Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes

His door was open wide*, with silver moonlight shining through;

The place was wet and slipp’ry where she trod;

An ugly knife lay buried in the heart of Mad Carew§,

‘Twas the ‘Vengeance of the Little Yellow God’.

* where were the guards? I’d bloody have ‘em up on a charge for letting yak-bothering clod-stabbers through the lines —S. M.

§ how much worse than being stabbed with a pretty knife, eh? —S. M.

There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,*

There’s a little marble cross below the town;

There’s a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,

And the Yellow God forever gazes down§.

* yes, J. Milton skimps on his poetical efforts by putting the first verse back in again. When Uncle Bertie or the Bank Manager’s Sister read it aloud, they tend to do it jocular the first time, emphasizing that rumty-tumty-tum metre, then pour on the drama for the reprise, drawing it out with exaggerated face-pulling to convey the broken- heartedness and a crack-of-doom hollow rumble for that final, ominous line. I blame Rudyard Kipling.

§ Have you noticed the ambiguity about the idol? Is it only one-eyed because M. C. has filched the other, or regularly configured like Polyphemus and now has its single eye back? Well, Mr. Hayes was fudging because he plain didn’t know. To set the record straight, this was always a cyclopean idol. And the poet didn’t hear the end of the story.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking — if Mad Carew’s emerald-pinching escapade led to a twit-tended grave North of Khatmandu, how did he fetch up unstabbed in our London consulting room, presenting a sickly countenance? Ah-hah, then read on…

IV

“I took the eye from the idol,” Carew admitted. “I don’t care what you’ve heard about why I did it. That doesn’t matter. I took it. And I didn’t give it away. I can’t give it away, because it comes back. I’ve tried. It’s mine, by right of … well, conquest. Do you understand, Professor?”

Moriarty nodded. If he understood, that was more than I did.

“I had to fight — to kill — to get it. I’ve had to do worse to keep alive since. They’ve not let up. They came for me at the hill station. Nearly had me, too. If letting them have the stone’d save my hide, I’d wish it good riddance. But it’s not the gem they want, really. It’s the vengeance. Blighters with knives have my number. Heathen priests. That’s an end to it — they think, at any rate. Some say they did get me, and I’m a ghost…”

I’d not thought of that. He didn’t look like any ghost I’d run across, but — then again — they don’t, do they. Ghosts? Look like what you’re expecting, that is.

“I didn’t just take this thing. I copped a fortune in other stones and gold doodads, too. Not as sacred, apparently. Though most folk who bought from me — chiselled at a penny in the pound, if that — are dead now. Even with miserly rates of fencing, I netted enough to buy out and set myself up for life. Thought I could do a lot better than Fat Amy Framington, I tell you. Resigned my commission, and left for India … with the little brown men after me. More of ‘em than I can count. Some odd ones, too — brown in the face, but hairy all over. White-hairy, more brute than man. There are a few of ‘em left in mountain country. Mi-go or yeti or Abominable Snowballs. They’re the trackers, when the priests let them off their leashes. They dogged me over India, into China … across the Pacific and through the States and the Northern Territories. Up to the Arctic with them after me on sledges … they have yeti in Canada too, sasquatch and windigo. I heard the damned beasts hooting to each other like owls. Close scrape in New York. Had to pay off the coppers to dodge a murder charge. Steam-packet to blighty. They nearly got me again in a hotel in Liverpool, but I left six of ‘em dead. Six howling brown bastards who won’t make further obeisance to their bloody little yellow God. Now I’m here, in London. The white man’s Kathmandu. I’ve still got this green lump. Worth a kingdom, and worth nothing…”

“This narrative is very picturesque,” said Moriarty, “though I would quibble about your strict veracity on one or two points. You could place it in the illustrated press. What I fail to perceive, Major Carew, is what exactly you want us to do?”

Carew’s eyes became hooded, shifty. For the first time, he almost smiled.

“I heard of you in a bazaar in Peking, Professor. From a ruined Englishman who was once called Giles Conover…”

Him, I remembered. Cracksman, and a toff with it. Also enthusiastic about precious stones, though pearls were his line. Why anyone decided to set a high price on clams’ gallstones is beyond me. Conover went for whole strings. Lifted the Ingestre necklace from Scotland Yard’s Black Museum to celebrate the centenary of the burning- down of Mrs. Lovat’s Fleet Street pie shop. I’ll wager you know that story.

The Firm had done business with Conover. Before his spine got crushed.

“You are … what was Conover’s expression … a consultant? Like a doctor or a lawyer?”

Moriarty nodded.

“A consulting criminal?”

“A simple way of stating my business, but it will suffice. Professionals — not only doctors and lawyers, but architects and detectives and military strategists — are available to any who meet their fees. Individuals or organizations have problems they have not the wits to solve, and call on those with expertise and experience to do so. Criminal individuals or organizations have problems too. If sufficiently interesting, I apply myself to the solution of such.”

“Conover said you helped him…

“Advised him.

“…with a robbery. You — what? —drew up plans he followed? Like an engineer?”

“Like a playwright, Major Carew. A dramatist. Conover’s problem required a certain flamboyance. Parties needed to be distracted while work was being done. I suggested a means of distraction.”

“For a cut?”

“A fee was paid.”

The Prof was being cagey about details. We arranged for a runaway cab to collide with a crowded omnibus at the corner of Leather Lane and St. Cross Street. This convenient calamity drew away night-guards at Tucker & Tarbert’s Gemstone Exchange long enough for Conover to nip in and abstract a cluster known as ‘the Bunch of Grapes’ or, more vulgarly, ‘the Duchess of Borset’s White Piles’. Nobody died except a drunken Yorkshireman, but seven passengers were handily crippled — including a Member of Parliament who couldn’t explain why he was in the hansom with two tight-trousered post office boys and had to resign his seat. A fine night’s work, all round.

Carew thought about it for a moment.

“They are in London. The brown priests. The yeti. They mean to kill me and take back their green eye.”

“So you have said.”

“They nearly had me in Paddington two nights ago.”

The Professor said nothing.

“Consider this an after-the-fact consultation, Moriarty,” said Carew, taking a plunge. “I don’t need help in planning a crime. The crime’s done with, months ago and on the other side of the world. I need your help in getting away with it.”

It became clear. The Professor ruminated. His head oscillated. Carew hadn’t seen that before and was startled.

“You will be killed,” said the Professor. “There’s no doubt about it. In all parallel cases — you have heard of the Herncastle heirloom, I trust — the, as you call them, “little brown men” have prevailed. Unless some other ironic fate overtakes him first, the despoiler is routinely done to death by the cult. Did Conover tell you of the Black Pearl of the Borgias?”

“He said he’d lost the use of his legs and been driven from England because of the thing, and he didn’t have it in his hands for more than a minute or two.”