The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
exactly as they occurred. I alone know the absolute truth of the
matter, and I am satisfied that the time has come when no good
purpose is to be served by its suppression. As far as I know,
there have been only three accounts in the public press: that in
the _Journal de Genève_ on May 6th, 1891, the Reuter’s despatch
in the English papers on May 7th, and finally the recent letter
to which I have alluded. Of these the first and second were
extremely condensed, while the last is, as I shall now show, an
absolute perversion of the facts. It lies with me to tell for the
first time what really took place between Professor Moriarty and
Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
It may be remembered that after my marriage, and my subsequent
start in private practice, the very intimate relations which had
existed between Holmes and myself became to some extent modified.
He still came to me from time to time when he desired a companion
in his investigation, but these occasions grew more and more
seldom, until I find that in the year 1890 there were only three
cases of which I retain any record. During the winter of that
year and the early spring of 1891, I saw in the papers that he
had been engaged by the French government upon a matter of
supreme importance, and I received two notes from Holmes, dated
from Narbonne and from Nimes, from which I gathered that his stay
in France was likely to be a long one. It was with some surprise,
therefore, that I saw him walk into my consulting-room upon the
evening of the 24th of April. It struck me that he was looking
even paler and thinner than usual.
“Yes, I have been using myself up rather too freely,” he
remarked, in answer to my look rather than to my words; “I have
been a little pressed of late. Have you any objection to my
closing your shutters?”
The only light in the room came from the lamp upon the table at
which I had been reading. Holmes edged his way round the wall and
flinging the shutters together, he bolted them securely.
“You are afraid of something?” I asked.
“Well, I am.”
“Of what?”
“Of air-guns.”
“My dear Holmes, what do you mean?”
“I think that you know me well enough, Watson, to understand that
I am by no means a nervous man. At the same time, it is stupidity
rather than courage to refuse to recognise danger when it is
close upon you. Might I trouble you for a match?” He drew in the
smoke of his cigarette as if the soothing influence was grateful
to him.
“I must apologise for calling so late,” said he, “and I must
further beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave
your house presently by scrambling over your back garden wall.”
“But what does it all mean?” I asked.
He held out his hand, and I saw in the light of the lamp that two
of his knuckles were burst and bleeding.
“It is not an airy nothing, you see,” said he, smiling. “On the
contrary, it is solid enough for a man to break his hand over. Is
Mrs. Watson in?”
“She is away upon a visit.”
“Indeed! You are alone?”
“Quite.”
“Then it makes it the easier for me to propose that you should
come away with me for a week to the Continent.”
“Where?”
“Oh, anywhere. It’s all the same to me.”
There was something very strange in all this. It was not Holmes’s
nature to take an aimless holiday, and something about his pale,
worn face told me that his nerves were at their highest tension.
He saw the question in my eyes, and, putting his finger-tips
together and his elbows upon his knees, he explained the
situation.
“You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?” said he.
“Never.”
“Aye, there’s the genius and the wonder of the thing!” he cried.
“The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That’s
what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime. I tell you,
Watson, in all seriousness, that if I could beat that man, if I
could free society of him, I should feel that my own career had
reached its summit, and I should be prepared to turn to some more
placid line in life. Between ourselves, the recent cases in which
I have been of assistance to the royal family of Scandinavia, and
to the French republic, have left me in such a position that I
could continue to live in the quiet fashion which is most
congenial to me, and to concentrate my attention upon my chemical
researches. But I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet
in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty
were walking the streets of London unchallenged.”
“What has he done, then?”
“His career has been an extraordinary one. He is a man of good
birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a
phenomenal mathematical faculty. At the age of twenty-one he
wrote a treatise upon the Binomial Theorem, which has had a
European vogue. On the strength of it he won the Mathematical
Chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all
appearances, a most brilliant career before him. But the man had
hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal
strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was
increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his
extraordinary mental powers. Dark rumours gathered round him in
the university town, and eventually he was compelled to resign
his chair and to come down to London, where he set up as an Army
coach. So much is known to the world, but what I am telling you
now is what I have myself discovered.
“As you are aware, Watson, there is no one who knows the higher
criminal world of London so well as I do. For years past I have
continually been conscious of some power behind the malefactor,
some deep organizing power which forever stands in the way of the
law, and throws its shield over the wrong-doer. Again and again
in cases of the most varying sorts—forgery cases, robberies,
murders—I have felt the presence of this force, and I have
deduced its action in many of those undiscovered crimes in which
I have not been personally consulted. For years I have
endeavoured to break through the veil which shrouded it, and at
last the time came when I seized my thread and followed it, until
it led me, after a thousand cunning windings, to ex-Professor
Moriarty of mathematical celebrity.
“He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half
that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great
city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has
a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in
the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations,
and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little
himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and
splendidly organized. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be
abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be
removed—the word is passed to the Professor, the matter is
organized and carried out. The agent may be caught. In that case
money is found for his bail or his defence. But the central power
which uses the agent is never caught—never so much as suspected.
This was the organization which I deduced, Watson, and which I
devoted my whole energy to exposing and breaking up.
“But the Professor was fenced round with safeguards so cunningly
devised that, do what I would, it seemed impossible to get
evidence which would convict in a court of law. You know my
powers, my dear Watson, and yet at the end of three months I was
forced to confess that I had at last met an antagonist who was my
intellectual equal. My horror at his crimes was lost in my
admiration at his skill. But at last he made a trip—only a
little, little trip—but it was more than he could afford when I
was so close upon him. I had my chance, and, starting from that
point, I have woven my net round him until now it is all ready to
close. In three days—that is to say, on Monday next—matters will
be ripe, and the Professor, with all the principal members of his
gang, will be in the hands of the police. Then will come the
greatest criminal trial of the century, the clearing up of over
forty mysteries, and the rope for all of them; but if we move at
all prematurely, you understand, they may slip out of our hands
even at the last moment.
“Now, if I could have done this without the knowledge of
Professor Moriarty, all would have been well. But he was too wily
for that. He saw every step which I took to draw my toils round
him. Again and again he strove to break away, but I as often
headed him off. I tell you, my friend, that if a detailed account
of that silent contest could be written, it would take its place
as the most brilliant bit of thrust-and-parry work in the history
of detection. Never have I risen to such a height, and never have
I been so hard pressed by an opponent. He cut deep, and yet I
just undercut him. This morning the last steps were taken, and
three days only were wanted to complete the business. I was
sitting in my room thinking the matter over, when the door opened
and Professor Moriarty stood before me.
“My nerves are fairly proof, Watson, but I must confess to a
start when I saw the very man who had been so much in my thoughts
standing there on my threshhold. His appearance was quite
familiar to me. He is extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes
out in a white curve, and his two eyes are deeply sunken in his
head. He is clean-shaven, pale, and ascetic-looking, retaining
something of the professor in his features. His shoulders are
rounded from much study, and his face protrudes forward, and is
forever slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously
reptilian fashion. He peered at me with great curiosity in his
puckered eyes.
“‘You have less frontal development than I should have expected,’
said he, at last. ‘It is a dangerous habit to finger loaded
firearms in the pocket of one’s dressing-gown.’
“The fact is that upon his entrance I had instantly recognised
the extreme personal danger in which I lay. The only conceivable
escape for him lay in silencing my tongue. In an instant I had
slipped the revolver from the drawer into my pocket, and was
covering him through the cloth. At his remark I drew the weapon
out and laid it cocked upon the table. He still smiled and
blinked, but there was something about his eyes which made me
feel very glad that I had it there.
“‘You evidently don’t know me,’ said he.
“‘On the contrary,’ I answered, ‘I think it is fairly evident
that I do. Pray take a chair. I can spare you five minutes if you
have anything to say.’
“‘All that I have to say has already crossed your mind,’ said he.
“‘Then possibly my answer has crossed yours,’ I replied.
“‘You stand fast?’
“‘Absolutely.’
“He clapped his hand into his pocket, and I raised the pistol