The Professor labored over his device and did his best to ignore his wife’s sobs. She wept so often these days that he felt he should have grown accustomed to the sound, but, no, as disciplined as his mind was, the Professor found this task to be beyond even his formidable abilities.
Part of the difficulty arose from the fact that it was a very small room, with almost nothing to distract him, nothing except his work. His work was the whetstone upon which the Professor honed himself. His work would keep his beloved ones safe. His work would set them all free.
“James?” Regina called, her voice thin and weary.
Moriarty stood straighter and raised his head, but he did not turn away from the device. “Yes, my dear?”
“What time is it?”
The Professor sighed. “My dearest, you know I cannot answer that question. There is no time here. We are trapped between the ticks of the clock’s sweeping hand.”
“James?” she called again in the same tone.
“Yes, my love?”
“How long have they been gone?”
Moriarty lifted his hand to his face and first rubbed the bridge of his nose and then stroked the ridge of his chin. He wondered, How long since I last shaved? And still no sign of stubble. He had always despised the need to shave. Had even considered developing some means to suppress the growth of hair on his face. Except Regina had always taken a strange delight in stroking his face in the early morning, before rising for the day, and commenting on how rough his cheek had become. “Like some kind of millworker or a stevedore,” she would say and the silly, stupid joke would always send her into a fit of giggling. Lord, how I miss shaving, Moriarty thought and said, “They have been gone as long as they have been gone, my love. I can tell you no more than that until I have completed my work. When I have, I will free us from this place and we can . . .”
“James?”
“What?!” Moriarty hissed. “I mean . . . I mean . . .” He recovered his composure. “What is it, my darling?”
“I miss them.”
The Professor lowered his head and cupped his chin in his open palm, elbow on the edge of his device, his great work—the key, the horologe. He stopped working for a moment (as if the word “moment” meant anything). He reached into his waistcoat pocket and withdrew his watch. As quietly as he could, he pressed the stem, which clicked softly. The hunter case swung open silently. Out of habit, Moriarty glanced at the clock face, but he really didn’t need to see that the second hand was not moving. He would have felt the mechanism’s whir in the palm of his hand if the gears had moved a single tick.
He ignored the clock face and instead stared at the tiny portrait in the interior of the case: his daughters. Sophia and Gladys. Ages five and nine when the portrait was done. And now they would be . . . how old? Who could say? “I know, my darling,” Moriarty whispered. “I miss them, too.” He snapped the case shut. “But we’ll never see them again if I don’t complete my work.” He touched the device with the tips of his fingers. “It’s the only thing that matters,” he said. “The only thing.”
“James?” Regina called. He looked over at his wife. Dressed in white, she lay on a white couch next to which there stood a white table. Behind her was a white wall. Her skin was pale white and drained of color. Her hair, once a beautiful, deep chestnut brown, was now white. He couldn’t remember if her eyes had changed color, but Moriarty did not wish to know if they had. He looked at his hands, which were also white. His clothes: white. His own hair and eyes: no doubt, they were white.
Only the device had any hue. Since it was the only thing in the room that mattered, this seemed entirely appropriate to Moriarty. “Yes?” he asked.
But Regina did not reply. She had started to weep again, so Moriarty returned to his labor, which was, in every sense that ever could matter, the center of the universe.