The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus Read Online Free Page B

and turned around to face his attackers, his feet firmly planted and his arms together and extended in the baritsu defense posture.
     
                  The Arab nearest him leaped, curved blade high in the air, and brought it down in an overhand arc aimed straight at his temple. With a deceptively easy-looking twist of his body he moved aside, grasped his assailant's knife-arm as he passed, and pinned it behind. The Arab made the mistake of trying to twist free, and he screamed with shock and pain as his shoulder joint pulled out of its socket.
     
                  Then Barnett and Sefton reached the scene. The lieutenant, using his swordstick like an épée, took two of the Arabs on in classical Italian style, his left hand raised languidly behind him. Barnett, swinging his stick freely in both hands, rushed at the others.
     
                  One of the attackers yelled out a few words in a guttural language, and his comrades broke off the fighting and raced away in as close to five different directions as they could manage in the narrow street. Lieutenant Sefton, who had downed one of the men with the first thrust of his blade, raced after another, yelling at him to stop and fight.
     
                  "Pah!" the tall man spat, straightening up and glaring after the retreating figures. "Amateurs! I am insulted."
     
                  "Excuse me?" Barnett said, trying to catch his breath.
     
                  Moriarty dusted himself off. "Thank you for your assistance," he said. "I seem to have lost my hat."
     
                  Lieutenant Sefton chased the retreating Arab to the corner before giving up. "Too big a head start," he lamented, returning to the square. He took the body of his swordstick back from Barnett and returned the blade to its scabbard. "Are you all right, sir?"
     
                  "Yes," Moriarty said. "Except for a slight rent in the jacket sleeve and the loss of my stick and my hat. I owe you gentlemen a great debt. Your assistance alleviated a troublesome situation."
     
                  "Glad to help," Barnett said briefly. He personally thought it might have been a bit more than "troublesome," but he held his tongue. Traditional British understatement, he decided.
     
                  "Couldn't allow a fellow Englishman to be molested by cutthroat Arabs without doing something," Lieutenant Sefton said. "My pleasure, I assure you. I am Lieutenant Auric Sefton, Royal Navy. My companion is Mr. Benjamin Barnett, an American."
     
                  Moriarty shook hands with both of them. "From the great city of New York, I perceive," he told Barnett. "Although most recently from Paris. And a journalist, if I am not mistaken."
     
                  "Why, that's quite right," Barnett said, looking with amazement at the tall man.
     
                  "Of course it is. I am Professor James Moriarty. I think we could all use a chance to catch our breath. Come, there's a small coffeeshop a few blocks from here. If you would care to accompany me, it would be my pleasure to offer you a cup of that thick brew which the Turk, in his wisdom, calls coffee."
     
                  "Why did those chaps attack you?" Sefton asked.
     
                  "I have no idea," Moriarty said. "Let us go to the coffeeshop, where I can sit down. I think I lead too sedentary an existence. My wind isn't what it should be. I promise I'll answer your questions there. Oh—one last thing ..." Moriarty bent over the body of the downed attacker and gave it a perfunctory examination. "All right," he said, straightening up. "It is as I thought. Let us go."
     
    -
     
                  The tables at the coffeeshop were arranged outside on the sidewalk, under a wide awning. Barnett and Sefton instinctively picked a table with a bench against the wall, where they could sit