18587    For years past I have continually been conscious of some power behind the malefactor, some deep organizing power which for ever stands in the way of the law, and throws its shield over the wrong-doer.

18588    Again and again in cases of the most varying sorts - forgery cases, robberies, murders - I have felt the presence of this force, and I have deduced its action in many of those undiscovered crimes in which I have not been personally consulted.

18589    For years I have endeavoured to break through the veil which shrouded it, and at last the time came when I seized my thread and followed it, until it led me, after a thousand cunning windings, to ex-Professor Moriarty of mathematical celebrity.

18590    'He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson.

18591    He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city.

18592    He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker.

18593    He has a brain of the first order.

18594    He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them.

18595    He does little himself.

18596    He only plans.

18597    But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized.

18598    Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be removed - the word is passed to the Professor, the matter is organized and carried out.

18599    The agent may be caught.

18600    In that case money is found for his bail or his defence.

18601    But the central power which uses the agent is never caught - never so much as suspected.