into his pocket and was gone. A few minutes elapsed, as you remember,
before the sleepy commissionaire drew your attention to the bell, and
those were just enough to give the thief time to make his escape.
"He made his way to Woking by the first train, and having examined
his booty and assured himself that it really was of immense value, he
had concealed it in what he thought was a very safe place, with the
intention of taking it out again in a day or two, and carrying it to
the French embassy, or wherever he thought that a long price was to
be had. Then came your sudden return. He, without a moment's warning,
was bundled out of his room, and from that time onward there were
always at least two of you there to prevent him from regaining his
treasure. The situation to him must have been a maddening one. But at
last he thought he saw his chance. He tried to steal in, but was
baffled by your wakefulness. You remember that you did not take your
usual draught that night."
"I remember."
"I fancy that he had taken steps to make that draught efficacious,
and that he quite relied upon your being unconscious. Of course, I
understood that he would repeat the attempt whenever it could be done
with safety. Your leaving the room gave him the chance he wanted. I
kept Miss Harrison in it all day so that he might not anticipate us.
Then, having given him the idea that the coast was clear, I kept
guard as I have described. I already knew that the papers were
probably in the room, but I had no desire to rip up all the planking
and skirting in search of them. I let him take them, therefore, from
the hiding-place, and so saved myself an infinity of trouble. Is
there any other point which I can make clear?"
"Why did he try the window on the first occasion," I asked, "when he
might have entered by the door?"
"In reaching the door he would have to pass seven bedrooms. On the
other hand, he could get out on to the lawn with ease. Anything
else?"
"You do not think," asked Phelps, "that he had any murderous
intention? The knife was only meant as a tool."
"It may be so," answered Holmes, shrugging his shoulders. "I can only
say for certain that Mr. Joseph Harrison is a gentleman to whose
mercy I should be extremely unwilling to trust."
THE FINAL PROBLEM
It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the
last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which
my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was distinguished. In an incoherent
and, as I deeply feel, an entirely inadequate fashion, I have
endeavored to give some account of my strange experiences in his
company from the chance which first brought us together at the period
of the "Study in Scarlet," up to the time of his interference in the
matter of the "Naval Treaty"--an interference which had the
unquestionable effect of preventing a serious international
complication. It was my intention to have stopped there, and to have
said nothing of that event which has created a void in my life which
the lapse of two years has done little to fill. My hand has been
forced, however, by the recent letters in which Colonel James
Moriarty defends the memory of his brother, and I have no choice but
to lay the facts before the public exactly as they occurred. I alone
know the absolute truth of the matter, and I am satisfied that the
time has come when no good purpose is to be served by its
suppression. As far as I know, there have been only three accounts
in the public press: that in the Journal de Gen鑦e on May 6th, 1891,
the Reuter's despatch in the English papers on May 7th, and finally
the recent letters to which I have alluded. Of these the first and
second were extremely condensed, while the last is, as I shall now
show, an absolute perversion of the facts. It lies with me to tell
for the first time what really took place between Professor Moriarty
and Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
It may be remembered that after my marriage, and my subsequent start
in private practice, the very intimate relations which had existed
between Holmes and myself became to some extent modified. He still
came to me from time to time when he desired a companion in his
investigation, but these occasions grew more and more seldom, until I
find that in the year 1890 there were only three cases of which I
retain any record. During the winter of that year and the early
spring of 1891, I saw in the papers that he had been engaged by the
French government upon a matter of supreme importance, and I received
two notes from Holmes, dated from Narbonne and from Nimes, from which
I gathered that his stay in France was likely to be a long one. It
was with some surprise, therefore, that I saw him walk into my
consulting-room upon the evening of April 24th. It struck me that he
was looking even paler and thinner than usual.
"Yes, I have been using myself up rather too freely," he remarked, in
answer to my look rather than to my words; "I have been a little
pressed of late. Have you any objection to my closing your
shutters?"
The only light in the room came from the lamp upon the table at which
I had been reading. Holmes edged his way round the wall and flinging
the shutters together, he bolted them securely.
"You are afraid of something?" I asked.
"Well, I am."
"Of what?"
"Of air-guns."
"My dear Holmes, what do you mean?"
"I think that you know me well enough, Watson, to understand that I
am by no means a nervous man. At the same time, it is stupidity
rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close
upon you. Might I trouble you for a match?" He drew in the smoke of
his cigarette as if the soothing influence was grateful to him.
"I must apologize for calling so late," said he, "and I must further
beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave your house
presently by scrambling over your back garden wall."
"But what does it all mean?" I asked.
He held out his hand, and I saw in the light of the lamp that two of
his knuckles were burst and bleeding.
"It is not an airy nothing, you see," said he, smiling. "On the
contrary, it is solid enough for a man to break his hand over. Is
Mrs. Watson in?"
"She is away upon a visit."
"Indeed! You are alone?"
"Quite."
"Then it makes it the easier for me to propose that you should come
away with me for a week to the Continent."
"Where?"
"Oh, anywhere. It's all the same to me."
There was something very strange in all this. It was not Holmes's
nature to take an aimless holiday, and something about his pale, worn
face told me that his nerves were at their highest tension. He saw
the question in my eyes, and, putting his finger-tips together and
his elbows upon his knees, he explained the situation.
"You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?" said he.
"Never."
"Aye, there's the genius and the wonder of the thing!" he cried.
"The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That's what
puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime. I tell you, Watson,
in all seriousness, that if I could beat that man, if I could free
society of him, I should feel that my own career had reached its
summit, and I should be prepared to turn to some more placid line in
life. Between ourselves, the recent cases in which I have been of
assistance to the royal family of Scandinavia, and to the French
republic, have left me in such a position that I could continue to
live in the quiet fashion which is most congenial to me, and to
concentrate my attention upon my chemical researches. 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."
"What has he done, then?"
"His career has been an extraordinary one. He is a man of good birth
and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal
mathematical faculty. At the age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise
upon the Binomial Theorem, which has had a European vogue. On the
strength of it he won the Mathematical Chair at one of our smaller
universities, and had, to all appearance, a most brilliant career
before him. But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most
diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead
of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more
dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers. Dark rumors gathered
round him in the university town, and eventually he was compelled to
resign his chair and to come down to London, where he set up as an
army coach. So much is known to the world, but what I am telling you
now is what I have myself discovered.
"As you are aware, Watson, there is no one who knows the higher
criminal world of London so well as I do. For years past I have
continually been conscious of some power behind the malefactor, some
deep organizing 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 endeavored 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.
"He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half
that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city.
He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain
of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center
of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well
every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only
plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized. Is
there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a
house to be rifled, a man to be removed--the word is passed to the
Professor, the matter is organized and carried out. The agent may be
caught. In that case money is found for his bail or his defence.
But the central power which uses the agent is never caught--never so
much as suspected. This was the organization which I deduced,
Watson, and which I devoted my whole energy to exposing and breaking
up.
"But the Professor was fenced round with safeguards so cunningly
devised that, do what I would, it seemed impossible to get evidence
which would convict in a court of law. You know my powers, my dear
Watson, and yet at the end of three months I was forced to confess
that I had at last met an antagonist who was my intellectual equal.
My horror at his crimes was lost in my admiration at his skill. But
at last he made a trip--only a little, little trip--but it was more
than he could afford when I was so close upon him. I had my chance,
and, starting from that point, I have woven my net round him until
now it is all ready to close. In three days--that is to say, on
Monday next--matters will be ripe, and the Professor, with all the
principal members of his gang, will be in the hands of the police.
Then will come the greatest criminal trial of the century, the
clearing up of over forty mysteries, and the rope for all of them;
but if we move at all prematurely, you understand, they may slip out
of our hands even at the last moment.
"Now, if I could have done this without the knowledge of Professor
Moriarty, all would have been well. But he was too wily for that.
He saw every step which I took to draw my toils round him. Again and
again he strove to break away, but I as often headed him off. I tell
you, my friend, that if a detailed account of that silent contest
could be written, it would take its place as the most brilliant bit
of thrust-and-parry work in the history of detection. Never have I
risen to such a height, and never have I been so hard pressed by an
opponent. He cut deep, and yet I just undercut him. This morning
the last steps were taken, and three days only were wanted to
complete the business. I was sitting in my room thinking the matter
over, when the door opened and Professor Moriarty stood before me.
"My nerves are fairly proof, Watson, but I must confess to a start
when I saw the very man who had been so much in my thoughts standing
there on my threshold. His appearance was quite familiar to me. He
is extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes out in a white curve,
and his two eyes are deeply sunken in his head. He is clean-shaven,
pale, and ascetic-looking, retaining something of the professor in
his features. His shoulders are rounded from much study, and his
