Moriarty by John Gardner Read Free Book Online

around his wrist—then a hint of breath on the back of his neck and a further pair of hands closed around his head from behind, tipping him forward, his head going under the water.
    Holding him down.
    Struggle as he might, there was no way for him to break loose. His lungs were soon bursting, and the blood pounded in his head so that he thought it would explode. His whole world was shrunken now to a need for breath and the thundering of his heart in his ears.
    Just as suddenly as he had been ducked into the water, so theypulled him out. No warning, just the harsh tug and he was above water, ears singing and chest heaving, mouth open as he sucked in air.
    â€œGood,” said a voice. “Now you know how bad it can get. Professor Moriarty came to your house in Hoxton, a couple of days back. You thought he was the cabbie, Harkness, who always drove for him in the old days, but it was the Professor himself and you were taken back to the house he’s using near Westminster. Right or wrong?”
    â€œRight,” Daniel heaved, still desperate for breath, the pain in his chest and the need for air overriding everything.
    â€œWhat did he want, Daniel? You tell me or you’ll drown, lad. I mean it. You’re nothing to me.”
    And down he went once more: hard under the water so that he was thrashing about, trying to turn his head from side to side, lungs on fire in need to be quenched by air.
    Daniel was near certain that his interlocutor in the shadows was Idle Jack, whom he had glimpsed in the hotel bedroom when they had taken him.
    Idle Jack was a coming man in the criminal fraternity, intelligent and with plenty of contacts, building his own family and not to be taken lightly: a barrister and a baronet whose nickname was easy to fathom for he was Sir Jack Idell, which he pronounced with stress on the first syllable—
Eye
-dell. So of course everyone called him Idle Jack.
    The baronetcy had been inherited from his father, Roderick “Roister” Idell, who had been a career soldier, distinguishing himself at the battle of Inkerman—the third great battle of the Crimean War. Shortly after Balaklava, and the famed charge of the Light Brigade, on the night of November 4, 1854, Major Roderick “Roister” Idell of the 68th Durham Light Infantry led a reconnaissance party below the heights at Inkerman, where the British and French armies were established, and reported their strength and disposition to his commandingofficer, Sir George Cathcart. * Later in the battle, Idell saved the life of the son of a courtier to the queen, which was the true reason for the baronetcy—that and the Idell millions that came from the flourishing slave trade. The Idell millions, if we are talking facts, were mainly mythical, or eaten away in the upkeep of the house and estate in Hertfordshire and the town house in smart Bedford Square, which had cost Sir Roderick a fortune to start with, and by the time of his death, in 1892, was so run-down and threadbare that Jack’s inheritance—title, houses, land, debts, and all—was more of a burden than a boon; indeed, some said that Idle Jack had little option but to go into a life of crime, which the wits said he’d already done being a barrister at law.
    A collage of vivid thoughts concerning Idle Jack swamped Daniel’s brain as they pulled him out of the water again, retching, reaching for air. Gasping, trying to see into that dark patch at the end of the room, where he knew there were people.
    The commanding voice again. “What did he want of you, Daniel, the Professor? Did he give you orders? If so, what were they?”
    â€œYes.” He could hardly get the word out, lunging for more air to feed his starved lungs. “Yes. Yes, he gave me instructions.”
    â€œTell me, and maybe I won’t let them duck you again.”
    He told it all: how he was to go to the hotel, bribe the boot boy, discover how long Mrs. James would