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

It is not by chance, or even by mathematics alone, that the Professor has survived eight centuries.

It takes him two and half seconds to disarm and kill the two most dangerous ones, the ones who moved with a modicum of skill and confidence – the latter assailant managed to nick the Professor’s cheek, drawing blood – and another half-second to disarm the weakling among the trio, the leader.

The two he killed were not conspirators, but merely hired assassins. He has never seen them before; their trim, taut bodies betray their obvious training. The one left alive is a plump but merciless bank executive from Belgium. The professional assassins had wielded knives; the cowardly banker had held a gun that he did not even know how to grip properly.

The Professor spends the rest of the night torturing his would-be usurper. He finds out the names of all those who supported his move against the Professor. Even though every piece of information has been squeezed out of the banker, the Professor ministers his cruel attentions on his prisoner until sunrise. The Professor has not slept, but he feels refreshed, more rested than he has in a long while.

He convenes an emergency meeting in the reception hall. Attendance is mandatory for all those currently in the tower: financiers, politicians, operatives, staff, slaves – everyone. Within twenty minutes, there are 764 people gathered in the hall. The Professor keys in the code that locks all doors in the building.

Emerging from behind the stage curtain, the Professor drags the bloodied and bruised banker, so as to let the repugnant creature be seen by the gathered congregation. Holding up the semi-conscious man in front of him, the Professor crushes his neck with his bare hands and then flings the corpse aside.

He waits one full minute. There is scarcely a breath to be heard in the entire room. They all wait on his word.

The Professor’s head oscillates from side to side in a menacingly reptilian fashion. He starts naming names, his cold, merciless gaze falling one by one on those he lists. After having pronounced thirty-seven names, he falls silent. For a full minute, the only movement in the room is the oscillation of his head. Then he utters two words: “Kill them.”

The assemblage sets upon the designated victims. Upon the conspirators.

The blood is lovely. The atavistic savagery is sublime. The unquestioning obeisance is perfect.

As the congregation sacrifices the unworthy to the altar of the Professor’s dominance, his mind is unshackled; it once more teems with the equations that are his lifeblood.

There were seventy-one other conspirators who were not present on site. The Professor had them dispatched with the application of one efficient formula – a slight shift in the markets that targeted them and them alone. Within four days, they were all destitute and under investigation by whichever force polices financial crimes in their respective countries. Within fifteen days, they had all either taken their own lives or been assassinated in such a way as to mimic suicide.

The Professor has not dreamed of the Detective since his victory over the conspiracy that sought to topple him. But he knows that the spectre of his opponent is waiting to pounce the moment his mind once more grows idle. The Professor cannot risk being so enfeebled again.

The random chance that gave birth to the Detective is no longer possible. The Professor’s control over the world is now too absolute to allow for the nurturing of such a mind as his one true opponent’s.

That must change, and yet it must also not change.

Working on the problem for two hours every evening, it takes the Professor seventeen days to calculate the exact variables to feed into a new equation. It will take three generations from this moment, but a new opponent shall rise. And from then on twice every century a new adversary will be born, each time from a random location, from random circumstances, driven by different motivations, with a different set of skills with which to spar with the Professor.

That will do, yes; that will do. Life is long, and the Professor must face fresh challenges – even if he must manufacture them himself – lest his mind and psyche stagnate and wither.

The Professor steps out on to his private rooftop terrace, facing inland, and, with a cold sneer, breathes in the brisk night air of Dubai, of the world. Of his world. His head oscillates in that distinctly inhuman manner that distinguishes him as the ultimate predator. Below him, the sands of Arabia stretch far away in time and distance.

‘Where do you suppose Mrs Hudson goes on a Thursday evening, Watson?’

‘I have no idea, Holmes.’

‘And why is she so reluctant to tell us? She has so far evaded my tactful enquiries.’

In Mrs Hudson’s absence, Maisie, our little skivvy, brought up the tea. Holmes poured it out and winced at the sight of the straw-coloured liquid.

‘That is one half of the mystery,’ he said. ‘The other is why the wretched girl can never learn to let the water boil.’

Holmes was not in the best of humours. He had not had a case for some weeks. He was restless and bored and, if this state of things were to continue, I feared recourse to stimulants stronger than tea. But I need not have worried. The case that was about to begin did not perhaps see him at his best, but it was a case full of interest, and one that went a long way towards explaining his enmity for Professor Moriarty.

It was a dismal day in late November in the year 1890 and dusk was drawing in. I was standing by the window, watching the lamplighter make his way down Baker Street, when a hansom cab drew up and the cabbie gestured with his whip to our door.

‘Unless I am much mistaken, Holmes,’ I remarked, ‘a new client is in prospect.’

A minute or two later, the skivvy showed a lady into our drawing room. She was wearing a half-mourning costume of lavender and mauve, and couldn’t, I judged, be more than thirty. Hers was a delicate face with arched eyebrows, but what struck me first as a medical man was her extreme pallor. She took a few faltering steps into the room, and I was just in time to reach her before she fainted. Between us, Holmes and I lowered her on to a couch. Her hands were ice-cold. Holmes chafed them while I had recourse to the sal volatile.

She was soon sufficiently revived to sit up on the couch. I placed a glass of brandy close at hand.

She was composing herself to speak, when Holmes raised a hand. ‘Let me guess the reason for your visit. Though one need scarcely be a detective to perceive that you have recently arrived in England from Italy, that before your marriage to a wealthy man you were accustomed to work for your living, that you are devoted to the memory of your late husband, and that you are desperately worried about your child.’

A glance at the lady’s face told me that Holmes as usual had hit the nail on the head.

‘But, how?’ she stammered.

Holmes smiled and picked up one of her hands. ‘Brown hands on a cold November day tell their own story. You have come from the south of France or Italy. It has been unseasonably cold in the south of France, so Italy it is. You were not born to money, in spite of those fine garnets you are wearing; otherwise, you would be accustomed to protect your hands from the sun. And for a lady such as yourself to be so afflicted, there must be a husband or a child in the case. And as you are a widow – one who still wears her husband’s signet ring on a gold chain around her neck—’

She managed a shaky laugh. ‘You are quite right, Mr Holmes. Before I married Harry, I was a governess and I have never managed to accustom myself to wearing gloves in warm weather. And, alas, it is all too true that I am at my wits’ end to know what has happened to my darling boy!’