The Great Game

...
there
is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of
earth!

— Rudyard Kipling

WEDNESDAY, 11 FEBRUARY 1891

             
Mrs. Hudson, the landlady at 221B Baker Street, knocked on the sitting room door of her illustrious tenant. "Mr. Holmes," she called. "There's a gentleman to see you."

             
There was a scurrying sound from inside, and Sherlock Holmes opened the door a crack and peered through. "What sort of gentleman?"

             
"Here's the gentleman's card." Mrs. Hudson slid the pasteboard through the crack. Holmes reached for it with his long fingers, pulled it inside, and immediately closed the door.

             
Mrs. Hudson waited patiently outside the door. She heard Holmes cry, "Professor Moriarty!" through the door, and then again louder, "Professor Moriarty!" in a querulous voice, and then, "How amusing," and then silence. After a moment he called, "Mrs. Hudson?"

             
"Yes, Mr. Holmes?"

             
"Are you still there, Mrs. Hudson?"

             
"Yes, Mr. Holmes."

             
"Good, good. Show the gentleman up."

             
Professor James Moriarty was a tall, angular man with a face like a hawk and deep-set, dark eyes that missed little of what passed before them. When Mrs. Hudson told him to go on up, he removed his black frock coat, placed it and his top hat on the coat stand by the door, and stalked up the stairs. The door to Holmes's sitting room was ajar. He looked at it thoughtfully for a moment and then pushed it open. The room inside appeared to be empty. "I'm here, Holmes," he said without attempting to enter.

             
Moriarty's calling card, crumpled into a ball, was thrown over the door into the hall, and then Holmes appeared from behind the door clad in a red silk dressing gown, a half-smoked cigarette in his left hand and an iron poker in his right. "None of your tricks now, Professor," he jeered. "I'm ready for you!"

             
Moriarty pursed his lips. "Is this why you sent for me, Holmes?" he asked.
"For more of your puerile accusations and infantile behavior?
Really! I was in the midst of replying to a letter from an American physicist named Michelson when your telegram arrived, and I put aside the correspondence to rush over here. Michelson has devised a novel way to measure the speed of light waves through the ether, but the ether doesn't seem to want to oblige. He requests my advice—you accuse me of tricks. Clearly I should have stayed at home and finished the letter."

             
"Of what possible use to anyone can it be to know the speed of light waves through the ether?" Holmes asked.

             
"The pursuit of knowledge requires no justification," Moriarty said.

             
"On the contrary," Holmes told him, pulling the door fully open. "The collection of useless facts is destructive of orderly and methodical thinking." He put the cigarette between his lips and inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly so that the smoke wreathed his face. "I could not understand criminal behavior so well if I did not collect, sort, and analyze the minutia of past crimes and observe new crimes as they occur. If I allowed myself the luxury of studying, say, the flight of butterflies, or the spectra of light emanating from the sun, I might be invited to lecture at the Royal Academy, but I should be hard put to solve even the simplest crimes."

             
"Indeed?" Moriarty said. "It is my experience that the more one attempts to cram into one's mind, the more it will hold, and the more information one commands, the better the results of one's attempt at deductive reasoning."

             
Holmes raised one hand in the air as though stopping a cab. "What telegram?" he demanded. Moriarty's hand went to his jacket pocket, and Holmes raised the poker.
"Careful, Professor!"

             
The professor pulled a folded telegram from his pocket and held it out in front of him. Holmes put his cigarette precariously on the edge of a bureau and grabbed for it. Moriarty examined Holmes's face critically. "You haven't shaved in a week, and your pupils are the size of shillings," he said. "You've been indulging in cocaine again, I fancy, judging by the wild gleam in your eyes and the upraised poker. Really, Holmes ..."

             
Holmes retreated back into the study and lowered the poker. "I sent you no telegram!" he interrupted. "I would asseverate that you sent it to yourself, I wouldn't put it past you, except that I can see no gain for you in such an action. Someone is diddling us both.
Surely the wording of the message, 'Come at once, stop.
221B Baker Street, stop.' should have alerted you to its spurious nature. Why, if for some unimaginable reason, I would send for you, would I not sign my name?"

             
Moriarty came into the sitting room and glanced around. "I thought perhaps you were saving the four pence. Perhaps the consulting detective business has fallen on hard times."

             
Holmes chuckled. "My last
client was—let us say
a member of one of the noblest families in the kingdom—and my fee was considerable. I am about to leave for—a certain country in Europe—to undertake a commission for the government. Have no fears for my financial resources. I take only those cases that interest me these days, and my recompense is generally excellent, save when I remit my fee altogether."

             
"Glad to hear that, Holmes," Moriarty said, crossing to a bookcase against the far wall and peering at the titles.
"Perhaps if you are sufficiently occupied you will leave me alone. It would be a welcome novelty not to find you dogging my footsteps every time I pursue some
innocent errand; not to hear your shrill accusations every time a sufficiently notorious crime is committed anywhere in England."

             
"Oh, in the world, Professor, in the world!"
Holmes almost danced over to a high-back chair and dropped into it. "I have too high a regard for your iniquitous abilities to imagine that your activities are confined to this little island."

             
"Bah!" said Professor Moriarty.

             
A heavy, solid footfall on the stairs presaged the arrival of Holmes's friend and companion, Dr. Watson, who bustled into the room and threw off his coat, draping it over the arm of a chair. "Afternoon, Holmes," he said. "Sorry I'm late.
Afternoon, Professor Moriarty.
I see you're here already."

             
Holmes rose from his chair and pointed a slightly quavering finger at Watson. "You expected him?"

             
"Professor Moriarty?" Watson nodded and took a seat at the small table that served them for eating meals when it wasn't covered with Holmes's newspaper clippings waiting to be filed. "I sent him a telegram."

             
"You did what?" Controlling himself with a great effort, Holmes sat back down on the edge of his chair.

             
Moriarty laughed briefly. "There you have it," he said. "The unexplainable explained."

             
"Watson, sometimes you—" Holmes paused and took a deep breath. "Watson, old friend, I pride myself on my intellect, but I haven't a clue—not the slightest clue—what could have induced you to send a telegram to"—Holmes waved in Moriarty's general direction rather than saying his name—"and what you thought to gain from it."

             
"I thought to shock you out of your lethargy and drug-taking, if you must know, Holmes. I thought that perhaps the sight of Professor Moriarty in the flesh might have some effect." Watson turned to Moriarty. "He hasn't left this room for three weeks."

             
"Seventeen days, Watson," Holmes corrected him. "It was seventeen days ago that I came in after chasing the Hampstead Heath Strangler for two days and nights until he finally drowned himself in the Thames."

             
"I see," Moriarty told Watson. "And you thought that the very sight of me would send Holmes fleeing down the stairs?"

             
"No, no, nothing like that," Watson said.

             
Holmes studied them both for a moment, and then fell back in his chair and chuckled. "Oh, I fancy it was quite like that, Watson. Quite like that."

             
Watson looked embarrassed. "Well, old man," he said, "perhaps there was some element—I mean, you were going on about the professor and how he was plotting against you. And when you began looking behind the couch and up the chimney to see if he was concealed there—well, old man, I thought I'd better do something. Cocaine is an insidious drug, at the level you're taking it."

             
"So it is, Watson," Holmes agreed. "I came to the same conclusion. And so I've stopped taking it."

             
Watson sat on the couch and stared dubiously at his friend. "You have?"