Read Online The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus by Michael Kurland - Free Book Online Page B

tens of thousands of people—a population larger than that of many small countries. Most of them work for the Internal Agency."
     
                  "Russians spying on other Russians."
     
                  "That is right," Zyverbine said. "Indeed, even the External Agency is mostly comprised of Russians spying on other Russians. Over the past twenty years many thousands of Russians have left their homeland. Among them were many anarchist intellectuals fleeing the Okhrana and taking their plots with them. Many of them— indeed most of them—have settled in London. There are a few in Paris and one small group in Berlin and some old men in Vienna; but most of the younger, more active anarchists are gathered in the East End of London."
     
                  "I know of them," Moriarty said. "In fact, it would be hard not to. They are said to create all sorts of problems for the police. They have established their own private clubs, which are the gathering places for Eastern European revolutionaries, nihilists, socialists, and other political activist types that the police believe to be troublemakers."
     
                  "Indeed," Zyverbine said. "Tell me, in your country, what is the prevailing opinion of these émigrés?"
     
                  "I would say it is mixed," Moriarty replied, thoughtfully. "Most Englishmen would approve of their ideals, as they conceive them to be: freedom, social justice—high moral goals. And yet they go around shooting grand dukes and bombing trains, and that sort of thing is frowned upon. There is also a strong belief among both the police and the criminal classes that the anarchists support both themselves and their movement by robbing banks, also frowned upon."
     
                  Zyverbine nodded and looked satisfied. "Just so," he said, "just so!"
     
                  "This pleases you?" Moriarty asked.
     
                  "Of course," Zyverbine told him. "We work very hard to create this image. Not, you understand, that it isn't true. We just emphasize here, expose there"—he touched the air with his forefinger at different imaginary points—"and show these people up for what they are."
     
                  Zyverbine paused before he went on. "Trepoff, of course, is more difficult to deal with, and the damage he could do to our relations with your great nation is grave indeed. Which is why we have called for you. Will you take the job, and what are your terms?"
     
                  "I don't believe," Moriarty said, "that you have, as yet, defined the job."
     
                  "You are correct, of course," Zyverbine said. "We have been talking around it. Well—to the point: we have discovered that Trepoff is determined to so discredit the Russian émigré community in London that your country will be forced to deport them all. He plans to commit some act that is so heinous, so atrocious, that your English citizens will rise up and force your government into taking such action."
     
                  "Why?" Moriarty asked.
     
                  "The anarchist heads in London wag the tails in Moscow and St. Petersburg," Zyverbine said. "When the next attempt is made on the life of Alexander III, it will almost certainly come on orders and plans from London."
     
                  "If they are ejected from London," Moriarty said, "they will merely settle elsewhere."
     
                  "Our goal is to keep them in motion," Zyverbine said. "This makes it harder for them to plan or to raise money, and easier for us to infiltrate their organizations."
     
                  "I see," Moriarty said.
     
                  "But what Trepoff and the Belye Krystall are planning ..." Zyverbine shook his head. "A major outrage is not wise. It is too dangerous, too full of pitfalls. Who can tell what will happen if the