Who Thinks Evil: A Professor Moriarty Novel (Professor Moriarty Novels) Read Online Free PDF

earlier robberies, no questions asked, as it were.”
    “I didn’t know you had sources,” said Barnett.
    “I has my nose to the wheel,” Tolliver explained.
    “Any ‘swag’ in particular?” asked Cecily.
    “A good question,” said the mummer, “and it would seem that the answer is ‘indeed so.’ The Marchioness of Cleves, whose husband is some biggywig in Her Majesty’s Government, is anxious to get her bauble back.”
    “The, ah, Bain of Thorncroft,” Barnett remembered. “A big topaz.”
    “Twenty carats,” said Cecily, who had a fondness for jewelry and an impressive knowledge thereof. “Possibly the world’s largest imperial topaz.”
    “What makes it imperial?” Barnett asked.
    “Its color mostly. This one is a sort of pinkish orange.”
    “So,” the mummer went on, “this’ere robber, Manxman Benny by name, he cops a plea, but he don’t give the rozzers anything for it they can chew on—except the professor.”
    “The authorities believed him?”
    “It must’ve gone summat like this,” the mummer offered. He raised a hand in supplication and assumed a high, shrill voice, “‘Honest, Inspector, I can’t peach on any of me mates, ’cause I never seen them before the job, and I don’t know nothing about any other jobs, and I don’t know who they are when they’re at home. But I happen to know who the big boss is, and I’ll swallow my fear of his retri-as-it-were-bution and give you his name. Which is Professor James Moriarty. S’welp me, governor, that’s all I knows.’”
    “And on that evidence they put the professor on trial?” Cecily asked incredulously.
    “There was a bit of detail to add corroboration,” Barnett told her, “but basically, that was it.”
    “Until the Honorable Eppsworth, what appeared for the prosecution, opened his sleeve and Esterman fell out,” the mummer expanded.
    “Esterman’s the local publican,” Barnett explained. “Owns the Fox and Hare in Wedsbridge. He claims that Moriarty stayed there for two nights the week before the robbery. Signed the register with the name Bumbury. Moriarty, on the other hand, says he was never anywhere near Wedsbridge. On the nights in question he was at his observatory on the Moor, but the only one there with him was his caretaker, an old ticket-of-leave man named Wilcox, who testified to that effect. When asked by the prosecutor whether he would lie for Moriarty, he replied, ‘A’course I would,’ which sort of ruined the effect.”
    “That’s what you get for telling the truth in this man’s world,” the mummer said darkly.
    “Maybe not,” Cecily suggested. “After all, something hung that jury.”
    “True,” Barnett agreed.
    “Someone should have hung Esterman for a lying dog, which is what he were,” the mummer added with a vicious upward swipe with his left foot.
    “What in the world—what’s this?” Barnett suddenly demanded. He had closed his notebook and thoughtlessly turned it over as he was laying it down. There were some words crudely written in pencil on the stiff back cover:
    look in binding
    “Where’d that come from?” Barnett demanded. “What binding? The binding of what?”
    Mummer Tolliver picked up the notebook and turned it over and over in his little hands. “It’s spirit writing,” he announced
    The Barnetts, husband and wife, looked at him.
    “A ghost sneaked in and wrote that bit on my notebook?” Barnett asked, with the hint of a smile.
    “It weren’t no ghost. The professor wrote that bit,” Mummer explained.
    “Ah! So Professor Moriarty snuck in and scribbled on my notebook?”
    The mummer looked annoyed. “It’s spirit writing,” he explained patiently, “what is done onstage or in a séance by the medium to produce a manisfetation … manifestation from the spirit world. The medium holds up a slate or pad so the assembled multitude can see that there ain’t nothing wrote on it, and then he turns it over and holds it upside down with a member