Moriarty

It lies with me to tell for the first time what really took place between Professor Moriarty and Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

"You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?" said he. "Never."

But I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged.

For years past I have continually been conscious of some power behind the malefactor, some deep organising power which forever stands in the way of the law, and throws its shield over the wrong-doer. Again and again in cases of the most varying sorts--forgery cases, robberies, murders--I have felt the presence of this force, and I have deduced its action in many of those undiscovered crimes in which I have not been personally consulted. For years I have endeavoured to break through the veil which shrouded it, and at last the time came when I seized my thread and followed it, until it led me, after a thousand cunning windings, to ex-Professor Moriarty of mathematical celebrity.

I was sitting in my room thinking the matter over, when the door opened and Professor Moriarty stood before me.

Professor Moriarty is not a man who lets the grass grow under his feet.

"I might have known it!" he groaned. "He has escaped!" "Moriarty?" "They have secured the whole gang with the exception of him. He has given them the slip."

The Swiss youth was never found again, and there can be no doubt that he was one of the numerous agents whom Moriarty kept in this employ.

I knew Von Herder, the blind German mechanic, who constructed it to the order of the late Professor Moriarty.

From the point of view of the criminal expert,” said Mr. Sherlock Holmes, “London has become a singularly uninteresting city since the death of the late lamented Professor Moriarty.”