Moriarty

As the year 1890 drew to a close, I was very comfortable and confident that my career would continue to thrive. There was not a felon in London who did not work for me. There had, inevitably, been bloodshed along the way but things had settled down and all that was behind me. Even the meanest and most feeble-minded criminals had come to appreciate that they were better off working under my protection. Yes, I took a goodly share of their profits but I was always there when circumstances turned against them, readily paying for their bail or defence. I could also be very useful. A cracksman searching for a fence? A swindler desirous of a false referee? I brought them together, opening doors in more than one sense.

There was, of course, Sherlock Holmes. The world’s greatest consultant detective could not fail to come to my attention but curiously I never gave him much thought. Did I have anything to do with the absurd Musgrave ritual or the equally unlikely Sign of Four? What did I care about the marriage of Lord St Simon or that trivial scandal in Bohemia? I know Watson would have you think that we were great adversaries. Well, it helped his sales. But the fact was that we were operating in quite separate fields of activity and, but for a single occurrence, we might never have met.

That occurrence was the arrival of Clarence Devereux and his entourage — Edgar and Leland Mortlake and Scotchy Lavelle. Everything that I told Athelney Jones about them was true. They were vicious criminals who had enjoyed spectacular success in America. What was not true, however, was my assertion that they intended to join forces with me. Quite the contrary, they came to England to stamp me out, to take over my criminal empire, and in the months that followed, they acted with a speed and violence that took me quite by surprise. Using the foulest methods, they turned my followers against me. Anyone who protested, they killed — always bloodily, as a warning to everyone else. They also used police informers against me, feeding information both to Scotland Yard and to Holmes so that I found myself fighting a war on three fronts. So much for honour among thieves! Perhaps I had become over-confident. Certainly I was unprepared. But I will say this much in my own defence: they were not gentlemen. They were Americans. They paid not the slightest attention to the rules of sportsmanship and civility to which I had always deferred.

Well, I have already said that criminals are stupid. To that I should have added that they are also self-serving. Very quickly, my associates realised which way the wind was blowing and ‘fell in line’, as I believe the saying goes. One by one, my closest advisors abandoned me. I cannot blame them. I think, had I been in their shoes, I would have done the same. At any event, by the start of April I found myself, unbelievably, a fugitive. My one advantage was that Devereux had no idea what I looked like and could not find me. He would have killed me if he had.

At this point, I had just three close allies. All of them have already appeared in this narrative.