The morning lectures ended in a haze of tedium.
Charlotte hadn't listened to a single word. For her, nothing the professor had covered qualified as necessary knowledge.
Mary hadn't listened either. For her, attendance was a formality — she'd spent the entire lecture in quiet conversation with Charlotte.
Russell hadn't listened at all. He'd been asleep — and yet, of the three, he'd come away with by far the most to show for it.
There was truly no feeling quite like waking up to discover your System wallet had quietly grown by two hundred Malice Points while you were out.
When the morning session let out, the three of them rose and filed out of the lecture hall under the idle stares of their classmates, relocating to an empty classroom to themselves.
"So — how was it?" Russell looked over at Charlotte. "First day of university. What's the verdict?"
"A waste of time," Charlotte replied, paring it down to the essentials.
"As far as the lectures themselves go — mind-numbingly dull. At least now I understand why you sleep through every single one."
"Vindication at last," Russell said, and took a sip of his coffee.
"I do wish you'd make some effort not to sleep through everything," Mary said from beside him, unable to help herself. "Have you ever considered actually taking notes?"
"I'd rather not, thanks." Russell shrugged.
It was then that Charlotte seemed to catch on something in her thoughts, and spoke up.
"Speaking of which — regarding the Professor..."
The moment the words left her mouth, Mary gave a barely perceptible start, a slight furrow crossing her brow.
What is your obsession with that Professor of yours.
"What about the Professor?" Mary asked, her tone pitched at just the right note of casual curiosity.
"I've been turning something over in my mind — whether there might be some connection between him and Moriarty."
The instant she finished speaking, the room went dead silent.
Both of the other parties present were visibly shaken by the hypothesis. Whatever they'd been doing with their hands had gone still.
In the end, it was Russell who broke the silence.
"Why?" he asked. "What connection could there possibly be between the two?"
"Exactly," Mary chimed in, "and didn't Moriarty actually cut across the Professor's plans at Lloyds Bank?"
"But what if that, too, was part of the Professor's plan?" Charlotte said.
"Perhaps the men who attacked the bank were always intended to be cannon fodder. Their role was to draw fire — to set the stage for Moriarty's entrance."
She paced slowly across the empty classroom as she spoke.
"If Moriarty had acted alone, even a successful operation would have drawn unwanted attention to himself. But bring in a wave of expendable men — dress Moriarty up as a Zorro — and the nature of the thing changes entirely, doesn't it?"
She turned back to look at them both.
"Is... is that right?" Russell turned to Mary.
"Why are you asking me?" Mary looked back at him. "I'm not the Professor."
She paused, then shifted her gaze to Charlotte.
"That said — if we follow your hypothesis through, then it does explain why both Moriarty and the Professor happened to converge on Lloyds Bank specifically."
"Furthermore, Scotland Yard's attention is currently focused almost entirely on the Professor. But the Professor's identity was already shrouded in an exceptionally high degree of secrecy — and in that respect, he and Moriarty are alike."
Charlotte pressed on.
"And there's one more rather significant detail."
"Which is?"
"Timing," Charlotte said. "The timing of the Professor's disappearance — and the timing of Moriarty's appearance."
"I know when Moriarty appeared — a year ago. But what about the Professor?" Russell asked.
"To be precise, Moriarty appeared one year and three months ago," Charlotte corrected.
"As for the Professor — based on what those men told us, and on what I've since managed to learn — setting aside the Lloyds Bank incident, the last confirmed sighting of the Professor before that was one year and four months ago.
One vanishes; the other emerges. A gap of exactly one month. That is rather too much of a coincidence."
Coincidence, she says.
I'd just come of age, and my Golden Finger had appeared right on cue — complete with its beloved cross-world welcome package. If there's a broken window, you climb through it. If there's a cheat code, you use it.
Russell kept the thought to himself.
"Maybe it really is just a coincidence?" he offered.
"One coincidence can be a coincidence. Two coincidences can still be a coincidence. But three or more stacked on top of each other — that is no longer a coincidence, Watson.
When you have eliminated all the impossibilities, whatever remains, however improbable or however uncomfortable it may be to accept, must be the truth."
Charlotte said it plainly.
"Still, we're short one final coincidence," Mary observed from the side. "Lloyds Bank, the Professor's disappearance, and Moriarty's emergence — where is the third?"
"The third coincidence..." Charlotte fell into silence.
She ran rapidly through everything she'd managed to extract from those men — the precious few accounts of the Professor's actual operations.
What grated on her was this: while every one of them had heard the Professor's name, the Lloyds Bank job had been their first and only genuine interaction with him. Beyond that, they'd only heard his exploits described second- or third-hand — passed down through the ranks until whatever they'd received had gone through so many retellings it was useless as evidence.
"Nothing yet," Charlotte admitted with a shake of her head, acknowledging the gap in the chain of evidence without pretence.
"I'd intended to draw out details of the Professor's earlier operations from them directly — but not a single one could tell me anything concrete. Whatever they did say was hearsay at several removes. By the time it reached their ears, who knows how many versions it had been through. None of it was of any use."
"Doesn't Scotland Yard have case files?" Russell asked.
"After you've orchestrated a perfect crime, do you leave your name at the scene?" Charlotte replied with a pointed look.
"Besides, those cases would be at least a year old, or older. I don't even know which ones the Professor planned — so how exactly would I know where to begin looking in the files?
A 'perfect crime' doesn't necessarily mean no one was ever caught. For the Professor, completing his objective without exposing himself — that is the entirety of his aim. And evidently, he succeeded."
She paused, then continued: "That said, from what they mentioned at the time, Billson seemed to know considerably more about the Professor than the others. It's possible Billson was informed of some of his earlier activities — or may even have taken part in one of them."
"So we're back to square one?" Russell raised an eyebrow. "Find Billson, and we can push further toward identifying the Professor."
"At least in terms of outcome, yes." Charlotte gave a nod.
"And where is Billson now?" Mary asked. "Has Inspector Lestrade turned anything up?"
"In terms of outcome — no. Not yet." Russell shrugged.
"There's still one thing that doesn't add up, though," Mary said.
"Where?" Charlotte looked over.
"If Moriarty and the Professor really are connected — then why..."
Mary paused, then turned to look at Charlotte, her blue eyes carrying a genuine, unresolved puzzlement.
"Why would Mycroft be covering for Moriarty?"
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