— Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Old Potts had been with Moriarty from the beginning, and there were few around who knew how far back that went. Slowly, and with great love, over the course of many years, he had converted the upper cellar in the house at 64 Russell Square into a huge, well-equipped basement laboratory and workshop.
The old man had his bed in a corner of the workshop. He seldom came upstairs, and almost never left the house, except for occasional visits to the professor's observatory on Crimpton Moor. And he was happy thus. Professor Moriarty spent much time in the basement with old Potts. It was here that he designed the delicate apparatus with which he studied the cosmos and tested his physical and astronomical theories.
Within the past year, old Potts had helped Moriarty fabricate a mechanism which could determine the speed of light to better than three parts per thousand. Together they had experimented with a series of evacuated glass valves with sealed electrodes of various rare materials, and observed fascinating and as yet inexplicable results when an electric current was passed through. It may be that they also had constructed a device which would enable one to bypass an electrical alarm system without setting off the alarm, and an instrument which would allow one to hear the tumblers falling in the latest model wall safe. If so, it is perhaps reprehensible that such mundane practical engineering projects were necessary to support the professor's flights of pure science. But that is the way of the world.
When Barnett came down into the workshop a few days after his visit to Scotland Yard, he found Moriarty and old Potts working together on a new design of light-frame astronomical telescope, specially constructed to be carried high above the earth in a giant hydrogen balloon. The telescope was strapped into a great jig on the central table while Professor Moriarty, with his shirtsleeves rolled up, made final adjustments in a series of setscrews around the telescope's rim. Old Potts, with his lab smock wrapped around him, followed behind the professor and put little dabs of cement on each screw to lock it permanently in place.
"Well, it looks as if you've got it just about finished, Professor," Barnett commented, strolling over to inspect the intricate, spidery mechanism that held the highly polished mirror.
"It had better be," Moriarty said. "It lofts next week, if the weather on the moor stays clear."
"You are going off to Crimpton Moor, then?" Barnett asked.
Moriarty nodded. The estate he maintained on Crimpton Moor included a residence, a workshop, and an observatory housing his precious twelve-inch reflector. This was the site of most of his astronomical observations. "Prince Tseng Li-Chang is already in residence, preparing the balloon," he said. "His son claims to have perfected a new emulsion for the photographic plates that will more than double their sensitivity. If it performs as promised, we should get some fascinating pictures."
"What do you expect to learn from these balloon experiments, Professor?" Barnett asked. "And please don't just fob me off with your usual reply that you're furthering human knowledge. I'm sure you are. But as an answer, you will have to admit it is rather vague."
Moriarty snorted. "You, a journalist, are concerned about an answer being 'rather vague'? Truly the millennium has arrived."
"I ask purely out of my own interest, Professor," Barnett assured him. "The great newspaper-reading public will not concern itself with staring at Mars unless it feels that something up there is staring back."
Professor Moriarty made the final adjustment on the aluminum-bronze telescope mounting and put the tiny screwdriver back in its small case. He turned and regarded Barnett with interest. "Now that," he said, "is a truly fascinating notion!"
"How's that?"
"Ah, Benjamin, you know not what you say," Moriarty replied. "For some time I have been pondering ways to interest the common man in the abstruse sciences. You may have just given me a valuable suggestion: 'Something is staring back.' I like the sound of that! And, indeed, there is a good chance that something is staring back."
"I assume that you are not speaking religiously, Professor," Barnett said.
"Religiously? Indeed, no. Neither religiously nor metaphorically nor psychically nor figuratively. Somewhere out there, Mr. Barnett, there are intelligences greater than our own. How could it be else? And these beings might, even now, be watching us with the same diligence that a hymenopterologist studies a colony of ants. And for purposes as far beyond our understanding as the hymenopterologist's purposes are beyond the understanding of the ant."
"You really believe this?"
"I am forced to this conclusion by the inescapable logic of the universe," Moriarty said.
"But intelligences superior to our own?"
Moriarty smiled. "I am very afraid," he said, "that any intelligences we find — or who find us — will be superior to our own."
"You speak as a confirmed atheist," Barnett said as he sat on the wooden bench running along the great worktable.
Moriarty shrugged. "It is not that I disbelieve in God," he said, "it is merely that I see no need to drag some immortal being into the equation in order to explain the universe."
Moriarty's housekeeper, Mrs. H, appeared on the landing leading down to the basement. "I trust you are ready with your drayage, Professor," she said, folding her arms across the severe bosom of her stiffly starched black dress. "The dray awaits."
"Splendid," Mrs. H," Moriarty said, rolling his sleeves down and shrugging his arms back into his gray frock coat. "The instrument is ready, and the packing is prepared. It only remains to lower the telescope into the crate and nail it shut."
Mrs. H sniffed. "I shall inform the drayman that you will be within the hour," she said.
"I trust my instructions were followed?" Moriarty asked.
"Implicitly, Professor," Mrs. H told him. "The dray is around the corner on Montague Street, by the hotel. Mr. Maws awaited its arrival."
"Excellent!" Moriarty said. "Then this large crate, which will almost immediately contain the telescope, and these other five crates which are already nailed down, are to be taken out through the accommodation exit and loaded into the dray. Great care is to be taken; this is delicate apparatus."
"I shall see to it, Professor."
"I know you will, Mrs. H. You are a paragon of getting-it-done-properly. You run this household with an efficiency which amazes even me. It is a constant delight to be associated with you. Please send the Mummer down to me now."
"Very well, Professor." Mrs. H nodded and withdrew.
What Moriarty called the "accommodation exit" was a back way that led, through a twisting maze of alleys and two subtly concealed doors in separating walls, to the side entrance to the hotel on Montague Street. "Why are you going out that way, Professor?" Barnett asked. "Are you sneaking this equipment out?"
"I never sneak," Moriarty said firmly. "Since my business is nobody else's affair, I fail to see how my effort to avoid prying eyes can be considered 'sneaking.' "
"I take it back, Professor," Barnett said. "I wasn't aware that we had any prying eyes about. Whose eyes are they, and what are they trying to find out?"
"A good question," Moriarty said, "and one deserving of a factual answer. At the moment I have only conjecture, but I expect— Ah! Perhaps we can find out now; here is the Mummer."
"I didn't want to disturb you while you was at work down here, Professor," the little man said, bounding down the wooden staircase.
"Thoughtful of you, Mummer," Moriarty said. "Did you succeed?"
" 'Course I did, what do you think?" the Mummer said, looking offended.
"With what result?"
"I buzzed the tall gent what's been mucking about outside keeping the admiral company, and found a rozzer in his poke."