were what are called “French” novels, and the rest were full of erotic drawings displaying couples coupling, many in positions that I had never dreamed of, and some in positions that I believe are impossible to attain. I began going through them methodically, right to left, top to bottom, for anything that might have been inserted between the pages, but found nothing.
There was a knock at the door and I turned to see a thickset man in the uniform of a waiter standing in the doorway. “You wished to see me, sir?” he asked, addressing the air somewhere between Moriarty and myself.
“Williamson?” Moriarty asked.
“That’s right, sir.”
“You found Lord Tams’s body the morning he died?”
“I did, sir, and quite a shock it was too.” Williamson stepped into the room and closed the door.
“Tell me,” Moriarty said.
“Well, sir, I brought the tray up at a quarter to eight, as instructed, and entered the sitting room.”
“You had a key?”
“Yes, sir. I got the key from the porter on the way up. My instructions were to set breakfast up in the dining room, and then to knock on the bedroom door at eight o’clock sharp. Which same I did. Only there was no answer.”
“One breakfast or two?” Moriarty asked.
“Only one.”
“Was that usual?”
“Oh yes, sir. If a hostess spent the night with his lordship, she left when he sat down to breakfast.”
“I see,” said Moriarty. “And when there was no answer?”
“I waited a moment and then knocked again. Getting no response, I ventured to open the door.”
“And?”
“There was his lordship, lying face-up on the bed, staring at the ceiling. His hands were raised in the air over his head, as though he were afraid someone were going to hit him. His face were beet-red. He were dead.”
“Were the bed-clothes covering him?”
“No, sir. He were lying atop of them.”
“What did you do?”
“I chucked.”
“You-?”
“I throwed up. All over my dickey, too.”
“Very understandable. And then?”
“And then I went downstairs and told Mr. Caltro, the manager. And he fetched Dr. Papoli, and I went to the pantry to change my dickey.”
Moriarty pulled a shilling out of his pocket and tossed it to the waiter. “Thank you, Williamson,” he said. “You’ve been quite helpful.”
“Thank you, sir,” Williamson said, pocketing the coin and leaving the room.
A short, dapper man with a spade beard that looked as if it belonged on a larger face knocked on the open door, took two steps into the room, and bowed. The tail of his black frock coat bobbed up as he bent over, giving the impression that one was observing a large, black fowl. “Professor Moriarty?” he asked.
Moriarty swivelled to face the intruder. “That is I.”
“Ah! Torkson told me you were here. I am Dr. Papoli. Can I be of any service to you?”
“Perhaps. What can you tell me of Lord Tams’s death?”
Dr. Papoli shrugged. “When I was called he had been dead for several hours. Rigor was pronounced. His face was flushed, which suggested to me the apoplexy; but I was overruled by the superior knowledge of your British doctors. If you would know more, you had best ask them.”
“I see,” Moriarty said. “Thank you, doctor.”
Papoli bowed and backed out of the room.
Moriarty crossed to the bedroom and gazed at the rumpled bedclothes. “Picture it, Barnett,” he said. “The dead earl staring up at the ceiling, his face unnaturally red and bearing a horrified expression, his arms raised against an unseen foe. And the strange puncture marks on the body, don’t leave those out of your picture.” He turned to me. “What does that image convey to you?”
“Something frightful must have happened in this room,” I said, “but what the nature of that happening was, I have no idea.”
Moriarty shook his head. “Nothing frightful happened in this room,” he said. “Understanding that will give you the key to the mystery.” He took one last look around the room and then went out into the hall. For the next half hour he walked up and down the hallway on that floor and the ones above and below, peering and measuring. Finally he returned to where I awaited him on the second floor landing. “Come,” he said.
“Where?”
“Back to Russell Square.”
We left the club and flagged down a hansom. Moriarty was taciturn and seemed distracted on the ride home. When we entered the house, Moriarty put a small blue lantern in the window; the sign to any passing members of the Mendicants’ Guild that they were wanted. Moriarty has a long-standing relationship with the Mendicants’ Guild and Twist, their leader. They are his eyes all over London, and he supplies them with technical advice of a sort they cannot get from more usual sources. About half an hour later a leering hunchback with a grotesquely flattened nose knocked on the door. “My monniker’s Handsome Bob,” he told Moriarty when he was brought into the office, “Twist sent me.”
“Here’s your job,” Moriarty told the beggar. “The Paradol Club is at the intersection of Montague and Charles. It has three entrances. Most people use the main entrance on Montague Street. I want a watch kept on the club, and I want the men to give me the best description they can of anyone who enters the club through either of the other two entrances. But without drawing any attention to themselves. Send someone to report to me every half- hour, but keep the place covered at all times.”
“Yessir, Professor Moriarty,” Handsome Bob said, touching his hand to his cap. “Four of the boys should be enough. We’ll get right on it.”
Moriarty reached into the apothecary jar on the mantle and took out a handful of coins. “Have them return here by cab if there’s anything interesting to report,” he said, handing the coins to. “This is for current expenses. I’ll settle with you at the usual rates after.”
“Yessir, Professor Moriarty,” Handsome Bob repeated, and he turned and sidled out the door.
Moriarty turned to me. “Now we wait,” he said.
“What are we waiting for?”
“For the villain to engage in his employment,” Moriarty said. He leaned back and settled down to read the latest copy of the quarterly Journal of the British Geological Society. I left the room and took a long walk, stopping for sustenance at a local pub, which I find soothes my mind.
I returned at about six in the evening, and stretched out on the sitting room couch to take a nap. It was just after eleven when Moriarty shook me by the shoulder. Standing behind him was an emaciated-looking man on crutches, a crippled beggar I remembered seeing at Twist’s headquarters in a Godolphin Street warehouse. “Quick, Barnett,” Moriarty cried, “our drama has taken a critical turn. Get your revolver while I hail a cab!” He grabbed his hat, stick, and overcoat and was out the door in an instant.
I ran upstairs to my bedroom and pulled my revolver from its drawer, made sure it was loaded, and then grabbed my overcoat and ran downstairs. Moriarty had stopped two cabs, and was just finishing scribbling a note on the back of an envelope. He handed the note to the beggar. “Give this to Inspector Lestrade, and no one else,” he said. “He will be waiting for you.”
Moriarty put the cripple in the first cab and looked up at the driver. “Take this man to Scotland Yard, and wait for him,” he said. “And hurry!”
We climbed into the second cab together and set off at a good pace for the Paradol Club. Moriarty leaned forward impatiently in his seat. “This is devilish,” he said. “I never anticipated this.”
“What, Moriarty, for God’s sake?”
“Two people of interest have entered the back door of the club in the past hour,” he said. “One was a young girl of no particular status who was taken in by two burly men and looked frightened to the watcher. The other was
