Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 19, No. 99, February 1952

His lordship looked up. “Did you say something, padre?”

The little priest shook his head. “No, no. It was merely a giggle.” He clasped his hands and beamed, like a happy child. “I am enjoying this. Do go on.”

“I wish,” said the Frenchman impatiently, “that our friend LaMont would come to the point. This aimless chatter fatigues me.”

“Why, don’t you like a lot of talk?” Miss Jane sounded surprised. “I do. The more the better.”

“So does he, ma’am,” thundered the doctor. “But only when he is doing the talking.”

Before the bickering could spread, his lordship resumed his reading. “ ‘Before considering the supra-legal activities of Professor Moriarty, however, it might be well to recapitulate briefly some of the more outstanding points of interest about the Holmes-Watson partnership at 22 iB Baker Street. After all, as we see our subject Moriarty almost solely through the eyes of one or other of the partners, it is only good policy to determine their value as witnesses and assess their relative strengths and weaknesses.

“ ‘It has become customary to set Holmes down as brilliant and the doctor as a courageous, level-headed, but — let us face it — desperately stupid man. So stupid, in fact, that he does not even have the sense to suppress his own weaknesses of intellect, but cheerfully exposes them to the public gaze through the medium of his chronicles. There is, for notorious example, the occasion on which Holmes returns to the lodgings, tears a piece from a loaf and devours it voraciously. “You are hungry!” remarks the doctor, with astonishing perspicuity. This is not by any means an isolated instance. Time after time the doctor utters some fatuity so crass that the mind rejects its probability on the instant. By any standards, they are abysmal. By Baker Street standards, they are utterly incredible.

“ ‘It is notorious that Holmes did not suffer fools gladly — his vicious outbursts at Lestrade and other officers from Scotland Yard testify to that. Is it likely then that for so many years he would tolerate a partner and colleague as congenitally feeble-minded as Watson makes himself out to be? Psychologically, I submit, it is quite out of the question’.”

“Bon.” The Frenchman’s beard bristled with appreciation. “Soundly reasoned — I could not have done better myself. I see what he is aiming at.”

“Seeing what you aim at is simple — anyone can do that,” remarked the priest abruptly. “But can you aim at what you see?” He looked at them and his eyes were very puzzled.

“May I,” asked his lordship politely, “proceed?” Again he turned to the thesis. “ ‘Two further points of interest affecting the famous friendship I commend to your notice before we proceed to the matter of Moriarty. One concerns certain expressions and turns of speech much favored by Holmes, perhaps the most frequently burlesqued talker in literature. Familiar cliches such as “Elementary, my dear Watson” hardly require any elaboration at this date.

“ ‘The other point is the inimitable and total assurance of Holmes. Facts, clues, evidence could — and so far as he was concerned, did — point in only one direction. He lived, we might say, on a one-way street of logic. A man held himself erect — ergo, he was a soldier. No other explanation — that he might be a Marine or even a civilian suffering from a stiff neck — was ever considered for a moment. A noted critic has drawn attention to this singular characteristic in the now famous dictum that one slip on the part of the criminal would have brought Holmes’s case crashing to the ground.

“ ‘Now, as to Moriarty. This king of crime had been a professor of mathematics at an English provincial University, and a brilliant one to boot, until at last driven from his Chair by the hot breath of scandal. Thereafter he went to London and became a crammer, one who stuffs young persons with just sufficient information to enable them to pass their examinations. This ex-professor, operating from his house in London, dominates the underworld of Europe and is brought in as a guest expert by even so powerful a group as the Scowrers of America. He is a veritable king among the kings of crime.

“ ‘So, at least, we are told.

“ ‘But who, we may legitimately inquire, is our informant? From whom do we hear these so-called facts? Why, none other than Holmes himself. The detective gives us two resumes of Moriarty’s career, once in The Valley of Fear and later in The Final Problem. This should be reliable enough information, but once again it would be no more than simple caution to question it. Especially when we remember Holmes’s tendency to regard only one side of the penny. He had decided that Moriarty was a crook, therefore Moriarty was a crook. It was as simple as that.

“ ‘But strangely enough, Scotland Yard had no clue whatsoever as to Moriarty’s existence in a criminal role. At one point in The Valley of Fear, Inspector MacDonald says that at the Yard they thought that Holmes had a bee in his bonnet about the professor — not an uncommon thought at the Yard about Holmes’s ideas, one must admit, but nevertheless indicative of their ignorance of a criminally-minded Moriarty.