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

‘He don’t seem to be able to keep his head still. It keeps wobbling about.’ He demonstrated the movement.

‘Where are his headquarters?’

Snaggles gave a brief grunting laugh. ‘You must be joking. No one knows. It’s being a tight-close secret that makes him so successful. But I tell you this: it ain’t just robberies that he’s into. He has his fingers in many pies: blackmail, counterfeit dosh, murder even. I can tell you that he’s in charge of most of the crime in London. He’s a dangerous fellow, Mr Holmes. If I were you I’d steer clear of him.’

Snaggles grinned nervously. ‘So then I says: “He’s a dangerous fellow, Mr Holmes. If I were you I’d steer clear of him.”’

The man who had become Professor Moriarty nodded his head in appreciation. ‘You have done well, Snaggles. You have no doubt whetted Mr Holmes’s appetite for the game considerably – which was my intention.’ He slid a small bag of coins across the desk towards Snaggles. ‘A little reward for your efforts.’

‘Thank you, Professor.’

‘You may go now.’

‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’ Snaggles retreated with haste from the room.

Moriarty cast a questioning glance at Moran who had been standing in the shadows.

‘Yes,’ Moran assured him.

Moriarty blew down the speaker tube on his desk. A voice responded.

‘Cartwright,’ said the professor, speaking into the tube. ‘Make sure that Mr Snaggles does not leave the building alive. Retrieve the bag of coins from his person and return them to my office as soon as possible, there’s a good fellow’.

‘I am getting there. Slowly. But it is hard work, Patterson. Far harder than I anticipated.’

Sherlock Holmes slumped down in the swivel chair opposite the Scotland Yard man. He was dressed as a common workman, complete with copious side-whiskers and an earring dangling from his left lobe. His features were ruddy and lined and a clay pipe peeped out of the top pocket of his disreputable jacket. When he had entered Patterson’s office, much to the distress of the young constable in the corridor, Patterson had not batted an eyelid. He was used to Holmes visiting him in a whole range of disguises. Indeed, since he had taken up the Moriarty case, Patterson had not seen the detective in his usual ‘civilian’ clothes.

‘I tell you, this professor is the Napoleon of crime,’ Holmes was saying. ‘He commands the minor criminals in London like the Pied Piper. They dance to his tune all right. However I try, I can only get so close to him, but no closer. It is very frustrating.’

‘That may be so,’ said Patterson, ‘but you have foiled many of his plans, upset his apple cart more than once in the last few months.’

‘Yes, but that does not seem to stop him. He rolls on like the sea and I am a feeble Canute. However, I am getting ever closer to him. My dossier on this master criminal is growing by the day. Soon I believe there will be enough evidence in there to incriminate him and all his minions.’

‘I will look forward to receiving it. I’ve never known you fail, Holmes. If anyone can bring this villain down, it is you.’

Sherlock Holmes pursed his lips. ‘We shall see. I have it on good authority that he has a most ambitious bank job in the planning. If I can scupper that …’

Violet Carmichael held the photograph of Sherlock Holmes in her hand and gently ran her long forefinger down the front of the picture, her sharp nails leaving a faint line across the features of the detective. She was barely containing her anger. ‘It is now time that he was stopped. Initially, I was amused by his arrogance, his brilliance. It entertained me to watch him grow in confidence and expertise and fall into our trap. But now he has become too dangerous. He is coming too close for comfort. My comfort. And the closer he comes, the more damaging intelligence he collects. The professor is the mask I have created to protect me. Holmes must never see beyond it. Fortunately, he has become obsessed by Moriarty as I hoped he would and so we must take advantage of this obsession and eliminate him.’ With a deft movement she crumpled up the photograph and threw it down on her desk. ‘It is time to have done with the man. Time for our little imposter to come into his own.’

As Alfred Coombs – the man who had become Professor Moriarty – climbed up the seventeen steps to Sherlock Holmes’s sitting room at 221B Baker Street, he knew that he was about to give the performance of his life. His knees trembled as he reached the landing and his throat felt very dry. ‘Come on, old boy,’ he whispered in his normal voice, one that he had almost forgotten how to use.

He tapped on the door and entered the room. Sherlock Holmes rose from his chair, his hand rammed into his dressing gown pocket where, Moriarty deduced, he was clutching a revolver. So, the great detective was that scared. The thought amused and relaxed Moriarty.

‘Certainly, Sherlock Holmes was rattled. He spoke with bravado, but an actor knows when another is acting,’ observed Coombs, before lighting the Havana cigar he had just been given.

‘Excellent.’ Violet Carmichael smiled. ‘I have arranged for a number of assassination attempts to be made on his life: sniper bullets, falling masonry – that sort of thing. None will be successful, of course. Such a death would only arouse suspicions with Scotland Yard. He will be dealt with later.’

‘What then is the purpose of these attacks?’

‘I need to prompt Mr Holmes to hand over his files to Patterson – who in turn will hand them over to me.’

‘He is your spy at the Yard.’

‘One of several.’

‘In the meantime, what about me?’

Violet Carmichael gave Coombs a feline smile. ‘You must prepare yourself for a journey.’

Watson gazed at his friend in the half-light of evening which filtered into his sitting room through the net curtains. The detective looked tired and ill but Watson observed that there was still that bright spark emanating from those fierce grey eyes.

‘My case against Moriarty is complete, old fellow, and the villain knows it. The proof being that I have been attacked several times today and only narrowly missed losing my life.’

‘Great heavens,’ Watson cried, shocked and alarmed at this statement, which was uttered so casually.

‘It is a very good omen. It shows that the master criminal is beginning to panic.’

‘And that your life is in danger.’

‘Always quick to making the obvious point, eh, Watson. Yes, indeed, London is too hot for me now. I have passed over the relevant papers to Inspector Patterson of the Yard and, within a few days, Moriarty and his gang will be rounded up. In the meantime, it would be judicious, I think, to absent myself from England for a while. A trip to Europe beckons and I was hoping that you would be my travelling companion. Would you come to the Continent with me? We could wander up the Valley of the Rhone, through the Gemmi Pass into Switzerland and on, via Interlaken, to Meiringen. And thence to Rosenlaui, not forgetting to make a stop at the magnificent Reichenbach Falls.

‘Of course. Anything you say, Holmes.’

Holmes was now alone on the narrow path overlooking the Reichenbach Falls. Watson had departed in haste to attend to a sick English lady who was staying at the hotel in Meiringen. The detective knew that the summons was a ruse to draw his only companion away, leaving the field free for the appearance of his arch-enemy, Professor James Moriarty. And, indeed, through the mist of spray, there appeared a dark silhouette, which shimmered indistinctly at first then clearly materialised into the figure of his arch-enemy.

The two men faced each other, the roar of the falls drumming in their ears.