Act the First
The Napoleon of Crime
Professor James Moriarty is not the sort of man one simply loses track of. He is a mathematician, a polymath, and — beneath the respectability of his academic title — the architect of London’s criminal underworld. He has organised the city’s most dangerous men into a disciplined force, protected them from the law, and profited handsomely from the arrangement. Holmes has called him the Napoleon of Crime. Moriarty has not disputed the comparison.
Holmes has been patiently dismantling Moriarty’s web for some time. The Professor is aware of this. Their struggle has been conducted, until now, at a distance — an intellectual duel between two men who have each recognised, with considerable unease, that the other is their equal.
This morning, however, intelligence arrived placing Moriarty somewhere within the 199 stations of London’s transport network. He is moving. He has resources. He has tricks. And he has, at most, twenty-four moves before the net must close or the trail goes entirely cold.
Holmes received the intelligence at 7:14 in the morning. By 7:16 he was already in motion.
The game, as he is known to remark on such occasions, is afoot.
Act the Second
The Pursuers
Five investigators have assembled for the pursuit. Each brings something the others cannot furnish. Whether that will be sufficient remains, as yet, an open question.
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Sherlock Holmes
The world’s only consulting detective — a distinction he created and remains the sole occupant of. His gift for observation and deduction is without peer. Holmes considers Moriarty a personal matter. He is not wrong to do so.
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Dr Watson
Former army surgeon, veteran of the Afghan campaign, and Holmes’s steadfast companion and chronicler. Watson’s medical eye and battlefield composure make him a more formidable ally than the popular accounts of him suggest.
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Insp. Lestrade
Scotland Yard’s most tenacious inspector. Holmes has compared him to a bulldog — an assessment Lestrade takes as a compliment, and is not entirely wrong to. He will not let go of a case. Not ever.
Insp. Gregson
Holmes once called Gregson the smartest of the Scotland Yarders, which is either high praise or a carefully worded slight, depending on one’s view of Scotland Yard. Gregson has chosen to interpret it as the former.
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Wiggins
Leader of the Baker Street Irregulars — Holmes’s unofficial intelligence network of London street children. Where a detective is noticed, Wiggins is invisible. He knows the city not as a map, but as a living thing.
Act the Third
The City
London’s transport network is vast, overlapping, and — for a man who knows it well — remarkably easy to vanish into. Moriarty knows it very well indeed. The Professor may move by any of four means, and the detectives must account for all of them.
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Hansom Cab
Fast, ubiquitous, and leaving no record. The workhorse of the city and the first resort of anyone who wishes not to be followed.
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Omnibus
Slower, but covering broader ground. A man aboard an omnibus can be watching for pursuit from the upper deck before his followers have even hailed a cab.
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Underground
Rapid, subterranean, and difficult to observe. A quarry who descends into the underground may emerge almost anywhere.
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River Craft
The Thames runs through everything. A boat leaves no footprints, and the river asks no questions of those who travel upon it.