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

Not quite ten minutes passed. The screams ceased.

The Bone had finished. He was tired but not exhausted. He turned to confront the master, scanning his bulging and borrowed eyes up and down the entire length of the nonchalant figure. Then his body relaxed, the strips of his torn costume hanging more limply than ever.

“I perceive that in your youth you were no less formidable than you are now. Discretion is still the better part of valour and so I have no intention of engaging with you. I have done enough.”

“As I expected,” said Moriarty.

“Just tell me why? Why did you betray those who wanted to work with you? Who wished to aid your crimes?”

Moriarty was affable but also philosophical. He smiled thinly, rubbed his chin and said, “In a place where there are so many heroes, more than all the jails can hold, the villains will necessarily be superior to those that are encountered elsewhere. In cities where the criminals are in the majority, the outnumbered heroes evolve into mighty beings. Here the opposite is true. I did not want competition I could not deal with. Villains here were improving all the time and would continue to improve until my own privileged position and status were under genuine threat.”

The Bone bowed and clicked his heels and hastened out of the room with the panache of an incontinent ghost.

Moriarty packed away his surgical instruments, tucked his cane under his arm, strolled unhurriedly out of the building.

The night was full of people.

The cinemas were emptying. Posters for the latest colour films, some of them torn, rippled their garish spectra at him. But he walked past. Not far was the train station, a place where the platform, rails, guards, locomotives, soot and unbearable partings were still in black and white, anachronistic, a not yet erased segment of a panoramic past.

He secured a carriage to himself. The train crossed a bridge almost at the top of the city and he was able to peer down.

All was well in Chaud-Mellé.

By chance I heard that a Mammoth Book of Adventures of Moriarty was being planned, and so I asked the editor whether I could contribute a few clarifying words about my dear grandfather, Professor James Moriarty. Not enough is widely known about his work.

My grandfather was not a criminal in the true sense of the word. No lesser man than Sherlock Holmes himself once said to Dr Watson: “In calling Moriarty a criminal you are uttering libel!” I will however not deny that my grandfather sometimes did things that could be seen as unlawful in a different context. He always kept an eye on the greater good. Or at least his own good. But don’t we all? The end justifies the means.

James Moriarty kept a detailed diary until shortly before his death. My account is based on this diary. In my report, I would also like to answer a few questions that those learned men researching Sherlock Holmes have thus far not been able to answer satisfactorily. These are:

1.The detailed circumstances of the meeting between Sherlock Holmes and my grandfather in Meiringen in May 1891,

2.The events that took place in spring 1904, which led Sherlock Holmes to retire from public life for an extended period and

3.The crisis of the summer of 1914, when Sherlock Holmes tried one last time to sabotage my grandfather’s work.

These events are inextricably linked. In my grandfather’s diary, they can be found under the heading of “The Case of the Five Brownings”.

When in spring 1891 I had Sherlock Holmes know that I would like to meet him, the great detective initially hesitated. His opinion of me was not great, and he suspected that I would, one way or another, double-cross him. His fear, however, was wholly unfounded. I am always honest if the circumstances allow it. In order to exercise discretion, I suggested a meeting abroad. Meiringen in Switzerland seemed suitable. This small town of three thousand citizens in the Bernese Oberland region is so insignificant that nobody would ever guess that decisions of world historic importance could be made here. No reporters would stray here. Meiringen had a train station, which simplified getting there.

We arrived separately. Holmes had difficulties getting rid of his loyal friend and companion Dr Watson, so he arrived two days after our agreed date at the Hotel du Sauvage on Bahnhofsstraße in Meiringen.

“What a lovely spring day,” said Holmes when he joined me at my table on the terrace. “May I?”

“Please. A lovely spring, yes, but there are dark clouds on the horizon.”

“Politically?” Holmes of course knew that as political adviser to the British government I was up to date on all current crises. “The Mahdi Uprising?”

I shook my head. The revolt in the Sudan was indeed dominating the headlines – Muslim fanatics had not only beaten the British troops but also invaded Ethiopia and killed the emperor – but that was unimportant.

“It’s not about Africa,” I said. “It’s about Europe.” I told Holmes what had happened. Kaiser Wilhelm II had been on the throne for three years now. He had sacked Bismarck and terminated the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia. This meant that the stable foreign policy of the German Reich was at an end.

“I know nothing about that,” said Holmes.

He couldn’t have known anything about it, as the Reinsurance Treaty was a secret treaty. Counter-measures were urgently necessary. Holmes said that that was my job as military adviser. I replied that my influence merely stretched to military-technical topics. And that in situations such as this, politicians also needed to be involved. My idea was to establish the necessary contacts via Holmes’s brother Mycroft.

“So, you are thinking of reshuffling the War Office? And who should, in your opinion, get the top job?”

“Not Lansdowne in any case,” I said. “We need to arm ourselves. And we need politicians who will see to that. Your chronicler, this Dr Doyle from Edinburgh, has repeatedly said that England should invest more in arms, and I agree.”

Holmes smiled. Of course he knew that I had invested my considerable fortune into the arms industry.

“You surely won’t begrudge me my enthusiasm, will you?” I said.

“Money is unimportant,” he said. “But arms deals are always criminal. And I don’t like to work with criminals. Do you know Basil Zaharoff?”

I nodded. I had hoped that Holmes would not touch upon this topic. But he was, as ever, too well informed.

“Who is this mysterious man? There is not a single photograph of him. Sometimes I ask myself whether he actually exists.”

“He exists, Mr Holmes. He exists, and he sells weapons. And successfully so, I might add. The first functioning submarine that the Turkish Navy bought …”

“Yes, and people say he has screwed over Maxim, the inventor of the machine gun. Screwed him over good and proper.”

Yes, that was true. “We bought him,” I said.

“People say Zaharoff is responsible for Maxim’s financial difficulties. They say sabotage …”

“Rumours,” I claimed.

“Sometimes, I get the impression, Moriarty, that you are this mysterious man.”

“If this were the case, our country should count itself lucky. Zaharoff has guided us to some of the most powerful weapons currently under development.”

“The submarine? The Nordenfelt-U-boat that Zaharoff sold to the Turks and Greeks?”

I nodded.

“So, you think Great Britain also needs such a submarine?”

“One? We need fifty U-boats!”

“Fifty? Do you know how much that costs? Thus far, the Bruce-Partington Plan is nothing but a plan, isn’t it? And if we buy the submarines from Nordenfelt in Sweden …”