Professor Moriarty: The Hound Of The D’urbervilles by Kim Newman Page A

found, to show off how bloody clever he was. No thought as to whether Basher might get caught ’twixt the guns. My only consolation was that Moriarty undoubtedly meant what he said about Higher Law. For breaking the deal, he’d probably exterminate the Danite Band to the last man (their horses and dogs too), then arrange a cholera outbreak in Salt Lake City to scythe through the Latter-day Saints.
    I, of course, would still be dead.
    Lassiter and I were either side of the window, just peeking out at a sliver of night.
    Another shot.
    I heard a rattling about from one of the nearby houses. A spill of light lay on the street as a front door opened. In that illumination, I glimpsed a figure in rough work clothes. A pointed red hood covered his entire head, big circles cut out for the eyes, gathered at the neck by a drawstring. Our shy soul froze a moment in the light and stepped back, but Lassiter plugged him anyway, reddening one of his eyeholes. He collapsed like an unstrung puppet.
    An irritated, bald man in a quilted dressing gown came out of his house, to make further complaint about the infernal racket. He was surprised to find a masked gunman lying dead over his front gate, obscuring the ‘no hawkers or circulars’ sign. The neighbour looked around, astonished.
    ‘What the devil...’
    Someone shot him. Oops, it might have been me. I was always one to blaze away without too much forethought.
    Lassiter looked disapproval at me.
    A great many curtains fell from fingers in nearby houses.
    The neighbour was only winged, but made a noise about it. The fellows who had accompanied him on his earlier deputation put cotton in their ears and went back to bed.
    So my shot had accomplished something.
    Lassiter looked out of the window, searching for another target.
    From where I was, I could easily shoot him in the stomach and try to hold Drebber to coughing up the agreed fee.
    Evidently he could hear the wheels turning in my head.
    ‘Algy,’ he drawled, gun casually aimed my way, ‘how’d you like to go through the winder and draw their fire?’
    ‘Not very much.’
    ‘What I reckoned.’
    Another bomb sailed through the window, without meeting any obstruction, and rolled on the carpet, pouring thick, nasty smoke. They’d let the fuse burn down before lobbing this one.
    ‘Is there a back door?’ I asked.
    Lassiter looked at me, pitying.
    Upwards of four men could surround a villa, easily.
    Jane looked at Lassiter like a pioneer wife who trusts her man to save the last three bullets to keep the women out of the clutches of Injuns. I always wondered why those covered wagon bints didn’t backshoot their pious pas and learn to sew blankets and pop out papooses, but I’m well known for my shaky grasp of morality.
    Bullets struck the piano, raising strangulated chords.
    ‘This is London, England,’ Jane said. ‘We left all this behind. Things like this don’t happen here.’
    Lassiter looked at me.
    We both knew everywhere was like this, herbaceous border in the back garden and ‘Goodbye, Little Yellow Bird’ sheet music propped on the piano or no. He’d have done better going to ground in the Old Jago or Seven Dials, where life was more obviously like this – those rookeries had well-travelled rat runs and escape routes.
    The smoke was getting thick and the carpet was on fire.
    I saw an empty bucket lying by the grate. The water had been used earlier to douse the fire. That was my fault.
    Lassiter chewed his moustache. That was his ‘tell’, the sign he was about to ‘go off’.
    ‘I’m goin’ out the front door,’ he said.
    ‘You’ll be killed for sure,’ Jane pleaded.
    ‘Yup. Maybe I can take enough of ’em with me so’s you and Little Fay can get away clean. You’re a rich woman, Jane. Buy this man, and men like him, and keep buyin’ them. Ring yourself with guns and detectives. The Danites will run dry afore the gold.’
    I peeked into the road again. The groaning neighbour was doubled over on