laurence address deliberately, to prompt fast action.
Of course, he had followed me and watched my travails all evening long, not intervening until the danger was over.
Of course, he had found a way to profit.
He strolled up the street, head bobbing. He was dressed all in black, for the night-time. He also had a carriage parked nearby, with Chop, his Chinese coachman, perched up on the box. He enquired solicitously after the neighbour, who was still making a performance of being slightly shot. Somehow, the man got the notion he had been saved by my intervention from a conspiracy of high-ranking Masons who wanted him dead over some imagined slight. It would be a risky proposition to complain officially about such well-connected villains since they owned the police. He bustled inside and drew his curtains, hoping to hide from inescapable doom under his coverlets.
Then Moriarty applied himself to the murders.
I was not privy to the arrangements the Professor made with Lassiter and Jane. I had to be in the still-smoky parlour, while Rache – excited to be up long past her bedtime – banged at the gutshot piano while singing more verses of her butterfly song.
At the conclusion of negotiations, Moriarty was proud owner, through hard-to-trace holding companies, of the Surprise Valley Gold Mine. Amusingly, he was now a major employer in Amber Springs, Utah.
Jim Lassiter/Jonathan Laurence, Jane Withersteen/Helen Laurence and Little Fay Larkin/Rachel Laurence were dead, burned to crackling in the smoking ruins of The Laurels, Streatham Hill Road. It was the gas mains, apparently. And the neighbours had some stories to tell.
What amazed me most was that the Professor had the corpses ready. Chop and I had to wrestle them into beds before the fatal match was struck. I suspected three strangers of the right ages had been ‘burked’, but Moriarty assured Jane the substitutes were ‘natural causes’ paupers rescued from anatomists’ tables. She believed him, and that’s what counts with women like her.
He had a satchel full of documents: passports, birth certificates, twenty-year-old letters, used steamer
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