Holmes dubs him the second-most dangerous man in London after his boss. That man was Colonel Sebastian Moran, and according to the Conan Doyle Estate, he was Moriarty's chief of staff. But in his final years, Worth found friendship with none other than William Pinkerton, whose detective agency had hunted after Worth for decades. He was finally caught in an ill-conceived daytime robbery in Belgium, where he spent five years behind bars and lost his wife and fortune. Among his treasured spoils of crime was a famed portrait by Thomas Gainsborough of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire.Īnderson eventually dubbed Worth the Napoleon of crime on account of his height, according to Ben Macintyre's ' The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, the Real Moriarty,' and Macintyre accused Worth of developing a Napoleonic complex. This was a façade he kept up for years, all the while sitting at the head of an international criminal organization that confounded police from London to Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Raymond and passed himself off as a gentleman. He fled to England under the name Henry J. He complains of how boring London is without Moriarty's crimes to solve at the beginning of 'The Norwood Builder' (via Camden), names a possible heir to Moriarty's genius in 'The Missing Three-Quarter' (via Camden), dismisses another such claim in 'The Illustrious Client' (via Camden), and names a favorite song of the professor's in 'His Last Bow' (via Camden).Īdam Worth was an American safecracker extraordinaire, who ran afoul of investigators in his home base of New York City in the 1860s (per Smithsonian Magazine). The case investigated within the story also concerned the last remnants of Moriarty's organization.Īfter 'The Empty House,' mentions of Moriarty were brief and often colored by a curious regret on Holmes' part that his nemesis was no longer around.

'The Adventure of the Empty House” (via Camden House), responsible as it was for explaining how Holmes could return from the grave, necessarily detailed their battle at Reichenbach Falls and Holmes' manner of escape. But Doyle mentioned him in five more short stories. Holmes would return for many more adventures, while Moriarty remained crushed and drowned at the bottom of a waterfall.

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