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

Why one thing and not another? Why become any one thing with a mind that could choose and pursue any fate in the world? What would she choose if she could have and be anything?

She pictured kingdoms kneeling at her feet. She saw visions of herself revolutionizing any field, no, every field of science. She imagined having the chance to vote, to go to university.

But the Professor didn’t worry about such common things. He would always want what was bigger, what was impossible. So, for his sake, no matter what fantasy she brought before herself, Molly pushed past it to ask, But what next?

And eventually there was no next. Molly’s mind was too small to realize the grandest possibilities.

She wandered home in defeat, barely noticing how barren her flat was. She usually lived with two women. They were card sharps at a local gambling den, known for their high-pitched laughter and their low-cut dresses. Both things were distractions. It made them good at cheating drunkards out of their money. They too were part of Moriarty’s wide-spread network. And now they were gone. The flat was empty of all their possessions. Molly had a fleeting thought of hope that they were alive and not arrested, then used the opportunity to sleep in the largest bed for once.

What comes after having everything? Molly thought in a dream-like state. In her mind, she saw the Professor. She saw him reading Crime and Punishment as a boy, saw him convince a classmate to steal, saw him weep at the evils of the world then laugh just as hard. He was a professor and a gentleman. He was a criminal and a monster. Her final vision was of the sneer he always gave her when she became tedious. Then she awoke and he was gone altogether.

Police were questioning other tenants of the building when Molly left the next morning. They saw her, but didn’t say anything. Why would they? She was just a young girl. She didn’t mean anything. Coming from a neighborhood like this, she probably never would.

She wove through the streets of London, dodging traffic as adeptly as she had her whole life. She knew where she was going, though she had only ever been there once. That had been an important day, when she had delivered a very important message. Molly still didn’t know what the message had been. She only remembered handing it over as she had taken a look at the great Professor Moriarty for the first time.

It was a public office. It had his name on the door and everything. That was why few members of the gang were ever allowed here. Molly didn’t expect him to be there. The Professor could be anywhere in the world right now. Still, she knocked and was somehow not surprised at all when he answered the door.

His face was red. His clothes were dirty. He looked like he wasn’t sleeping properly. Molly had never seen him look so uncomposed. He stared at her blankly for a moment like he didn’t recognize her. Then her face snapped into place and he scowled. “Molly. What the devil are you doing here?”

“I … I figured it out,” she stammered. He was more frightening than usual, like an animal in a cage. She cleared her throat and made her voice steady. “I think I know why you’re a criminal.”

He stared at her even longer, clearly having no idea what she was talking about. The weeks must have been long for him indeed. The Professor never forgot anything. “I don’t have time for this!” he snapped. He turned away and went back to throwing things into a large suitcase.

But he didn’t tell her to leave and that was as good as an invitation to come in where the Professor was concerned. Molly stepped inside and kept speaking. “I kept thinking about what I know about you. You’re incredible, a genius. I think … I think you can do anything. And then I realized how awful that must be.”

He kept moving. It was impossible to tell if he was even listening. Molly took the chance that he was. “I think you had to become a criminal. Because if you can have everything, what’s the point of anything? You had to become the best villain so that the best hero would come out to find you. It was the only way you could ever find your equal. The only way you could ever be challenged. Maybe—” she said the last part quietly “—maybe if another villain had come first you would be the hero.”

James Moriarty was quiet. He filled his suitcase and shut it with an audible click. “Is that it then? Thank you, Molly. I’d been wondering why I did it.” He looked at her and his face made a twitch. She decided it was a smile. “Goodbye, dear Molly. Keep up with your studies. Don’t become a waste of my time.”

And he left. Somehow Molly knew she would never see him again. She turned to the bookcases of the office. They were filled to bursting. In a few minutes, she found what she had come for in the first place: an excellent edition of Euler’s De fractionibus continuis dissertatio. It was still in pristine condition. Molly took it under her arm and left the office, ready to see just what her meager mind could accomplish.

The others filed out of the room, glancing back with barely concealed smiles; they knew what was coming, and were relieved they weren’t going to be on the receiving end.

“You know why I’ve asked you to stay behind, don’t you? You had very specific instructions, and you failed to follow them. Instead, you decided to—”

“I thought that—”

“You ‘thought’? You thought ? Oh, dear me, that won’t do at all. You’re not expected to think , as well you know, and you will be punished. What do you think about that, young Master Moriarty?”

Moriarty met the tutor’s gaze, and took a deep breath. “I know I was supposed to complete the exercise from the textbook, but I thought you’d be more interested in the work I handed in. You did understand what it was, I presume?”

“Understand?” the tutor’s face reddened. “Did I ‘understand’ the nonsense you handed in? What precisely was there to understand, boy?”

Moriarty shook his head slightly. “Sir, please, hear me out. You asked me to do some basic Pythagorean calculations, but I gave you much more than that, don’t you see? I gave you the solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem.”

Moriarty folded his arms and smiled, but his mathematics tutor did not smile. Instead, he looked increasingly angry.

“Fermat?” the older man said. “Are you insane, boy? Are you seriously telling me that in half a page of foolscap, you solved—”

“I solved it, yes. I solved the final problem.”

The tutor’s face flushed a full shade of red, and he stared at this boy who stood in front of him so casually and made such unlikely claims.

“I should say,” Moriarty went on with a shrug, “that the explanation I gave was only a summation, because I had only a limited amount of space on the page, but I—”

“Silence,” the tutor growled. “You will be quiet, boy. Your insolence is … is staggering. I have heard many excuses from many boys over the years, but yours is surely the most brazen. Such misbehaviour cannot go unchecked. You will be punished.”

“But—”

“You have gone too far already, Moriarty,” the tutor warned. “Do not try my patience beyond its limits.”

Moriarty said nothing more.

The punishment was quite specific; of all the boys in the school, Moriarty would be the only one forbidden to take part in the visit to London Zoo to see the hippopotamus Obaysch, recently arrived from Egypt and already attracting vast crowds. Moriarty would instead be made to stay in his dorm room and consider what he had done, and the importance of doing as he had been instructed.