The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty Page 4

  Though he wasn’t there to speak to her, Molly could hear the tales he’d weave in her mind all the same.

  “I was a poor boy from a poor family. I grew up seeing my own mother starve before my eyes. I began to steal to help us survive.”

  “I was an honorable professor, devoting my life to shaping the minds of our nation’s youth. One day, I was framed for an unspeakable crime and I realized my honor meant nothing.”

  “You stupid girl! I’m a smart man and crime made me rich and powerful! Why else would I do it?”

  Each fantasy was like a fresh phantom that would haunt her for a day or more. One by one she banished them. They didn’t fit the facts. Moriarty was brilliant. Smart enough to overcome any poverty or tarnished reputation. Smart enough to gain riches and power without needing to be troubled by the law. There had to be something more.

  She got her first hint of what was causing all the gang’s problems when she snuck into the back room of one of their favorite taverns to get everyone’s lunch orders. She interrupted a game of darts. The gentlemen involved only had a second to glance at her before the game was interrupted far more dramatically. A crashing sound came from the back of the room and suddenly a flood of police officers came swarming in. Within the gang there were many things Molly wasn’t allowed to know. However, one lesson had always been thoroughly impressed on her: when the police arrive, it is time to be somewhere else. She took a quiet step back into the tavern, sat down, and played with a length of string until the fuss died down.

  Police filed out. Men she’d worked with for years walked past her in handcuffs. No one looked at her once. She stared, but only because that’s what a spectator would do. A dozen entwined strings of fate were snipped in an instant and no one said a thing. It could be worse, she mused. They might have died. And, although it was dangerous, she allowed herself to be grateful for that much at least.

  She heard a chuckle as the last officers left. “It looks like they knew who to be bitter about. Not that it did them any good!”

  When they were all gone, life at the tavern continued. The owner had been arrested for harboring criminals, but the barmaid, Antonia, was still taking orders. She came over to Molly. “Anything for you, love? I’d give you tea for your nerves, only you don’t look like you have any.”

  “Thank you.” Molly smiled. “Can I have it in back? I think that will be my last chance to see the place.”

  Antonia nodded, not so much because she understood as because she’d long since learned not to ask questions about these things. Molly got her tea and walked back into the ransacked room she’d only ever seen for minutes at a time before.

  She righted a chair and table and wondered what sort of plans had been made there. Would this room ever host crooked games of cards again? Ever hear the elaborate details of the most nefarious plots in England? Maybe the tavern wouldn’t even be in business by the end of the week.

  This was a place he built, she realized. Professor Moriarty had hundreds of secret dens throughout London. As far as Molly knew, this one wasn’t particularly special. But the police had gotten some significant members today: Giles, Crane, Moffey. Men who did good work for the Professor. And now they were gone. Arrests happened sometimes, but the police weren’t normally this lucky.

  Or was it luck?

  There was an article, almost waiting for her, on the dartboard. The headline read “Consulting Detective Helps Unravel String of Robberies”. The paper was full of holes from the darts. It took a bit of time to piece the story together.

  There was a man who helped the police solve crimes. It sounded like he was good at it too. The robberies mentioned in the article weren’t Moriarty’s so far as she knew. They weren’t amateur work either. The detective had put together some very subtle clues to solve the case. He sounded smart. He sounded brilliant. So why was he fighting crime where Moriarty caused it?

  Molly’s tea grew cold as she sipped it and pondered.

  The detective was more famous than she’d realized. Soon, she seemed to hear his name everywhere. She read his stories. The writing was overly sensational, but it was easy to see why he captivated people. He was like a magician, one who could explain his tricks and still keep the audience mystified. He was a genius and yet he was also loved. Perhaps he wasn’t rich or exceptionally powerful but Molly suspected he could have those things if he wanted to. (Particularly if the rumors about his brother were true.)

  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 a
nything. 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.

  Everything Flows and Nothing Stays

  John Soanes

  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.

  His dorm room was a poor environment in which to consider these matters, or indeed to think at all. He’d made a limited effort to personalise his living environment, merely affixing two pictures to the wall near his bed (drawings given to him as a going-away present by his family: one of a soldier, the other of a steam train), and the furniture had been scratched and battered by the room’s previous occupants, which in itself annoyed him; his predecessors at the school seemed to have aims that extended only as far as carving their names on the surfaces of desks, drawers and doors, whilst he was increasingly feeling that, with appropriate discipline and focus, a person could carve their name across the surface of the known world and become a byword for achievement, like Alexander or Napoleon.

  Moriarty had, then, given scant consideration to the topic of obedience and its importance, and instead had thought about the cold smile on the tutor’s face as he had stated the punishment; a near-sneer, as if the tutor derived some pleasure from exercising the power he had over his pupil. Moriarty could only conclude that the authority the tutors had over him and the pupils – indeed, the power all adults had over boys of his age – derived from the concept of “might makes right”, a phrase he had read recently. The tutors had control over him solely because of their age and perceived seniority, he concluded; even their limited intelligence was not a hindrance, as they had the physical ability to force the pupils to obey orders, should the need arise.

  Moriarty spent a full four minutes considering the imbalance of this – that lesser individuals should be able to manipulate those whose thinking was demonstrably superior – and then he had pulled on his coat and set about disobeying the terms of his punishment. Easily bypassing the groundskeeper who was supposed to be ensuring he remained within his dorm, he exited the school building.

  And then he left the school grounds, and headed into London.

  Whilst the others were at London Zoo in Regent’s Park, Moriarty spent a little time in Hyde Park. On the south side of the park, wooden hoardings had been erected, ahead of the Great Exhibition, which was scheduled to take place the following year. Beyond the edge of the park, horse-drawn carriages passed by in a constant creak of wheels and clip-clop of hooves. Nearer to him, a stream of people passed by the work in progress, couples and nannies pushing baby carriages made of wood and wicker. He watched them pass by, and felt no connection with them at all.

  Moriarty stayed in Hyde Park for a while, standing on the Serpentine Bridge and musing about the flow of the rivers through London, how vital they were for the city and yet how they were for the most part unseen, like the blood flow Descartes had written about. As he stood on the bridge and watched the wind playing over the face of the water, a butterfly landed a short distance from him, a dash of colour against the stone of the bridge.

  It occurred to him that lingering in one place might prove to be a mistake; if the school party was unable to see the fourlegged attraction in Regent’s Park, the masters might decide to take the boys for a walk elsewhere in the capital, and he might be discovered. One single person too many in the queue ahead of the pupils might lead to undesirable consequences, and he did not intend wasting his time explaining himself to the older but lesser minds of the school simply because a conjunction of unlikely events had led to him being discovered. He decided to move on, to head towards the East End, generally following the route of the rivers of London, the city’s hidden circulatory system.

  He set off towards the park gates and, as he walked past the butterfly, it flew into the air, wings beating frantically.

  He walked at a measured pace – he knew the length of his stride and the distance he could cover before he needed to get back to the school – and though he was still young, his height, his thin face and his high forehead made him look older. His long arms, and the subtle vertical striping of his coat, made him look even taller, and he stood out from the crowd both in appearance and bearing. His head moved from side to side as he took in all the details of his surroundings, and, as he made his way past Hyde Park Corner and on to the edge of Green Park, he realised that he was moving through the crowd
unimpeded, the surrounding people leaving a space around him.

  Moriarty allowed himself a flicker of amusement at this; he was happy for people to avoid him out of suspicion if not out of fear or respect, but, as he felt an east wind pick up and blow the thin strands of his hair back from his forehead, he found himself almost wishing to experience the normal Brownian motion of a body through a crowd, as others standing closer by might have afforded some protection from the wind that even now pulled at his coat.

  As the carriages passed by and kicked up mud, he stood and looked across Green Park, at Constitution Hill, which was not a hill but a road; the road where Peel, the founder of the Metropolitan Police Force, had sustained a fatal wound after falling from his horse, but where all three of the attacks on Queen Victoria had failed. The moral, if one was to be sought, appeared to be that accidents were more likely to be fatal than assassination attempts, and less likely to attract further investigation.

  Moving through the crowd as if in a bubble, Moriarty walked along Piccadilly, following the edge of Green Park.

  Always keeping at least ten paces between them, the older boy followed, confident he had not been seen.

  The crowds grew denser on Piccadilly, and Moriarty considered entering a shop to escape the throng. There was a bookshop there, and he had money enough to afford to make a purchase – having read of the recent premiere of Wagner’s Lohengrin, he was minded to see if he could find a copy of the source material, preferably in the original German – but he also knew it would be difficult to hide a new book upon returning to the school. Any new item attracted the attention of the other boys, and would lead someone to hide the book by way of playing a prank, or, worse, news of the acquisition would reach the ears of the tutors.