Professor Moriarty: The Hound Of The D’urbervilles Read Online Free PDF Page B

that, he was either very privileged or very unobservant.
    ‘Still, she must be brought to heel. Though the girl will do as well. A warm body must be taken back to Utah, to come into an inheritance.’
    ‘Cottonwoods,’ said Moriarty. ‘The ranch, the outlying farms, the cattle, the racehorses and, thanks to those inconveniently upheld claims, the fabulous gold mines of Surprise Valley.’
    ‘The Withersteen property, indeed. When it was willed to her by her father, a great man, it was on the understanding she would become the wife of Elder Tull, and Cottonwoods would come into the Church. Were it not for this Lassiter, that would have been the situation.’
    Profits, not parsons, were behind this.
    ‘The Withersteen property will come to the girl, Fay, upon the death of the adoptive mother?’
    ‘That is the case.’
    ‘One or other of the females must be alive?’
    ‘Indeed so.’
    ‘Which would you prefer? The woman or the girl?’
    ‘Jane Withersteen is the more steeped in sin, so there would be a certain justice...’
    ‘...if she were topped too,’ I finished his thought.
    Elder Drebber wasn’t comfortable with that, but nodded.
    ‘Are these three going by their own names?’
    ‘They are not,’ said Drebber, happier to condemn enemies than contemplate his own schemes against them. ‘This Lassiter has steeped his women in falsehood, making them bear repeated false witness, over and over. That such crimes should go unpunished is an offence to God Himself...’
    ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ I said. ‘But what names are they using, and where do they live?’
    Drebber was tugged out of his tirade, and thought hard.
    ‘I caught only the false name of Little Fay. The Withersteen woman called her “Rache”, doubtless a diminutive for the godly name “Rachel”...’
    ‘Didn’t you think to tail these, ah, varmints, to their lair?’
    Drebber was offended. ‘Lassiter is the best tracker the South West has ever birthed. Including Apaches. If I dogged him, he’d be on me faster’n a rattler on a coon.’
    The Elder’s vocabulary was mixed. Most of the time, he remembered to sound like a preacher working up a lather against sin and sodomy. When excited, he sprinkled in terms which showed him up for – in picturesque ‘Wild West’ terms – a back-shooting, claim-jumping, cow-rustling, waterhole-poisoning, horse-thieving, side-winding owlhoot son of a bitch.
    ‘Surely he thinks he’s safe here and will be off his guard?’
    ‘You don’t know Lassiter.’
    ‘No, and, sadly for us all, neither do you. At least, you don’t know where he hangs his hat.’
    Drebber was deflated.
    Moriarty said, ‘Mr and Mrs James Lassiter and their daughter Fay currently reside at The Laurels, Streatham Hill Road, under the names Jonathan, Helen and Rachel Laurence.’
    Drebber and I looked at the Professor. He had enjoyed showing off.
    Even Stangerson clapped a hand to his sweaty forehead.
    ‘Considering there’s a fabulous gold mine at issue, I consider fifty thousand a fair price for contriving the death of Mr Laurence,’ said Moriarty, as if putting a price on a fish supper. ‘With an equal sum for his lady wife.’
    Drebber nodded again, once. ‘The girl comes with the package?’
    ‘I think a further hundred thousand for her safekeeping, to be redeemed when we give her over into the charge of your church.’
    ‘Another hundred thousand pounds?’
    ‘Guineas, Elder Drebber.’
    He thought about it, swallowed, and stuck out his paw.
    ‘Deal, Professor...’
    Moriarty regarded the American’s hand. He turned and Mrs Halifax was beside him with a salver bearing a document.
    ‘Such matters aren’t settled with a handshake, Elder Drebber. Here is a contract, suitably circumlocutionary as to the nature of the services Colonel Moran will be performing, but meticulously exact in detailing payments entailed and the strict schedule upon which monies are to be transferred. It’s legally binding, for what that’s