The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty

Obsession Russel D. McLean

“You may call me ‘Professor’.”

He sits perfectly at ease, loose limbs remaining in control at all times. His high-domed forehead seems designed to keep his dark, and admittedly thinning, hair from creeping forward. There is a faint odour of hair pomade. He is clearly a man of intellect. Listen to the way he speaks. His skin is pale and his eyes are sunk into his forehead, giving him the gaunt appearance of an undertaker. But that is not his profession. Not unless he extracts a generous price from the families of those interred by his deceptively delicate-looking hands. He is wealthy. It is clear from his clothes and his demeanour. And the fact that he has paid for my time and expertise.

“Professor,” I say, letting the name roll around my tongue.

He sits forward. “I would prefer,” he says, with a hint of threat, “that we not deal in real names.”

I sit back in my chair. Notebook open and pencil at the ready. The new leather squeaks as I adjust my weight. I look at the clock above the mantelpiece. My wife is waiting for me at home. This impromptu session will take no more than an hour.

The Professor says, “I do not require you to take notes.”

“Professor,” I say, “It is important that—”

“—there must be no record,” he says. “You are already being rewarded handsomely for your services.”

I try not to bristle at his tone. There is something patronising there. A disregard that I find personally insulting.

“You look uncomfortable,” he says.

“No.”

“Many people are uncomfortable in my presence. I have always had that effect on others. Even as a child.”

I nod, and put away my notes. This “Professor” will be here for one, maybe two sessions at most. He is, like so many of the richer clients who seek my audience, merely seeking an outlet for his boredom. As the new medicine of psychiatry extends beyond the asylum, many of my colleagues fear it is destined to become merely another way for the privileged to relieve their boredom.

“Tell me,” I say, “about your childhood.”

The Professor is, in a purely mental sense, elusive as a butterfly that has not been sufficiently exposed to cyanide. He mentions his parents only briefly and dismissively, before implying that he has a brother who is a colonel in Her Majesty’s armed forces. Beyond that he does not go into great detail. His blood relatives are merely facilitators of his existence. He does not speak to them and has not done so since he graduated from university education.

“My family became merely a means to an end,” he tells me. “I was educated. I was never at a loss for money. I could buy and sell friends easily. But such friends … I found they tired easily. I do, however, find their lives and their habits fascinating in the way an entomologist finds the rituals of ants to be of great interest.”

“You see other people as ants?”

He keeps quiet. Expecting me to answer the question for him. But that is not how the game is played. He has to understand the rules.

I say, “You have a superior intellect to most men?”

“I have published volumes on binomial theories in mathematics that shook the established order. And more still on the movements of the asteroids and the nature of the heavens.”

“To acclaim?”

Again, he says nothing.

“But this is not enough for you? You were not recognised for your—”

“Recognition has nothing to do with it!” A sudden, unexpected flash of anger. He sits forward. Voice close to cracking. There is a madness in his eyes that he had hidden before. His body stiffens as though bitten by a venomous snake. “Recognition is for those obsessed with the opinions of other people. A man of my intellect … There is no one whose approval I seek!”

“No one?”

He hesitates. Considers his response. Our most honest reactions, so I and others have come to believe, arise when we do not consider them. Instinct teaches us about ourselves. But men like the Professor – in need of control – suppress these automatic reactions, viewing them as weakness.

“Of late, I have experienced an itch,” the Professor says. “Initially, little more than a minor irritation. But over months and even years, it has become something I can no longer ignore.” He leans forward in his chair, brings me into his confidence. “There is no man who so controls his life as I do. Who is aware of, and able to control, every detail. No man surprises me or unsettles my plans. Except one. An individual who threatens to undermine my hard-fought discipline. We have never met and yet he thwarts me at every turn, threatens to cause a lifetime’s achievements to crumble and float away on the wind as though they were mere dust.”

“Who is this man?” I ask.

He takes a breath. This, I sense, may be the most honest thing he has said since entering the room. “He calls himself London’s greatest – and only – private consulting detective. The itch that threatens to consume me at the expense of all other things is named Sherlock Holmes.”

Sherlock Holmes.

Everyone knows the name. Over the last few years, he has emerged as a unique and quite brilliant eccentric in our country’s consciousness. Any man would rightly be able to quote you his address at 221b Baker Street, perhaps even name some of the many spectacular crimes that he has thwarted. He is a marvel of the modern age and, in the minds of many of my colleagues, the pinnacle of man’s intellectual evolution.

And he is my Professor’s nemesis.

“Tell me why this man vexes you.”

“Your profession,” the Professor says, “is little more than … quackery.”

“Then why are you here?”

He sits back in his chair. Regards me for a moment. His eyes are intense. They seem to be constantly searching for something. I sense that they will never be able to find it.

“It was … suggested to me. You studied, alongside Kraepelin, I believe. A fine mind. I trust that some of his genius may have rubbed off on you. Certainly, you have a reputation for assisting members of the gentry in coming to terms with their … hidden desires and personal problems. You are more than merely a carer for the lunatics locked within this asylum of yours. You have even offered assistance in exceptional criminal cases. Not unlike the detective, I suppose. But you retired from that work.” He smiles. “After the Ripper. But, fear not, I have read your notes and theories. Your work there was not without some results.”

My work on the Ripper case had been conducted on the understanding that my notes and theories would remain un attributed. The only copies remain with Inspector Abberline. My name appears nowhere on any official documents.

“The killer remains at large.”

“Perhaps,” the Professor says, and smiles. I notice his canines. They are sharp. I think of a wolf on the prowl. I try not to think of the man known as the Ripper. “What I require, my dear Alienist, is such assistance as you may offer the habitual opiate user or the man overcome by desires he knows to be wrong. I fear that the great detective may have needled his way inside my mind. That I have developed a sickness. One that affects every action I undertake. I would be rid of this. You have helped others to overcome their worst instincts. To hide certain unpleasant symptoms of the mind. Some mere habitual quirks, and others … well … I have reviewed your roster of your private patients—”

“No! That is impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible. Even the improbable. I have seen the files, have no doubt. And their names are as impressive as their problems are varied.”

“No,” I say. “You cannot—”

“I can and I have. I am one of the most remarkable and resilient minds you will ever meet. And you would do well to remember that.”

“Then what do you want of me?”

“Your assistance. And your insight. No more. I am not asking for your subservience or obedience. I am asking you to … help … me overcome this obsession. Help me to see that this Sherlock Holmes is, as all other men, beneath me in intellect and capability. Help me to forget him.”

He does not meet my eyes once during this speech. And, when he says the word “help”, it comes out weak and reluctant. A word that sounds unnatural slipping between his bloodless lips, no matter how many times he may force it.

Our session runs late. I lose track of the ticking of the clock that hangs over the mantelpiece. It is, however, my last appointment of the day. The only person waiting for me is my wife. And, when I explain to her my reasons, she will understand.

As the Professor leaves, I see there is a man waiting for him outside. By his bearing, I judge him to be military. Is this the briefly mentioned brother, James? But when my client refers to him as “Sebastian”, I dismiss the theory. During our session, he let slip only this one insubstantial sliver of personally identifiable information. I do not know if he did this on purpose or if his apparently infallible mind slipped for just a moment. But it fuels my own obsession to understand this strange and dangerous man, despite the fact my instincts scream at me to run into a dark hole and hide.

My wife is waiting for me when I return. She has been up since before I left, working in our shared library. She writes papers on the peculiarities of the human mind and, sometimes, I publish them under my name. We have discussed her submitting for a place of study, but the institutions we approach have been wary of a woman interested in psychology. Such is the way of the world. Perhaps one day, things shall change. Perhaps even in my lifetime.

“Where have you been?” She looks up from her desk and smiles at me.

“I am sorry. There was … I have a new patient.”

“Yes?”

“I find him … interesting.”

“Yes?”

I see the Professor once a week for the next three. At night, I return home and dictate from memory. My wife takes down dictation and overnight, as I rest, she writes up her thoughts and theories as the state of the Professor’s mind.

In the third week, I do not speak of him on my return.

“Something is troubling you?”

“I have made a terrible mistake. In treating this man.”

“Why?”

I try to answer, but the words stick in my throat.

“Talk to me.”

I clear my throat, walk away to get a glass of water. When I return, Emily looks at me. Her eyes are wide. She has dark eyes, and in the wrong light they appear almost black. But in them, there is intelligence and compassion. I drink from my glass and say, “I feel as though I have made a deal with the devil. No, I am certain that I have.”

Our theory – we treated it almost as a game, something light to indulge our curiosity – has become that the man was highly intelligent, and yet also delusional. He may or may not know Sherlock Holmes. He certainly claims that they have never met in person. I had believed at first that the Professor was an amateur detective himself and found the existence of Holmes to be a threat. But the truth is stranger than that.

The truth chills my soul.

“How can you hate a man you have never met?”

The Professor wags a finger. “A good question. You are full of good questions. No answers. But that is the nature of your profession. You rely on your patients to do the heavy lifting. It would not do for you to supply answers. To cow them with your intellect.”

I shrug. I have begun to feel more comfortable in his presence. “It is healthier for the patient to come to their own—”

“I have had men killed for asking bad questions,” he says. Quietly.

I almost laugh. It’s there. In my chest. Bubbling up to the surface, ready to break the tension. But he’s serious. Deadly serious. Looking at me now with those blue eyes, capturing me, letting me know that he will only tolerate me for so long before he snaps.

“You have?”

“I have had men killed,” he says, as though correcting himself. “This doesn’t surprise you, does it?”

“I had my suspicions that your activities were not entirely legal.”

He smiles at that. “You thought that I was a detective. That my enmity regarding Mister Sherlock Holmes was simple professional jealousy. I can read you, my dear Alienist. Perhaps better than you can read me.”

“You are a man who endeavours to be the best in his field.”

“In any field. And I am,” he says. “I am the greatest villain of this age. A criminal mind such as this world has never known. More than a killer, like Jack the Ripper, more than a thief. I control such men. I direct them. There is not a deviant act that occurs within this city that I do not have a hand in.”

“Does that include … ?”

“The Ripper is something else entirely, I admit. Even God may occasionally miss the beat of a sparrow’s wings. By acknowledging my fallibility, I am able to better prepare for the future.”

The comparison to God goes unremarked. My wife and I have already written on his extreme egotism; a need to feel as though he is at the centre of all things. His self-perception is that of a spider at the centre of a web, reaching out and controlling all things in his domain with a simple flick of his limbs.

“That is why I am at conflict with the detective, despite our never having met,” he says. “We are flip sides of the same coin, I fear. He is the only one in this godforsaken world who may match my own intellect. And yet he chooses to ally himself with tradition and order.”

“And you?”

“Oh, do not be so blasé as to believe I chose evil,” he says. He shakes his head, and his expression is the same as if he were talking to a child. “If I chose anything, I chose chaos. And for good reason. The great detective would prefer the world to remain entirely as it is: static and dull and uninteresting. He would have made a fine academic in that sense. Tell me, have you read the work of Charles Darwin?”

“I have.”

“And?”

“He makes many interesting points about the evolution of life on this planet.”

“Interesting points? You read and you do not understand. Darwin talks of a world that is in constant flux. Animals change and adapt to circumstance. Those that fail to do so, die. Evolution arises through change. I believe we may only discover our potential by introducing the unpredictable.”

“In other words, you are an agent of natural order?”

He nods. “To a degree, then, you understand?” He does not wait for a response. “The old Empire is rotting. There is a new world order coming, and I intend to be at its centre. Its architect. But, everywhere I turn, I am thwarted. Holmes. Always Holmes. The Great Detective. The hero of the ailing British Empire. You read the papers?”

“Yes.”

“How did his infernal biographer describe the case? Ah, the Red-Headed League …”

“One of yours?”

“One of mine. Almost all of them, you see. And now, not content with standing in my way, Holmes has discovered me. He intends to bring me into the light.”

“But, then, I still don’t understand. For what do you require my services?”

“In order to understand the great detective I need to understand myself. Your reputation is beyond reproach. And deserved.”

“Indeed?”

“Oh, yes, indeed. And now, I fear, you have become my co-conspirator. You had the chance, you realise, to turn me away?”

“I would never turn away any man in need. Whether seeking a cure for some mental affliction or simply attempting to understand his own mind.”

“No, that’s not it. You were intrigued by the puzzle I represented, by the very fact that you knew from the off I was not everything I appeared to be. You are a man of curiosity.”

“And I know what curiosity did to the cat.”

He grins. The wolf-teeth appear. I try not to shrink back.

“No,” he says. “Curiosity is a trait to be encouraged.” He leans forward. “Informing on one’s own patients, however …”

“He threatened you?”

“He said he knew of the notes we had taken. He told me that I was to burn them all.”

“And?”

“What choice do I have?”

She laughs. “What choice? What choice?” She stands, comes over and wraps her arms around me. I fall into her, breathe in the scent of her recently bathed hair. “The choice, husband, is to go to the police. The choice is not to submit to his bullying!”

I pull back and look at her. She does not understand.

“No,” a voice says, from just behind the door where I entered. “There is no choice.”

The man named Sebastian sets a light to our papers. We watch as he does so, powerless. He throws them on to the fire with detached efficiency. I think back to when the Professor told me that I was not to write down any of our conversations. I should have listened, then.

When he is done, Sebastian says, “Pack your bags.”

“Why?”

“The Professor requires your services. He has one more task for you. The reward will be handsome.” He speaks in short, declarative sentences. He is the Professor’s blunt instrument, used when a scalpel is insufficient.

Emily grabs at my coat as I stand. I shake her off. I have no choice. I made this deal with the devil. I am now his plaything.

I say, “I require nothing more than the clothes on my back.”

Sebastian laughs. “Your choice,” he says. And then, mockingly, “Alienist.”

The carriage rattles as we pass across the border to Switzerland. I attempt to pass the time by reading the newspapers, but am unable to focus on the stories at hand. Sebastian is no longer with me. He departed at Newhaven, after a young gentleman passed him a note on the platform. Judging by the expression on his face as he left me, it was not good news.

Two men enter my carriage. One of them is tall and gaunt, younger by some years than his companion. His forehead reminds me somewhat of the Professor’s, and he has that same coldness to him. His friend is older, more portly, and, like Sebastian, has the bearing of a military man. But he has not allowed soldiering to rob him of his humanity. He smiles when his friend leaves, and takes a seat opposite me. “That man,” he says, “can never sit still.”

“Not a happy traveller?”

“Not happy at rest.” He smiles. “Where are you travelling to?”

“Meirengen,” I say.

“Oh? Business or pleasure?”

“Business. I have a patient there waiting for me.”

“A doctor?”

“In a sense.”

He nods. “I am a medical doctor, myself.”

“The mind,” I say. “I am an Alienist by training. I run an asylum within the confines of London. And a private practice for those who need lesser assistance.”

“We, too, are headed for Meirengen.”

There is silence between us for a while.

“Your business there?” I finally ask, for want of anything better to do. The rolling countryside has finally lost its appeal.

“My companion’s business,” the man says. “I choose to accompany him, however.”

“A man should have friends,” I say.

“Yes,” the man says. “Without friends, who are we?”

Sebastian gave me a letter as we made our way to the station. Over the course of my journey to Switzerland, I periodically read and reread the Professor’s missive, searching for some meaning that I might have missed.

On our approach to the station, I read the letter one more time. As I fold it to put away in my breast pocket, the door to the carriage opens and my new-found friend’s companion bursts in. “We are nearly there!” he says. “Come, Watson, there is much to prepare!”

The doctor, who has been sleeping for maybe an hour, wakes quickly, and looks at me as he shrugs his coat about his shoulders. “He was never one for subtlety,” he remarks of his companion. “A pleasure to meet you.” He extends his hand. Silently, I take it and we shake before parting. “Maybe we shall meet again in Meirengen.”

“Perhaps,” I say. But it is all I am capable of. As they leave the cabin, my throat seizes up. For I realise now that my travelling companion was the estimable Doctor Watson and that his friend was none other than the great detective himself: Sherlock Holmes.

The Professor waits for me in private rooms, under an assumed name.

With little preamble after being granted access, I set myself up in a corner of the room. I sit down and say to him, “Tell me of your intentions.”

“I want to kill him,” he says. “Throttle him with my bare hands. Choke the life from him.” As he speaks, his body tenses. His hands grip like talons. His skin becomes pale and his eyes manic.

I say, “You hate him.”

“He is an annoyance.”

“Don’t downplay your feelings,” I say. “You hate the man. You hate anyone you see as a challenge, as an obstacle, as an equal.”

“I have no—”

“Don’t lie to me!” Suddenly bold, I realise that I have nothing left to lose. He can kill me if he wants, but I will not be restrained by fear. “Don’t lie to yourself! You are afraid of this man and you hate what you are afraid of!”

There is silence. He stands and looks at me. The silence becomes a physical presence in the room, crushing and choking. Have I made a mistake?

“Afraid?” he says. “Yes, yes. Maybe you’re right. The idea that there is someone in this world who is my equal? Oh, when you believe yourself unique, the prospect is terrifying.”

I allow myself finally to breathe.

“When you return to England,” he says, “there will be money waiting for you. A sum to more than compensate you for your assistance. You will not hear from me again.”

“You think yourself cured?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. But it is better to cut one’s ties than become dependent, don’t you think?”

But there is something else, too. Something unsaid.

I stand and offer my hand.

He smiles and accepts the gesture. “Do not mistake this for friendship,” he says.

I leave without another word.

The following morning, I am preparing for my departure when I come across a commotion in the lobby of my hotel. I stop one of the stewards and say, “What is happening?”

“You are English?”

“British. Yes.”

“Then …” He hesitates for a moment. “You have not heard?”

“Heard what?”

“The detective. The great detective. Sherlock Holmes. He is dead.”

I gather the story through rumour and report. Make sense of what I can. But what I know is this: the great detective confronted his nemesis, and together they plunged into the waters at the Reichenbach Falls.

I send a telegram to my wife: “I am delayed by a few days, but I will be home.” I say no more than this. In the space of a telegram, it is impossible to convey my feelings about the death of the Professor whose name, I have learned at long last, was Moriarty.

That afternoon, I return to my room. It is my last night before I board the first of several trains that will take me home.

There is a knock at the door as I open my case and prepare to fold my clothes. When I answer, I see my friend from the train. He says, “When I heard there was an Alienist here, I hoped it would be you.” He extends his hand. “My name is Doctor John Watson. I believe that you may be able to offer some assistance to those overcome by traumatic events.” He talks with the restrained air of one desperate to keep a lid on some strong emotion.

I merely nod at his greeting. And feel strangely responsible for his current state of mind.

He says, “My friend, the one who was with me on the train—”

“Mr Sherlock Holmes?”

“Yes.”

“By all accounts, one of the finest minds the world has ever known.”

“And a dear friend.”

I invite him to take a seat beneath the windowsill. He does so. I find some water and pass it to him. He sips. The room is silent. From somewhere outside comes the sound of birds, chirruping almost joyously as though unaware of the clouds that myself and Watson can see.

“You, too, seem touched by sorrow.”

I smile, but it feels unconvincing. “My patient,” I say. “He also died yesterday.”

“I am sorry. I suppose in the excitement over a figure such as Holmes, the deaths of others whose names are not known to the public may appear to be lessened.”

I say nothing. I lean against the writing desk.

“How did he die? Your patient?”

“Obsession,” I say. “There is no other thing to say. I feel as though there was something I missed. But he was so guarded. In the end, I fear that the obsession he could not admit to was what led to his demise.”

“Holmes was much the same. Obsessive. The exclusion of all else. In that way, your patient and my friend, I suppose they were alike.”

I allow Watson to talk. The more he talks about Holmes, the more the great detective becomes the Professor in my mind, both men mirror images. As the Professor had remarked, himself.

The immovable object and the unstoppable force.

There are tears on my cheeks. My eyes burn gently.

I wipe the tears away with a subtle gesture. Wonder at their cause, briefly.

Watson, in his own grief, does not notice.