Crossover of the Week

Summer 1911

HOW THE PROFESSOR TAUGHT A LESSON TO THE GNOLES 

Professor Moriarty is hired by the thief Nuth to help him plunder the treasures of the creatures known as the gnoles. Nuth says thieves trace their lineage to Slith, and before him Prometheus, and that the history of thievery is as storied as that of any noble house in Ruritania or Celephais. He also asks Moriarty, “Shall I allow the foreigner Rocambole or the dissolute Raffles to wear the crown that is rightfully mine, then?” Moriarty has a tank which is based on the designs of “a certain Sikh of my acquaintance.” Moriarty says he will teach the gnoles the lessons of Troy, of Sarnath, and of Peking. 

Story by Josh Reynolds in The Adventures of Moriarty, Maxim Jakubowski, ed., Robinson, 2015. Nuth and the gnoles are from Lord Dunsany’s “How Nuth Would Have Practiced His Art Upon the Gnoles.” Slith, besides being mentioned in that story, appears in Dunsany’s “Probable Adventure of the Three Literary Men”; both stories are included in the collection The Book of Wonder. Ruritania is from Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda. Celephais and Sarnath are from the works of H. P. Lovecraft. Rocambole is Ponson du Terrail’s adventurer. A. J. Raffles is E. W. Hornung’s gentleman thief. The Sikh is Captain Nemo. Rick Lai’s “The Secret History of Captain Nemo” and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen indicate Nemo would have no reason to do Moriarty any favors, so the Professor must have stolen his old foe’s technology. 

This crossover writeup is one of over a thousand appearing in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, coming this summer from Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!