The only light in the room came from the lamp upon the table at which Ihad been reading. Holmes edged his way round the wall and flinging theshutters 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 amby no means a nervous man. At the same time, it is stupidity rather thancourage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you. MightI trouble you for a match?" He drew in the smoke of his cigarette as ifthe soothing influence was grateful to him.
"I must apologize for calling so late," said he, "and I must further begyou to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave your house presentlyby 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 hisknuckles were burst and bleeding.
"It is not an airy nothing, you see," said he, smiling. "On thecontrary, 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 awaywith 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 natureto take an aimless holiday, and something about his pale, worn face toldme that his nerves were at their highest tension. He saw the question inmy eyes, and, putting his finger-tips together and his elbows upon hisknees, 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. "Theman pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That's what putshim on a pinnacle in the records of crime. I tell you, Watson, in allseriousness, that if I could beat that man, if I could free societyof him, I should feel that my own career had reached its summit, andI should be prepared to turn to some more placid line in life. Betweenourselves, the recent cases in which I have been of assistance to theroyal family of Scandinavia, and to the French republic, have left me insuch a position that I could continue to live in the quiet fashionwhich is most congenial to me, and to concentrate my attention upon mychemical researches. But I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quietin my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty werewalking the streets of London unchallenged."
"What has he done, then?"
"His career has been an extraordinary one. He is a man of good birth andexcellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematicalfaculty. At the age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon the BinomialTheorem, which has had a European vogue. On the strength of it he wonthe Mathematical Chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, toall appearances, a most brilliant career before him. But the man hadhereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strainran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased andrendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers.Dark rumors gathered round him in the university town, and eventually hewas compelled to resign his chair and to come down to London, where heset up as an army coach. So much is known to the world, but what I amtelling you now is what I have myself discovered.
"As you are aware, Watson, there is no one who knows the higher criminalworld of London so well as I do. For ye
ars past I have continually beenconscious of some power behind the malefactor, some deep organizingpower which forever stands in the way of the law, and throws its shieldover the wrong-doer. Again and again in cases of the most varyingsorts--forgery cases, robberies, murders--I have felt the presence ofthis force, and I have deduced its action in many of those undiscoveredcrimes in which I have not been personally consulted. For years I haveendeavored to break through the veil which shrouded it, and at lastthe time came when I seized my thread and followed it, until it ledme, after a thousand cunning windings, to ex-Professor Moriarty ofmathematical celebrity.
"He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half thatis evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is agenius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the firstorder. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, butthat web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver ofeach of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents arenumerous and splendidly organized. Is there a crime to be done, apaper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to beremoved--the word is passed to the Professor, the matter is organizedand carried out. The agent may be caught. In that case money is foundfor his bail or his defence. But the central power which uses the agentis never caught--never so much as suspected. This was the organizationwhich I deduced, Watson, and which I devoted my whole energy to exposingand breaking up.
"But the Professor was fenced round with safeguards so cunningly devisedthat, do what I would, it seemed impossible to get evidence which wouldconvict in a court of law. You know my powers, my dear Watson, and yetat the end of three months I was forced to confess that I had at lastmet an antagonist who was my intellectual equal. My horror at his crimeswas lost in my admiration at his skill. But at last he made a trip--onlya little, little trip--but it was more than he could afford when I wasso close upon him. I had my chance, and, starting from that point, Ihave woven my net round him until now it is all ready to close. In threedays--that is to say, on Monday next--matters will be ripe, and theProfessor, with all the principal members of his gang, will be in thehands of the police. Then will come the greatest criminal trial of thecentury, the clearing up of over forty mysteries, and the rope for allof them; but if we move at all prematurely, you understand, they mayslip out of our hands even at the last moment.
"Now, if I could have done this without the knowledge of ProfessorMoriarty, all would have been well. But he was too wily for that. He sawevery step which I took to draw my toils round him. Again and againhe 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 couldbe written, it would take its place as the most brilliant bit ofthrust-and-parry work in the history of detection. Never have I risen tosuch a height, and never have I been so hard pressed by an opponent. Hecut deep, and yet I just undercut him. This morning the last steps weretaken, and three days only were wanted to complete the business. I wassitting in my room thinking the matter over, when the door opened andProfessor Moriarty stood before me.
"My nerves are fairly proof, Watson, but I must confess to a start whenI saw the very man who had been so much in my thoughts standing there onmy threshhold. His appearance was quite familiar to me. He is extremelytall and thin, his forehead domes out in a white curve, and his twoeyes are deeply sunken in his head. He is clean-shaven, pale, andascetic-looking, retaining something of the professor in his features.His shoulders are rounded from much study, and his face protrudesforward, and is forever slowly oscillating from side to side in acuriously reptilian fashion. He peered at me with great curiosity in hispuckered eyes.
"'You have less frontal development than I should have expected,' saidhe, at last. 'It is a dangerous habit to finger loaded firearms in thepocket of one's dressing-gown.'