Moriarty (7 page)

It was Terremant, shaking himself like a big dog, coming in out of the rain. “Bloody hell,” he said grinning at his old friends. “It's raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock out there. I'm drenched.”

The man by the fire made way so that Terremant could dry his coat by the flames, and Ember rushed off to get him a drink—“Drop of brandy, please, Ember. Dry out me innards.”

They all huddled together now, heads low and muttering softly.

“Fart-e-bellies,” Lee Chow murmured, then went off into a peal of high laughter.

“Keep quiet and shut up, you evil fucking Chinee,” Ember snapped.

“I got a letter for you, Bert. From hisself,” Terremant said, sliding the envelope over the tabletop.

Spear turned it over, glancing at the seal and flap. “You've read it, of course?” he asked.

“Could never break meself of the habit,” Terremant answered, raising his eyebrows.

“You'll come to a sticky end, reading other people's letters.” Spear broke the seal and ran his thumb up the flap, then pulled out the four pages.

“You've got to find another really big warehouse, like the one we had in Limehouse,” Terremant said. “You're to buy it through that lawyer he's always using. Funny-named geezer.”

“Gwyther,” said Spear as though there was nothing strange about Perry Gwyther's interesting name.

“That's the one. You buy a huge warehouse.”

“Where?”

“Here in Poplar, or back in Limehouse, Shadwell, wherever you find one. But it has to be near the river. Like before.”

“Then what?”

“You get hold of an architecture and get him to design a place just like we used to have.”

“You mean an architect.”

“If you say so, Bert. You know me and words. You get him, take him out for a steak supper. Tell him what you want, let him make the plans, then report to the Professor. I know where he's staying for the time being, because I'm staying with him, seeing as how I'm looking after him.”

“And what've you been doing, Jim? You and the Professor?”

“I can't say.”

“‘Course you can, Jim.”

“I can?”

“We're all on the same team, old friend. You can share with us.”

“Yes,” he said, still a shade uncertain, remembering Moriarty's admonishment. “Oh, I suppose so.” He paused as though still mulling it over. “Well, we spent some time in Vienna. He was looking for someone.”

“Was he now. And did he find who he was looking for?”

“I think he did. German gent.”

“Not that bugger Wilhelm Schleifstein?”
*
Ember snapped.

“No, not him. This one's a fellow called von something. I think it's von Hartzendov, or Hertzendorf, or something. I seen him somewhere before, but can't place him. The Professor had dinner with him a few times. He seemed very happy, but he's not happy now.”

“What's he unhappy about now, then?”

“Like a bear with a sore head. It's all there in the letter, Bert. He wants all of us to have a word with our people: all of them, the lurkers, punishers, whizzers, dippers, the madams, the girls, the blaggers, rampsmen, tricksters, and the gonifs. Since the Professor went away, family people have been leaving, defecting. Some forty percent of our people have gone. It's all in that letter.”

“Wha' is this?” Lee Chow asked. “Wha' is defecting?”

“Defecting, Chow. Defecting means to change sides, go over to the enemy; it means to desert, to turn traitor.”

Lee Chow shook his head vigorously. “Not my people. No' my men or women. No. Never my people.”

“I'm afraid they have, my old yellow friend. About a quarter of your folk have left the Professor's employ.” Terremant nodded, most serious.

“And he wishes us to speak to each individual?” asked Spear.

Terremant leaned over and tapped the pages of the letter on the table with his forefinger. “It's in there, Bert. Each of us have to see our people and count them off. Within reason, that is.”

“I'm glad it's within—”

And this was the moment when the door of the saloon bar crashed open and they heard the rain lashing down outside.

Later, Ember said he had never seen anything like it, except when he saw Maskelyn and Cooke's conjuring show at the Egyptian Hall. The large pistol appeared in Albert Spear's hand like magic. He was sitting there looking at the pages of the letter one minute; the next he had a revolver in his hand pointing straight at the door and the bedraggled boy who came tottering through it near to tears.

The lad was soaked to the skin and breathing heavily. “Mr. Spear, sir. I got a hansom for the last few yards. I went on the bus, but I run the last five miles. I'm from the Professor …”

“Shush, lad,” Spear commanded. “Don't take on.”

“You're young Walker, aren't you?” Ember almost 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.”

“What's the message, boy?”

“You'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.”

“Where?”

“I 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.

“I know him alright.”

“You know his trade?”

“I 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.

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.

“No wifee,” Lee Chow said confidently. “Daniel 'ive a'one except when he get woman in.”

“What did he say?” Spear asked Ember, cocking his head to one side and frowning.

“He 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:

“What's all this about the Prof using boys? Shadows, you called them?”

“He's been seriously incommoded.” Terremant shifted on the bench seat, embarrassed by his words, uncertain for a moment whether he had used them correctly.

“Seriously incommoded?” Spear's voice went up an octave. Terremant wasn't good with words, and these two were unlikely intruders into his vocabulary.

“It'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.”

“We weren't here. He told us to stay out. To back off.”

“Well, 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.”

“Beware his sting then.”

“Aye, indeed. The gaffer can be a cantankerous bugger when he's a mind.”

“So he's got a load of boys to do men's work?”

“A 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.”

“But they're untrained. Inexperienced.”

“What'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.”

“Yes, 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.

“I'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 match, while Carbonardo was only five foot four and slightly built; of swarthy complexion, he had dark tousled hair and dark eyes showing some blue in them. “Real little
heartbreaker,” Sal Hodges had said the first time she set eyes on him, and Sal knew about broken hearts.

Spear found the back door on the latch, and upon opening it he bumped straight into Ember and Lee Chow.

Spear told them, “He's buckled, ready to whistle for the Prof.”

“Good thing an' all,” Ember said.

“Watch him care-for-ee,” Lee Chow cautioned. “Daniel is cunning fellow. Danger-ess man.”

They followed Spear through to the hall, where Terremant had come inside and closed the door. Daniel stood at the foot of the stairs with both hands on the wooden ball that topped the newel post.

“I've run me hands over him,” Terremant said. “Clean as a button-stick.”

“He's a good boy, Daniel.” Spear put a hand on the assassin's shoulder. “Not going to cause us any bother, are you, son?”

“Just want to talk to the Professor. Want to find out who peached on me. Then I can go and take care of whoever it was. I'm sometimes stupid. I was told to make myself scarce and I was going to, but I wasn't thinking right. Should've gone to the Prof straight off.”

“Who told you to go for a walk, then?”

“Would you believe it? Idle bloody Jack.”

“You'd better secure your house then, Daniel,” Spear suggested.

“Jack Idell come a shade heavy with you then, Danny?” Terremant probed.