Moriarty The Life and Times of a Criminal Genius Read online

  MORIARTY THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A CRIMINAL GENIUS

  MICHAEL CHARTON

  PUBLISHED BY CHARTONS CORNER AT SMASHWORDS

  COPYRIGHT 2011 MICHAEL CHARTON

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotations used in critical articles or reviews.

  There are many people I want to thank for my first book. If I leave you out, it is not a deliberate act, but forgetfulness.

  I want to begin with my parents, Marvin and Barbara Charton, without whom I would not be here. I want to thank them for instilling a love of reading and their unwavering support.

  To my best friend, wife, and published author Elaine Charton, thank you for getting me going. I love you and who would have thought, your night blindness in driving would lead to this. The world works in funny ways.

  To my dad’s good friend, John (J.J.) McClarnon may he rest in peace, thank you for instilling my initial knowledge of things Irish.

  To the wonderful members of my Romance Writers of America chapter, Saguaro Romance Writers. We rock!

  To Arthur Conan Doyle for creating Sherlock Holmes. I hope my small effort here will help keep interest in Sherlock Holmes alive for future generations.

  Finally, to the members of Michael Palin’s website Palin’s Travels who have been hearing about this for years.

  • MORIARTY!

  • THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A CRIMINAL GENIUS

  • By Michael Charton.

  Table of Table of contents

  Part I. My Early Days

  Chapter One The Meddlesome Holmes is Closing In!

  Chapter Two My Childhood Ended When I Was Thirteen

  Chapter Three We Must Leave Ireland!

  Chapter Four: Arrival in the Devils Backyard

  Chapter Five: Starting with Nothing

  Chapter Six: Building My First Gang or Brain over Brawn

  Part II. My American Sojourn and Other Places for Schemes

  Chapter Seven: My Time in Boston

  Chapter Eight: The American Civil War

  Chapter Nine: The Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania

  Chapter Ten:Arriving in the American West and Finding Love

  Chapter Eleven: India

  Part III. End Game

  Chapter Twelve: My Temper Gets the Better of Me and Taking Mother Away from Accursed London

  Chapter Thirteen:The Brilliant Schemes Sherlock Holmes Destroyed

  Chapter Fourteen: Money Earning Blackmailing Schemes

  Chapter Fifteen: Sunny Italy and Allies There

  Chapter Sixteen: My visit to the Diogenes Club

  Chapter Seventeen: My Philosophies in Full

  Chapter Eighteen: My Visit to Vienna and to Dr. Freud

  Chapter Nineteen: My Visit to Holmes

  Chapter Twenty: The Story of Col. Moran

  • Part One My Early Days

  • Chapter One

  • The Meddlesome Holmes is Closing In

  September 15, 1890

  I am writing down my thoughts, for I am at my wits end! I have tried to be kind. I have tried blackmail. I have tried subtle threats, direct threats, but alas, to no avail! His Boswell, Dr. Watson, writes missives to praise Holmes, while slandering me. I can hardly get relief from the courts in my position. I am a hunted Irishman in the English lair: a Catholic and the descendant of great Celtic kings, persecuted and hunted like the animal the Sassenach think I am. I abhor what Holmes has done to me. The outrages have been building over the years and getting to be more than I can bear.

  He calls me the "Napoleon of Crime." I take his compliment on that score; however, he does not acknowledge the other things I do: the orphanages I set up worldwide; the organizations I set up to help people scattered worldwide by English evil, cruelty, and An Ghorta Morta, The Great Hunger, which dispersed many Irishmen, me included, from the land of our birth.

  Oh, Mr. Holmes, you don't know yet how you will pay. You and all of the so-called Great British Empire. You will be shown how one man, with I daresay a higher intellect than yours, shall bring you and your arrogant Empire to its quivering knees. You shall be quivering. Your arrogance will be your undoing. I shall laugh. I shall build a better world for all those you have oppressed by spreading the color pink over the atlases of the world. Oh, Mr. Holmes, you have thwarted and vexed me! With the naval treaty, I could have brought your rotten nation down. You meddled and snatched it from my hands! You uncovered my alliances worldwide! In India, Canada, the United States, Australia! You are dogging my every step. I tip my hat to your brilliance. I will best you in the end, though. Your cocaine-addled brain is no match for me. You may think me a stupid, ignorant Mick. I assure you, Mr. Holmes, go on thinking me not as brilliant as you think. Maybe that will be your undoing. You shall underestimate me.

  Your companions, I know, are no match for me. For example, there is that ignorant buffoon from Yorkshire, Lestrade. If ever there was a bumbling Peeler, he is it! I realize why you have a need to help the police regularly. The Welsh idiot, Jones, is no better! Inspector Hopkins, I do have respect for. He helped to thwart me in the bank robbery my Red Headed League scheme.

  Now I come to your Boswell Dr. John Watson. As God is my witness, I will fix him. For he, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, is your voice to the British masses. You make my life hard, Holmes. Watson makes it public and makes you a hero. It would be a shame for Dr. Watson to meet with an accident that might ruin his hands, therefore ending his writing and his medical career. I have to admit I tried blackmailing him, bribing him. I have to admit Dr. Watson is a proper British gentleman. That and that alone, makes him an enemy as well.

  Your brother Mycroft. Don't think for a minute I can't get to him at his club. I can and I shall if you do not leave me to my business. I have been to Sicily and studied the Mafia and its techniques. Trust me, if you don't back off, I shall find a way.

  The ladies in your life, Irene Adler and Mary Russell. I will not harm a lady, but there are those of my acquaintance who are women and will not hesitate to do so.

  You don't realize the fire you are playing with, Mr. Holmes, with no one to put the fire out. Why not leave the battle and keep the fire from burning in the first place?

  Mr. Holmes, I am prepared to make you one final deal. I know you will not take my money. I have tried that through my associates. However, I will make this deal with you. There is no negotiation. You must accept and move out of the way or be disposed of. The deal is as follows:

  You allow an Irish independence movement to thrive.

  The British government uses its vast economic resources to pull the Irish masses out of their poverty.

  A timetable is drawn up for Irish independence.

  The Gaelic language is promoted and not repressed.

  Reparations are made for An Ghorta Morta. Mr. Holmes, as far as I am concerned, Her Majesty's government has blood on its hands--the blood of millions of Irishmen.

  The Catholic Church is designated the official church of Ireland.

  You stay out of my affairs completely. If you want to be a consulting detective, that is fine. You may not, however, investigate me, and Dr. Watson may not write about it if you do.

  All of these are non-negotiable. I hope this is clear. I expect an answer forthwith.

  If this goes o
n, one of us must be destroyed. There isn't room in the same mortal world for both of us. I have men all over the world, ready to do my bidding.

  Who do you think bankrolled the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania? Fenians in Canada? Who helps to raise funds in Boston and New York? Certain goings on in India? There are many lonely deaths in the Irish countryside, enemies of my people. I shall not give you specifics; however, a man of your brilliance gets the idea. I have connections in many places. My point, Mr. Holmes? Think you can flee your beloved London, which I know you don't like to do? Think again! I shall be waiting and plotting. For your life, take the offer of safety, while you still can. You have hounded me these long years and you shall not get another chance. What will it be Mr. Holmes? You have two weeks to make your decision. Choose wisely.

  • Chapter Two

  • My Childhood Ended When I was Thirteen

  •

  The peace love and security of my childhood home was broken and violated! The door burst open! Six huge redcoats burst through the door with a tall, arrogant looking, aristocratic officer behind them. They were huge, powerfully built men. At least two of them were over six feet, so they towered over us. I had never felt such fear in my life. The officer actually ordered the soldiers to fix bayonets and they herded the four of us, mother, father, my younger sister Mairead and me into the corner of our main room far from the fire. "Stand still. My men will shoot anyone who moves," the officer said in a tone that was commanding, but not loud, and definitely cold. My mother's piercing blue eyes stared straight up at the officer. She slapped him in the chest for she could not reach his face. A soldier with black hair and eyes gritted his teeth in front of me as he held the point of the bayonet at my chest. My parents taught me not to show fear, but it was hard to do in this situation.

  "How dare you?" Mother spat the words. Mairead, being so young, was left alone. She went into the bedroom to hide. "How dare you invade the sanctity of my home, as you and your charging bulls have?"

  "Madame, if you do not restrain yourself, my men will tie you up," the officer said coldly.

  Mother slapped him again. "No one speaks to me that way in my house!" She drew the phrase "in my house" out very slowly.

  "McGuiness, tie the woman and gag her. You need not treat her as a lady." One of the soldiers, a great big strong man, grabbed a handkerchief and a thin rope. He grabbed my mother around her waist from behind and, mistakenly or not, he touched her breast.

  Mother kicked back, but McGuiness was so large she could not hurt him no matter how many blows she landed. "Oh, my boy, a son of Ireland, your mother must be so ashamed," she said in a now deflated sad voice.

  McGuiness responded with an evil leer. "Me mother was a Derry prostitute who died. The army is me mother and father."

  "God help us all," were the last choked words mother got out before she was bound, gagged and placed on the floor, hands tied across her knees. Father was not acting to defend us only because he was knocked down and hit with the butts of the soldiers' rifles. The soldiers clearly were trained well and knew their dirty business. The officer struck him across the face with a riding crop. Then the officer took out an official-looking document, looked down his arrogant, aristocratic nose and began reading: "James Moriarty, you are hereby charged with violating the Queen's Peace through smuggling and treason." The redcoat guarding me moved his rifle, threw me to the floor and helped to grab father and hustle him out the door. Luckily, they did not search the house and find father's shotgun. I was going to need that in a short time.

  The beginning of what would become the rest of my life occurred that terrible night, October 15, 1848, with the dying embers of the fire and a cold in the house that was more than just a dying fire. I was thirteen years old and was going to become a man just like that.

  I want the world to get an idea where I came from. I want the world to understand how I succeeded in spite of the English in not dying in my native and beloved Ireland and became an educated and wealthy man in spite of the barriers placed in my way.

  I grew up in southwestern Ireland with my back to the Atlantic, in County Kerry. The English could only drive us into the sea or, as with many other Irish, abroad. We spoke a mixture of English and Gaelic but we were careful not to speak the Gaelic near the English. Remember what bloody Cromwell said two centuries earlier, "To Hell or Connaught!"

  My family name is traceable to the eleventh century in Castlemaine Harbour, County Galway. In Gaelic it is actually O'Muirchirtaig meaning "skilled in the ways of the sea." My family was a powerful family. Then that bitch the English call Good Queen Bess stripped my illustrious family of its power. Cromwell was still bloodier and decimated us. We as a family made sure we were as educated as we could be and learned the oppressor's language so we could speak to him. Not with him, to him. My real Christian name is Seamus, but I only use that with fellow Irishmen. It is dangerous to speak the Gaelic where the English can hear it. In enslaving us, they have made that treasonous.

  My father, also named James Moriarty, was a brilliant man who owned a fishing boat. He lived up to the family name in being skilled with the sea. He smuggled items we needed to stay alive, as well as weapons from France. Father taught me to respect learning and never forget my heritage and to stand up for the less fortunate who were suffering. The cruelties of the past were present and never forgotten, nor was I allowed to forget them. Father was small in build, but not in stature in my eyes and our community. You had to be brave and tough to survive a cruel sea and do the smuggling and take the risks he was doing. Father admired the revolutionaries on the continent, felt Home Rule politicians were too weak, and Ireland's only hope was a violent revolution. He proudly helped smuggle people who killed rapacious landlords and British soldiers and officials out of Ireland and to safety. Father had a fire burning inside him, but on the surface was a quiet reflective man for the most part, who enjoyed smoking his pipe, reading and thinking.

  On the other hand, my mother Mary Katherine was a small fiery woman with red hair and piercing blue eyes. If she glared at you, her eyes seemed to bore right through you. She feared no man or woman. She was the one who raised me because father was away much of the time. She was a well-read woman who admired the ancient Celtic legends and Celtic warrior queens, such as Boudicca, who destroyed the English city of Colchester in 61 A.D. and fought the Romans. She never stopped telling me, "James, you are descended from great Celtic warriors and kings. I expect you to find a way to restore that glory. I named you after our beloved King James who had his rightful throne stolen from him, as he was stolen from us. Ireland will rise once again from English cruelty and evil. I expect you to lead that. That more than any riches will make me proud."

  You can see how tough she was. I knew not to question what she wanted.

  My Father grew up around my mother and was always trying to impress her. What brought them together was their literacy and a shared destiny in an Irish future. Father's quiet passion and Mother's loud passion were a brilliant combination.

  You must understand the fact that Catholics were not allowed to attend university or own much land. The government wanted to keep us poor and stupid. The English disliked us and despaired of us, but they made us what we became. Then they made fun of us. Father's trial was speedy and, of course, a sham.

  The soldiers provided some of the poor drunken wretches of the area as witnesses who claimed to see guns offloaded. Father represented himself. He did not deny the charges. If anything, he reveled in it. I think he knew he was a dead man anyway. He was certainly going to have his day in court and he finally got it.

  After the jury found Father guilty, the judge asked him if he had anything to say. He refused to address the judge as "your lordship." "I stand before this so-called court of justice. It is not a court of justice to me, as I, James Moriarty, do not recognize it. You accuse me of smuggling. If smuggling to survive is a crime, then so be it. Our people are mistreated by your hateful crown and now they are starving. Your e
vil farming policies brought us to this! To think heroic Irish missionaries once tried to civilize you Saxon bastards! Some bloody repayment! Norman incursions and Norman knights created more cruelty. Then came the Plantations of those blasted Scots Presbyterians and God's scourge on Earth, Oliver Cromwell. You denied us our beloved King James and placed that Dutch heathen on the throne. You accuse me of treason. The Scottish patriot William Wallace, when you English tried him many centuries ago in Westminster, said he could not be a traitor, for he did not recognize the government of Proud Edward, that murderous king, Edward I. Your government occupies me. I am not a part of it, and I daresay you would prefer not to have me as a part of it. Why can't you just leave us be? You don't like us anyway. You don't approve of our Catholic faith. You don't approve of our Gaelic language. You hate everything we are. Why do you insist on staying? I will not live to see my land free. My boy over there will live to see that day and will help fight your vile crown and defeat it to make sure it happens.

  The judge intoned, "Sir, are you quite finished with your torturous and inaccurate lesson in Irish History?"

  "I reckon I am even more finished with you than you are with me! Erin Go Bragh!!

  I was so proud to be pointed out by father in the courtroom. I could not imagine I was ready for what he wanted, though. The Judge placed the black cap on his head and intoned again, "James Moriarty, a jury of your peers has found you guilty. It is the pleasure of this court that you will be taken to a place of execution in two days' time. There you will be hanged by your neck until you are dead. May God have mercy on your soul." Father did not even flinch. The judge then pointed a long bony finger toward me. "Young man," he intoned in his dull voice, "I will be watching you."