Who is Professor Moriarty. Hero Professor Moriarty. Screen image of the antihero

Moriarty - the villain of the late Victorian era, the head of one of the most influential criminal networks in all of Europe - is more like a Presbyterian priest, ready to give a blessing to any sinner, than to someone who sends people objectionable to him to the forefathers with a light hand.

Professor James Moriarty is the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, a brilliant criminal element whom the London detective calls the "Napoleon of the underworld". Arthur Conan Doyle himself uses this expression, referring to the real evil genius Adam Worth, who served as one of the prototypes of Moriarty.

In the original Holmesian, in the short story "The Adventure of the Final Problem", Professor Moriarty, a late Victorian villain and head of one of the most powerful criminal networks in all of Europe, falls with the detective off a cliff. . Sherlock believed that the crown of his work should have been the elimination of Moriarty, whose atrocities are poisoning society. However, readers, including Queen Victoria herself, were simply outraged that Moriarty dragged Sherlock with him to the grave. Doyle had no choice but to "resurrect" his favorite detective.

Moriarty is a vengeful, independent, charismatic and self-confident man who reveals the ruthless side of his personality as soon as something pisses him off. He respects Holmes' intellect and says that for him to fight with people of this level is a real intellectual pleasure.

Characterizing his worst enemy, Sherlock calls James Moriarty a man of noble birth, with an excellent education and phenomenal mathematical abilities. It turns out that at the age of 21, Moriarty wrote a treatise on Newton's binomial, which made him famous throughout Europe. He then received a chair in mathematics at a provincial university and, as the detective believes, could reach even greater heights. However, the genius, in whose veins the blood of a criminal flows, due to his sick mind and hereditary tendency to cruelty, soon became the subject of dark rumors - and was forced to resign and get out to London (London).

In the story "The Valley of Fear" Moriarty is called the intriguer of all times and peoples, the organizer of all hell and the brain of the criminal world, darkening the fate of peoples. And at the same time, Sherlock himself is amazed at how ingenious the tactics of his fierce enemy, who wrote "The Dynamics of an Asteroid" ("The Dynamics of an Asteroid"), an amazing book that no scientist dared to criticize, despite the tarnished reputation of the author himself. A defiled doctor and a slandered professor is Moriarty's guise, and Sherlock calls it a stroke of genius.

Wishing to reveal some details of the appearance of the "Napoleon of the criminal world", Conan Doyle describes a man with a thin face, gray hair and stilted speech. The criminal is more like a Presbyterian priest, ready to give a blessing to any sinner, than to someone who, with a light hand, sends people objectionable to him to the forefathers. Moriarty is the owner of untold wealth, carefully hiding his real financial situation. Sherlock believes that the professor's money is scattered in at least twenty bank accounts, and the main capital is hidden somewhere in France (France) or Germany (Germany).

In the short story "The Empty House", Holmes claims that Moriarty acquired powerful pneumatics from a blind German craftsman, one Mr. von Herder. This weapon, which resembled a simple cane in appearance, fired revolver cartridges at long distances and made almost no noise, which made it ideal for taking up sniper positions. In his dirty work, the villainous professor preferred to arrange "accidents", whether it was the incident when Sherlock almost died from falling masonry or from a horse-drawn cart rushing at breakneck speed.

Fans of the adventures of the London genius of private investigation assumed that not only Adam Worth could serve as the prototype for Moriarty. Someone saw the fictional villain as American astronomer Simon Newcomb. This talented graduate of Harvard (Harvard), with a special knowledge of mathematics, became famous throughout the world even before Conan Doyle began to write his stories. Another point of comparison was the fact that Newcomb had developed a reputation as a vicious snob, trying to destroy the careers and reputation of his academic rivals.

The Reverend Thomas Kay, the mathematician and astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss, and the Fenian John O'Connor Power were also under suspicion. Finally, Conan Doyle is known to have used his former Stonyhurst College as inspiration when he worked out the details of the Holmsian. Among the writer's peers in this educational institution there were two boys named Moriarty.

Surely all our readers have seen the popular TV series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. This refers to the Soviet version with Vasily Livanov and Vitaly Solomin in the lead roles. One of the colorful figures - the sinister Professor Moriarty, of course, was also remembered by the audience. But few people know that the actor who played this role is our countryman. And he lives not in Moscow, not in St. Petersburg, but in Samara. Our correspondent met with Honored Artist of Russia Viktor Evgrafov and asked him to answer a number of questions.

Viktor Ivanovich, for a long time you did not please us, the audience, with your appearance in the cinema. Are they not invited?

Why? Invite. The point is different. I don't care who to play and who to play with. I can't stand bad movies and myself in bad movies. I refuse some offers. But if, reading the script, I see that it will turn out to be a serious, high-quality picture, then I agree. For example, three years ago I was offered to star in the television series "Lenin's Testament" with director Nikolai Dostal. To be honest, I don't regret this job. The tape, based on the works of Varlam Shalamov, is a historical drama. This is not entertainment, but a serious philosophical work that makes people not only worry but, looking into the past, think about the future, about good and evil. The power of cinematic art lies in the fact that it should cause the viewer to ask himself questions that before that he either did not ask at all, or tried in every possible way.
get away from them.

But one of your main roles is the villain Moriarty. Was it hard to transform?

- I took the task seriously. He began to think about the fate of the hero. Why is he such a scoundrel, what is wrong with him? And he came up with! The professor must have complexes. Which? Most likely, generated by physical handicap. I came up with a small hump, a direct, unblinking look. Make-up artist of Lenfilm Lyudmila Eliseeva, an amazing woman, understood my idea from a half-word and transformed me better than ever. Seeing, the director immediately approved me not as a stunt double, but for the role of Moriarty himself.

Stuntman?

Well, yes. Initially, the role of Moriarty was intended for Smoktunovsky. I was invited as his understudy, that is, to stage a fight with Sherlock Holmes. Naturally, they dressed me in the same costume, made up. But director Igor Maslennikov liked my image more.

Do you have an acting education?

Yes. I graduated from GITIS, the course of Vladimir Andreev. True, he entered there relatively late, at the age of 25, after serving in the army.

Ever wanted to be an artist since childhood?

No. I grew up in a military family. The father was a pilot. Naturally, like most boys of my generation, he dreamed of officer epaulettes. Why did you choose art? Many reasons. One of them is the ability to experience reincarnation during physical life. But acting is fertile ground not only for reincarnation, but also for self-sacrifice: I had to die 13 times in the frame alone.

Not scary?

I liked those scenes. After all, the work is finished, I died in the film, and she, this role, will no longer haunt me. After all, before that I lived as that cinematic hero, but in real life some kind of emptiness formed.

And what was she filled with?

Another reincarnation - stunt work.

So who do you feel more like, an actor or a stuntman?

An actor, of course! Stunting is, rather, an outlet. Hobby. However, I also do it seriously, professionally.

By the way, why don't you serve, like most artists, in any theater? I have no desire?

There was a desire. Moreover, I started with the St. Petersburg Youth Theater. As a student, he dreamed of working for Shukshin. Alas, the master passed away early, and for some reason Andreev did not take me to his place.

However, I digress. I will return to answering the question. In fact, the theater and film actor are essentially different professions. The profession of a film actor includes several nuances that are absent in the theatrical profession. Firstly, the ability to instantly mobilize and play a small piece from start to finish. It can even be one cue, one gesture or just a glance. The main thing is what!

In the cinema, of course, you also get excited, but, unlike a theater actor, you do it not for two or three hours, when you have the opportunity to fine-tune the role, but by rebuilding instantly. And finally, if on stage an artist can work on a role for several performances, deepen it, he does not have such an opportunity in the cinema - he can take a double, but only now and only here.

Who did you have to play in the Youth Theater?

The fact of the matter is that the roles I was offered were not even secondary, but tertiary.

Have you dreamed of playing Hamlet?

Imagine, yes, wanted to. No, I didn't want to - I dreamed! What artist doesn't dream? Another question - this role is not for everyone, this is the pinnacle of acting: you played the Prince of Denmark - which means you have become an artist.

How did you end up playing this character?

No. I learned the role, prepared. I really hope that one of my students will play. Among the guys I trained, there are very talented ones. I tried to convey to them what real masters taught me in turn. Unfortunately, looking at the current cinema, it is clear to the naked eye that we are losing the great school of Stanislavsky.

What do you think it is to be a teacher?

It means putting your soul into students who are an extension of myself. However, an actor cannot be completely taught. In a theater university, teacher-student relationships are built at the level of the soul. As a teacher, of course, I can teach technology: how to speak, how to move on stage. Stage art has its own techniques and secrets, but the main thing is God's spark.

Where are you teaching now?

I am currently Associate Professor at the Department of Directing and Mass Performances at the Institute of Contemporary Art. I train young people by profession "actor of drama theaters and cinema."

Why don't young people go to the theatre?

Because in the so-called "dashing 90s" there was a cultural counter-revolution. Everything comes from childhood. And who takes care of the children? Almost nobody. Take those schools. Where are the circles of young technicians, naturalists, theater? Children do not want to feel compassion, to worry, they come home, turn on the TV and watch some rubbish about murders. The "masterpieces" of our TV are "Comedy Club" and "Dom-2", which simply need to be given the status of telenarcotics. And the Bukins? After all, in this series we see the discrediting of family relationships. The viewer develops a need to be entertained, for someone on the screen to undress, although television should make people think first of all.

The same thing happens because of the numerous TV shows in relation to the police (the current police) and the army, where people in uniform are parodied, simply mocked at them. As a result, today's young people have no role model, no hero of our time.

How often have you had to deal with law enforcement officers?

Certainly! I am a frequent visitor to the police departments. I am invited to creative meetings in the team. I spoke in Tolyatti, Samara, the Center for Professional Training of the Main Department of Internal Affairs. The audience received me very warmly. I would like to take this opportunity to make a suggestion. Employees, especially operatives, often have to transform, play certain roles, and not only during development, but also when talking with people, but sometimes they lack acting skills. I think it would be worth teaching some of the basics of this art in the educational institutions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Indeed, I have developed a system of exercises to restore the body. It didn't come from a good life. In 1995, on the set of the joint Soviet-American film "Children of Captain Grant", I had to do a trick: jump from the yard of a sailboat. The height was outrageous. By mistake of a colleague, the second stunt coordinator, I received severe injuries. Doctors literally picked up my broken ribs and spine piece by piece. The lung was severely damaged. I began to develop my own method of restoring health. She has no analogue. It is based on the centuries-old methods of labor of the Russian peasant, which have been preserved in our genetic memory. Once upon a time, my grandfather, and he was a forester, showed me some techniques for working with a stick. Their essence lies in the fact that with the help of this simple device it is possible to purposefully develop certain muscles. Plus, a special massage that allows you to activate the necessary energy centers. However, this is a topic for a separate discussion.

Interviewed by Evgeny KATYSHEV

Photo by Dmitry LYKOV

P.S. A few years ago, a series of coins was issued in New Zealand with the heroes of the Soviet film series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The numismatic miracle, worth two dollars each, still exists in eight thousand copies. On the coins there are images of the following characters: Sherlock Holmes (Vasily Livanov), Dr. Watson (Vitaly Solomin), Sir Henry Baskerville (Nikita Mikhalkov), Professor James Moriarty (Viktor Evgrafov).

The main character, the head of a powerful criminal organization, the genius of the criminal world.

Here is how Sherlock Holmes describes it:

He comes from a good family, received an excellent education and is naturally endowed with phenomenal mathematical abilities. When he was 21, he wrote a treatise on Newton's binomial, which won him European fame. After that, he received a chair in mathematics at one of our provincial universities, and, quite possibly, a bright future awaited him. But the blood of a criminal flows in his veins. He has a genetic propensity for cruelty. And his extraordinary mind not only does not restrain, but even strengthens this tendency and makes it even more dangerous. Dark rumors spread about him on the campus where he taught, and in the end he was forced to leave the department and move to London, where he began to prepare young people for the officer's examination ...

Returning from the review, Kutuzov, accompanied by the Austrian general, went to his office and, calling the adjutant, ordered to give himself some papers relating to the state of the incoming troops, and letters received from Archduke Ferdinand, who commanded the forward army. Prince Andrei Bolkonsky with the required papers entered the office of the commander in chief. In front of the plan laid out on the table sat Kutuzov and an Austrian member of the Hofkriegsrat.
“Ah ...” said Kutuzov, looking back at Bolkonsky, as if by this word inviting the adjutant to wait, and continued the conversation begun in French.

Chernov Svetozar

Adam Worth - the prototype of Professor Moriarty

Adam Worth - the prototype of Professor Moriarty

In December 1893, the next issue of the Strand magazine, as you know, plunged into mourning all British fans of the Great Detective: the ruthless author brought him to the edge of the Reichenbach Falls with the evil genius of the London underworld, Professor Moriarty, and buried both at the bottom of the foaming abyss.

Conan Doyle did not spare colors to describe the opponent of his hero:

He's the Napoleon of the underworld, Watson. He is the organizer of half of all atrocities and almost all unsolved crimes in our city. This is a genius, a philosopher, this is a person who can think abstractly. He has a first class mind. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of his web, but this web has thousands of threads, and he picks up the vibration of each of them. He rarely acts on his own. He's just making a plan. But his agents are numerous and superbly organized. If someone needs to steal a document, rob a house, take a person out of the way - one has only to bring the ego to the attention of the professor, and the crime will be prepared and then carried out. The agent may be caught. In such cases, there is always money to bail him or invite a defender. But the main leader, the one who sent this agent, will never get caught: he is beyond suspicion.

Doyle endowed his professor with a penchant for mathematics, a trait he had spied on his friend Major General Drayson. (However, Holmesian enthusiasts have other candidates in mind.) It is believed that the professor got his name from a certain George Moriarty, who was constantly written about in London newspapers in 1874 in connection with his attempt on his wife. This assumption seems unlikely, since the surname Moriarty was quite common - even among criminals, the mentioned George was not the only Moriarty. In the press of that time, this surname occurs quite often. And it is unlikely that Conan Doyle would have turned up the criminal chronicle in order to choose a name for his villain. Besides, there were other Moriartys. For example, in the 1880s, one James Moriarty was treasurer of the Land League. And in June 1893, there was a press release naming the Rev. James X. Moriarty as chaplain and naval instructor on the training ship Boscowan in Portland.

Conan Doyle himself in the story "The Valley of Fear" put into the mouth of Sherlock Holmes a comparison of the professor with the famous "catcher of thieves" and the head of the criminal syndicate, Jonathan Wilde, who was hanged in 1725. However, there is every reason to believe that the elusive king of the London underworld, Professor Moriarty, owes his main features not to Jonathan Wilde the Great, but to the famous) Adam Worth, which, according to one of the early Holmes scholars Vincent Starrett, Sir Conan Doyle himself mentioned in a conversation with Dr. Gray Chandler Briggs.

Why was Adam Worth so famous - why did Doyle choose him as the prototype of the evil genius? One must think that the writer chose him primarily for his incredible resourcefulness of mind. The deeds of the real "Napoleon of the underworld" are in no way inferior to the atrocities of the fictional Moriarty, and more than one detective dreamed of putting him behind bars. However, the fate of Worth is not similar to the fate of Moriarty in the main - he did not have his own Sherlock Holmes, and he ended his life in a completely different way.

Adam Worth was born in 1844 in a poor family of German Jews and at the age of five he emigrated to America with his parents. At the age of 14, he ran away from home, lived for a while in Boston, then in 1860 ended up in New York. At the very beginning of the Civil War, he enlisted in the army of the northerners as a volunteer, was wounded by shrapnel in the battle of Manassas (the so-called second battle of the Bull Run River) and ended up on the list of the fallen on the battlefield. This led him to the idea of ​​recruiting into various regiments under false names in order to receive money assigned to volunteers. In the end, he was identified by agents of the Allan Pinkerton National Detective Agency, who were engaged in the search for deserters, and he had to flee to New York.

In the mid-1860s, New York was known as one of the most corrupt and criminal cities in the world: it was full of corrupt politicians and policemen, Irish and Jewish immigrant gangs, pimps and prostitutes. Starting as an ordinary pickpocket, Worth soon gathered a gang and won the trust of New York's most famous dealers in stolen goods, becoming the leader, organizer and financier of the robberies that his people committed. Caught on the robbery of the Adams Express Company van, he spent several weeks in the famous Sing Sing prison (New York State). After that, he decided that the sad experience should not be repeated, and found himself a patroness - Marm Mandelbaum, the most successful buyer of stolen goods in New York. Under her guidance and protection, he began to rob banks and warehouses. Just like Doyle's Moriarty, Worth got what he wanted with his intellect and made it his principle that a man with brains should not carry a firearm. There is always a way, and a much better way, to do the same with the mind. Throughout his life, he never resorted to violence and, unlike his literary competitor, forbade others to do so. The successful escape from the White Plains prison of the safecracker Charles Bullard, organized by Worth and another of his henchmen at the request of Mandelbaum, not only strengthened his authority in the underworld of New York, but also made him friends with Bullard, with whom they became partners.

The couple's first act was the daring robbery of the Boylestone National Bank in Boston on November 20, 1869. Under the guise of sellers of strengthening agents, they rented a room next to a bank vault, dismantled a wall, broke into a safe and carried out a million dollars in cash and securities, after which they fled to England. Here Adam Worth, who first identified himself as Henry Raymond - the name of the late editor of the New York Times (under which he lived until the end of his days), took up the robbery of usurious shops.

In June 1871, after the defeat of the Paris Commune, he moved with his gang to Paris. Here, not far from the Grand Opera, he and Bullard opened the American Bar, which became one of the main post-war centers of entertainment for the Parisian public. The first two floors offered perfectly legitimate entertainment: a chic restaurant with French cuisine and American booze, a reading room with French and foreign newspapers. But on the third floor, an underground gambling house with roulette and card tables was equipped. In the event of a police raid, with the help of a special mechanism, it instantly turned into an ordinary, albeit very spacious cafe. The "American Bar" was visited by the cream of society, who were on both sides of the "barricade": Worth greeted with the same cordiality both bankers and socialites, and famous safekeepers, counterfeiters and swindlers, who often became the perpetrators of his elaborate robberies. The end of the American Bar was a visit by William Pinkerton, one of the two Pinkerton brothers who took over the detective agency after their father's death. The agency hired by the Banking Association after the Boston Boylestone Bank robbery had amassed a large dossier containing details of Worth's entire criminal career. As a result, in the winter of 1873, he had to close his establishment, and move all property and equipment to London, where he decided to settle.

All under the same name of Henry Raymond Worth rented an apartment in Mayfair - the most fashionable area of ​​London - at No. 198 Piccadilly, from where he led his henchmen. The case was put on a grand scale. He and his assistants carefully planned robberies of banks, railway cash desks, post offices, warehouses, houses of wealthy citizens. For a decade and a half, Adam Worth created a real criminal empire in London. The performers, who were always hired through a chain of intermediaries, never knew anything about the organizers. All they knew was that the order had come "from above", the matter had been thought through to the finest detail and would be well paid for, that's all. Caught red-handed, they could not extradite anyone even if they wanted to.

Worth used his criminal network not only for his own purposes, but also committed custom-made crimes, and also provided "assistance" to all his "colleagues": robbers, burglars, swindlers. In a pamphlet dedicated to Worth and published in 1903 (after his death), William Pinkerton wrote: “Thieves came to him for help. Need to bribe a bank clerk or make a master key? Please. For a certain businessman, an experienced robber or false documents are needed? Adam Worth has everything you need and for every taste. He knew where to find the right person for every job, for which he received an impressive percentage of the profits.

The king of criminals watched the crimes committed at his will, as if from behind the scenes: he was a puppeteer, skillfully directing his puppets.

His henchmen acted throughout Europe and, on the orders of their leader, could commit any robbery or forgery. However, Worth and his associates were not limited to Europe. In the early 1870s, they purchased a 34-meter Shamrock steam yacht, on which they made long overseas trips: they robbed banks on the coasts of South America, the West Indies ... In Kingston, in one of the Jamaican warehouses, his people "lightened" safes on ten thousand dollars. This case almost ended in failure: a British gunboat set off in pursuit of Worth's yacht, but could not catch up with the high-speed vessel of the criminals.

There are not so many high-profile cases in which Adam Worth personally participated - he, as we already know, preferred to remain in the background, shifting the execution of his plans to others. But in 1876, with two accomplices, he repeated the “feat of Herostratus” - he committed a theft that immortalized his name. At Christie's auction (during the sale of the Wynn Ellis collection), William Agnew bought for his art gallery a painting by Thomas Gainsborough "Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire" for 10,100 guineas; three weeks later it was stolen - the portrait disappeared for 20 years. Twelve of those twenty, the painting was kept in a chest with a double bottom and accompanied its new owner wherever he went - until he decided that it was too dangerous to keep it with him and hid it in 1886 in America.

In 1878, Adam Worth and a certain Megotti with several accomplices robbed an express train from Calais to Paris; in 1880, Worth managed to detain an armed convoy in South Africa near Fort Elizabeth, which was carrying rough diamonds from the mines, and after several machinations managed to take possession of the protected cargo. Then he figured out how to sell these diamonds without resorting to the services of dealers in stolen goods: he organized a legal sale - which was both safer and more profitable.

That was one side of Adam Worth's life. But there was another, external one: Henry Raymond, a wealthy American who was interested in horse racing and bought a herd of 10 horses, and then two more stallions, in 1877 acquired an estate called West Lodge in south London, in the Klapam Common area. There was an imposing red-brick two-story house, and soon there was a tennis court, a shooting range, a bowling green. Raymond hosted sumptuous dinner parties both at his Piccadilly flat and at his country mansion, both lodgings decorated with "expensive furniture, antique knick-knacks and paintings", rare books and expensive china. In the words of Sir Robert Anderson, easily changing his identities, Raymond-Worth "was able to break into any company" - whether as a wealthy slacker or the godfather of the London underworld. In the 1880s, his annual expenses reached 20 thousand pounds, and incomes sometimes exceeded this figure by three times. According to Pinkerton's calculations, the brilliant criminal earned at least two million dollars during his criminal career, and possibly all three. “Adam Worth is probably the only criminal who has achieved such enormous wealth,” argued one of his old acquaintances in the thieves' world. “He had an expensive apartment in Piccadilly, he hosted the best people in London, who knew him only as a very rich man with bohemian inclinations.”

Naturally, the activities of Worth and his people could not hide from the attention of the police, his name was well known to Scotland Yard - in this the elusive Moriarty surpassed his prototype. When, in 1907, Sir Robert Anderson was asked who was the most dexterous and ingenious of all the criminals he knew, he answered without the slightest hesitation: “Adam Worth. He was the Napoleon of the underworld. All the rest were no match for him.” John Shore, first inspector and later superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department, vowed to arrest and imprison Worth, but he could not do this. The Pinkerton Agency, the New York police and Scotland Yard constantly exchanged information about the crimes Worth was behind, but it was never possible to find direct evidence that would connect the owner of the robbery with the crime committed.

Worth masterfully concealed traces of his activities. He almost never met anyone he couldn't rely on entirely, and if he did, he made an appointment in some East London haunt where the police would not venture. Going to a meeting with his henchmen, Worth changed an exquisite dress for a shabby one, and returning, he went into the railway toilet to quickly and discreetly change into a "gentleman's" suit. He bribed several employees of Scotland Yard, who constantly kept him informed. The London Evening News wrote in 1901 that "he maintained a staff of detectives and an attorney, and his private secretary was a barrister."

Robert Anderson spoke about one of the ways that Adam Worth, aka Henry Raymond, used to provide himself with an alibi. “My friend, a doctor practicing in one of the wealthy suburbs of London, once told me about a certain remarkable patient who, although he lived in luxury, suffered extremely from a hypochondriacal syndrome. From time to time my doctor friend was urgently called - the patient was lying in bed, although, apparently, he was perfectly healthy. However, he always insisted that he be given a prescription, which the servant immediately took to the pharmacist ... I must have dispelled my interlocutor's bewilderment by explaining to him that the eccentric patient was the king of criminals. Henry Raymond knew that the police were following his movements, and suspecting that he was noticed in a dangerous company, he rushed home and pretended to be sick. The doctor's testimony and the entries in the apothecary's books could confirm that at the hour when the police allegedly saw him at the scene of the crime, he was lying sick at home.

It all ended in the early 1890s, when Worth went to France to rescue his former boyfriend Bullard from prison, but he died before his arrival. For some reason known only to him, Worth decided to personally participate in a very dangerous robbery of a Belgian cash-in-transit van in Liege. Local banks received most of the money from Switzerland, from where the money was delivered by rail at certain days and hours. Two people took fireproof boxes of banknotes from the depot and delivered them to the banks on a simple two-wheeled van. The van had been unguarded at the bank for about three minutes, but Worth felt that, with good scrap, this would be enough to open three or four cases and remove the contents. On October 5, 1892, he and two of his people tried to do this, but the accomplices, without warning the leader of the danger, fled, and the "Napoleon of the underworld" was arrested by the gendarmes. In March of the following year, he appeared in court.

Since he refused to give his real name, the Belgian police sent out requests to foreign colleagues. Both the New York Police Department and Scotland Yard positively identified him as Worth. So did his old rival, "Baron" Max Shinburn, who wanted to earn himself an early release. But the Pinkerton Detective Agency, which had the largest dossier on the "robbing king", chose to remain silent, which subsequently played a significant role in his fate. Worth categorically denied involvement in various crimes incriminated to him, and called his latest robbery a gesture of desperation - he allegedly ran out of livelihood. He was sentenced to seven years in prison and sent to Leuven Prison.

Most likely, Conan Doyle first heard of the existence of Worth in July 1893, when he had already decided to get rid of Holmes. On July 24, the Pall Mall Gazette published an article revealing the secret of Worth's seventeen-year-old daring theft at the Agnew Gallery. The material for the article was an interview with Adam Worth by freelance journalist Marsend of Pall Mall in a Belgian prison; he managed to extract from the prisoner (who mistook Marsend for a lawyer) a confession that it was he, Henry Raymond, and in reality Adam Worth, "le Brigand International", who stole the famous painting "Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire" by Gainsborough in 1876. The article described the life of Worth and his crimes, which gave London the impression of an exploding bomb. It struck Conan Doyle, too.

However, his professor even looked a little like Worth, who was strong, short - only 154 centimeters - wore sideburns. Doyle's Moriarty, by contrast, was a true Victorian villain: "He's very skinny and tall. His forehead is large, convex and white. Deep sunken eyes. The face is clean-shaven, pale, ascetic - something still remains in it from Professor Moriarty. The shoulders are stooped - probably from constant sitting at the desk - and the head protrudes forward and slowly, like a snake, sways from side to side. Such a person was much better suited for the role of the gravedigger Sherlock Holmes. The Great Detective died, and for ten years Conan Doyle forgot about both Sherlock Holmes and Adam Worth.

Meanwhile, Worth was alive: in 1897, sick and having lost all his former accomplices, he was released from prison - two years ahead of schedule. Some members of his gang retired, others died, others were in prison. No one met him at home: one of the two accomplices in the failed Liege robbery, whom Worth had instructed to take care of his wife and children, took advantage of his absence and forced his wife Louise into cohabitation, methodically drugging her and accustoming her to the consumption of opiates. He gradually sold Worth's property: a yacht, horses, diamonds, and when Louise Raymond turned into a complete alcoholic and drug addict, he took everything to the last penny and disappeared. Worth's mad wife was committed to a psychiatric hospital, and the children were sent to America to live with Adam's brother.

To earn a living, Worth robbed a jewelry store for 4,000 pounds and went to America, where he turned to William Pinkerton - he well remembered that Pinkerton refused to give information about him to the Belgian police. Worth asked for mediation in the sale of the Gainsborough painting - now the grandson of the previous owner. The exchange took place in 1901. With the proceeds (which, according to some sources, amounted to about twenty-five thousand dollars, and according to others - only five), he returned with his children to London, where he bought a modest house and lived in it for the eleven months remaining to his death. He died on January 9, 1902 and was buried under the name of Henry Raymond.

In the year of the return of the portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire, Conan Doyle wrote another story about Holmes - The Hound of the Baskervilles, and a year later he was forced to resurrect the Great Detective. Professor Moriarty also had to cross swords with Sherlock Holmes once again - this time in the story "The Valley of Fear", which takes place before the fatal battle at the Reichenbach Falls. The impetus for the emergence of a new story about Sherlock Holmes was, most likely, Doyle's trip in May - June 1914 to New York. James Horan, in The Pinkertons - A Famous Detective Dynasty (1967), claimed that on one of his transatlantic voyages, Conan Doyle met William Pinkerton, who has been mentioned here more than once. The exact date of this meeting is unknown, but most likely it took place on board the Atlantic liner on the writer's return journey from America (Pinkerton is not listed on the passenger list of the Olympia, on which Doyle sailed to America). On the way, the American regaled Doyle with stories about the deeds of the Pinkertons, including the defeat of the Irish underground organization Molly Maguires. It is very likely that it was also about Adam Worth, whose confidant turned out to be William Pinkerton in the return of the Gainsborough painting to the Agnew Gallery.

On his return to England, Conan Doyle began writing The Valley of Fear, taking as the basis for the second part (the stories of the Sweepers and Birdie Edwards) Allan Pinkerton's book 'Molly Maguires' and the Detectives', published in 1877 and reprinted in 1886- m. The CEO of the Pinkerton Agency, Ralph Dudley, claimed in an interview given to the same James Horan that William Pinkerton was furious after reading Fear Valley. “At first he said that he would file a lawsuit against Doyle, but then he cooled off. He was annoyed that Doyle, even though he fictionalized the story, did not consider it necessary to ask Pinkerton's permission to use his notes. They used to be good friends, but from that day on, their relationship became strained. Mr. Doyle sent several letters trying to settle the matter, and although U.A.P. sent him courteous replies, he no longer treated Mr. Doyle with the same warmth. Perhaps Pinkerton had another reason for dissatisfaction: he probably felt that in the first part of the story Doyle had already used his own work - the 1904 pamphlet "Adam Worth, nicknamed Little Adam", which outlined the story of Worth.

Indeed, in The Valley of Fear, Conan Doyle again resorts to the story of Adam Worth (to the episode with the theft of the Gainsborough painting) - in a conversation between the detective and Inspector MacDonald about Professor Moriarty. Holmes asks the policeman if he noticed a painting by Jean-Baptiste Greuze hanging in the professor's office. In response to the inspector's bewilderment about how the case they are discussing is related to the picture, Holmes reports the following:

Even the prosaic fact that in 1865 Greuze's Girl with a Lamb was sold at the Portali auction for one million two hundred thousand francs (more than forty thousand pounds) can push your thoughts in a new direction.

It was assumed that such a large amount received for the picture, in itself, reminded readers of the theft committed by Worth, but Conan Doyle also beat the name of Agnew's art gallery - in the original, Greuze's painting was named in French: “La Jeune Fille? I'Agneau". Further in the conversation, Holmes leads MacDonald to the conclusion that the painting came to Professor Moriarty illegally:

It indicates that its owner is a very rich man. How did he acquire his wealth? He is not married. His younger brother works as a railway stationmaster in the west of Britain. His scientific work earns him seven hundred pounds a year. And yet he has the painting of Dreaming.

And that means what?

In my opinion, the conclusion suggests itself.

That is, that he has large incomes, and, apparently, illegal ones?

Two world wars and the emergence of new, even more powerful criminal organizations completely erased the memory of Adam Worth, but Professor Moriarty, unlike his prototype, thanks to the talent of Conan Doyle, escaped oblivion. As the embodiment of evil, he continues to exist not only in the memory of Conan Doyle readers, but also in numerous films and books, arguing with his fame with other literary, cinematic and real-life criminals.

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The prototype of Sherlock Holmes - Dr. Joseph Bell In 1876, Conan Doyle decided to become a doctor and entered the University of Edinburgh, where Dr. Bell became one of his teachers, whose personality made a huge impression on the future writer. Dr. Bell in his work

Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty Anyone who has watched at least one movie about Sherlock Holmes is well aware that the main enemy of the great detective is Professor Moriarty. However, out of sixty stories about Holmes, the sinister professor appears in only ... in one. This is the story of the last

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PROTOTYPE OF THE MAIN HEROINE OF THE NOVEL Who is the prototype of the main character of the novel? Louise Colet or Emma Bovary? Without a doubt, both. For Gustave began five years of pleasure and hellish torment. During this time, from under his pen will come out the most famous in all French

Hinduism as the Prototype of a Universal Religion Strange as it may seem, the prejudice against Hinduism that Vivekananda struggled to eradicate over a century ago from the minds of Western society has not disappeared at all. India has become a place of pilgrimage for lovers of yoga and tantra, and as for

Professor Moriarty is a character in the cycle of works by Arthur Conan Doyle about Sherlock Holmes, the antagonist of the protagonist, the head of a powerful criminal organization, the genius of the criminal world.

He comes from a good family, received an excellent education and is naturally endowed with phenomenal mathematical abilities. When he was 21 years old, he wrote a treatise on Newton's binomial, which won him European fame. After that, he received a chair in mathematics at one of our provincial universities, and, quite possibly, a bright future awaited him. But the blood of a criminal flows in his veins. He has a genetic propensity for cruelty. And his extraordinary mind not only does not restrain, but even strengthens this tendency and makes it even more dangerous. Dark rumors spread about him on the campus where he taught, and in the end he was forced to leave the department and move to London, where he began to prepare young people for the officer's examination ...
- "The Last Case of Holmes"

Holmes also speaks of Moriarty as "one of the best minds in Europe" and the "Napoleon of the underworld". Conan Doyle borrowed the last phrase from one of the Scotland Yard inspectors associated with the case of Adam Worth, an international criminal of the 19th century, who served as the prototype of the literary Moriarty.
In the text of the "Valley of Terror" there is a description of Moriarty's appearance:

This man looks amazingly like a Presbyterian preacher, he has such a thin face, and gray hair, and stilted speech. Saying goodbye, he put his hand on my shoulder - just like a father, blessing his son to meet the cruel, cold world.
- "Valley of Terror"

It also mentions that Professor Moriarty has a legal income of 700 pounds a year (salary at the university department) and that he is not married. The data on the name and family of Moriarty are contradictory: in Holmes's Last Case, the professor is not called by name, but it is mentioned that he has a brother, Colonel James Moriarty, who after his death "protected the memory of his late brother." At the same time, in The Empty House, the name "James" is already attributed to the professor himself; thus, it literally turns out that the two brothers have the same name (in the four-act play "Sherlock Holmes", written with the participation of Conan Doyle, the professor already bears the name "Robert"). In addition, in the "Valley of Terror" the brother-colonel is not mentioned at all, but another, younger brother of the professor appears, who "serves as the head of the railway station somewhere in the west of England."

Moriarty acts in only two works of the cycle, in the story "The Last Case of Holmes" (1893) and the later story "The Valley of Terror" (1914-1915); in addition, he is mentioned in five stories: "The Empty House" (1903), "The Contractor from Norwood" (1903), "The Missing Rugby Player" (1904), "His Farewell Bow" (1917), "The Radiant Client" (1924) .

The character was introduced by Conan Doyle as a way to "finish" Holmes in order to end the cycle, which the writer himself considered lightweight pulp fiction. Moriarty dies during a hand-to-hand duel with Holmes, falling off a cliff into the Reichenbach Falls; according to the text of the story, Holmes also perishes with him; Both bodies have not been found. However, subsequently, Conan Doyle, due to numerous protests from readers, had to "revive" Holmes, declaring his apparent death a staging, which was caused by the need to hide in order to defeat the remnants of Moriarty's organization (see the story "The Empty House" in the collection "The Return of Sherlock Holmes")

In the Soviet TV series by Igor Maslennikov "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson", the role of Moriarty was played by Viktor Evgrafov (voiced by Oleg Dal). Among the performers of the role of Moriarty in the movie was Sir Laurence Olivier (in the 1976 film "Seven Percent Solution").
Moriarty also appeared in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, but his face was not shown, and in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, where he was played by Richard Roxburgh.
In the film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, the professor's face is still shown, moreover, he is an important character in the film.
In the 2010 series Sherlock, Moriarty first appears in such a way that neither the viewer nor the characters guess who he really is. In age, he is clearly much younger than in the book original. Sherlock characterizes him like this in the Reichenbach Falls series: It's not a man, it's a spider. He knows exactly where people's weak points are and when to press them.
The asteroid (5048) Moriarty, discovered in 1981, is named after the character.
Both mentioned scientific works of Moriarty (on the dynamics of the asteroid and on the interpretation of the binomial theorem) are sometimes mentioned in the scientific literature.