The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty

by Maxim Jakubowski

  He then made a strange request that he would come to me in the later evening at ten of the clock every Tuesday. He was indisposed at a more suitable time due to his important business in the shipping industry and his wish to spend the early evenings with his family. In exchange, he would offer me treble my fee, as long as I felt that I really could cure him.

  I gave him my assurance that I could and he seemed much cheered. And, what is more, I truly believe that I can help him. As he left, he seemed much taller than I had realized on first impression: such is the power of the mind over the physical being, he had seemed to grow inches upon my assurance.

  A second patient then. I will have enough to cover my weekly rent and to eat well. If a third patient emerges, perhaps I will even be able to purchase a picture to adorn these bare walls.

  5 July 1886

  It has been a momentous morning, one that will be forever seared into my consciousness. I have broken through the barrier – indeed, I have smashed it to smithereens – but the land behind that barrier proved to be dark and terrible. I wish I had never glimpsed its horrors.

  Already aware of the work of the great Mesmer, I became a devotee of John Baird’s researches into hypnotism while I undertook my medical learning in Edinburgh. Then, in Paris, Sigmund and I discussed hypnotism at great length and I became the master of self-hypnotism. I felt sure that I could use hypnosis to help any patient recover the occluded memories of events that had caused a disturbance of the mind.

  With his resolute refusal to discuss his darker memories, I had decided that Professor Moriarty should be the beneficiary of my first foray into the hypnotism of a patient. Yet, as I fingered my gold pocket watch and studied his severe, angular face, his high-domed forehead and stony countenance, I faltered. Never in my life had I encountered such a fiercely intelligent and obdurate gentleman, one who was hardly going to allow himself to be put under another’s spell.

  However, to my surprise, he leaned forward and said, with that curious small smirk upon his almost lipless mouth, “Stop playing, boy, and do whatever it is you feel you must do.”

  I arranged proceedings so that we were sitting opposite each other and I carefully followed Baird’s process. I held the pocket watch a fixed distance from the professor and asked him to stare intently at it. Five minutes of complete stillness and silence passed, but there was no change in the professor’s demeanour. He stared fixedly, barely blinking, but the light of keen, conscious intelligence never left his deep-set eyes.

  I was about to give up and return the pocket watch to my waistcoat when I noticed there was some delicate shift in his stare. I now seemed to be looking into the eyes not of a wise and cynical old man, but of an innocent boy.

  I trod carefully at first, asking him to describe the world of his childhood in minute detail. In a sober, even voice, with his gaze still fixed upon the watch, he described his mother’s bedroom and his father’s study with a devotion to detail that I believe is beyond fully conscious memory. Then I asked him to describe some event that took place in his father’s study, and that is when the darkness began.

  The young Moriarty had allowed Indian ink to stain some linen and his father summoned him to the study, but, under questioning, Moriarty blamed his brother. Thereupon, while Moriarty watched, his protesting brother’s bare legs were beaten with a cane, stroke after stroke after stroke, his father laughing manically all the while. It was only when blood ran freely down the back of the boy’s welted thighs and calves that the punishment ceased.

  There then, I thought, we have arrived at the likely root of the insomnia so quickly. Guilt, that emotion of which the professor is so dismissive, has disturbed his mind to the point that his body is in revolt and will not allow sleep, for the terrible occurrence no doubt haunts his dreams.

  I was ready to coax the professor back into the present, but first I thought I would try to invoke a more recent memory to see if I could understand the depth of the professor’s predicament. I asked him to describe his own study, which again he did in detail, and to picture himself seated at the desk. Was there anything that had taken place in that room that filled him with unease?

  The professor uttered a short, dry, staccato laugh that seemed out of keeping with his induced state, but he continued in his solemn voice. The toneless delivery of the words soon proved an ill match for the horrors they described. With no more bidding, the esteemed professor conjured images of such vileness that my stomach turns to think of them. A specialist in astronomy, he described a universe of dark intrigue in which he was the sun and his criminal subordinates and “soldiers” were the stars, some linked into constellations, others orbiting alone upon his governance. He portrayed himself issuing command after command from the desk, arranging for burglary, deception, forgery and worse – murder and assassination! Politicians, lordly gentlemen and gentlewomen, shopkeepers and beggars: no one was immune from the evil effect of his communications, not even children. The river of stories was shoaled with the corpses of the innocent.

  I was dumbfounded and a-trembling. At first I thought about running to the nearest constable. But it was then, in a moment of clarity, that I deduced that his tales were not true. As if this professor could possibly be running a network of the most damnable of criminals! No, the problems lay in the theories of Mesmer and Baird, and now I believed not one word of their supposed scientific reasoning. The hypnotized state was not a gateway to memory and truth – no! It was a mere portal to the vilest of imaginings that in the conscious world we can suppress and control, thank goodness. My ridiculous games had merely forced the venerable professor unwittingly to unleash a terrible fiction that had nothing to do with reality.

  The professor had finally fallen silent and I saw that the keen intelligence had returned to his eyes once more.

  “Remember, Dr Blake, that you promised complete confidentiality.”

  And, with that, he swept from the room, humming “Three Little Maids from School”, which was somewhat incongruous to my state of confusion. Everyone in this city seems to be humming those insufferable Gilbert and Sullivan ditties.

  It has been a sobering day. My understanding of hypnosis and recovered memory is in tatters, and I have no semblance of an idea how to proceed with the professor’s treatment.

  At least tomorrow I can look forward to the rather simpler case of Mr Smithington Smythe.

  6 July 1886

  It was nearly midnight, just half of an hour ago, when my door was nearly taken from its hinges with the banging. I had only just retired to bed, but had immediately fallen into a deep sleep and awoke in a state of high confusion. I stumbled my way out of the bedroom, into the consultation room and towards the noise. The door was shuddering with each determined blow.

  “Who is it?” I shouted, trying to control my hands as I lit a candle.

  “It is the Metropolitan Police. Open the door.”

  My thoughts immediately turned to Professor Moriarty. Was it possible that his words were not a fiction and the police were now investigating his manifold crimes?

  If only that were so.

  When I opened the door, I was looking up at a tall, portly man in a peaked cap who was accompanied by a uniformed officer.

  “Are you Dr Trevelyan Blake?”

  “Indeed.”

  “I am Inspector Bradstreet of Scotland Yard. There has been a vicious knife attack, doctor, not fifty yards from here.”

  “I will get dressed and come immediately.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Doctor. The victim is beyond all help and the police doctor is at the scene.”

  “Then why have you awoken me?”

  “I believe you know the victim, Doctor. Lady Eleanor Kennington.”

  I felt the candle drop from my fingers and the world went black.

  A few minutes later, which was as soon as I could gather my senses, I said that I must go to Eleanor and made to leave immediately, even though I was in a nightshirt and my feet were still bare.

>   The inspector barred my way with a strong arm.

  “It is not a sight you would like to see, sir. The dear lady has been cut …”

  “Disembowelled,” added the constable.

  “… in the manner of a medical man. You are a medical man, are you not, Doctor?”

  “Of course I am. What are you saying?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  Over the next ten minutes there ensued the most awful conversation I have ever been forced to endure. No doubt armed with gossip from one of the Kennington servants, the inspector intimated that he knew all about my fall from favour with the deceased Lord Kennington and Eleanor’s rejection of me.

  “You are well acquainted with Lady Eleanor Kennington’s house in Berkeley Square, and you are familiar with the precious artworks in the Upper Gallery, five of which have been cut from their frames. And you are also well acquainted with Lady Kennington’s habits, are you not?”

  “Well, yes. All that is true,” I said, while still trembling at the thought of my poor, pure Eleanor’s mutilated body.

  “So you would have known that, as usual, the lady would be alone, reading in the library at about thirty minutes past ten this evening, exactly the time the dear lady was murdered.”

  “What on earth are you saying, man?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.” The inspector paused. “But where were you, Doctor, between ten and eleven this evening?”

  I stared at the inspector in disbelief. “I was here.”

  “Alone, I dare say?” The man had a gleam in his eye.

  “No, Inspector. I was in the company of Mr Smithington Smythe, a very respectable man of some importance, for the entire hour.” By now I was in a state of anger. I ripped open a desk drawer and handed Mr Smythe’s card to the inspector. Even in my torment at the news of Eleanor’s death, I felt some satisfaction at seeing the gleam leave his eye. He looked thoroughly disappointed and turned to leave.

  “Rest assured we will speak to Mr Smythe.” The inspector stuck out his huge chest and stood in an imposing manner in the doorway. “You will not leave the city in a hurry now, will you, Doctor?”

  And, with that, the policemen left me to myself, and to the fullness of my deep and terrible grief.

  8 October 1886

  I write this in the shadow of the noose. My dear cousin Richard has brought me a pen, ink and paper, and the warder has allowed me to write what may be the last entry to be appended to my diary, as well as a letter to Dr Watson. Richard has been a friend to the last. He has been the only person to visit me in gaol. When I told him of my final, desperate plan to attract the attention of Sherlock Holmes, he at first said it was futile and told me to resign myself to my fate, but once he knew of my determination he took it upon himself to pursue the matter. He has managed to extract the diary from my few possessions still held at Barrel Yard, and he will take those pages, along with this final entry and the letter, to Dr Watson.

  And so I must return to the events of three months past.

  The end, when it came, came swiftly. In the early hours of the morning after the murder of dear Eleanor, I went to Berkeley Square. I wanted to grasp some final part of her, to say goodbye to her, to make her awful, sudden absence more comprehensible. An officer of the law guarded the doorway to the house and so I turned away and wandered the streets for some hours, twisting and turning, not knowing to where I was going until my feet took it upon themselves to bring me back to my rooms. I fell upon my bed and wept once more.

  There was another knock on the door. I was tear-stained and somewhat dishevelled but I was beyond such care. There, standing before me once more, was Inspector Bradstreet of Scotland Yard, this time accompanied by two constables.

  The inspector pushed me back into the room.

  “Doctor Blake, I put it to you that you have been seen staring up at Lady Eleanor Kennington’s house on an almost nightly basis.”

  “I …”

  “I put it to you that Lord Kennington cut you out of his will, and that Lady Kennington refused your advances.”

  All this was true, but I protested. His assemblage of the facts was skewed and inappropriate.

  “I put it to you that you murdered Lady Eleanor and stole from her five paintings.”

  I was seared and discombobulated by his accusation but I stood my ground and retorted, using his own ridiculous language. “And I put it to you, sir, that I can prove it was not me. Mr Smithington Smythe …”

  “Mr Smithington Smythe! The address on the card you handed to me was for Wilson’s funeral parlour in Clapham.”

  My knees weakened.

  “No one has ever heard of this Smythe. There has been no sight or sound of him in either Mayfair or Clapham, and his name is not recorded in any ledger. He simply does not exist. Between quarter past and half past ten of the clock yesterday evening, you were not in these rooms, sir, sitting with Mr Smithington Smythe. You were stealing through the gardens of Kennington House to prise open a window that you knew would give access to the library. You then strangled and stabbed …”

  “Disembowelled!”

  “… Lady Eleanor Kennington and stole the pictures from the Upper Gallery.”

  By then I had collapsed to my knees.

  “Search the premises, Constables.”

  Within a minute, one of the constables had returned from the bedroom. “This was under the bed, sir.”

  Held outward, taut between his hands, was the small Dutch painting of the windmill that Eleanor and I had stood before so many times, back in the days when the world was wonderful and so full of promise. I looked on, dumbfounded and defenceless, caught in a web beyond my comprehension.

  I have pleaded my innocence every day since. I have even broken my vow of confidentiality and talked of Professor Moriarty’s mysterious universe of crime, but I am looked upon as one would a madman.

  Not one soul believes a single word I say.

  Obsession

  Russel D. McLean

  “You may call me ‘Professor’.”

  He sits perfectly at ease, loose limbs remaining in control at all times. His high-domed forehead seems designed to keep his dark, and admittedly thinning, hair from creeping forward. There is a faint odour of hair pomade. He is clearly a man of intellect. Listen to the way he speaks. His skin is pale and his eyes are sunk into his forehead, giving him the gaunt appearance of an undertaker. But that is not his profession. Not unless he extracts a generous price from the families of those interred by his deceptively delicate-looking hands. He is wealthy. It is clear from his clothes and his demeanour. And the fact that he has paid for my time and expertise.

  “Professor,” I say, letting the name roll around my tongue.

  He sits forward. “I would prefer,” he says, with a hint of threat, “that we not deal in real names.”

  I sit back in my chair. Notebook open and pencil at the ready. The new leather squeaks as I adjust my weight. I look at the clock above the mantelpiece. My wife is waiting for me at home. This impromptu session will take no more than an hour.

  The Professor says, “I do not require you to take notes.”

  “Professor,” I say, “It is important that—”

  “—there must be no record,” he says. “You are already being rewarded handsomely for your services.”

  I try not to bristle at his tone. There is something patronising there. A disregard that I find personally insulting.

  “You look uncomfortable,” he says.

  “No.”

  “Many people are uncomfortable in my presence. I have always had that effect on others. Even as a child.”

  I nod, and put away my notes. This “Professor” will be here for one, maybe two sessions at most. He is, like so many of the richer clients who seek my audience, merely seeking an outlet for his boredom. As the new medicine of psychiatry extends beyond the asylum, many of my colleagues fear it is destined to become merely another way for the privileged to relieve their boredom.

>   “Tell me,” I say, “about your childhood.”

  The Professor is, in a purely mental sense, elusive as a butterfly that has not been sufficiently exposed to cyanide. He mentions his parents only briefly and dismissively, before implying that he has a brother who is a colonel in Her Majesty’s armed forces. Beyond that he does not go into great detail. His blood relatives are merely facilitators of his existence. He does not speak to them and has not done so since he graduated from university education.

  “My family became merely a means to an end,” he tells me. “I was educated. I was never at a loss for money. I could buy and sell friends easily. But such friends … I found they tired easily. I do, however, find their lives and their habits fascinating in the way an entomologist finds the rituals of ants to be of great interest.”

  “You see other people as ants?”

  He keeps quiet. Expecting me to answer the question for him. But that is not how the game is played. He has to understand the rules.

  I say, “You have a superior intellect to most men?”

  “I have published volumes on binomial theories in mathematics that shook the established order. And more still on the movements of the asteroids and the nature of the heavens.”

  “To acclaim?”

  Again, he says nothing.

  “But this is not enough for you? You were not recognised for your—”

  “Recognition has nothing to do with it!” A sudden, unexpected flash of anger. He sits forward. Voice close to cracking. There is a madness in his eyes that he had hidden before. His body stiffens as though bitten by a venomous snake. “Recognition is for those obsessed with the opinions of other people. A man of my intellect … There is no one whose approval I seek!”

  “No one?”

  He hesitates. Considers his response. Our most honest reactions, so I and others have come to believe, arise when we do not consider them. Instinct teaches us about ourselves. But men like the Professor – in need of control – suppress these automatic reactions, viewing them as weakness.

  “Of late, I have experienced an itch,” the Professor says. “Initially, little more than a minor irritation. But over months and even years, it has become something I can no longer ignore.” He leans forward in his chair, brings me into his confidence. “There is no man who so controls his life as I do. Who is aware of, and able to control, every detail. No man surprises me or unsettles my plans. Except one. An individual who threatens to undermine my hard-fought discipline. We have never met and yet he thwarts me at every turn, threatens to cause a lifetime’s achievements to crumble and float away on the wind as though they were mere dust.”