A Matter of Memory

[Dark Tower staircase]

(The Third Doctor and Sarah Jane are walking down.) 

Sarah-Jane Smith : 

I can't go on -- I feel as if something 

were pushing me back. 

The Established Dandy : 

Yes. Yes, I can feel it too, Sarah. 

It's the mind of Rassilon. 

We must be nearing the tomb. 

Now, you've got to fight it. 

You must keep Your Mind under control.

 

Sarah-Jane Smith : 

I can't, I feel as if something 

absolutely terrible 

were going to happen. 

The Established Dandy : 

Sit down here. Sit down. 

Rest for a moment. All right? 

Sarah-Jane Smith : 

Where are you going? 

The Established Dandy : 

I won't be a second. 

Sarah-Jane Smith : Well, don't be too long.

[Dark Tower corridor]

(The Third Doctor walks along to a corner, then turns to go back to Sarah. A man in army uniform walks round the corner.) 

Mike Yates' Ghost : 

Doctor. Doctor, this way. 

The Established Dandy : 

Mike? Mike Yates? 

How did you get here? 

Mike Yates' Ghost : 

Same way as you. 

Liz Shaw is here, too. 

The Established Dandy : 

Good heavens. 

(Liz comes round the corner.) 

The Established Dandy : 

Hello, Liz. Any more of you? 

Liz Shaws' Ghost :

 Someone you should know very well. 

Come and see for yourself. 

The Established Dandy : 

Huh, not that little fellow in 

the checked trousers and 

the black frock coat. 

Liz Shaws' Ghost : 

And more. There are Five of You now. 

The Established Dandy : 

Oh, good grief. 

Mike Yates' Ghost : 

And they're waiting for you. 

The Established Dandy : 

Yes, well, you wait here for a moment. 

I'll go and get Sarah. 

(Yates blocks his way.) 

Mike Yates' Ghost : 

I'll fetch her. 

The Established Dandy : 

No, I, er, I think I'll go, Mike. 

She's nervous enough as it is. 

Liz Shaws' Ghost : 

Let Mike go. Your other selves 

need you urgently. 

The Established Dandy :

.... No, I think I'll go, thanks. 

(The Doctor dodges round Yates.)

 

Mike Yates' Ghost : 

No, Doctor! 

Liz Shaws' Ghost :

 Stop him! 

The Established Dandy : 

How? You're phantoms, 

illusions of the mind! 

Liz Shaws' Ghost : 

Stop him!!!

(Liz and Yates disappear in a cloud of black smoke.)

[Dark Tower staircase]

Sarah-Jane Smith : 

What's happening? Doctor? 

Doctor! Oh, there you are. 

The Established Dandy : 

Sarah? 

Sarah-Jane Smith : 

Sarah? Of course I am. 

What are you talking about? 

Listen, why did you leave me for so long? 

And what was that scream? 

The Established Dandy : 

They were just phantoms from The Past. 

Sarah-Jane Smith :

 Yes, well, I'm in The Present and I'm Real. 

The Established Dandy : 

Yes. Yeah, you're real enough. 

Come on. 

(They head off in the other direction.)

[Dark Tower corridor]

Tegan : 

Do you feel weird, Doctor? 

Old Grandfather : 

Full of strange fears and 

terrible forebodings? 

Tegan : 

That's it. 

Old Grandfather : 

No, as a matter of fact, I don't. It's all illusion, child. 

We're close to the domain of Rassilon,

 whose mind is reaching out to attack us. 

Just ignore it, as I do. 

Tegan : 

How? 

Old Grandfather : 

Fear itself is largely an illusion. 

And at my age, there's little left to fear. 

Hmm. No, there's nothing here to harm us. 

(The Master comes down a staircase behind them and follows.)

[Dark Tower staircase]

(The Second Doctor and the Brigadier are coming up some stairs.) 

The Brig : 

I don't like it, Doctor. I feel rather unwell. 

Touch of nausea, I think. 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

What you feel is Fear, Brigadier, 

projecting from the mind of Rassilon. 

The Brig : 

Fear? 

(A woman screams nearby.) 

WOMAN [OC]: 

Doctor, Help Me! 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

No. It may be A Trap. 

I'll go and see. You wait here. 

The Brig : 

Certainly not. 

I'm coming with you. 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

Oh, very well, but don't get in the way. 

(Another scream.)

[Dark Tower corridor]

The Cosmic Hobo : 

Take this. 

(He gives the torch to the Brigadier. The scream is close by.) 

The Brig : 

What was that? 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

We'll go and see.

 

(The Brigadier hooks the torch on a nearby sconce and they walk up to the corner.) 

The Brig : 

Good grief! 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

Jamie! Zoe!

 Jamie McCrimmon's Ghost : 

Stay back, Doctor. 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

Why, what's happening? 

Zoe Herriot's Ghost : 

Don't come any closer. 

There's a force field. 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

A force field? We'll soon see about that.

 

Jamie McCrimmon's Ghost : 

No, don't, Doctor. If the force field 

is disturbed, it'll destroy us. 

Zoe Herriot's Ghost : 

You must go back. 

The Brig : 

Well, Doctor, what are we going to do? 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

Get them out of it.

 

Jamie McCrimmon's Ghost : 

No, no, please don't, Doctor. 

Zoe Herriot's Ghost : 

Oh, go back. Save Yourselves. 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

I can't. I can't leave you there. 

Zoe Herriot's Ghost : 

You must. 

The Brig : 

We could find another way 

into the tomb area. 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

But Zoe and Jamie would still be trapped. 

Jamie McCrimmon's Ghost : 

The Brigadier's right -- 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

....or would they? Just a minute.... 

It's a Matter of Memory....

 

Zoe Herriot's Ghost : 

Stay away!

 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

Why? I can't harm you. 

Jamie McCrimmon's Ghost : 

One step nearer and we're dead!

 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

You can't kill illusions. 

(The Second Doctor steps between Jamie and Zoe. Jamie's voice echoes.) 

Jamie McCrimmon's Ghost : 

No, Brigadier...! 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

You're not Real -- 

When you were returned 

to Your Own People, 

The Time Lords erased Your Memory 

of the period you spent with me --

....so How Do You Know 

Who We Are? Answer! 

(Zoe and Jamie scream and disappear in a cloud of black smoke.) 

The Brig : 

They're gone. 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

Yes, yes, it's sad....

[Dark Tower staircase]

(They keep going upwards.) 

The Brig : 

I still don't like it, Doctor. 

I don't fully understand why we're here. 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

You want to get Home?

 

The Brig : 

Of course.

 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

That is why we are here. 

Have Faith, Brigadier --

Have I ever led you astray? 

The Brig : 

On many occasions. 

The Cosmic Hobo : 

Yes, well -- This will be The Exception. 

Come along.

Frankenstein’s Ghost

Sir Cedric Hardwicke also plays the "ghost" of His Father in the scene where Frankenstein decides to reinvigorate the Monster. Hardwicke's mellow baritone sounded nothing at all like the clipped, nervous speech of Colin Clive, who played the original Frankenstein, but Clive had passed away in 1937, the result of poor health exacerbated by acute alcoholism.

The Mob :

There's a curse upon 

This Village...

The Curse of Frankenstein.

Aye.

Aye, it is True.

The whole countryside 

shuns The Village.

Our fields are barren, 

the inn is empty.

Wailing Woman :

My little ones cry in their sleep.

They are hungry. There is no bread.

It's The Curse, The Curse of Frankenstein.

The Mayor of Frankenstein :

This is nonsense, folks.

You talk as though these were the Dark Ages.

You know as well as I do 

that The Monster died 

in the sulphur pit under 

Frankenstein's tower...

and that Ygor, his familiar 

was riddled with bullets

from the gun of Baron 

Frankenstein himself.

The Mob :

But Ygor does not die that easily.

They hanged him and 

broke his neck, 

but he lives.

Haven't I seen him, sitting beside 

the hardened sulphur pit,

playing his weird horn, as if to lure 

The Monster back from Death 

to do his evil bidding?

The Mayor of Frankenstein :

You talk like frightened children.

Elder # 1 :

Well, if something isn't done, 

there'll be a new mayor 

after the fall election.

The Mob :

Aye!

The Mayor of Frankenstein :

What do you want me to do?

The Mob :

Destroy The Castle —

Wipe the last traces of these

accursed Frankensteins 

from Our Land.

Elder # 1 :

The People are right, 

Your Honour.

Elder # 2 :

I agree, Your Honour.

The Mayor of Frankenstein :

I Don't Believe that these dead wretches can 

affect the prosperity of This Village.

But Do as You Will with The Castle :

It's yours.

The Mob :

We'll blow it up!

*****

Frankenstein :

Ever since I can remember,

I have dreaded this moment.

For years I felt secure, certain that

The Monster had been destroyed.

I tried to keep all knowledge of it from you. 

And until last night, I succeeded.

Elsa Frankenstein, 

The Princess :

I had to know.

Yesterday, when I saw Ygor...

I felt that something had come out

of The Past to threaten our Happiness.

Please don't let it spoil our lives.

Father, promise me.

Frankenstein :

I promise you, Elsa.

I'll find a way.

I must find a way.

*****

Frankenstein :

Dr. Bohmer, I need your aid.

This Monster must be destroyed.

Dr. Bohmer :

Destroyed? But how?

He's not subject to the ordinary laws of Life. 

Frankenstein :

There is a way.

He was made limb by limb, organ by organ.

He must be unmade in the same way. 

Dr. Bohmer :

Dissection?

Frankenstein :

Bit by bit, piece by piece...

just as My Father created it.

Dr. Bohmer :

But this thing Lives -- 

It would be Murder.

Frankenstein :

How can you call the removal 

of a thing that is not Human, 'Murder'?

Dr. Bohmer :

I regret, Doctor...

I cannot be part of your plan.

Frankenstein :

Then I must do it alone.

While it lives, no one is safe.

*****

Frankenstein's Ghost :

My Son - What are you about to do?

Would You Destroy...

that which I, Your Father,

dedicated his life to creating?

Frankenstein :

I must. The Monster you created

is in itself destruction.

Frankenstein's Ghost :

Nevertheless, I was near to solving a problem

that has baffled Man since The Beginning of Time...

the secret of life, artificially created. 

Frankenstein :

But it has brought Death

to everything that it's touched.

Frankenstein's Ghost :

That is because, unknowingly...

I gave it a criminal brain.

With your knowledge of Science,

You can cure that.

Frankenstein :

It's beyond My Cure.

It's a malignant brain.

Frankenstein's Ghost :

What if it had another brain?

Frankenstein :

Another brain!

*****

Frankenstein :

Bohmer! Dr. Bohmer!

Dr. Bohmer :

What is it, Doctor?

You've changed Your Mind?

Frankenstein :

Yes. Attach the high-frequency

leads to the terminal electrodes.

Dr. Bohmer :

Yes, sir.

Ygor, The Bad Shepherd :

Frankenstein!

Frankenstein :

Come in, Ygor. 

I may need your assistance. 

Ygor, The Bad Shepherd :

You have agreed.

You are going to Help Him, Doctor?

You are giving him Life.

Frankenstein :

Yes, but not for The Purpose

that you think, Ygor.

I'm giving him strength so that 

an operation may be successful. 

Ygor, The Bad Shepherd :

An operation?

Frankenstein :

Yes, I'm giving him another brain.

You must explain to him

when he becomes conscious.

You must make him understand.

Ygor, The Bad Shepherd :

Whose brain?

Kettering?

Frankenstein :

Yes, Kettering.

A Man of character and learning.

The Monster will cease to be an evil influence...

and become everything that is Good. 

Ygor, The Bad Shepherd :

No! You cannot take My Friend away from me. 

He's all that I have, nothing else. 

You're going to make him Your Friend, 

and I will be alone.

Frankenstein :

It will be as I say, 

or he must be destroyed. 

Ygor, The Bad Shepherd :

He cannot be destroyed.

Frankenstein :

There is one way - by dissection.

Ygor, The Bad Shepherd :

No. Not that. Doctor.

Ygor's Body's no good.

His neck is broken, crippled and distorted, 

lame and sick from the bullets

Your Brother fired into me.

You can put My Brain in His Body.

Frankenstein :

Your brain?

Ygor, The Bad Shepherd :

You can make us One.

We'll be together always...

my brain and his body... Together.

Frankenstein :

You're a cunning fellow, Ygor.

Do you think that I'd put 

your sly and sinister brain 

into the body of A Giant? 

That would be A Monster indeed.

Ygor, The Bad Shepherd :

You'll do as I tell you, 

or I'll not be responsible for the consequences.

Dr. Bohmer :

Ironic, isn't it, Doctor?

Yes, The Monster's Victim shall inherit His Body.

And Everlasting Life.

Frankenstein :

Build up the voltage potential to its maximum.

Two Words.

any attempt to separate us will result in his death

Two words:

  help me

  Her wide stare riveted to the words, Sharon’s breath came frosty as she whispered, “That’s her handwriting, Father.”

  At 9:00 that morning, Karras went to The President of Georgetown University and asked for permission to seek an exorcism. He received it, and immediately afterward went to the Bishop of the diocese, who listened with grave attention to all that Karras had to say. “You’re convinced that it’s genuine?” the Bishop asked finally.

  “Well, I’ve made a prudent judgment that it meets the conditions set forth in the Ritual,” Karras answered evasively. He still did not dare to believe. Not his mind but his heart had tugged him to this moment : pity and the hope for a cure through suggestion.

  “You would want to do the exorcism yourself?”

  Karras felt elation; saw the door swinging open to fields, to escape from the crushing weight of caring and that meeting each twilight with the ghost of his faith. And yet, “Yes, Your Grace,” he answered.

  “How’s your health?”

  “My health is fine, Your Grace.”

  “Have you ever been involved with this sort of thing before?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Well, we’ll see. It might be best to have a man with experience. There aren’t too many these days but perhaps someone back from the foreign missions. Let me see who’s around. In the meantime, I’ll call you as soon as we know.”

  When Karras had left him, the Bishop called the president of Georgetown University, and they talked about Karras for the second time that day.

  “Well, he does know the background,” said the president at a point in their conversation. “I doubt there’s any danger in just having him assist. In any case, there should be a psychiatrist present.”

  “And what about the exorcist? Any ideas? I’m a blank.”

  “Well, now, Lankester Merrin’s around.”

  “Merrin? I had a notion he was over in Iraq. I think I read he was working on a dig around Nineveh.”

  “Yes, down below Mosul. That’s right. But he finished and came back around three or four months ago, Mike. He’s at Woodstock.”

  “Teaching?”

  “No, he’s working on another book.”

  “God help us! Don’t you think he’s too old, though? How’s his health?”

  “Well, it must be all right or he wouldn’t still be running around digging up tombs, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “And besides, he’s had experience, Mike.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, at least that’s the word.”

  “And when was that? This experience, I mean.”

  “Oh, maybe ten or twelve years ago, I think, in Africa. Supposedly the exorcism lasted for months. I heard it damn near killed him.”

  “Well, in that case, I doubt that he’d want to do another one.”

  “We do what we’re told here, Mike. All the rebels are over there with you seculars.”

  “Thanks for reminding me.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “Look, I’ll leave it up to you and the Provincial.”

  Early that quietly waiting evening, a young scholastic preparing for the priesthood wandered the grounds of Woodstock Seminary in Maryland. He was searching for a slender, gray-haired old Jesuit. He found him on a pathway, strolling through a grove. He handed him a telegram. His manner serene, the old priest thanked him and then turned to renew his contemplation, to continue his walk through a nature that he loved. Now and then he would pause to hear the song of a robin, to watch a bright butterfly hover on a branch. He did not open and read the telegram. He knew what it said. He had read it in the dust of the temples of Nineveh. He was ready.

  He continued his farewells.

 

   

 “And let my cry come unto thee…”

 

He who abides in love, abides in God, and God in him…

  —Saint John

 

There is a Certain Amount of Courtesy Involved in These Things.

Foreword to a Fatal Interview

I WANT TO tell you the circumstances in which I first encountered Hannibal Lecter, M.D. 

In the fall of 1979, owing to an illness in my family, I returned home to the Mississippi Delta and remained there eighteen months. I was working on Red Dragon. 

My neighbor in the village of Rich kindly gave me the use of a shotgun house in the center of a vast cotton field, and there I worked, often at night. 

To write a novel, you begin with what you can see and then you add what came before and what came after. Here in the village of Rich, Mississippi, working under difficult circumstances, I could see the investigator Will Graham in the home of the victim family, in the house where they all died, watching the dead family’s home movies. 

I did not know at the time who was committing the crimes. 

I pushed to find out, to see what came before and what came after I went through the home, the crime scene, in the dark with Will and could see no more and no less than he could see. 

Sometimes at night I would leave the lights on in my little house and walk across the flat fields. When I looked back from a distance, the house looked like a boat at sea, and all around me the vast Delta night. 

I soon became acquainted with the semi-feral dogs who roamed free across the fields in what was more or less a pack. Some of them had casual arrangements with the families of farm workers, but much of the time they had to forage for themselves. 

In the hard winter months with the ground frozen and dry, I started giving them dog food and soon they were going through fifty pounds of dog food a week. 

They followed me around, and they were a lot of company – tall dogs, short ones, relatively friendly dogs and big rough dogs you could not touch. They walked with me in the fields at night and when I couldn’t see them, I could hear them all around me, breathing and snuffling along in the dark. 

When I was working in the cabin, they waited on the front porch, and when the moon was full they would sing. Standing baffled in the vast fields outside my cabin in the heart of the night, the sound of breathing all around me, my vision still clouded with the desk lamp, I tried to see what had happened at the crime scene. 

All that came to my dim sight were loomings, intimations, the occasional glow when a retina not human reflected the moon. 

There was no question that something had happened. 

You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It’s all there and you just have to find it. 

Will Graham had to ask somebody, he needed some help and he knew it. He knew where he had to go, long before he let himself think about it. 

I knew Graham had been severely damaged in a previous case. I knew he was terribly reluctant to consult the best source he had. 

At the time, I myself was accruing painful memories every day, and in my evening’s work I felt for Graham. 

So it was with some trepidation that I accompanied him to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, and there, maddeningly, before we could get down to business, we encountered the kind of fool you know from conducting your own daily business, Dr. Frederick Chilton, who delayed us for two or three interminable days. 

I found that I could leave Chilton in the cabin with the lights on and look back at him from the dark, surrounded by my friends the dogs. 

I was invisible then, out there in the dark, the way I am invisible to my characters when I’m in a room with them and they are deciding their fates with little or no help from me. 

Finished with the tedious Chilton at last, Graham and I went on to the Violent Ward and the steel door slammed shut behind us with a terrific noise. 

Will Graham and I, approaching Dr. Lecter’s cell. 

Graham was tense and I could smell fear on him. I thought Dr. Lecter was asleep and I jumped when he recognized Will Graham by scent without opening his eyes. I was enjoying my usual immunity while working, my invisibility to Chilton and Graham and the staff, but I was not comfortable in the presence of Dr. Lecter, not sure at all that the Doctor could not see me. 

Like Graham, I found, and find, the scrutiny of Dr. Lecter uncomfortable, intrusive, like the humming in your thoughts when they X-ray your head. 

Graham’s interview with Dr. Lecter went quickly, in real time at the speed of swordplay, me following it, my frantic notes spilling into the margin and over whatever surface was uppermost on my table. I was worn out when it was over – the incidental clashes and howls of an asylum rang on in my head, and on the front porch of my cabin in Rich thirteen dogs were singing, seated with the eyes closed, faces upturned to the full moon. Most of them crooned their single vowel between O and U, a few just hummed along. 

I had to revisit Graham’s interview with Dr. Lecter a hundred times to understand it and to get rid of the superfluous static, the jail noises, the screaming of the damned that had made some of the words hard to hear. 

I still didn’t know who was committting the crimes, but I knew for the first time that we would find out, and that we would arrive at him. I also knew the knowledge would be terribly, perhaps tragically, expensive to others in the book. And so it turned out. 

Years later when I started The Silence of the Lambs, I did not know that Dr. Lecter would return. 

I had always liked the character of Dahlia Lyad in Black Sunday and wanted to do a novel with a strong woman as the central character. 

So I began with Clarice Starling and, not two pages into the novel, I found she had to go visit the Doctor. 

I admired Clarice Starling enormously and I think I suffered some feelings of jealousy at the ease with which Dr. Lecter saw into her, when it was so difficult for me. 

By the time I undertook to record the events in Hannibal, the Doctor, to my surprise, had taken on a life of his own. 

You seemed to find him as oddly engaging as I did. 

I dreaded doing Hannibal, dreaded the personal wear and tear, dreaded the choices I would have to watch, feared for Starling. 

In the end I let them go, as you must let characters go, let Dr. Lecter and Clarice Starling decide events according to Their Natures. There is a certain amount of Courtesy involved. 

As A Sultan once said : I do not ‘keep’ Falcons – They Live with Me. 

When in the winter of 1979 I entered the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and the great metal door crashed closed behind me, little did I know what waited at the end of the corridor; how seldom we recognize the sounds when the bolt of our fate slides home. 

T.H. Miami, 

January 2000

VALERIE-X

 

 Valerie

fem. proper name, French, from Latin Valeria, fem. of Valerius, name of a Roman gens, from valere "to be strong" (from PIE root *wal- "to be strong").

 

"I don't know who you are. Please believe. There is no way I can convince you that this is not one of their tricks. But I don't care. I am me, and I don't know who you are, but I love you.

I have a pencil. A little one they did not find. I am a women. I hid it inside me. Perhaps I won't be able to write again, so this is a long letter about my life. It is the only autobiography I have ever written and oh God I'm writing it on toilet paper.

I was born in Nottingham in 1957, and it rained a lot. I passed my eleven plus and went to girl's Grammar. I wanted to be an actress.

I met my first girlfriend at school. Her name was Sara. She was fourteen and I was fifteen but we were both in Miss. Watson's class. Her wrists. Her wrists were beautiful. I sat in biology class, staring at the picket rabbit foetus in its jar, listening while Mr. Hird said it was an adolescent phase that people outgrew. Sara did. I didn't.

In 1976 I stopped pretending and took a girl called Christine home to meet my parents. A week later I enrolled at drama college. My mother said I broke her heart.

But it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us. But within that inch we are free.

London. I was happy in London. In 1981 I played Dandini in Cinderella. My first rep work. The world was strange and rustling and busy, with invisible crowds behind the hot lights and all that breathless glamour. It was exciting and it was lonely. At nights I'd go to the Crew-Ins or one of the other clubs. But I was stand-offish and didn't mix easily. I saw a lot of the scene, but I never felt comfortable there. So many of them just wanted to be gay. It was their life, their ambition. And I wanted more than that.

Work improved. I got small film roles, then bigger ones. In 1986 I starred in "The Salt Flats." It pulled in the awards but not the crowds. I met Ruth while working on that. We loved each other. We lived together and on Valentine's Day she sent me roses and oh God, we had so much. Those were the best three years of my life.

In 1988 there was the war, and after that there were no more roses. Not for anybody.

In 1992 they started rounding up the gays. They took Ruth while she was out looking for food. Why are they so frightened of us? They burned her with cigarette ends and made her give them my name. She signed a statement saying I'd seduced her. I didn't blame her. God, I loved her. I didn't blame her.

But she did. She killed herself in her cell. She couldn't live with betraying me, with giving up that last inch. Oh Ruth. . . .

They came for me. They told me that all of my films would be burned. They shaved off my hair and held my head down a toilet bowl and told jokes about lesbians. They brought me here and gave me drugs. I can't feel my tongue anymore. I can't speak.

The other gay women here, Rita, died two weeks ago. I imagine I'll die quite soon. It's strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and I apologized to nobody.

I shall die here. Every last inch of me shall perish. Except one.

An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.

I don't know who you are. Or whether you're a man or a woman. I may never see you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again. I wish I could kiss you.

Valerie

X

from V for Vendetta

Written by Alan Moore.

Art by David Lloyd.  

Work It Out

"My Dear Watson, Professor Moriarty is not a man who lets the grass grow under his feet. I went out about mid-day to transact some business in Oxford Street. 

As I passed the corner which leads from Bentinck Street on to the Welbeck Street crossing a two-horse van furiously driven whizzed round and was on me like a flash. 

I sprang for the foot-path and saved myself by the fraction of a second. 

The van dashed round by Marylebone Lane and was gone in an instant. 

I kept to the pavement after that, Watson, but as I walked down Vere Street a brick came down from the roof of one of the houses, and was shattered to fragments at my feet. 

I called the police and had the place examined. 

There were slates and bricks piled up on the roof preparatory to some repairs, and they would have me believe that the wind had toppled over one of these. 

Of course I knew better, but I could prove nothing. 

I took a cab after that and reached my brother's rooms in Pall Mall, where I spent the day. 

Now I have come round to you, and on my way I was attacked by a rough with a bludgeon. 

I knocked him down, and the police have him in custody; but I can tell you with the most absolute confidence that no possible connection will ever be traced between the gentleman upon whose front teeth I have barked my knuckles and the retiring mathematical coach, who is, I dare say, working out problems upon a black-board ten miles away.”

“I think that I may go so far as to say, Watson, that I have not lived wholly in vain," he remarked. "If my record were closed to-night I could still survey it with equanimity. The air of London is the sweeter for my presence. In over a thousand cases I am not aware that I have ever used my powers upon the wrong side. Of late I have been tempted to look into the problems furnished by nature rather than those more superficial ones for which our artificial state of society is responsible. Your memoirs will draw to an end, Watson, upon the day that I crown my career by the capture or extinction of the most dangerous and capable criminal in Europe."