Death on a Pale Horse - By Donald Thomas Page 0,106

of international criminals was deeply engaged in the trading of armaments via Belgium and its new Congo territory to the Transvaal and southern Africa. Had they encountered an obstacle which might be overcome by the removal of the Comtesse de Flandre? Was the note a warning from someone that harm was intended to this good lady at the next new moon—harm that did not exclude her assassination?

At least one or two of the pieces in the puzzle could now be put in place, thanks to our meeting with Mycroft Holmes. Moran had come away from the Transvaal with whatever he could loot from the estate of Andreis Reuter. The amount had been less than he had expected, because the young man had belatedly judged him for the rogue that he was. All the same, with the aid of his cronies, there had been enough to set up the “colonel” as an international trader in guns and ammunition. He became an agent of the cosmopolitan criminal brotherhood in which Sherlock Holmes had always believed—“the higher criminal world,” as he was apt to call it. Moran’s ambition was no doubt to seize the supreme governorship of that world, perhaps literally by force of arms.

Almost in the first week of our acquaintanceship, Holmes had ridden his favourite hobby-horse for my benefit. He believed firmly in this international aristocracy of crime. Such an intricate and worldwide association worked together for common purposes and was beyond the power of any police force to destroy. To my friend’s own knowledge, it included Rawdon Moran’s own brother Colonel Sebastian Moran; a further pair of brothers with a common Christian name, Professor James Moriarty and Colonel James Moriarty; blackmail and extortion was in the slippery and loathsome hands of Charles Augustus Milverton. Elsewhere the organisation embraced Giuseppe Gorgiano and the infamous Red Circle gang of Naples and Southern Italy; Hugo Oberstein, international dealer in such military papers as the Bruce Partington submarine plans; Captain James Calhoun, leader of a group of professional assassins from Savannah, Georgia; John Clay, an accomplished cracksman of Coburg Square in London’s East End; and very many more listed in the personal archives of Sherlock Holmes.

Could such an organisation exist? A century ago, it would have been impossible. In our own age of international railways, telegraph wires, and ocean liners, it was impossible to prevent. A case soon came our way. A pair of the most determined felons gave each other alibis on opposite sides of the globe. Our friend Sir Edward Marshall Hall gained the acquittal of one man charged with bigamy. Descriptions and photographs apparently proved that the defendant was in prison in the United States at the time. Two years later, I was in court with Marshall Hall for the trial of the Lambeth Poisoner, Dr. Neill Cream. My companion recognised him as almost a twin of he who had stood trial for bigamy and been acquitted; Cream had given him an alibi as an Illinois gaol-bird.

I stared long and hard at the oil paintings of Crimean generals on the library wall. Holmes and I were getting into this mystery deeper than we had ever intended. I could do no more good here. I slipped the card into my pocket, went down and called for my hat and coat, then set off for Baker Street. I would tell my story to Holmes and let him make what he could of it.

7

I explained everything to him. As usual, he ignored most of the evidence and seized on one item that was crucial to the entire narrative.

“The Comtesse de Flandre?”

“I fear she means nothing to me.”

“Indeed? Does she not? There are others, my dear fellow, to whom she means a great deal. But few people are party to the secret.”

He got up from his chair by the fireplace, where he had been listening in his usual attentive posture. His long legs had been stretched out, finger-tips touching in an attitude of payer, elbows resting on the arms of the chair, eyelids lightly closed. Now, turning up the ornamental gas-lamp below the picture rail, he crossed to the far wall of the room, whose long run of bookshelves made up his archive. The lowest shelf contained a run of large scrap-books, purchased at intervals from Appincourt, our Baker Street stationer. Other men might have filled the thick blank pages of these folio volumes with family mementoes or cuttings from favourite literature. In the case of Sherlock Holmes, hardly an evening passed without the appearance