My Friend and Colleague - Chapter Three - Moriarty: A Narrative of Crime

 

 Sherlock Holmes
MY FRIEND and COLLEAGUE
THE EXTRAORDINARY FINAL PROBLEM
by
Dr. John H. Watson
and
L. Guy Campbell
 __________________________________

Chapter Three
 Moriarty: A Narrative of Crime
____________

    It was in the year of 1881 that Sherlock Holmes, at the age of 27, took up lodging in Mrs. Hudson’s upper Baker Street residence, London, located at 221B.  Holmes’ elder brother, Mycroft, possessed of similar deductive reasoning, if less disciplined, maintained a high, yet secret, position with the British government.  Not known as a man of action, Mycroft was a constant figure at the Diogenes Club, of which he was co-founder. One of his associates described Mycroft as “Heavily built and massive, having a suggestion of uncouth physical inertia in his figure, but above this unwieldy frame there was perched a head so masterful in its brow, so alert in its steel-gray, deep-set eyes, so firm in its lips, and so subtle in its play of expression, that after the first glance one forgot the gross body and remembered only the dominant mind.”

    My introduction to these two great minds changed the course of my life forever, taking me on paths never before dreamed of.  Dr. John Hamish Watson is my full name.  It is to the following facts that I intend to report:

    I first met Holmes when searching for lodgings in London after my injury and return from military service as a surgeon in Afghanistan. "How are you?"  Holmes said cordially upon our first meeting, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit. "You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive."  From that moment onward Holmes and myself would often be sharing rooms together, and our lives intertwined in more ways than one.  Though I later married Mary Morstan, whom I met during the case of The Sign of Four, and, on occasion indulged my medical practise from my own residence, more years than not Holmes and I occupied the rooms at 221B together, and the numerous cases we solved occupied all my time.

    There was one thing that, despite all the other cases and criminals that occupied Holmes’ attention, commanded his attention more than any other.  That was, indeed, the man Holmes often referred to as the Napoleon of Crime, Professor James Moriarty.

    Holmes described Moriarty as follows, ”Moriarty 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 on 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, the University of Leeds, and had, to all appearances, a most brilliant career before him.  Moriarty also wrote The Dynamics of An Asteroid, described as "a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics and that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticising it. 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 come down to London, where his diabolical career in crime began.”

    It is true that, in all of my narratives on cases that Sherlock Holmes and I worked on together, Moriarty has only been known to have been involved in very few.  However, it has also been noted that Holmes has suspected Moriarty’s involvement behind many more, and has said so openly to Scotland Yard.  Inspector Lestrade, habitually inept at the art of detecting, paid very little attention to Holmes on these occasions.  Add to the fact that no one, not even Holmes, was sure what Moriarty looked like.  Scotland Yard’s inability to believe in anything they cannot hold in their pitiful grasp, went a long way in making Moriarty appear like a figment of Holmes’ imagination.

    Yet, for all this information, it appears that Holmes and his brother Mycroft are the only men in Britain to be completely aware of Moriarty and his underground criminal entourage.