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.

18602    This was the organization which I deduced, Watson, and which I devoted my whole energy to exposing and breaking up.

18603    'But the Professor was fenced round with safeguards so cunningly devised that, do what I would, it seemed impossible to get evidence which could convict in a court of law.

18604    You know my powers, my dear Watson, and yet at the end of three months I was forced to confess that I had at last met an antagonist who was my intellectual equal.

18605    My horror at his crimes was lost in my admiration at his skill.