Read The Revenge of Moriarty for Free Online Page B

and diagrams. The book was about three-quarters full, but any stranger glancing at the writing would have made little sense of it. There were, for instance, breaks in the writing only when a capital letter was required. Apart from these capitals, the longhand flowed on and on, sometimes for two lines or more, as though a gifted penman was engaged in an involved copybook exercise. Nor were there any readable words, either in standard English or any foreign tongue. This was, of course, Moriarty’s cipher: a cunning poly-alphabetic system based upon the works of M. Blaise de Vigenere * to which the Professor, with his active cunning, had added a few intricate variations of his own.
    At this moment Moriarty was not concerned with the bulk of the book. He allowed the leaves to ripple between finger and thumb, letting the last quarter of blank pages fall free until he came to the final ten or twenty leaves. These, like the first part of the book, were covered with writing, though incomplete and with a single word heading every third or fourth page.
    These single words, written in block capitals, when transcribed into plain text and then deciphered into clear, were names. They read: GRISOMBRE. SCHLEIFSTEIN. SANZIONARE. SEGORBE. CROW. HOLMES .
    For the next two hours, Moriarty sat engrossed in these personal notes, adding a line here, making a small drawing or diagram there. For most of the time he worked on the pages dealing with Grisombre, and anyone who was blessed with the skill and ingenuity required to decode the cipher would have noticed that the notes included the constant repetition of several words. Words like Louvre, La Gioconda, Pierre Labrosse . There were also some mathematical calculations and a series of notes which appeared to indicate a delicate time scale. They read:
    Six weeks for copy .
    Substitute in eighth week .
    Allow one month to pass before approaching G .
    G must complete within six weeks of accepting the charge .
    To this, the Professor added one final note. Deciphered it read: G must be faced with the truth within one week of success. Have S and Js to hand .
    Closing the book, Moriarty smiled. The smile turned into an audible chuckle, and then to a laugh in which one could almost hear the discord of wickedness. In his head the plot was hatching against Grisombre.
    The elevated railway which ran through the Liverpool Docks was known locally as the dockers’ umbrella, because of the shelter it afforded dock labourers on their way to and from their places of employment. It served this secondary function well on the morning of 29 September 1896 when a lengthy period of dry weather was broken by a warm gentle drizzle.
    In spite of this inclemency, the sprawling outline of the gigantic port and docks – second only to London – was a welcome sight to the passengers of the SS Aurania as they crowded the boat and promenade decks.
    From the shore, the 4000-ton vessel seemed strangely alive, sighing steam, her red funnel flecked with white seaspray, as though breathing hard with fatigue and relief at having reached a haven after its arduous journey.
    She docked a little after noon. By then the drizzle had eased away and the overcast sky became ragged with streaks of blue, as though someone had taken a claw across the clouds.
    Bertram Jacobs arrived at the berth just in time to see the Aurania tie up, watching with undisguised interest as the gangways were swung up and the first pieces of baggage began to be hoisted ashore.
    Bertram’s brother, William, also watched, but from a vantage point some hundred-and-fifty yards distant, for the pair had set out separately that morning, obeying Moriarty’s instructions to the last letter.
    They were well set up young men who would obviously be able to look after themselves if called upon. Dressed neatly with little trace of flamboyance, they could have easily passed for sons of a middle class, respectable, family; even, in certain circumstances, as