Free Who Thinks Evil: A Professor Moriarty Novel (Professor Moriarty Novels) by Michael Kurland Page B

dropped open.
    The girl turned her head to see what her cull was staring at. At the back of the room the nude body of a young boy was spread out on the red and tan Baluchi carpet, his chest and stomach splayed open, his various internal organs placed carefully around him like offerings to an obscene god. The pools of blood surrounding him had not yet begun to dry.
    For a second the scene seemed not to register; then her eyes widened and the color drained from her face. Slowly, and with a sort of innocent grace, she fell unconscious to the floor.
    The man screamed. Not a full-throated scream, but a sort of loud, hysterical gargle. It was enough, it would suffice.
    The remaining nine rooms on the floor were soundproofed, so no one within heard anything amiss. However, there were three men on the stairs who came rushing up at the sound.
    By this time Natyana had regained control, gently but firmly closed the offending door, and taken the fat man by the hand. “There’s been a horrible accident,” she told him. “We must call the police. Perhaps it would be wise for you to leave before they arrive, don’t you think? I’ll attend to the girl.”
    The three men from the stairs came tumbling over to them. “An accident,” Natyana repeated to them. “This gentleman will tell you all about it. He’s had a bad fright. You might want to help him downstairs.” She paused, then went on, “It is probably a good idea for all of our guests to vacate, to go home now.”
    “What happened?” one of the men demanded.
    “Beyond what this gentleman can tell you,” Natyana replied, “you’d best not know. Downstairs, please.”
    The three men exchanged glances and, finding no better course of action, turned and headed back downstairs, taking the fat man with them, leaving the fainting girl lying in the corridor.
    “What now, do you suppose?” asked the porter.
    “Pick up the poor girl—it’s Agnes, isn’t it?—and lay her on the divan by the stairs.”
    “Yes. Of course.” The porter complied, laying the girl down gently with a cushion under her head, and smoothed what there was of her clothes.
    “Now,” Natyana said, “I imagine, we must have any remaining guests leave. P’raps you should alert the rest of the staff and see to it.”
    “What are we going to tell them?”
    Natyana considered. “Trouble with the pipes should do it. Although I fancy they’ll hear otherwise soon enough.”
    The porter nodded and then asked, “Why’d you tell those three that the fat gent would tell them all about it?”
    “Because he was going to anyhow,” she said. “No way to stop him.”
    “Ah!”
    “You’d best get Master Paternoster up here. I’d go myself, but I had better stand cové over this door.”
    The porter shook his head. “Five years I’ve been here, and never nothing like this. Nothing remotely like this. What are we going to do?”
    “Considering that most of our members will know about this before they leave, I fancy we have little choice in the matter.”
    “You ain’t really nohow going to call the rozzers, are you? We ain’t calling in no rozzers, are we?”
    “Master Paternoster must decide, but—I don’t see any way around it. Luckily there are a couple of select, ah, rozzers that we can call. Gentlemen who spend time here in a private capacity, although they spend their days at Scotland Yard. They may be willing to help us in our time of need, but our members had better be long gone before they arrive.”

 
    [CHAPTER SEVEN]
    RELEASE
    When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,
    The mother of months in meadow or plain
    Fills the shadows and windy places
    With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain.
    —ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
    THEY CAME FOR MORIARTY AT FIVE IN THE MORNING, tramping down the narrow passage, two men in mufti with the unmistakable ramrod-stiff comport of army officers. Jacobs the warder led the way, huffing, coughing, wheezing, and stomping. The sound of their coming awoke