Free The Revenge of Moriarty by John E. Gardner Page A

plunge for ninepence, hot or cold shower for a shilling and the full Turkish bath for two and six.
    Bert Spear paid for a Turkish bath but only got as far as the changing rooms, for there he saw the attendant who was his sole reason for the visit. The attendant was a huge bruiser of a man, with a damaged ear and hands the size of shovels.
    â€˜What cheer,’ said Spear with a delighted grin.
    â€˜Bert Spear. Blind me, I never expected …’
    â€˜Well, there you are. A surprise. You still with me for a fair slice?’
    Terremant did not have to think. ‘Say the word.’
    â€˜I want you and five good ’uns. Men we’ve used before. Handy and big.’
    â€˜Done. Is it for …?’
    Spear held up a hand in caution.
    â€˜Can you remember an address?’
    â€˜Me memory only goes duff for the Peelers.’
    â€˜Tomorrow night. Ten o’clock. Twos and threes – not all in a lump. Number Five Albert Square, other side of Notting Hill.’
    â€˜A job?’
    â€˜You’re hired. Permanent.’
    Terremant’s face broke into a broad beam and one huge fist smacked gently onto Spear’s shoulder.
    â€˜Like the old days.’
    â€˜Exactly like the old days. You’ll meet a lot of old friends. But I want you silent. If not, you are a mouth and will die a lip.’
    â€˜I’m deaf and dumb, you know that.’
    Spear looked at him hard. Terremant could have lifted and crushed him with one hand, but the big man knew that Spear was highly respected. In spite of his reputation as no mean punisher, Terremant would never go looking for trouble where one of Moriarty’s Praetorian Guard was concerned.
    â€˜Tomorrow night then.’
    Spear smiled and nodded and left for other haunts that were not nearly so salubrious as Faulkner’s Turkish Baths.
    Since the 1850s the face of London had undergone a subtle change. Building developments had altered and removed many of the teeming rookeries, those cesspools of evil, but in spite of reform and replanning, there were still streets and maze-like back alleys into which the police only ventured in pairs and the stranger only entered by foolish chance.
    These areas held no fear for Ember. On and off for over thirty years he had come and gone along the darker and more notorious of the city’s streets with the particular immunity accorded to those who held a special and useful sinecure within the bastions of the criminal world.
    No matter that Ember had been absent from old haunts for two years and more. In some way this fact only went to enhance his journey during that night as he slipped, a thin shadow, from street to street, to taproom, lodging house and obscure kitchen. Everywhere he went in the cold and dank thoroughfares there were men and women who hailed him, sometimes as an equal, but more often as a person of rank.
    He moved quickly, not tarrying long in any one place, having short conversations with various ragged individuals. On occasion money changed hands, slid surreptitiously from palm to palm to the accompaniment of nods, leers and winks.
    When dawn came up, heralding another bright day in that Indian summer of 1896, Ember emerged from the smoke, ripeness and clinging gin-sodden air of that nether world with the knowledge that he had relaid the foundations of the network which was once Professor James Moriarty’s pride and joy: that invisible chain of intelligence which would provide the most recent and detailed knowledge regarding both champions and enemies of the underworld alike.
    The sun began to climb higher and at ten o’clock on that same morning, a group of ragged urchins hammered on the door of 221 B Baker Street and were eventually led into the presence of Sherlock Holmes himself. Fifteen minutes later the street arabs left, happy and clutching silver shillings, their reward for the whispers passed on to Holmes who, for the next hour, sat in his rooms playing the violin and