Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon(3)

Good Lord, he thought, what can this mean? And, worse, what consequences might it have for his batting? Could he somehow be transforming into an ambidexter or, God forbid, a favorer of the left hand: a sinister? Left-handed bowlers on the cricket field were one thing—they were largely harmless—but left-handed batsmen were a nuisance, necessitating the rearrangement of the field and causing all kinds of fuss, bother, and boredom. His mind reeled at the awful possibilities should his body somehow be rebelling against him. He would never be able to take the crease for Marylebone again!

Gradually Conan Doyle calmed himself, and fear gave way to fascination, although this lasted only for as long as it took him to read the manuscript itself. Detailed on its closely written pages was a conversation between Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, who had apparently taken it upon themselves to meet at Benekey’s in High Holborn, a hostelry noted for the privacy offered by its booths and the quality of its wines. According to the manuscript, Moriarty had instigated the meeting by way of a note delivered to 221B Baker Street, and Holmes, intrigued, had consented to sit down with the master criminal.

In his letter, Conan Doyle explained what he found most troubling about the contents upon first perusal: he had only begun writing about Moriarty days earlier, and had barely mentioned him in the course of the as-yet-untitled story. Yet here was Moriarty, seated in Benekey’s, about to have the most extraordinary conversation with Sherlock Holmes.



Extract from the manuscript (Caxton CD/ MSH 94: MS)

Holmes regarded Moriarty intensely, his every nerve aquiver. Before him sat the most dangerous man in England, a calculating, cold-blooded, criminal mastermind. For the first time in many years, Holmes felt real fear, even with a revolver cocked in his lap and concealed by a napkin.

“I hope the wine is to your liking,” said Moriarty.

“Have you poisoned it?” asked Holmes. “I hesitate even to touch the glass, in case you have treated it with some infernal compound of your own devising.”

“Why would I do that?” asked Moriarty. He appeared genuinely puzzled by the suggestion.

“You are my archnemesis,” Holmes replied. “You have hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain runs in your blood. Could I but free society of you, I should feel that my career had reached its summit.”

“Yes, about that archnemesis business . . .”

“What about it?” asked Holmes.

“Well, isn’t it a bit strange that it’s never come up before? I mean, if I’m your archnemesis, the Napoleon of crime, a spider at the heart of an infernal web with a thousand radiations, responsible for half that is evil in London—all that kind of thing—and you’ve been tracking me for years, then why haven’t you mentioned me before? You know, it would surely have popped up in conversation at some point. It’s not the kind of thing one tends to forget, really, is it, a criminal mastermind at the heart of some great conspiracy? If I were in your shoes, I’d never stop talking about me.”

“I—” Holmes paused. “I’ve never really thought about it in that way. I must admit that you did pop into my mind quite recently, and distinctly fully formed. Perhaps I took a blow to the head at some stage, although I’m sure Doctor Watson would have noted such an injury.”

“He writes down everything else,” said Moriarty. “Hard to see him missing something like that.”

“Indeed. I am lucky to have him.”

“I’d find it a little annoying myself,” said Moriarty. “It’s rather like being Samuel Johnson and finding that, every time you lift a coffee cup, Boswell is scribbling details of the position of your fingers and asking you to say something witty about it all.”

“Well, that is where we differ. It’s why I am not a scoundrel.”

“Hard to be a scoundrel when someone is always writing down what one is doing,” said Moriarty. “One might as well just toddle along to Scotland Yard and make a full confession, thus saving the forces of law and order a lot of fuss. But that’s beside the point. We need to return to the matter in hand, which is my sudden arrival on the scene.”

“It is somewhat perturbing,” agreed Holmes.

“You should see it from my side,” said Moriarty. “Perturbing isn’t the half of it. For a start, I have an awareness of being mathematically gifted.”

“Indeed you are,” said Holmes. “At the age of twenty-one you wrote a treatise on the binomial theorem, which has had a European vogue.”

“Look, I don’t even know what the binomial theorem is, never mind what it might resemble with a European vogue—a description that makes no sense at all, by the way, when you think about it. Surely it’s either the binomial theorem or it isn’t, even if it’s described in a French accent.”

“But on the strength of it you won a chair at one of our smaller universities!” Holmes protested.

“If I did, then name the university,” said Moriarty.

Holmes shifted in his chair. He was clearly struggling. “The identity of the institution doesn’t immediately spring to mind,” he admitted.

“That’s because I was never chair of anything,” said Moriarty. “I’m not even very good at basic addition. I struggle to pay the milkman.”

Holmes frowned. “That can’t be right.”