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The Napoleon of Crime.
Sitting in his chair at 221B Baker St, Sherlock Holmes reflected on the case himself and his friend and colleague Dr Watson had just experienced. When the pawnbroker Mr Wilson had come to the flat to tell him and Watson about the strange 'Red-Headed League,' and how he was given the instructions to copy the contents of an encyclopaedia for some extra money, urged on by his assistant Vincent Spaulding, Holmes had been interested simply because he had found it bizarre some young man would be so insistent on an employer going to apply to an add entered into the newspaper for redheaded men.
At the same time, Wilson had let slip some interesting information about his assistant; Holmes could understand a young man being interested in a hobby, but why would he do it during business hours when he ran the risk of being fired? But he and Watson had both exploded into peals of laughter by the ridiculousness of the story, especially the part where the Red-Headed league had closed down and nobody had even heard of it. It was so ridiculous it was impossible not to laugh. But he had taken the case on because his interest was aroused; somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to get Wilson out of the way of that shop where he would spend hours copying entries out of the encyclopaedia, and what made it interesting was how Wilson had been deliberately targeted, and his assistant was in on it.
When he had personally visited the shop and met Spaulding face to face, Holmes had recognised him at once as John Clay, a criminal with a long history, and when he had seen the dirt on the man's trousers, he'd had some idea he had been doing some digging. It didn't take long for him to realise what Clay and whoever else it was who was in on the plan had in mind. They were opening up passages to the city sewers on the way to a nearby bank, which happened to be holding a large consignment of French gold.
Holmes steepled his fingers together and thought about the scale of the plan; to someone else, this kind of plan would be seen as something Clay would have concerned on his own, but Holmes had worked out it wasn't him. Somebody else had gone to a lot of trouble to think the plan up, and all of it bore the signs of Professor Moriarty's work.
Moriarty…
As Inspector Jones - an idiot policeman but good in his own way - explained to the bank official Merryweather, Professor Moriarty's name echoed throughout the underworld, but nobody knew anything about him despite what Holmes himself had deducted of him; he was a man of stupendous intellect and education, who had shown potential in other fields before he had become a criminal, using his intelligence to rise through the ranks until he had become a mastermind.
Holmes had interfered with the professor's plans in the past; they were all carefully plotted out while he waited in the background awaiting news of success, and he would always remember how he had discovered the existence of the mastermind. He had noticed a few of the crimes he had dealt with; murders and thefts, while seemingly random, had just a hint of cunning planning behind them, and after he had looked at the pattern he'd determined there was a mastermind behind many of the crimes, and he had been interested enough to contact the police who'd told him their own informants had told them about a mastermind as well, a mastermind by the name of 'Professor Moriarty.' But no matter what he had done, no matter how many weeks he had spent visiting the best places to hear things under disguise, even rumours which he could pick apart latter to determine if there was a seed of truth underneath them to discover more about the Professor's life and to find out where he was, Holmes had never found anything.
Holmes had no idea how Moriarty's organisation worked beyond one or two ideas, but none of the agents captured had revealed anything. It was either because they didn't know anything about the Professor himself and they'd received his instructions in a certain way, which was plausible since it ensured there was no real contact between Moriarty and the agents, but it caused some problems unless they were prepaid and were promised great rewards. Or it had never occurred to the policemen to ask questions, although if that were the case why would they not tell them about Moriarty regardless?
Holmes stood up and he walked over to the window and looked outside passed the curtains which were drawn. The street was already dark beyond the dim lighting of the gas lamps on the street, and the dim lighting of the flats above, as well as the few shops still open at this hour, but Holmes had trained himself and his senses to be able to cope. He could see the passing coaches and he saw the dark silhouettes of the passersby on the streets, but he saw something that gave him pause.
There was someone down there on the street who was standing highlighted in one of the dimly lit windows of a shop on the opposite side of the road - Holmes studied the figure, estimating their height and build; judging from the appearance it was a man with a thick dark cape, with a top hat. The figure was likely tall, but in the dim lighting and the shadows down on the street, Holmes couldn't tell much else about the man beyond the fact he dressed very well.
He narrowed his eyes, noticing how the figure was looking straight at him; he could tell from the posture of the figure they were looking straight up at his window, but the figure hadn't moved an inch as soon as Holmes fixed on them. Holmes narrowed his eyes but he didn't break eye contact with the figure he was almost certainly sure was Professor James Moriarty.
"One day, Professor," Holmes muttered to himself, thankful Watson and Mrs Hudson weren't in earshot to hear him, and as he looked down at the figure, Holmes wondered how long he had before the Professor returned.
