Professor Moriarty

Professor James Moriarty, is a fictional character who is the arch-enemy of the detective Sherlock Holmes. In the Sherlock Holmes stories, Moriarty is known as the "Napoleon of Crime." T. S. Eliot would later describe Macavity in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats as "The Napoleon of Crime."

He first appeared in Arthur Conan Doyle's tale "The Final Problem" wherein he fought with Holmes atop the Reichenbach Falls[?] and was said to have fallen to his death whilst locked in mortal combat with the detective.

He next appeared in "The Valley of Fear". He has only appeared in two of the sixty Sherlock Holmes tales by Conan Doyle but due to his popularity in later stories by other authors, parodies, and use in other media has gained the popular impression of being Holmes' nemesis. In the Conan Doyle stories, narrated by Watson, Moriarty is never seen by Watson, who relies upon Holmes to relate accounts of the detective's battle with the criminal.

The Professor has a brother, also named James Moriarty, who is a station-master. Holmes described Moriarty as being

a man of good birth and excellent education. endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty. At the age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon the binomial theorem, which has had a European vogue. On the strength of it he won the mathematical chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all appearances, a most brilliant career before him.

His weapon of choice was the "air-rifle," a unique weapon constructed for the Professor by a blind German mechanic, Von Herder, and used by his employee Colonel Sebastian Moran.