128 – But then Holmes broke in (1)
When James Moriarty woke up from a terrible nightmare, he sighed softly and was relieved without realizing it. Of course, his head hurt, perhaps because of the aftereffects of his dream, and the pain caused by the dream seemed to be taking over his body, albeit slightly.
First of all, as soon as he opened his eyes, Moriarty realized that he had escaped a nightmare, but somehow he could not remember what he had dreamed of.
But he didn’t pay much attention. Originally, most dreams would disappear from memory like a mirage as soon as you opened your eyes, and above all, they were just dreams at best.
Yes, it is still a dream.
No matter how terrible the nightmare was, it was just a stupid dream that could never happen.
Moriarty thought so.
More than anything, he no longer had time to worry about dreams. Because a problem facing reality immediately caught his attention as he lay on the bed.
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t a problem. However, perhaps because of the aftereffects of his dream, he could not help but react a little sensitively without realizing it.
“Peony… …. “What are you doing?”
“Hi! Main… Master, are you awake? Sesame… sesame…… “I wanted to wake you up!”
When he slowly opened his eyes, he felt the presence of someone else sitting next to him.
Of course, Moriarty’s own bed was larger than a bed for a single person. He wasn’t the type of person to be very obsessed with wealth, but he wasn’t the type to insist on frugality like a monk either.
He naturally enjoyed small luxuries, and did not insist on a cramped single bed, so his bed was always large enough for two or three people.
But Moriarty himself was a celibate, so he always had the bed to himself.
I immediately knew that the popular figure next to me was a peony.
Of course, Moran did not dare to sneak into his bedroom and spend the night with him. True to Moran’s excuse, it was clear that he had come in to wake her up and then quietly laid down next to her.
It was clear that Moran enjoyed a brief escape. Because Moriarty himself gave the opportunity to take advantage of Moran’s heart in the first place.
I also found out that Peony was secretly savoring his own body odor, just like a dog smelling something it likes.
Normally, he would have pretended not to notice, but perhaps because he had a nightmare, he had no choice but to open his mouth with a bit of an edge without realizing it.
Moran, startled, got down from her bed at an incredible speed, her face blushing like a child whose parents caught her doing something bad.
She was so fast that you would have thought the sight of her lying next to her just moments ago had been an illusion.
However, Moriarty did not press further. As if he felt regretful, he tolerated the fact that Moran did not manage her facial expressions without realizing it.
Even so, in her own eyes, Moriarty was nothing more than her little boy.
He could be confident. He said that he could precisely control and coordinate everything as he had done so far.
If someone like Porok had listened, he would have lamented and asked people to listen to his advice, but Moriarty had a habit of ignoring the words of those less intelligent than him.
Moriarty, who tolerated the deviation of his secretary and subordinate and briefly attended to Moran, got ready and asked about his schedule and work while eating breakfast.
Most of them were trivial, literally office-related things for work.
She could be said to be bored these days because she has not been paying any attention to her beloved student, Holmes. If it hadn’t been a nightmare, she might have been looking for a new excuse to provoke Holmes, hoping that her disappointing pupil would once again provoke her.
Therefore, Moriarty had no choice but to ask about her dear Mr. Charles Augustus Milvert.
“How’s Mr. Milverton doing, Moran?”
“We are responding lightly as instructed. “I think I’ll probably come back sometime tomorrow at the earliest, master.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Moran answered in a businesslike manner as she handed over black tea with milk and sugar adjusted to the owner’s taste, and a satisfied Moriarty nodded her head.
If Charles Augustus Milverton had heard it, he might have reacted differently, but for Moriarty, Milverton was a toy that suddenly appeared.
Of course, like a child, he was a toy that he would soon tire of and break, but at least for the time being, he was something that was easy to play with lightly.
More than anything, the other person was quite fun to play with.
She said she knew nothing to begin with, but she had to suppress her laughter when she sent her threat to Moriarty himself.
Despite being a bit of a prank, it was a fairly useful toy in that it did not run to Moriarty until now.
However, Moriarty learned that afternoon that Moran’s prediction was unusually wrong. Charles Augustus Milverton visited Moriarty’s mansion again with a complicated expression and without an appointment.
“You don’t look as good as you did a few days ago, Mr. Milverton. “It seems like you’re having a hard time living these days, not least because it came so suddenly.”
“Mo… Professor Moriarty!”
Just by looking at his face, you could tell that Charles Augustus Milverton, whom he had reunited with after a few days, had clearly gone through a lot of changes.
According to Moriarty’s recollections, he was a man so chubby that he was concerned about his future health. It would be ambiguous to call him a pig, but he was the kind of person for whom the expression “Thin” Would never fit.
However, as if he had experienced something unfortunate in the past few days, his plump cheeks had shrunk to a degree that was noticeable, and above all, his bloodshot eyes were filled with anxiety, fear, and a little anger.
Even in this situation, the fact that the other person was expressing some anger towards him clearly brought Moriarty great satisfaction. That’s because it was fun to play with.
Charles Augustus Millton barely suppressed his complex emotions and instinctively asked the question he most wanted to ask.
“Everything… “What are you?”
Moriarty smiled at that stupid question.
For a moment, Milverton felt fear towards the young man in front of him, and he also had to feel anger.
He couldn’t help but think back to the nightmarish daily life of the past few days.
Something is wrong. Anyone who wasn’t an idiot had no choice but to know. An unexplained rejection or fearful reaction from numerous journalists who came to increase the level of threats against Professor Moriarty.
In addition, there was a printing shop that recently burned down due to an unknown fire, and a subordinate who committed suicide out of nowhere.
The man in front of me is clearly the culprit. Milverton had a hunch.
Of course, based on common sense, if you were involved in such a matter, you would not have hastily come to visit out of fear.
But Milverton was a proud man, and while he felt fear, he could not help but be half-blinded by his anger at the opponent before him.
This was possible because he was a man who never felt any fear despite the fact that there were many people who built wealth through threats that could destroy people’s lives in the first place, and who actually destroyed them.
Moriarty opened her mouth.
From noble mtl dot com
“This is a difficult question to understand. To answer your stupid question, the man you are looking at is James Moriarty, a professor of mathematics at Oxford, and he recently received an interesting letter from Charles Augustus Milverton.”
“So what on earth did you do?!”
Milverton raised his voice without realizing it. At his attitude, the maid who was guarding Professor Moriarty like a soldier suddenly showed her teeth and growled, but she still could not hold back her anger.
It was terrible, everything was a nightmare.
What greatly shocked Milverton was the ‘suicide’ of a subordinate he had ordered to write an article about Moriarty.
Coincidentally, Milverton himself was the first to discover the scene, and seeing the hanging body was clearly shocking in itself.
But it wasn’t the sight of such a body that scared Milverton. From what he remembered, there was definitely nothing underneath the hanging body.
It was common knowledge that even Milverton needed a scaffold to hang himself. He reported this to the officers who came to retrieve the body, and apparently they also saw something suspicious.
However, Milverton could not help but be embarrassed when he saw the police authorities conclude that it was suicide.
“I don’t know what you’re asking. Was it your subordinate, John? Are you saying that John killed himself, but he didn’t have a foothold underneath him?”
“Yes… “You!”
In response to Moriarty’s provocation, which was not a provocation, Milverton looked like he was threatening his inner pocket. His pistol was there.
No matter how much he thought he would never be in danger, he was always armed with simple weapons, mistakenly believing that they would at least be effective against the opponent in front of him.
However, Milverton could not help but be taken aback by Professor Moriarty’s next words.
“That’s not how you make threats, but you don’t seem to be very good at making threats, Mr. Milverton.”
“Huh?”
After coming to his senses, Milverton realized that his pockets had become lighter. He turned his gaze back to Professor Moriarty and saw his pistol in the hand of his maid.
