Free Moriarty by John Gardner Page B

half-completed work on
The Dynamics of an Asteroid
lying on the smugly neat desk facing the leaded window looking out onto the quiet courtyard.
    He thought now, as he waited in his makeshift rooms on the edge of Westminster, that it was during that visit so many years ago that he knew the full flush of envy as he saw James’s real potential. His brother would undoubtedly become a great and respected man—and this at a time when he, Jim Moriarty, was harried on all sides, desperately trying to build himself into a man to be feared and respected within the criminal hierarchy of, first, London, and then the whole of Europe.
    At the time of that first visit to the up-and-coming professor, young Moriarty had suffered a number of setbacks and more than anything, he needed some way of showing the underworld that he was truly a man of strength, a force with which to be reckoned, a leader with unique skills.
    It was only after Professor James Moriarty was acclaimed for hiswork
The Dynamics of an Asteroid
that the professor’s youngest brother saw clearly the way in which he could both further himself and scour the torment of envy from his brain. After all, he, more than any other person, knew his elder brother’s weaknesses.
    By the later 1870s, the tall, gaunt, and stooped professor, old before his time, was becoming a public figure. His mind, it was claimed, bordered on genius, his star seeming to be set ready for a rapid rise into the academic stratosphere. The newspapers wrote of him and there were predictions of a new appointment: the Chair of Mathematics would shortly be vacant at Cambridge, and it was common knowledge that the professor had already turned down two similar posts on the Continent.
    The time was ripe for the youngest Moriarty to act, and, as with all things, he laid his plans as meticulously as the professor in his world used science.
    Among his acquaintances, the young Moriarty had fostered the friendship of an elderly actor of the blood-and-thunder school, Hector Hasledean, a thespian whose one-man performances, in which he presented a striking range of Shakespearean characters from the hunchback Richard III to the old and embittered King Lear, were still much in demand.
    Hasledean was by this time in his late sixties, and drew freely upon a lifetime of theatrical experience. A flamboyant figure in both private and public life, the actor, though much given to the bottle, had a huge well of talent, still retaining the ability to move audiences with his range of emotions but also dazzling through his ability to change his appearance. Audiences marvelled at this talent, and young Moriarty set out to learn from him the tricks of that particular trade.
    Always certain of his victims’ weaknesses, young Moriarty became an invaluable friend to the ageing actor, plying him with gifts of goodwines and expensive spirits. He quickly won the actor’s confidence, and one night before Hasledean lapsed into total fuddlement, Moriarty made his first approach.
    He explained that he would like to play a trick on his famous brother and now sought the actor’s help in teaching him the art of disguise—in particular, how he could appear before his famous brother as a replica of the great man. The idea appealed to the actor, who totally entered into the spirit of things, working with the younger man and teaching him the rudiments of disguise: choosing the right kind of bald-pate wig with the assistance of the greatest expert of the day, supervising the making of special boots with “lifts” to give the added height, and designing a harness to help the young man maintain the required stoop. He also bade his pupil study the best books on makeup and disguise: Lacy’s
Art of Acting, A Practical Guide to the Art of Making-Up
by Haresfoot and Rouge, and the more recent
The Toilet and Cosmetic Arts
by A. J. Cooley.
    In a matter of some four weeks, the youngest Moriarty was able to transform himself