“Almost a year?”
A smile pulled at his lips. “You seem to doubt your hearing today. It has been a battle royal. Mrs. Hudson has most definitely not been remiss in her duties. She takes this innocent creature here to be the very symbol of the encroaching filth that God put women such as her on this earth to destroy. Our war, too, has lasted over a year. At first she asked me daily if she could not remove the vermin. Despite my instructions, I think she would have killed the spider long ago had I not threatened to seek other lodgings should she do so. I have told her that other spiders are fair game to her broom or dust mop, all save this one.” My perplexed expression made him laugh. “Come, Henry—have you never had a pet?”
“You know we have Victoria.” Victoria was our cat whom Michelle had most irreverently named.
“Then consider this small carnivore my pet. She is a prime specimen of tegenaria civilis, the common British house spider. She is a lady of great courage and determination, as well she must be to survive the undeserved hatred and abomination of the female of our species.”
“Not only the female!”
“As a physician, you should know that the fly is the great enemy of mankind. The fly is the carrier of infection and disease. The spider is our ally. Do have a look at her.”
Unenthusiastically I took the glass. The spider seemed immense, small hairs coverings its legs, spots covering its back. The fly was half smothered in silk, yet it still shook periodically, and I heard a faint buzz.
“Disgusting.” I set down the glass and turned away from the desk, hoping to steer us away from the spider.
Holmes smiled briefly. “I had no idea you were so fond of flies.”
“I am not fond of flies!”
This made him laugh. “Come, let us sit down. You need not watch her devour her prey.” I sat in one of the armchairs near the fire, while Holmes took the other and crossed his legs. “You look the very model of a prosperous physician today, Henry. And how is Michelle?”
“Now there you have the prosperous physician. Luckily avarice is stronger in my disposition than male pride. Her practice is thriving, and she makes far more money than I. Several women of the upper class have discovered that they prefer a woman physician, and she has become quite the rage. She will soon have to begin turning away patients. Only last week she snared Lady Connely. Old Thurswell must be furious. He has preached against women doctors for years. To have his wealthiest patient snatched away by a female half his age... It is rather delightful.”
Holmes laughed. “Come, Henry, you make her sound like my friend tegenaria civilis with her fly. I am glad to hear you are both prospering. What of her work with the less fortunate?”
“She would turn away Lady Connely first. She has made a vow that for each rich patient she takes on, she will have a poor one in the balance. We both still work at the clinic weekly.”
“I wish all physicians shared your charitable sentiments.”
“And you, Sherlock—what is all this? It does seem a bit... messier than...” A gesture with my hand took in the books and papers scattered about.
“I have been working on a puzzle, a very curious one.” He sat back in the chair and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Tell me, Henry, did you ever read Watson’s story, The Final Problem?”
“Given your attitude toward his stories, I have always scrupulously avoided them. Is that not the one, however, where you die at the end?”
Holmes was amused. “Yes. At the Reichenbach Falls. And have you heard of Moriarty, Professor Moriarty?”
“No, I have not.”
“He is my arch-enemy, the Napoleon of crime, Watson has me calling him.”
“Does this Moriarty have any basis in reality?”
Holmes set down his pipe and leaned forward, his eyes suddenly bright. “Ah, that is the question—that is the puzzle. Even a week or two ago I would have told you he was a complete fiction. I would have been adamant. Watson’s stories to the contrary, most crimes and criminals are stupid. Only very rarely does a man of first-rate intelligence turn to crime. Most often we have only drunken ruffians or groups of them who bash in someone’s head, snatch a purse, or rob a bank. The true criminal genius is rare, and the notion of an evil mastermind behind the crime in London is a silly one. Watson has me comparing Moriarty to a huge spider at the center of an evil web sensing every motion, every criminal movement, in this great metropolis. Of course, I would never have come up with such an obviously preposterous metaphor.”
“Why preposterous?”
Holmes shook his head. “You know nothing about spiders either. Only a female spider can spin a web; only she sits waiting for her prey—and not necessarily at the center. If Moriarty were a woman, the metaphor might have made sense, but for a man, it is a foolish one.”
“Perhaps poetic license...”
“I do not take poetic license with the natural world! If Watson wished to make such an inane metaphor, he should have had it coming from his own mouth.” His face had grown quite red. “Pardon me. My irritation with Watson is only too ready to come to the surface. People are always comparing men to savage creatures such as wolves or spiders, but in reality, man is the only animal capable of true evil. There is no malice in the wolf or spider. I watched my spider devour her mate.”
“What?”
“Yes, she is one of the varieties which frequently consumes the male. The male is much smaller than the female. The female tegenaria will devour other spiders of either sex or even her own children after a certain age. It is curious how the roles of the sexes are reversed with spiders and humans. But I digress. I was telling you about Moriarty and the foolishness of the notion of a mastermind behind much of the crime in London.”
“Yes.”
“Unfortunately, I am no longer convinced it is so foolish an idea.”
His smile vanished, and as I stared into his gray eyes, I felt a kind of chill about the heart. “Good Lord,” I whispered.
“I am not certain, Henry. Perhaps I am wrong—I hope I am wrong.” He tried to draw on his pipe, but it had gone out. “Blast it.” He set down the pipe, stood, and walked to the large bow window overlooking Baker Street. “The past several months I have had a growing sense of... uneasiness. I thought at first it was only nerves, but now I think I had begun to sense a pattern, a shape—a web, if you will.” He glanced over at his desk. “Forgive me, tegenaria. Something is happening, I believe, but still it eludes me. It began only as an intuition, but I have been pondering the problem, reading over the papers for the past several months, checking certain leads, certain odd crimes. There may indeed be a Moriarty. It is ironic.” He laughed.
“What is?”
“If it were not for Watson’s preposterous creation, I might never have hit upon the idea. Two weeks ago I asked myself, what if there were a Moriarty? Only then did I begin to sense the pattern. So far I have no idea what kind of person he may be. If this pattern is real, then a major intellect, a truly imposing mind, is behind it. The design is intricate and very subtle. He is the opponent for whom I have always longed.”
I frowned. “How could you long for such a monster?”
“Have you never wanted to slay a dragon?”
“No, I can’t say that I have.”
Holmes leaned upon the windowsill, staring down at the street below. “Now what have we here? A visitor, if I am not mistaken. He would have given the cabby’s poor horse a workout. A little under eighteen stone, I would say. His clothes proclaim him a gentleman, but he has the physique of a boxer or stevedore. Ah, yes! He is at the door. I am tired of musing over insubstantial cobwebs, and it has been frightfully dull of late. Perhaps he has an interesting case for me.”