The Napoleon of Crime

His eyes, deep set beneath a ridge of brow and a high domed forehead, flicked over the room, at the broken glass and ceramics, the tumbled books. Reptile eyes. Hard. Cold. Gimlet eyes. They might have been steel blue. They might have been gun metal grey. They were fixed on me though his head oscillated from side to side. He stooped slightly. His nose looked thin, pinched. His mouth was tight, sneering.

He chuckled. A dry sound, like dead leaves give when crunched underfoot. "I could not have had it done better," he remarked, his voice as dry as his laugh.

He leaned upon a cane made from an expensive wood - probably mahogany - with a yellowed ivory knob. Skull shaped and yellowed, like his head.

He half hobbled, half shuffled to one of the upholstered chairs beside the fireplace in the corner of the room. He smirked as he laid a finger on Doyle's Phineas Speaks, the only book on the shelf beside the chair. Then he groped for the armrest. I came forward hesitantly, grasped his arm and helped steady him into the chair.

A harsh and unwilling "Thank you," came from his thin lips as he adjusted the tails of his frock coat. His voice was like gravel. "Excuse me. I took a nasty fall in Switzerland, and an old man tires more rapidly as each year passes."

He motioned to the other chair.

I shook my head. I did not want to be within his reach. "I have to clean up the room," I said.

He shot me a gimlet stare. He raised his cane as if to hit me, then struck the floor thrice. Six burly men, or clothed gorillas, materialized.

"Shelve. Sweep." The old man swept the point of his cane in a horizontal arc that encompassed the Room. "Clean".

The men immediately and silently commenced work.

The old man flicked his eyes back to my face. "Sit."

I sat.

"You know who I am," he intoned. It was a statement. An accusation. I sat rigid with fright.

"You do speak. Who Am I?"

I could not trust the air to leave my lungs. I licked my lips. "Professor James Moriarty."

He shook his head impatiently. "Liam Moriarty. That fool Watson had a fixation on the name 'James' so he used it for almost all his villains. James - Seamus - was my elder brother, the Colonel. He and Moran started in the same regiment - the Royal Munsters. I met Moran through him."

"But Dr. Watson wrote you were James."

"Sassenachs! If a name looks like 'James', they say it is 'James'. He impatiently wave it away. "I am Professor Liam Moriarty. My brother is Colonel James Moriarty. Commit it to memory."

He glared around the room. "Another shrine to him! How many are there now? And a new one in Portsmouth!"

"Well, Mr. Lancelyn Green had bequeathed quite a collection to Portsmouth - but it's of Doyle, not just Holmes. Your creator."

"His creator!" The Professor fidgeted and made as if to rise. "Get me on my feet and take me outside. The atmosphere reeks of him."

I hoisted him out of the chair and helped him through the Magic Door into the main area of the Library. "If you hate him so much, why did you come here?"

"I heard the Room was blown down by a policeman. A policeman! I had to see the damage." Moriarty wheezed and chuckled. "The Revenge of Scotland Yard! Who would have believed they would avenge me, even in this small way? O frabjulous day! Caloo! Calay!"

Professor Moriarty oscillated his craggy skull. "Being the Napoleon of crime is not all fun and conquest," he informed me. "It is a twenty-four hour a day commitment, every day. Including holidays." He smiled. "Especially holidays. Could you even guess at the takings by my pickpockets and shoplifters during the Christmas season? That is chicken feed to what comes in daily from my other businesses; but I do love taking during the season of giving."

"May I ask what are your 'businesses' are?"

"The usual. Extortion. Prostitution. White collar crimes. The odd murder. Espionage and international terror."

"Why did you become a criminal? You were a respected academic."

Moriarty snorted. "Respected? What value is there in the 'respect' of idiots and fools? Most of academia is made up of morons teaching dullards - and they are the smart ones. The cream of our society. The Men of Empire. Bah! They use an hundredth part of their limited intelligences. And professors are paid little more than library clerks."

"A lot more than a little, Professor," I retorted. "Compared to my salary, yours --."

"Is not enough to live as I deserve to live. I am a genius. Why should brain dead cretins live better than their intellectual masters. I was born to command. You to serve."

"Then why deign to explain yourself to me?" I asked.

He snorted. "Because Watson had smeared my memory in the mire. I'm sick of it."

"But if you care only for power," I put in. "You dont want anyone's good opinion."

"The opinion of morally satisfied fools and dolts? Humbug," he grumbled. "I don't know why I am talking to you. I don't know why it matters so - why it matters now. Holmes has had his century of praise. Why shouldn't I have mine?

"Yet, it does matter." He looked at me with an almost human look. "I want to have my say - and I want it to be the final word. I was a great man before he tossed me into the Reichenbach Falls. I want all to appreciate that, even when they hate or despise me . If they fear me, I will not have lost my power. I will have won and Holmes will have lost."

He smote his stick savagely upon the floor. "I will have won over him. Evil over good. Tyranny over justice. Cruelty over compassion. Power over glory. I will have won over Sherlock Holmes."

He laughed into my shocked face.

"You won't be able to resist writing my story," he said. "The villain is always more interesting than the hero. He is the 'other' The unknown. Thy mysterious. The frightening."

Moriarty grasped the edge of the balistrade and peered down the five floors of the library at the people reading, studying, conversing. A couple was snatching kisses, oblivious to the people smirking and pretending not to see them. Two men were playing chess. Another man was drinking an illict soft drink while reading a magazine.

"Dante's Inferno," he muttered. "What circle of Hell is this?"

"The fifth floor of the Toronto Reference Library," I replied. "All heroes and all villains come here eventually." I looked at him. "I've read people prefer villains to heroes. What are you to them but a hero?"

"I am amoral and immortal. I rejected straitlaced morality when I saw that it bound me, not profited me. I kept up the veneer of an upright, respectable college professor even when my stupid, so called peers sneered at me behind my back. I am a genius. I have always been a genius. Morality is for lesser men, not me. If they have the brains I have, morality and Judeo-Christian ethics forbids they use them."

"You do not believe in God?" I asked. "In Divine Retribution? Divine Law?"

"Rubbish! I believe in the survival of the fittest - and I am the most fit. I manipulate men by manipulating their desire, their greed, their fears. Selfishness drives mankind, not goodness and altruism. They think they do what they do to benefit themselves, but no! They do what they do to benefit me. I have goals and I insure that no one prevents me from my purposes."

"And power is your goal? To be master of mankind?"

He bowed. "Of course."

"That is not an original ambition," I said. "Others have said the same. The Caesars. Napoleon. Hitler. Qaddafi and Hussein. And they failed."

"Because they were not me," he replied. "They came close to success - with my help some of them - and I will come closer. I nearly had it in my grasp had it not been for that meddler Holmes." He smiled a snake's smile. "Even then he had to go outside the law to kill me."

"You had some compassion," I pointed out. "You lured Watson away instead of having him killed."

Moriarty flushed and half rose. "I did not 'lure him away'. Holmes arranged that." he snapped.

I gaped at him. "Mr Holmes arranged it?"

"Of course he did! I wanted Watson dead too. I wanted their deaths to look accidental. A slip. A fall. One man grasping the other's hand. The weight of one pulling both over the precipice. That's what we would have made it look like. That was the story Moran and I would have given to the police at Rosenlui. Two hikers who saw the tragic, fatal fall of the great Mr. Holmes and his devoted companion." He brushed a mock tear from his eye. " I wanted Watson dead to prevent his exposing me to the world. as the murderer of Sherlock Holmes. I wanted to shut his mouth, dry up his pen; but Holmes shut my mouth instead."

"Holmes intended to kill you?"

"Of course he did! Don't you understand? He lured me out of England by pretending to flee from me. He knew that I was behind or the beneficiary of all the thefts, robberies, murders and assaults in London. He knew - we both knew - it was either him or me. Either I destroyed him or he destroyed me. He could not have me arrested. He had no proof whatsoever that would convince a jury a mild mannered mathematician was the Napoleon of Crime. So, since he could not have me hung, he had to perform the execution on his own."

"Then why did he have Watson turn back to the hotel?"

"Use your thick head, woman! Would the moral Dr. Watson let his friend murder me? Would he led him damn his soul? So long as Watson did not witness what happened, Holmes could make up any story he pleased, and Watson, credulous fool would accept it without question. He could say that I slipped and fell. That it was a fair fight. That he killed me in self defence."

"Which he did do."

"Hah! He shot me before I shot him, and he pushed me off the ledge. Then he wrote his sad little note to Watson and left him. That is what Moran saw from his place on the ledge overlooking us."

"But Colonel Moran threw rocks at him!"

"So Holmes told his credulous friend. Perhaps Moran did throw a rock at him in frustration because his airgun would not fire. Where he was, Moran could not have hit him with a pebble, let alone a rock."

"Why didn't Moran tell the police what he saw?"

"Better to stay alive and inconspicuous and take control over what was left of our syndicate. He owed no loyalty to a dead man."

"But apparently you did not die."

"Oh yes I did. I died the moment the bullet pierced by heart. By you must have heard of parallel universes, even though your feeble mind cannot comprehend the concept. My essence can influence men and events by crossing from plane to plane. I can influence their minds though I can no longer influence them corporeally." His eyes took on a dreamy look. "I almost had it back through that dolt Hitler and his Nazis."

"Almost."

He glared at me. "I advanced him. I whispered my counsel in his ear. He would not acknowledge his debt to me. He would not give me my due. He would not share the power. He said - he actually believed - that it was all his doing. That he alone was smarter than the smartest. An insignificant little Austrian rabble rouser who could not even paint in an original style. A mediocrity. So I brought him down. My advice led him to his destruction - and half the world's as well."

"But you were an influential mathematician . Your work on the binomial theorem. Your book about the asteroid that had a European vogue. You had the respect of our peers. What went wrong?"

"Who said that anything went wrong? I was the center and the apex of a wide reaching and sophisticated criminal empire. To outward seeming I was a humble labourer for the progress of science, It amused me that everyone around me would not, could not, believe that the self effacing college professor was more powerful than kings and premiers. I slaughtered and buried my scruples under the muck of a Dublin graveyard and became the power I am."

"You were a Fenian? A member of the IRA?"

"I left any feelings for Ireland behind with my childhood and my scruples. My brother Seamus took both the name James and the Queen's shilling and rose to the exalted rank of Colonel in some God and Devil forsaken part of India. Much good it did the poor fool. Jamie truly believed that Holmes persecuted and Watson maligned an innocent man. Professor Moriarty hacked out a wry laugh. "The strangest part of the farce is that I love my dunce of a brother. He was the only human being who cared about my good name."

"How did you build your empire of evil?"

"You have a fondness for alliteration that you should curb," Moriarty said testily. "Empire of Evil. Hmm. It is not bad. I built it up in the usual way. I used the money I came with - which was just enough for a prudent scholar - to make money. I lent it out, did favours to win favours, put up the money for little crimes, then gradually bigger and bigger crimes. I put more and more people under obligation to me, one way or another, by using front men, and if anyone became a threat or a liability to me, he - or she - simply disappeared. No one cared where they had gone - particularly not the police. By the time I could append a degree to my name, I had so many layers between myself and my minions that no one who did my bidding knew it was my bidding they did."

"Except Holmes."

"Yes. Damn him."

"And except Colonel Moran."

"Yes, but so long as I lived, he knew he would live well and prosperously. Moran was a fool, but like Holmes said himself, an intelligent man is dangerous to have at your side. He might figure out how to do without you."

"How did Holmes find your secret?"

"I wish I knew. I left no spoor for him to sniff. But he discovered my connection to the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania, and my contacts in the Sinn Fein. No man is so pathetically attached to his country than an Irishman. Anything to free 'the auld sod' from the English. Maybe Brother Mycroft may have felt a strand twitch in his web. A clever observer and analyst of international affairs, Mr. Mycroft Holmes."

The largest and most brutal looking of Moriarty's minions ventured toward us. rotating his greasy cap in both his hands.

"Begging your pardon, Professor, but the job's done. We cleaned up and carted the wreckage away like you ordered us to, and set the place to rights."

Moriarty gave the Room a stern inspection. "Good. Now off with you. A pity this is all for Holmes," he said, sighing.

"It is called the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection," I said. "All his fictional characters have a home here."

"Even wicked me?" The professor sneered.

The 'foreman' of his gang spoke up. "Ahem. Professor, we found these books about you while we were shelving them. Do you want us to throw them away?"

He motioned to his mates, who held out the books in question, one in each hand. John Gardner's The Return of Moriarty and The Revenge of Moriarty. Michael Kurland's The Great Game and The Infernal Device.

"There are others here, Professor; but those were the ones we found with your name on them."

Moriarty held out an imperious hand. The man placed The Return of Moriarty in it. He flipped the pages, then silently read a passage, flipped more gages, read another passage. The did the same with the Revenge and the Kurland books.

"Poppycock," he announced. "But not badly written. Mildly amusing bedtime stories to scare children and idiots."

He shot me a look. "These are kept here for anyone to read?"

I nodded, frightened at what he would do with them, and with me. Moriarty tossed the book he held into my hands, then motioned his men to put the books they held back inside the Room.

"They dared to write such drivel about me. Me! Professor Moriarty - who forgot more in a minute than they learned in a lifetime. What do they know about me? I should have their bodies thrown into a bonfire of their works. But I won't. Why should Holmes always be the hero of every scribbler's story?"

He pointed a long, bony finger at my nose. "Forget what I told you. You're not wicked enough to write the truth about my struggles and my triumphs.

"But heed and remember, scribbler. A great story must have a great villain."

I touched my forelock in mock salute. "You inspire us all, Professor."