Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty

But the illusion was imperfect. It contained all the clues leading to its own unraveling. Wakefield , the man who must wake . The primes. The bees.

He has failed, then.

He is falling and he cannot stop.

Time is about to catch up with Professor Moriarty.

Moriarty plunges back inside the dream with whirlwind force. Twenty years spent in the fog makes its inhabitation comfortable and automatic, easy to re-enter at will.

Ah, yes. He is back in his rented room.

With quick, precise gestures Moriarty packs his scant belongings and leaves a brief note behind informing the owners that he will not be back. And here is a gift, a small token of my appreciation , he adds, and places the note atop the Hawthorne volume.

Several times during his stroll back to 83 Albermarle Street Moriarty hears rushing water and is almost tempted back into that Other World. But each time he resists, forcing himself to think of classical compositions that will appeal to his mathematical mind – Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” and “Canonical Variations”, with their kaleidoscopic symmetries – and allow him to elude the danger.

He saunters about London without checking how long, for it is best to keep time periods undefined in his mind. Eventually, he makes his way to Benekey’s pub, which serves a fine wine and provides private booths. Walking to his chosen booth down the main room, lined with dark wood alcoves, he passes a mirror and there sees a reflection of his cold, gray eyes, filled with inexorable purpose. For a flicker of time the gray in his eyes reminds him of another grey, that of a mist. He pushes the image aside.

Sitting for a long time, drinking his wine, Moriarty asks himself: How long can I keep this up?

How long can he promote his self-hypnosis, continue to hold the gauze of this reality over his senses, so as to blind them to his predicament in the Other World?

Then his lips spread into a crafty smile. He must only keep it up for the rest of his natural dream-life, for when he dies inside this universe, it will matter not what happens to his body in the Other World. His consciousness will have expired.

Considering his current age, the period in question is unlikely to exceed ten, or perhaps fifteen, years.

With this insight, Moriarty’s body relaxes. He feels his whole fate turning on a pivot.

To prevent this great dream from dissipating , he thinks. That is my task, nothing more.

His mind turns to mathematics once more. In his youth, he performed work on the binomial theorem. He has heard that the German mathematician George Cantor has made great advances in the understanding of infinity, as envisioned through set theory. If infinity can be so tamed, then there is ample hope for Moriarty.

The professor pays and departs Benekey’s. As he wends his way back home, he realizes that to strengthen the constitution of his belief, he must take up reading in a voracious way. The clearer the print on the page, the more firmly entrenched he will be inside the dream. And so he stops en route to purchase several fine books and journals.

During the last stretch of his trip, he thinks of Holmes, and Holmes’s attitude towards the retiring mathematical coach. He knows full well that Holmes’s horror at his crimes was lost in his admiration at Moriarty’s skills. He can think of no higher praise. In this place, Holmes too still lives. Perhaps one day Moriarty will pay him a visit.

But not today. Today he reunites with Mrs Moriarty and reclaims his life.

At last he arrives.

Pausing near the house, Moriarty discerns, through the parlor windows of the second floor, the red glow and the glimmer and fitful flash of a comfortable fire. He sighs in an anticipation of domestic contentment. Moriarty ascends the steps lightly, for, though twenty years have stiffened his legs since he came down them, his new convictions and determination more than compensate for the loss of vitality.

The door opens. As he passes in, in a parting glimpse of his visage we recognize his crafty, knowing smile, a smile that speaks of worlds within worlds to which only he is privy.

We will not follow Moriarty across the threshold. Suffice it to say that Moriarty has found his place, and his place is not ours.

The place is Reichenbach, the time is May 1891, and the theme is self-banishment.

The lights in the theatre dimmed and the curtain rose. The set was the drawing room of a London town house. The butler entered. As he did so, Colonel Sebastian Moran, sitting in the first row of the stalls, touched his companion’s arm. ‘That’s the fellow,’ he whispered. He paused for a moment, allowing a gentle smile to touch his lips. ‘What do you think?’

At first his companion did not respond but stared with fascination at the man attired in the butler’s livery, while the stage gradually filled with other members of the cast and the drama commenced for real. The actor was very tall, thin with a balding high-domed head and moved with remarkable ease.

The butler’s role was small but his manner and bearing were impressive. After a few perfunctory lines, he made his way off stage. On his exit, Moran’s companion chuckled, the eyes gleaming with pleasure. ‘I think he will do very nicely. Very nicely indeed.’

Alfred Coombs was enjoying a glass of stout in the communal dressing room at the end of the show. He had sloughed off his butler’s outfit, swilled away the greasepaint and was dressed in his own rather shabby civilian clothes ready to return to his lodgings. He was deliberately slow in effecting the metamorphosis from Gerald the butler to Alfred Coombs the lowly actor, so that by the time the transformation was complete, the rest of the cast had gone, leaving him with the luxury of a peaceful dressing room and his bottle of stout. He loved this quiet time at the end of a performance. He felt he had the theatre all to himself. It allowed him to daydream of that time, not too distant he hoped, when he would have a dressing room of his own as befitting a principal player. There would be a dresser hanging up his costume, before bringing out his evening suit, which he would wear for a late supper at the Café de Paris or maybe the Ritz.

He took another swig of the rich dark ale, easing his mind into the fantasy. He had been long in the profession, never rising in the ranks, always below stairs as it were, but with Alfred Coombs hope sprang eternal. He really believed that one day he would take the starring role, be thrust centre stage into the limelight and accumulate all the glossy trimmings that went with being a star.

As he was contemplating this eventuality, almost a nightly ritual, there came a knock at the dressing room door. With a sigh of annoyance at having his rêverie disturbed, Alfred dragged his feet down from the make-up table and wandered to the door. On the threshold were two figures: a man and a woman. The man was a bluff-looking fellow with wiry blond hair, a heavy moustache and bright blue eyes, which shone out of a ruddy face. But it was the woman, standing behind him, who captured Coombs’s attention. She was a striking figure, tall, dark-haired and palefaced; beautiful in a cold and clinical fashion. Her dark eyes gazed upon him in a hypnotic manner that seemed to penetrate Alfred’s tired brain as though gaining access to his very thoughts.

‘Good evening, Mr Coombs,’ said the man. ‘We did enjoy your performance tonight.’

Alfred did not know how to react to this compliment. He had never received one for his acting abilities before and it crossed his mind that the comment was tinged with sarcasm and that he was being ridiculed.