Colonel Moran
Colonel Sebastian Moran is a fictional character, an enemy of Sherlock Holmes and the villain of the Sherlock Holmes short story The Adventure of the Empty House. Holmes once described him as "the second most dangerous man in London"- the most dangerous being Professor Moriarty.
Pseudo biography
According to Sherlock Holmes's index of criminal biographies, Sebastian Moran was born in London in 1840, the son of Sir Augustus Moran, CB, sometime Minister to Persia.
He was educated at Eton College and the University of Oxford before embarking upon a military career. Formerly of the 1st Bangalore Pioneers, he served in the Jowaki Expedition of 1877-1878 and in the Second Anglo-Afghan War, seeing action at the Battle of Charasiab, 6 October 1879 (for which he was mentioned in dispatches); the Battle of Sherpur, 23 December 1879; and at Kabul.
A devoted sportsman and highly skilled shot, he was author of the books Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas in 1881 and Three Months in the Jungle in 1884, and reportedly once crawled down a drain after a wounded man-eating tiger.
He soon turned to the bad (Holmes attributes this to a hereditary trait), and although there was no open scandal he was obliged to retire from the army and return to London. Outwardly respectable, with an address in Conduit Street, Mayfair and membership of the (fictional) Anglo-Indian Club, the Tankerville Club and The Bagatelle Card Club, he nevertheless continued in his evil ways. He was soon recruited by the criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty, and served for a time as his chief of staff. Maintained in a comfortable lifestyle by Moriarty, Moran soon came to be used solely for assassinations that required his peculiar skill with the rifle, including that of Mrs Stewart of Lauder in 1887. On the break-up of the Moriarty crime ring in The Final Problem (early 1891), Moran escaped incrimination, and followed the Professor to Reichenbach Falls. After witnessing his chief's death at the hands of Holmes, Moran attempted to kill the detective by rolling boulders down upon him, but Holmes escaped. Now left without employment, Moran earned a living back in London by playing cards at several clubs.
However one of the other players, Ronald Adair, noticed that Moran won by cheating and threatened to expose him. On 30 March 1894, Moran murdered Adair by shooting him with a silenced air rifle that fired revolver bullets. Dr. Watson and a returned Holmes took the case, and Moran, learning that Holmes was back in London, attempted to kill the detective by firing his air rifle from a vacant house across the street from Holmes' residence. However Holmes, who had figured out how Moran killed Adair, fooled the Colonel: what Moran ended up shooting was a wax dummy of Holmes while the real Holmes, with Watson and Inspector Lestrade in tow, hid within the vacant house with Moran without the Colonel's knowledge. As soon as Moran fired, he was seized and arrested.
In The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, Holmes mentions Moran as being still alive. This story is set in September 1902. Moran is also mentioned in His Last Bow as an example of those of Holmes's many adversaries who have futilely sworn revenge against him. Colonel Sebastian Moran was also the villain in Doyle's Sherlock Holmes play The Crown Diamond written in the early 1900s but not performed until 1921. However, when this play was adapted as the short story The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone, Moran was replaced by Count Negretto Sylvius.
Other appearances
Moran appears as the main villain in the 1946 Basil Rathbone film Terror by Night.
Moran appears in the Flashman novella Flashman and the Tiger, and as a boy in the novel Flash for Freedom!, by George MacDonald Fraser . (MacDonald gives him a birth-date of 1834, and the full name "John Sebastian 'Tiger Jack' Moran".) In Flashman and the Tiger, during the battle of Rorke's Drift, Moran demonstrates amazing speed and unearthly accuracy with a revolver.
In Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds, the Artilleryman from The War of the Worlds is said to be Moran's son.
In Martin Powell's short story "Sherlock Holmes in the Lost World" (collected in Gaslight Grimoire) Moran attempts to rebuild Moriarty's criminal empire after the latter's death, but is killed by Professor Challenger.
In the film Without a Clue, Moran (portrayed by Tim Killick) appears as Moriarty's tall bodyguard and has a scar down one side of his face. His weapon of choice is a switchblade which he uses to stab and cut his victims, and he is also a highly skilled knife thrower.
Moran appears in several unrelated works by Kim Newman:
- He appears as a vampire character in the alternate history horror novel Anno Dracula.
- In the short story "The Man Who Got Off The Ghost Train", Richard Jeperson is dispatched to investigate a decades-old mystery in which Colonel Moran played a brief but memorable part.
- The short story "A Shambles in Belgravia" is a parody of "A Scandal in Bohemia" featuring Moriarty and Moran in the Holmes and Watson roles and Anthony Hope's Ruritania in place of Bohemia.
- In the short story "The Red Planet League" (a sequel to "A Shambles in Belgravia", collected in Gaslight Grimoire), Moran helps Moriarty carry out a hoax that becomes the inspiration for H. G. Wells' "The Crystal Egg" and The War of the Worlds.
Moran appears in two stories in the anthology Shadows Over Baker Street: "A Study in Emerald" by Neil Gaiman and "Tiger! Tiger!" by Elizabeth Bear.
In the David McDaniel's Man from U.N.C.L.E. novels, Moran is the founder of THRUSH after Professor Moriarty's death at Reichenbach.
Moran appears as a minor character in Alan Moore's comic book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume I, as an underling of Moriarty, where they are both secret agents who are assigned by MI5 to create a criminal empire through which the government can be in control of the criminal underworld.
In T. S. Eliot's poem "Gus: The Theatre Cat" (which became one of the songs in Cats), it is said that Gus once played a man-eating Tiger pursued by an Indian Colonel down a drain.
References and external links
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