The Criminal Mastermind of Baker Street

by Rob Nunn

  Bright with the thought of his future reward, Redmond hurried out of the room to place Holmes’ advertisement in the papers.

  At 6:30 that evening, there was a knock on the door at Baker Street.

  “Mr. Henry Baker, I believe,” Holmes said, answering the door. “Is that your hat, Mr. Baker?”

  Henry Baker was a large man with rounded shoulders, a massive head with a touch of red in his nose and cheeks. A slight tremor of his extended hand confirmed Holmes’ surmise as to his drinking habit.

  Baker answered in a slow, staccato fashion. “Yes, sir, that is undoubtedly my hat.”

  “We have retained these things for some days because we expected to see an advertisement from you giving your address. I am at a loss to know why you did not advertise.”

  “Shillings have not been so plentiful with me as they once were,” the visitor remarked.

  “Very naturally. By the way, about the bird - we were compelled to eat it.”

  “To eat it!”

  “Yes, it would have been no use to anyone had we not done so. But I presume that this other fresh goose upon the sideboard will answer your purpose equally well?”

  “Oh, certainly, certainly!” answered Baker with a sigh of relief. “That looks like quite an excellent bird.”

  Holmes glanced at Watson with a slight shrug of his shoulders before turning back to Baker. “There is your hat, then, and there your bird. By the way, would it bore you to tell me where you got the other one from? I am somewhat of a fowl fancier, and I have seldom seen a better grown goose.”

  “Certainly. There are a few of us who frequent the Alpha Inn near the Museum. This year our good host instituted a goose club, by which on consideration of some few pence a week, we were to receive a bird at Christmas. My pence were duly paid, and the rest is familiar to you. I am much indebted to you, sir.” Baker bowed solemnly to Holmes and Watson and took his leave.

  “So much for Mr. Henry Baker,” said Holmes after he closed the door. “It is quite certain that he knows nothing whatever about the matter. I suggest we follow up this clue at the Alpha Inn while it is still hot.”

  Holmes and Watson followed the trail of the carbuncle, and found that the geese provided to the Alpha Inn goose club members came from a salesman in Covent Garden by the name of Breckinridge. Back out into the December cold they went, travelling onto the Covent Garden Market, where they found the stall bearing the name of Breckinridge just closing up for the day. Holmes questioned the salesman and found that the geese came from a breeder on Brixton Road. Holmes and Watson had barely moved away from Breckenridge when a little rat-faced fellow began pestering the salesman about his geese.

  Watching the new man being shooed away by Breckenridge, Holmes whispered to Watson, “Ha, this may save us a trip to Brixton Road,” and quickly caught up with the new arrival.

  The man spun around, pale-faced and quivering. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “I could not help overhearing your discussion with the salesman. I think that I could be of assistance.”

  “You? Who are you? You couldn’t possibly know anything of this matter.”

  “My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don’t know.”

  At Holmes’ name, the man turned even paler. “But you can know nothing of this?”

  “I see that you recognize my name, so you understand that what you say is not true. You are endeavoring to trace some geese which were sold by Mrs. Oakshott, of Brixton Road, to a salesman named Breckinridge, by him in turn to Mr. Windigate of the Alpha Inn, and by him to his club, of which Mr. Henry Baker is a member.” Holmes paused for a moment to let his grey eyes bore down on the man. “That goose had something very valuable to you in it, didn’t it Mr. Ryder?”

  Suddenly very worried, Ryder squeaked, “How do you know my name?”

  “Mr. Ryder, you clearly know who I am so don’t waste my time with such bleat. You are the head attendant at the Hotel Cosmopolitan, the same man who let a plumber into the Countess of Morcar’s room the day that her carbuncle went missing. And now you’ve lost the gem. The game’s up, Ryder.”

  As the cold air enveloped the men, Holmes moved in closer to Ryder and lowered his voice to a menacing tone. “If you recognize my name, then you know that a crime of such magnitude should be run through my organization. It would have never fallen apart as it has, and you would be under my protection. But you weren’t the force behind this theft, were you, Ryder?”

  “Please, Mr. Holmes,” Ryder stammered. “It wasn’t my idea. I was only following orders, sir.”

  “Precisely. And from whom did the orders come? The orders to steal the carbuncle and place the blame on your plumber with a convenient criminal record so that there was no trail back to you or your superior in crime?”

  “I never met with the man. I only got my orders through other people and notes. I swear, Mr. Holmes.”

  “A name, man. Give me a name!” Holmes growled.

  Looking around fearfully, Ryder whispered, “Please, he can’t know that I told you. He threatened my sister.”

  Holmes nodded curtly at the man’s pleadings. Ryder took a deep breath and finally whispered, “His name is Moriarty.”

  Holmes placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. “You are not cut out for this line of work, Mr. Ryder. I suggest that you return to the Hotel Cosmopolitan, and when John Horner returns to work in a few days, cleared of all charges, that you give him a significant raise.”

  “Of course, Mr. Holmes, anything you say. God help me!” Ryder burst into convulsive sobbing, with his face buried in his hands.

  “Go!” said Holmes. “No more words. Go!”

  As the man rushed off, Watson turned his surprised face to Holmes.

  “After all, Watson,” Holmes smiled, “it is the season of forgiveness. Chance has put in our way a most important brick in the case against our rival. My man will return the carbuncle, we will split the reward, John Horner will be released, and we may take up our case against a most singular foe.”

  Holmes paused for a moment, looking at the snow beginning to fall. “Yes, Watson, we have the man’s name now. I feel that it is time that we got to know who this Moriarty really is.”

  Chapter 7: Dear Me, Mister Holmes

  “I am inclined to think ...” Watson started.

  “I should do so,” Holmes remarked impatiently.

  “Really, Holmes, you are a little trying at times.”

  After learning the name of his new rival in December, Holmes had spent all of his energy learning everything that he could of his foe. His long hours of investigation had left him stand-offish, and this day in January was no different, as he was too absorbed with his own thoughts to answer Watson. Before tempers could flare from either man, there was a knock on the door and one of Holmes’ messenger boys delivered him a note.

  Holmes glanced at the envelope. “Thank you, Simpson. There will be no reply to this, but please see that these notes are delivered to Eckrich and Cochran.”

  Once the boy had left, Holmes turned his attention back to his correspondence. “It is Porlock’s writing. I can hardly doubt that, though I have only seen it twice before. The Greek e with the peculiar top flourish is distinctive. But if it is from Porlock, then it must be something of the very first importance.”

  “Who is Porlock?”

  “Porlock, Watson, is a nom de plume, a mere identification mark, but behind it lies a shifty and evasive personality. In a former letter he frankly informed me that the name was not his own, and defied me ever to trace him among the millions of this great city. Porlock is important, not for himself, but for the great man with whom he is in touch. Picture to yourself the pilot-fish with the shark, the jackal with the lion - anything that is insignificant in companionship with what is formidable. Not only f
ormidable, Watson, but sinister - in the highest degree sinister. That is where he comes within my purview.”

  “The criminal Moriarty?” Watson asked.

  “Yes. Professor James Moriarty. But you are uttering libel in the eyes of the law when you call him a criminal, and there lies the glory and the wonder of it. The masterful schemer, the organizer of every devilry that rivals my own organization, the man who wishes to be the new controlling brain of the underworld. That’s the man. But so admirable in his management and self-effacement, that for those very words that you have uttered he could hale you to a court and emerge with your year’s pension as a solarium for his wounded character. The man pervades London’s underworld and yet no one save myself has heard of him. But our day will come.”

  “He is a professor, you say?”

  “Yes. He is a man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. At the age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon the Binomial Theorem. On the strength of it, he won the Mathematical Chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all appearances, a most brilliant career before him. The professor is the celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid - a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it.

  “And this professor is the man you have been hunting for all this time.”

  “He is. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers. Dark rumors gathered round him in the university town, and eventually he was compelled to resign his chair and to come down to London, where he set up as an Army coach. So much is known to the world, but I have discovered more.

  “I have been three times in his rooms, twice waiting for him under different pretexts and leaving before he came. Once - well, I will leave that to your imagination, Watson. It was on the last occasion that I took the liberty of running over his papers, with the most unexpected results - I found absolutely nothing. That amazed me. He is unmarried. His younger brother is a station-master in the West of England. His chair at the university was worth seven hundred a year. And yet, above his desk, hangs a Greuze painting, similar to one that fetched more than four thousand pounds at auction.

  “You mean that he has a great income and that he must earn it in an illegal fashion?”

  “Exactly. Of course I have other reasons for thinking so - dozens of exiguous threads which lead vaguely up towards the center of the web where the poisonous, motionless creature is lurking. I only mention the Greuze because it brings the matter within the range of your own observation. Moriarty is reminiscent of Jonathan Wild, a master criminal from the last century - 1750 or thereabouts. You see, Watson, everything comes in circles - even Professor Moriarty. Jonathan Wild was the hidden force of the London criminals, to whom he sold his brains and his organization of a fifteen percent commission. The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It’s all been done before, and will be again.”

  “The same could be said for our organization,” Watson observed.

  “Ah, but where I differ from Moriarty and Wild is that I take pains to perform my crimes in a gentlemanly fashion, devoid of violence, except for when totally necessary. I’ll tell you one or two things about Moriarty which may prove this point. I also happen to know who is the first link in his chain - a chain with this Napoleon of crime at one end and a growing number of broken fighting men, pickpockets, blackmailers and card-sharpers at the other, with every sort of crime in between. His chief of staff is Colonel Sebastian Moran, as aloof and guarded and inaccessible to the law as himself. Moriarty supplies him liberally with money and uses him only in very high-class jobs which no ordinary criminal could undertake. You may have some recollection of the death of Mrs. Stewart, of Lauder, in 1887. No? Well, I am sure Moran was at the bottom of it; but nothing could be proved.

  “I may also tell you that Moriarty rules with a rod of iron over his people. His discipline is tremendous. There is only one punishment in his code. It is death.”

  “How can London tolerate two organizations such as yours and Moriarty’s? Surely, the force will begin to suspect a controlling force sooner or later,” Watson pondered.

  “I am aware of the conundrum. Again and again in case of the most varying sorts - forgery cases, robberies, murders, the perpetrators have operated under shield which forever stands in the way of the law, such as my own. But these were not crimes in which I have been consulted. This ex-professor of mathematical celebrity is the organizer of nearly all that is undetected outside of my range in this great city. But he is fenced round with safeguards so cunningly devised that, do what I will, it seems impossible to get to him. You know my powers, my dear Watson, and yet at the end of these months of work, I am forced to confess that I have at last met an antagonist who is my intellectual equal. But at last the time has come when I am able to seize my thread and follow it, until it led me, after a thousand cunning windings, to this man, Porlock.”

  “But what does this man Porlock tell you?” asked Watson.

  “Ah, the so-called Porlock is a link in the chain some little way from its great attachment. Porlock is not quite a sound link, between ourselves. He is the only flaw in that chain so far as I have been able to test it. Hence his extreme importance. Encouraged by the stimulation of an occasional ten-pound note sent to him by devious methods, he has once or twice given me information which has been of value. I cannot doubt that if we had the cipher we should find that this communication is of the nature that I indicate.”

  Holmes flattened out the paper he was holding to reveal a numbered and lettered code, obviously an attempt to convey secret information. Holmes deduced quickly that the code referenced words in a page of some book. But which book?

  In a very few minutes, there was another knock at the door and another message appeared.

  “The same writing,” Holmes remarked, as he opened the envelope. He read the message aloud to Watson. “’Dear Mr. Holmes, I will go no further in this matter. It is too dangerous. I can see that he suspects me. He came to me quite unexpectedly after I had actually addressed this envelope with the intention of sending you the key to the cipher. I was able to cover it up. If he had seen it, it would have gone hard with me. But I read suspicion in his eyes. Please burn the cipher message, which can now be of no use to you. Fred Porlock.’”

  Holmes sat back for some time, staring into the fire.

  “It’s pretty maddening to think that an important secret may lie here on this slip of paper, and that it is beyond human power to penetrate it,” Watson offered.

  Puffing on his pipe, Holmes mused aloud. “I wonder! Let us consider the problem in the light of pure reason. This man’s reference is to a book. That is our point of departure.”

  “A somewhat vague one.”

  “Let us see, then, if we can narrow it down. The cipher message begins with a large number, 534, does it not? We may take it as a working hypothesis that 534 is the particular page to which the cipher refers. So our book has already become a large book. The next sign is C2. What do you make of that, Watson?”

  “Column!” Watson announced.

  “Brilliant, Watson. You are scintillating this morning. Had the volume been an unusual one he would have sent it to me. Instead of that he had intended, before his plans were nipped, to send me the clue in this envelope. This would seem to indicate that the book is one which he thought that I would have no difficulty in finding for myself. In short, Watson, it is a very common book.”

  “The Bible!” Watson cried triumphantly.

  “Good, Watson, good! But not, if I may say so, quite good enough. The editions of the Holy Writ are so numerous that he could hardly suppose that two copies would have the same pagination. This is clearly a
book which is standardized.”

  “The almanac.”

  “Excellent, Watson! But, today being the seventh of January, it is more than likely that Porlock took his message from last year’s.”

  Holmes dashed to the cupboard and emerged with a yellow-covered volume. He sat down and began to work out the cipher.

  “I have it Watson. ‘There is danger may come very soon one Douglas. Rich. Country. Now at Birlstone House, Birlstone. Confidence is pressing.’ There is our result, and a very workman-like bit of analysis it was. So, some devilry is intended against one Douglas, whoever he may be, residing as stated, a rich country gentleman. This may be a way to trail a crime back to Moriarty himself.”

  Holmes was still chuckling over his success when the door brought a knock again, and a Scotland Yard inspector sauntered into the room.

  Watson was startled to see a member of the police force at 221B, but Holmes only smiled and welcomed his guest. “You are an early bird, Mr. Mac. I fear that a personal visit instead of a telegram means that there is some mischief afoot. Let me introduce my friend, Doctor Watson. Watson, Inspector MacDonald is an old acquaintance of mine back from my days on Montague Street.”

  “Yes,” MacDonald acknowledged, “Mr. Holmes has helped me twice to attain success and a few other times on trifles. I know, Mr. Holmes, being the gentleman that you are, you don’t care to mix with the more grisly crimes that come my way, but I am dearly in need of your services. A Mr. Douglas of Birlstone Manor House was horribly murdered this morning.”

  Holmes hid his surprise, but was startled by the news of so quick a development relating to Moriarty. “I am interested, Mr. Mac, and as I have no other pressing matters at the time, I would be happy to assist you. While we are on our way, Mr. Mac, I will ask you to be good enough to tell us all about it.”