“The Devil’s Pet Baits”

We’re excited to announce that, in the year of the publication by Anthony Horowitz of a large section of Professor Moriarty’s long-lost personal papers, this blog has been granted access to a much shorter, and much earlier, passage from the Napoleon of Crime’s private journals. It is dated December 27th, 1887, and begins in what appears to be the form of a letter. There is no record of it ever being delivered.

Sir,

Your insouciance is intolerable. As twin poles in the invisible tug of war at the heart of London’s seething underworld, here we have both been, engaged in an absurd chase across the metropolis in search of some poultry. I have followed you, and you have stalked me; we have competed for the crop of a goose, and it is you that have taken home the game. Yet the manner – the arrogance! – of your victory seems calculated to insult, to claim a kind of superiority you may feel but certainly have not won in so trifling a moment. I cannot abide such theatrics. They are the weakest mark of your often admirable character.

For instance, I find your capacity for manipulation remarkable. I confess to a regard for the extent to which you are able to feign unconcern, particularly to even your closest friend. I saw the under-informed chronicler of your exploits enter your rooms on the second morning after Christmas, and I saw him leave; not a trace was there upon his countenance of the grave concern he should have felt. From my cab I had seen that infernal commissionaire rush into Baker Street. I knew what he had in his pockets – my own agents had narrowly missed him at home (the reward he may still share with you will barely pay for the damage to his belongings effected by my men as they searched fruitlessly for the Countess of Morcar’s stone).

You also knew – yes, Moran had seen you near the Hotel Cosmopolitan on the day of the theft -that my network was bent upon liberating the blue carbuncle from that venal aristocrat; you knew, like me, that her possession of it was the result of only the latest in the long line of misdeeds which have characterised the passage of its value between human hands. And you knew, but have shared with no one, that my possession of the stone would have funded many more of my activities – which you so doggedly attempt to frustrate. This contest between you and I which you so thoroughly keep from your literary doctor remains secret to both our advantages – but rarely have you caused me more bother than in this, one of my potentially most lucrative single affairs. Your pace, perhaps, picks up.

Your newspaper advertisement in search of the man who had originally intended to eat the goose in which your commissionaire had found that stone was a wonderful ruse, and of course it occurred to me that, in order to be led to the source of that goose, all I need do was follow you. The bird had disappeared from my own view, too. I should not, in hindsight, have entrusted any moment of the carbuncle’s existence to that fool Ryder. His role in the operation should have remained within the confines of the Countess’s  hotel. My mistake was to assign him the role of carrying the stone from the Cosmopolitan to an agent in Twickenham the following day. His fear of me was so great that he did not reveal my role even when you bullied him so mercilessly in your rooms; I thought it would also be so great to ensure his competence. His bizarre decision to place that stone in a goose is proof enough that even my intellect can at times slip from grace.

I stalked you, then, through Covent Garden market during your search for the source of Ryder’s goose. You – and therefore we – were so close, and at any time I might have successfully overtaken you, fatally for you or otherwise, and skipped ahead a step to the stone … but how might I have accounted for the absurd coincidence of your almost bumping into the rat-faced Ryder himself? Even then, I waited outside your rooms, sure you would call Lestrade or some other of Scotland Yard’s useful idiots, and assumed that the stone, once in the police’s possession, would soon again be mine – a constable on duty is easily paid to be in dereliction of it. Of course, you guessed this. Ryder fled your rooms a free man, the terror which propelled him more of me than of the gallows, and I understand he is already bound for Australia; the stone, meanwhile, remained in your rooms, and in your strong-box. The Countess will reclaim it tomorrow directly from you, and be more vigilant of me than ever (as so she should – for the last time we clashed she almost paid with her life).

There will be no weak link in your chain this time, no chink in the armour of another of your neat solutions. I am, in our shared adventure of the blue carbuncle, undone – and you may pose as the noble fount of festive charity, rather than the sly, deceitful nemesis of an adversary you seek to thwart with every move.

Perhaps one day you will have to admit the truth. Until then, there is only one thing left for me to say.

Merry Christmas, Mr Sherlock Holmes.

Professor James Moriarty

 

 

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