OME while ago my old friend Sherlock Holmes, retired in the country, sent me a box of his earliest cases, a mixture of journals and newspaper clippings, preceding our partnership at Baker Street, to which he attached this note:

Watson, there is a story to be told here, but I have less patience now for weaving the tapestry myself. I have kept up with your writings and, though your consideration for deduction is lacking, your ability of selection I confess is a virtue I have long underrated. It may be in old age you have grown less credulous. Whatever the case, you will find much here to interest your readers. I have thought long on our old foe, Professor Moriarty. I myself am unable to approach the matter with sufficient moral strength. I, who killed him in self-defence, am haunted by his death and by my act. He was evil. On that point we should not doubt. But it would be immoral to append to my labels the gaudy role of his biographer. Nevertheless, if only for the exorcising of my own demons, the story must be told.

The letter lacked his characteristically brief signature, but I did not need it to affirm the voice I knew so well from the old days. From the contents I soon understood that Holmes had collected not only those cases dealing with Moriarty, but many, however indirectly, which he felt were influenced by the sinister professor. The material was much and varied, too much indeed for my hand alone. I have selected a variety of material, for the portrait of Holmes as a young man is a fascinating one. It is an ill-fitted puzzle, I confess, for there is less analysis and deduction, but readers will glean and reconcile many disparate details. And in the final, though brief memoir, Holmes draws an interesting portrait of his foe, the man believed to be Moriarty, ‘the Napoleon of Crime’. This story forms a subtle prelude to their final clash, a double-portrait which compels, and which I am compelled to expedite as my friend requests.

***

T was not surprising in the winter of 1877 that London should experience an outbreak of fires. First was the Masonic Lodge, repurposed into tenements since 1869, and being constructed of old brick and wood it was inevitable, however tragic, that the building, filled with people using woodstoves to keep warm, should be a victim of accidental conflagration. Accidental because the man who started the fire lived to tell reporters how it happened. Jeremiah Sloane worked for the city as a streetsweeper. After one particularly cold and difficult shift Mr. Sloane returned to his flat on the top floor and lit his stove. He fell asleep in his chair and woke to find himself in a cloud of smoke, flames already advancing on the outer wall above the street. The London Fire Brigade later determined it was no ordinary mishap which Mr. Sloane might have helped prevent, but the result of a crack in the stovepiping where it jammed through to the outside wall. Oxidised, the flames spread quickly over the old crumbly, bread-like bricks and so on to the rest of the building. So quickly did it consume that all that remained when the Brigade came onto the scene was its stone foundation.

In all other respects the fire had a happier ending, for nobody was burnt or injured, except by fumes. Mr. Sloane, immediately after waking, raised the alarm and the building was quickly evacuated. A fortunate situation since the house was three times smaller than most other tenement buildings, and having been built smaller, did not touch close to its neighbours and spread. The result was that Mr. Sloane, the originator of the fire, had also become hero of the hour. The insurance, it turned out, was generously paid by former Lodge members who fondly recalled the building and felt responsible for the people affected, as much as for the final destiny of their old meeting house.

When, two weeks later, two newer and larger buildings caught fire, the tragic results were staggering. Only just were the fires contained, and only because their materials were newer and hardier, and because a Fire Brigade station was positioned nearby. Nevertheless, nearly a week passed as they burned, and more than twelve-thousand Londoners stood in gaped amazement.

The origin of the fires was similar to the Masonic Lodge. Stovepiping on the top floor, inheriting air flushed in through outside cracks, spread quickly through the wooden interiors. Many lives were lost, and many more injured.

London was turned on its head in a panic about stoves, stovepiping, and top floors (one newspaper columnist suggested getting rid of them altogether). Much blame was placed on manufacturers and installation men. Officially, there was never suspicion of foul play. Nevertheless, Scotland Yard was called in to, as the newspapers put it, “detect any potential criminality.” There was no refusing the job in the state of things, stretched thin as the Yard was.

In keeping with developments of the London Fire Brigade, the government ordered that the police department “keep up.” The result was an added division of police investigation, crudely dubbed ‘the research department,’ and was composed of exactly two people. One was the librarian, Sergeant Lemuel Rumbas, a man who affected the burden of his job by slowly lowering himself into his seat with a deep and prolonged sigh. In truth he became accustomed to the geniality of his role and, given the choice, would have baulked at returning to policing the streets.

The other member of the research department was a university student, recently graduated, and whose unique speciality was unconnected with his studies, for he had done some acting and read literature of the sixteenth century, mainly drama, though he affected indifference to the arts. His name was Sherlock Holmes, and he was by far the smartest man the Yard ever hired, and their most regretted. His attempts at instituting new methods in the detective force were quickly stamped out and put him out of the running for any higher position. Relegated to reading criminal records in the basement library, the Yard believed they would be rid of him through the rigours of boredom.

“I’m sorry, superintendent, but the reason I accepted this job was to have access to your vast collection of case histories,” Holmes had once retorted to his superior.

Holmes made himself indispensable. What many struggled to discover as a matter of course, content to piece together any solution from the embers of uncertainty, Holmes could see, as through a glass darkly, the details of the criminal based on nothing more than a footprint, an article of clothing, or the length of the bed they slept on.

“He is a tall man,” Holmes had observed during the incident of the bed, looking at nothing more than a bare mattress and crumpled blanket. There was little else but a side table and a slim little leather-bound book. “He is very lean. He walks slowly. He is religious, I think—to a point, but most certainly cheap.”

The inspector flared.

“How in the name of the hounds of hell do you expect me to believe all that? Do you think this is some sort of school game!”

The moustached inspector was in his face, his breath wild with the burnt scent of the meal his wife called breakfast.

“I apologise most profoundly, inspector,” said Holmes, his voice betraying nothing like apology. “My recital of deductions has the unintended consequence of seeming meretricious, but I offer them sincerely. If we but look at the shape on the bed—”

Holmes diverted his superior’s attention back to the scene of investigation.

“—this mattress is a wonderful mould of the man. From the contour of indentations we understand that this man is too long for such a small bed. He has folded his legs up near his chest. From this we may understand that he is a very tall man, if the muddy boot print were not enough. He sat on the edge of the bed here—”

Holmes showed the spot.

“—where it is all flattened out.”

The inspector was reduced to the role of student.

“From the depth of the indentation one can see he is a thin man. This mattress—”

Holmes pressed down on the corner of it.

“—is exceptionally supple, filled with down. A heavier man would sink and leave a veritable crater among the stuffed down, puffing up the edges of the mattress, but no such thing has occurred.”

“You spoke of his religiosity as if you knew him a lifetime,” intoned the inspector gravely.

“That is because of his choice of lodging,” said Holmes. “You will agree, inspector, that this establishment has too often been the focus of your department—a known house of prostitution. But there is no evidence of a second person habituating the bed, nor among the scatter of footprints in here or outside the door. His muddy boots he placed carefully by the bed. From this I gather that our man is made of sterner stuff—but not so stern that he will bypass a cheap price for lodging. Nor has he retrieved his Book of Psalms, which he has not inscribed, nor is it well-thumbed—but it surely doesn’t belong here. It is a tome the hotel manager would shrink back at.”

***

OW, with the Yard tired of the fire controversy and wishing ardently to move on, Holmes was brought onto the case for his sophomore excursion. Amidst the snow-laden cityscape Holmes looked intently among the ruins of the latest site. Blackened brick and charred planks told him very little.

“No, Constable Plemons, there is nothing more I can deduce here. It is in the history of the building, and of its tenants, that we must seek our mystery.”

Scotland Yard agreed to conduct a grand inquest, hoping to conclude the ordeal once and for all. Though public interest was diminished, the newspapers had freshly turned the image of the police force into one of buffoonish caricature.

For two months the Yard interviewed former tenants, landlords, proprietors, and all connected parties. In that cold little white hall, festooned with a dozen minute-takers and stenographers each, overseen by judges Habbakuk Morton and Charles Toller-Lewis, the inquest plodded on, freshly rekindling public debate. 

Stories were identical. Landlords begrudged any notion of responsibility on their part, placing it squarely on lack of government standards and inspection. Former tenants supplied that their rooms were very draughty, and that they were not surprised, after all, by the fires. The most interesting set of witnesses came in the figures of the pipe-installers, men who wore coveralls at all times, and who went everywhere and knew London better than a cabman. Their testimonies were quite pedantic as they described in detail their methods of cutting and plastering, and their warnings to landlords about “wind exposure.” To this the landlords could not sufficiently reply except to shrug and accept the evidence.

Only on the last day of the inquest, long after reporters had quit for greener pastures, did a witness come to the stand and tell quite a different tale.

Agnes Matilda Barry, aged 57, though looking much the worse for wear with matted hair and being heavyset, had been employed as a charwoman in the second Border Street building which had burnt down.

“As charwoman, did you notice anything unusual about the fireplaces and chimneys in this building?” asked the police lawyer.

“No,” said the charwoman in her broad accent. “There was never anything amiss in that buildin’. It were burnt down on purpose, I know specially.”

The extended silence that followed, pregnant with amazement at the blunt audacity of the witness, amused Holmes as he sat in the gallery, doodling a portrait of the witness between his notes.

After conferring with the judge the court lawyer turned again to Mrs. Barry.

“Mrs. Barry, in your view, how did the fire start, and to what purpose would someone, as you assert, commit this act? Who would have done this?”

“I don’t rightly know ‘ow, sir, nor why. My ‘usband told me. Said it was a man as yet unknown to the police and public, but the criminal classes know ‘im well.”

“And the name of this person?”

“Calls ‘isself ‘Napoleon’. Leastways, that’s what they call ‘im.”

That was the end of the inquest. Although there were whispers about the last witness’s testimony, there had been no news reporter present, so the shock of her revelations would likely never reach wide public speculation. 

Sherlock Holmes followed after the lawyer in the hall.

“Lieutenant Braebyn! Tell me, what do the police intend to do about Mrs. Barry’s testimony?”

“As a matter of fact, the judges are conferring this evening for a final verdict. But you may be assured Scotland Yard will keep open an inquiry to Mrs. Barry’s claims.”

“But you do not intend to do a full investigation?”

“The expenses and attention of law enforcement must eventually be trained elsewhere, I think you will agree. Who are you—what newspaper are you with, young man?”

“Sherlock Holmes. I work for you, for Scotland Yard.”

“Oh—really? Well Mr. Sherlock—”

“Holmes.”

“Well, Holmes, since it interests you so much, by all means look into the details.”

“I think the husband ought to be interviewed,” said Holmes.

“Whatever you like,” said Braebyn.

“I take it my inquiries will have the official stamp of approval?”

“Seeing as how the affair is a domestic one, and only an inquiry, do whatever you like. But in all likelihood this case is at an end. You have seen the evidence, heard the witnesses—all are in accord. These fires were tragic accidents.”

“Mrs. Barry says otherwise,” retorted Holmes.

“One witness, one variation,” said Braebyn. “Scotland Yard’s resources are not endless. London has already moved on.”

***

The interview with Mr. Barry proved revelatory, but at first he would not give any names.

“If they were to know I was a squealer I could be done in!”

“But Mr. Barry, you have already allowed your wife to testify.”

“She weren’t s’posed to go! I told ‘er not t’go! But it’s up to the p’lice now. It’s in your ‘ands now—leave us out of it!”

“I am from the police, Mr. Barry. This is a formal investigation.”

“Jus’ what I don’t need,” insisted the man.

“And what if I were to guarantee our conversation never left this room? I would hear your information, and you would never hear from me again.”

Holmes learned from Mr. Barry, through an application of insistent threats but more through the desperate imbibing of the bottle, an interesting series of facts. First was the existence of what he called “the invisible army,” a coterie of criminals in an assortment of professions, working as a brotherhood of criminals, and all in payment and owing allegiance to one they called “our Napoleon.”

Such ravings, Holmes mused, were perhaps better considered outside of the environment of a formal inquest. The vital fact Mr. Barry supplied was that the true identity of this ‘Napoleon’ had become known to him through an associate in the profession, a janitor at a respected London bank. He’d learnt from this associate that “Napoleon was in the building” at the same time as he, for his legend had spread far and wide. Men poured out of the bank, filing down the white steps into the anonymity of the street, no man more likely than the next. Barry’s associate, a bold thief, had brushed up against one of the men, smiling in the gentleman’s face as he lifted the man’s side pocket, hoping for an accidental treasure, but was left with nothing more than a business card. He noted the name and frowned, crushed the card in his palm and threw it away. Over a beer the man told Barry his adventure, wondering aloud, in a flippant mood, “if it were ‘im.”

Then the tragedy that proved, to Barry’s thinking, the story true. The death of his friend. A slip of the foot at a curb, trampled by horse-and-cab, an unfortunate and inescapable accident. To say ‘Napoleon’ aloud was to speak, with boyish tittering, the name of the most powerful man in London. To speak aloud the name behind the name was death.

“What is the name?” asked Holmes urgently.

Barry shrank into his seat. He motioned Holmes closer.

“Pen. Paper,” he said, trembling.

Holmes supplied him with his own. With trembling hand Barry wrote a single name, in large letters, misspelt with a missing ‘t’, and the ‘y’ hardly formed at all, but Holmes recognized it as the common clan from County Kerry, Ireland, ‘Moriarty.’

***

HERE were many Moriartys in London, far too many in fact to interview. Holmes narrowed his list to seventeen, then to seven. The barber Moriarty, one of the Scottish breed, proved too innocent, for his method of cutting hair was to make every man look like he’d arrived from Glasgow. He could not have been in London long. An investigation of a string quartet, led by two violinist brothers from Killarney, led only to a blissful evening of Schubert and Brahms, and a desire in Holmes to take up the violin. The chemist shop owner, originally Holmes’ preferred suspect, turned out to be quite an old man, blinkering behind a pair of strong spectacles. He seemed more afraid that, by accident of his name, he’d been singled out as an imposter in polite English society.

“It is not true that a man who knows poisons need be of any great intelligence,” Holmes proffered to Sgt. Bilkins in the Scotland Yard lounge that evening. “Only that he needs glasses and the ability to read.”

There remained now a maths tutor, a banker, and a government official.

Roland Moriarty was the branch manager of the South London Bank. Holmes did not linger for an interview upon learning that he was out of the country. James Moriarty the maths tutor and James Moriarty the low-level government official worked in the same district as one another. Could the same man have created two careers, or was it mere coincidence?

***

And here I, Dr. Watson, insert the brief but fascinating portrait of Moriarty by Holmes.

Y meeting with Moriarty came about as a result of a report given to me by Scotland Yard. It was the most extensive list of people living in London with that name. Astonishingly, it was up-to-date for that year. I singled out seven names and began my inquiries. There was a barber by that name whose shop was on Gerard Avenue in those days. There were two musicians who were brothers also, and it was through them that I learned a little of violin technique. Finally I was left with three names, and I set out to visit the first of them, a professor of mathematics at the College of St. Martin’s. In those days the college was a series of dark cavernous rooms, their doors looming over us, probably intended for the giants who must have inhabited the world in the days before our fathers.

The hall where Professor Moriarty lectured was one such windowless grotto, dimly lit with wickered lamps, for they had not yet installed gas in those days. I settled into a corner among the other students and observed. He wore a three-piece grey wool suit, a decade past its prime whose sleeves, I observed, were lightly frayed. His academic gown was overly large but well-kempt. He appeared to me like every other man of academic breed.

After the lecture I followed and caught him up in the undercroft. His gait, though marked by a slight limp, was brisk and effectual.

Everything about this tutor spoke of a respectable type of poverty, so indelible in a Scotsman or an Irishman, Englishfied though he might be.

His face was remarkable, a mask of granite, his eyes peering out from stone with an animal reason. His fingers gripped the head of his cane like eagle talons.

“Professor Moriarty, I wish to speak to you,” I said, catching up to his stride.

He looked at me beneath his lowered brow.

“You are that young man rudely interjected inside my classroom. I see you have no books. You are not a student,” he said.

A simple equation.

“As you perceive,” I said simply. “My name is Sherlock Holmes. I was a student recently, but not here. I am interested in the science of mathematical probabilities. I have heard of your reputation as a great mathematician—one of the greatest in England, though not recognized widely enough. I have read your Dynamics of an Asteroid and consider myself an admirer. I am employed by Scotland Yard.  For the purposes of my employer, I wish to question you about the Border Street fires. You’ve no doubt read of them in the papers. They were determined to be accidental, due to faulty installations of stovepiping in the uppermost storeys. The banks have paid out the insurance in full. Perhaps you might illuminate for me the line of probability between intentional causation and eventual occurrence.”

“Intentional causation,” sneered the professor. “Sir, you have imposed upon me and therefore impeded my valuable time. You have proposed to ingratiate yourself to me with a preposterous and gross exaggeration of my abilities, and so insult me. You have no business here. What your true aim is I cannot guess, nor does it interest me. I have only this to say—that if the police have employed you in so addle-pated a fashion, they are far greater ignoramuses even than you.”

His voice, a low shaky tenor, was dedicated to the production of syllables that were factual and exact. An insult and a compliment he might pay with the same mathematical fluency, the words arranged exactly as he needed them to be.

I followed behind him until he entered a building and slammed the door. It was surely locked.

Forced to abandon the interview, I lingered at the college and quickly located the student common room. The students were amiable and gossiping, even to a degree not generally allowed in my school. Their portrait of the professor was, as is often the case with college boys, of a man seen through the prism of fun. They had their little private jokes at the expense of his appearance, calling him “the roc”, in reference to the bird of The Arabian Nights. They allowed he was a hard master, but eminently respectable, and felt the better of their careers for all that, much like the admiration of a sailor for an austere commander. The professor liked art, music, and mediaeval philosophy and had offered, by way of a holiday speech, a lecture on the music of the spheres. As to his private life they knew only that he had a younger brother in the army, and that the professor himself also tutored some contingent of the army during his sabbaticals.

I left the college defeated but determined. I submitted my report to Scotland Yard, such as it was, and found some support for following the lead of the banker, Roland Moriarty, who had left the country, and whose bank, it was discovered, had underwritten the insurances for the Border Street buildings that had burnt in the fire.

That investigation proceeded without my help, but the banker was swiftly acquitted in the opinion of the police, and an official apology issued to him from the director. From then on I conducted my own secret investigations inside the criminal underworld. I may now safely disclose my disguise in the role of a handyman and stovepipe-installer in some tenements of London, a role I worked for several weeks to build a successful reputation.

At first my excursion yielded more than hard work and a generous enough cheque for my troubles—but later it yielded as much as my life was worth! My penchant for disguises is one I picked up in my theatre days. Even then my skill with a false moustache and rubber nose annoyed my classmates as they would wait for my arrival to a rehearsal, only to discover I had employed myself in the role of janitor, listening in their presence to their complaints of me. This new disguise was my best invention yet—a coverall suit and striped shirt, a deep bowler, a brush-like moustache and a latex scar under my lip, and a skillful addition to my nose. I painted my eyelids black in the manner that some men of the underworld are known to do in order to conceal their eyes better under lights. I daresay I looked a bit of a Dick Turpin, with an added scowlishness.

Infiltration on my part was not hopeful or accidental. Mr. Barry had given me a number of leads and I had scouted them out. My destination was a tenements building on Bethany Street, one of those respectable inlets in the sea that is South London which is nevertheless filled with sharks, a pool in which an innocent man will boil alive if he does not keep to ground. The Bethany building was, like the burnt tenements, of newer construction but, of greater interest, underwritten by the South London Bank.

I entered late at night in my handyman disguise, concealing my tool bag. Then, on pretence, I knocked on the suspected door.

“Fire inspection. Emergency visit,” said I, knocking loudly, a tactic most tenants responded to in order to avoid an embarrassing scene among their neighbors.

A man answered after a while, with a frown and the curses that I expected. But it was the description of the man that Barry had said (“Varney,” he had said it was) and so I knew I’d found my mark. Varney’s was the kind of face you meet in public and think genial, but when the spectacles are off the eyes are mean and a sneer is revealed. I had not had so many opportunities to study the faces of live criminals yet, not in their natural element as was likely here. The room was furnished nicely, with a woman’s touch, but the lack of a woman's coat on the rack informed me she was out. The table was set for four men, recently departed, for the crystal glasses were empty and despondently arranged, and the card pile neatly stacked.

Without word I strode to the fireplace, dropped my tools with a crash, and began my pretend inspection.

“Where’s the landlord?” he demanded. “This ain’t regular.”

I wheeled round and pulled him by the nightgown towards me, threatening in a low rasping voice.

“It’s reg’lar enuff.”

Whisking the crowbar from my bag, I intended to bully him more. To what end, exactly, I was learning on the fly. You would have laughed at my preposterous act, dear Watson, for I was green indeed in that moment, and afterwards, but just then I had to make a snap decision.

“Napoleon ain’t ‘appy. Them inquests was drums in ‘is ears.”

It was the wrong decision.

“Not happy? With such a staggering success?”

It was just then I realised what I had stumbled into. From the sideroom two other men came out. They were equally scarred and rugged as I was pretending to be, though not so lithe. A fourth figure stood in the doorway.

“Who’s this bothering us, Charlie?”

“Says Napoleon ain’t pleased with us.”

“Lissen, mate,” said one of the bruisers, “we’s ‘ad a long day and is gettin’ tired. Clear owt or we’ll peel you off.”

I stood up straight, straighter perhaps than my impersonation ought to have done. Nevertheless, with legs planted firmly I held a crowbar with both fists. Despite the invitation to leave I was of the firm impression that the instant I turned my back I would be mobbed. I had instigated the violence, and these bruisers were merely counting on my turning coward before their numbers.

“Napol—Moriarty ain’t pleased.” I tried to relish the name for their sake.

Their silent surprise affirmed my scare had worked.

“Of course he’s pleased,” said the fourth man from the doorway. “Men, this is clearly an imposter. But he knows something extra. Don’t let him out.”

My legs were kicked out from under me and I lay on my belly with a boot on my back. I craned my neck up to see to whose face the refined voice belonged, but it was shadowy above the low-set lamps.

I made my last and best snap decision. Surprising my captor I twisted round and escaped his boot. With an agility that still astounds me to think of, I bolted for the door and down the stairs in a split second.

I was faster than a jackrabbit, and made good headway on the street before pausing, only to look back and see that my pursuers had been only just a little slower.

There was no question of going home. They would follow me and, what’s more, discover my true identity. I had to lose them in their own territory. The alleys of London are a monstrous labyrinth for the uninitiated and, but for my youthful energy, I was nearly cornered at several turns. Twice I bowed under the arch of a street bridge, only to discover that my pursuers, multiplied, and had seen me. Down a path that became a sloshing gulley that turned to a dead end that would surely have meant the end of me, I desperately wished for the aid of a revolver. But there was a drainpipe just above my head. With a desperate leap I took hold of it and thanked my school training—under the reverend John Langford Corrigan of the British Indian Army—for this advantage. From pipe to elevated street I made my last dash for the civilised pavement and street lamps of London and finally toward Regent’s Park. Inside a cab I crumpled my false nose and scar in my palm, my heart still pounding inside the burly costume.

Later, my fright took shape in the imagined figure of the fourth man with the civilised voice. His name aloud had nearly cost me my life, for I did not doubt then that it was Moriarty.

There was another face, also, in that dangerous room, that was familiar. The fires. The inquest. The man in the nightgown who opened the door. Varney. Or, as he was known to others, Jeremiah Sloane.

I am afraid my adventure into the underworld did more harm than good. My identity was safe, but there was nothing to be done about Sloane or the thugs and garroters that I met. There was no other fire, but also no Sloane to be found. Mr. Barry and his wife both moved away (who can blame them?), and the legend of Moriarty’s criminal reign fell again to the reputation of a delusion. Could such a man exist, they asked?

“You’d do well to stay out of that part of London, regardless, young Holmes,” said Sergeant Rumbas to me. “There’s no use getting yourself killed—‘that won’t pay the bills’, as my wife often says. ‘And I won’t, so don’t you worry my dear,’ is what I tell her. And, well, it’s a dangerous enough job as it is, isn’t it?”

To those who have read this account thus far, dear Watson, the identity of the South London Bank manager can now be revealed as the same Roland Moriarty who so vehemently defended his brother’s reputation after the event of Reichenbach when you so effectively asserted his villainy. He died some years after that, as you may remember, and his full name in the obituary was printed as Roland James Moriarty. Because both men were dead by 1900 I did not resurrect their memory, but it may yet be discovered that both their forces were behind the Border Street fires, and Sloane merely their accessory. In any event, the case was for now beyond my ability. Moriarty’s influence grew, and it was at the moment that he was killed that he was at the height of his powers, a power that haunted us, as you will remember, through those years of my disappearance.

This, my second disappearance into the countryside, is that of a man alone. Away from the city I feel the events of my life more keenly, considering the strangeness of life itself and my arrival at the end of so many roads. That my life should be spared, and not his, is one of those conspiracies of fate which often troubles me; that I should have pursued such a dangerous man with so little regard to wakening a greater danger; that I took his life and now feel his absence as a fellow mortal; that the status of his soul, even, is locked into that of my own. These are my final and ultimate considerations as I meditate on the purpose of my existence.

***

Here ends Holmes’s account, and my final duty to my friend, for in supplying this first and last adventure I, Dr. John H. Watson, now lay aside my role as his chronicler and turn the box of papers to the record office of Scotland Yard, where the whole of Moriarty’s crimes can now be studied in those halls, and indeed, where the method of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, formerly of 221b Baker Street, is now more fully appreciated.

***

ADDENDUM— A List of Documents from which I have constructed this tale.

Document Series 1 — newspaper clippings from The Times of London and The Sunday Gazette, dated December 8-21, 1877, and December 9-24th respectively. Several of these with scribbled comments by Holmes. From these come the narrative of the fires and the ensuing public debacle which forms the background of our story.

Document Series 2 — three very yellowed and tattered notebooks, dated 1874 on the front, presumably from his schooling days but empty of any academic work, but each containing a brief summary of Holmes’ first cases. It is from these that I have gleaned Holmes’ account of his days at Scotland Yard, and the moustached inspector with a bad breakfast on his breath, as well as many other individual characterizations.

Document Series 3 — Holmes’ notes from the police inquests for the fires. His notes are sparse, usually four word descriptions of a witness. “Works as poorman’s solicitor.” I have not included these as they reveal nothing of usefulness in the case. Most useful is Holmes' brief summaries of the policemen he worked alongside at the Yard, which I have put into the tale.

Document Series 4 — the list of several hundred Moriartys, their professions filled in by hand, in residence in London in 1877, typed on thick rough paper of two-and-a-half feet in length, folded into thirds, watermarked ‘Scotland Yard’, provided to Holmes for his hunt.

Document Series 5 — Holmes’ latest and recent memoir, a total of 15 hand-written pages of small printing, written expressly for this last testament, the bulk of which I have quoted, but also several pages of summary and detail which I have woven into my own prose.