The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus (99 page)

             
It was a bizarre scene that Barnett found himself wandering through; masked men and scarlet women playing at card games with a savage intensity under the actinic glare of the multiple gas fixtures that were scattered about the walls like perverted gargoyles. There was another game going on too, a subtler game played with nudges and winks and nods and indirect conversation, and blushes and giggles from the
demimondaines.
This was also being played with a fierce intensity, although Barnett could not, from what he overheard, clearly discern the rules, rewards, or penalties. The game, superficially sexual in content, had the flavor of evil and decay. Barnett noted a cynical hardness around the eyes of the women, and he thought he detected in some of their eyes the glitter of fear.

             
"What do you think?" he whispered to Moriarty, as the two of them stood in an isolated corner of the large room near the piquet table.

             
Moriarty looked at him for a long moment, as though debating which of the many ways to answer that question he would choose. "I think we are on the periphery of evil," he said. "We must proceed inward, toward the center. Prepare yourself for scenes that will not please you, and try not to give yourself away by reacting prematurely to whatever you see. Blend in with your surroundings, as distasteful as that may be."

             
Barnett looked around. "If I have to play, I'll play," he said. "I have had practice. Which way, do you suppose, is the center?"

             
"I have been watching," Moriarty said, "and as far as I can determine, the door in the opposite corner of this room would seem to be the portal to the netherworld of infinite and infernal delights. It leads to a corridor, and the corridor leads to—what, I wonder? I have seen several of the masked gentlemen go through it, but none of the, ah, ladies. Are you ready?"

             
"I hope so," Barnett whispered.

             
"Stiff upper lip!" Moriarty said. "Or, at least,
act
as though your upper lip is as stiff as an Englishman is supposed to keep his upper lip. You are going now into the
sanctum sanctorum
of this blessed club, the delights of which are the reason you pay the Master Incarnate his twenty guineas a month."

             
"I suspect I shall get more than my money's worth," Barnett murmured. "Lead on, Professor."

-

             
He was among them now. They smiled and laughed and played at their devilish games; and he smiled and laughed under his mask, and played well his own game. He took out his watch, a gift from the Burgermeister
of
F
ü
rth after a successful escape from the ancient dungeons beneath the Rathaus: it was now quarter past ten. In one hundred and five minutes all games would cease. Midnight, the witching hour. He laughed again, aloud, but nobody noticed.

-

             
The house was divided into four sections, which like the levels of heil in Dante's
Inferno,
were separated according to the sins favored by the inhabitants. Each level of greater sin was accessible at only one place, through the level of lesser sin. Moriarty and Barnett progressed from Level One, Gambling and Lechery; then to Level Two, Various Exotic Perversions with Willing—or Persuadable—Women. The room they entered, large, effusively ornate, and yet subtly tawdry, resembled nothing so much as the parlor in an expensive brothel. Which was certainly deliberate, and was in no way inaccurate.

             
Barnett ran his gaze over the flocked red plush wallpaper; the deeply cushioned chairs and couches, done in matching fabric; the elaborate and tasteless candelabrum, decorated with flowers and cherubim and remarkably voluptuous female angels; and the equally voluptuous ladies lounging on the couches, garbed in imaginative dishabille. "Aside from these idiotic masks," Barnett whispered, "this could be any one of fifty clubs in London, all catering to the same 'sporting' population."

             
"Nemo repente fuit turpissimus,"
Moriarty murmured. "I find Juvenal quotable at the most unusual times."

             
"How's that?" Barnett asked quietly.

             
Moriarty shook his head slightly in mock annoyance. "Your American schools just don't believe in a classical education," he commented. "No wonder your English prose is so flat and unmellifluous; you are all innocent of Latin."

             
"Discuss my educational deficiencies some other time, Professor," Barnett requested firmly. "What did you say?"

             
"Roughly, 'No one ever mastered the heights of vice at the first try.' These chaps have to start somewhere, after all."

             
Suddenly a scream sounded from one of the nearby rooms—a high-pitched cry of unendurable agony. Barnett jerked his head around, seeking the source of the sound, but none of the others in the parlor reacted at all, except for a few of the women, who twitched nervously.

             
Barnett clutched at Moriarty's sleeve. "What was that?" he demanded.

             
"Casual, Mr. Barnett," Moriarty whispered intently. "Remain casual. This sort of thing must happen all the time. Remember the part you are playing. You are well used to such sounds. Indeed, it is why you are here."

             
Barnett stiffened his back and lifted his head into a parody of nonchalance. "What is it exactly that happens all the time," he asked, "which causes girls to scream in distant rooms?"

             
Moriarty leaned casually against a patch of flocked wallpaper. "You really don't want to know," he said. "Suffice it to say that other people's ideas of sexual pleasure may be far removed from your own."

             
"You mean—but why would they put up with it? The women, I mean?"

             
"These ladies are all imported from elsewhere for service in this house. This is a practice that is common in London houses of this sort, although these people take more advantage of it than others might. They serve for about two months, which is probably the length of time that the house stays in any one location, and then are sent back whence they came with a sum of money in hand. If necessary, as it frequently is, their, ah, wounds are first tended to in a hospital far from here, where the causes behind their injuries are overlooked by mutual agreement."

             
"Horrible!" Barnett said. "Much worse than any stories I've heard about the brothels in France."

             
"Your studies in depravity did not descend deep enough," Moriarty commented. "There are many similar places in Paris, as indeed in Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Warsaw, and every other European capital. With the possible exception of Rome—the Italians don't seem to be as prone to
institutionalize their violence. As to what happens in such houses in the Osmanli Empire and the Arab world, they make our friends here look like dilettantes."

             
Barnett looked around him. "You make this place sound like a garden party," he commented.

             
"You are mistaken," Moriarty replied. "I said it was horrible, not unique. Besides, this is merely the, let us say, middle level of experience. The upper levels, for which they kidnap women off the street and throw dead bodies back onto the street, probably more nearly meet your requirements."

             
Barnett clutched convulsively at Moriarty's sleeve again, and then forced himself to let go. "If you can believe it, I had forgotten for an instant," he said. "Let us go on!"

             
"We must locate the door through which the initiates go to practice vices few others even know exist," Moriarty said.

             
"You expect to find Cecily at this next level?" Barnett demanded. "And yet you think she is still all right?"

             
"They must have cells," Moriarty said, "where women are held for, ah, future use. I expect to find the lady in one of these cells, and I expect to find the cells deep in the heart of the beast."

             
"Cells?"

             
"Yes. There were signs in the now-deserted houses that certain of their rooms had been used as cells.
"

             
"
Well then—" Barnett began.

             
"Grab that man!" a harsh, commanding voice suddenly rang out from somewhere behind Barnett. "Don't let him escape! He is not one of us, he is a spy! Be sharp, now!"

             
Barnett started at the words, twisting around, and expecting to feel a heavy hand on his shoulders. To his amazement and relief, the short, imperious man who had barked out the commands was not pointing his accusing finger at Barnett, but at a slender man who had been quietly sitting by the piano.

             
"Here, now," the accused said, rising to his feet. "What's the meaning of this? Who are you, sir, and what do you mean by such an accusation?" He seemed amused, rather than alarmed. "Is this your idea of fun, little man?"

             
Several men who were dressed as servitors of the club appeared from different doorways, as though they had been awaiting the command, and moved closer to surround the tall, slender man.

             
"I am the Master Incarnate," the little man announced. "And you are a spy!"

             
"Whatever makes you think that?" the slender man asked, ignoring the surrounding servitors with a splendid nonchalance. "Are you absolutely sure you're right? Remember, Master, unveiling a member would be a very bad precedent to set, especially for you. Are you sure you wish to risk it, in front of all these fellow members?" With a wave of his hand, the slender man indicated the cluster of masked men, who had all stopped whatever they were doing and turned to watch the scene.

             
"I am sure," the Master Incarnate barked. "Especially as I can name you where you stand, and then prove it by unmasking you ... Mr. Sherlock Holmes!" He reached for the mask and yanked it off, exposing the sharp features of the consulting detective.

             
"I must hand it to you, Count," Holmes said, edging toward the wall. "You have cleverly revealed my identity. But, after all, are you quite certain that I'm not a member?" He took a firm grasp on his stick and flicked it in the general direction of one of the servitors, who was approaching him from behind. The man jumped back with alacrity.

             
"Thought you could fool us this afternoon," the Master Incarnate said, grimacing his satisfaction, "grubbing about in the cellar."

             
"The cellar?" Holmes repeated, sounding surprised. "Whatever are you talking about, Count d'Hiver?"

             
The count ignored Holmes's use of his name. "I heard about it as soon as I returned this afternoon," he said, "and watched through a concealed peephole to see who would attempt to gain entrance this evening that shouldn't. And it was you, Mr. Holmes—it was
you.
I had a feeling during the course of this investigation that you were going to prove too clever for us."

             
"I suppose there would be no point in advising you that this house is surrounded?" Holmes inquired, backing the rest of the way to the nearest wall. The way to the entrance door was now blocked by two brutish-looking servitors of the house.

             
"There would be no point at all," the Master Incarnate declared savagely. "It isn't, and it wouldn't change things for you if it were. Take him!"

             
Five of the burly servitors leaped for Holmes, who lifted his walking stick and whirled it about him, fairly making it sing as he beat them off. In an instant two of them were down, and the remaining three were circling respectfully out of range of the lean detective and his three feet of ash.