WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Season 1, Episode 7 of Moriarty the Patriot, "The Noahtic, Part Two," now streaming on Funimation.
After introducing its navy-haired detective, the one and only Sherlock Holmes in Episode 6, Moriarty the Patriot gives the hero a small but significant part intervening in his future nemesis' plot aboard The Noahtic in Episode 7. While Holmes is unable to save Moriarty's latest target from suffering a 'just' punishment, his parting words to Moriarty hint that the professor is certainly on his radar now -- which, as we know, will blossom into one of fiction's greatest cat-and-mouse adventures.
The moment of Sherlock's intervention comes when Moriarty engineers Count Blitz Enders -- a firm believer in the greatest game being man -- to accidentally murder a man in the middle of a ballet performance onboard the luxury cruise liner. The man, a criminal lowlife himself, had already been stabbed to death by Enders in his quarters, but Moriarty tricked Enders into believing him to somehow still be alive, prompting the panicked snob into committing his crime all over again -- with an audience, this time.
As a crowd of his peers turns on him in disgust, so does Enders on them, leading to him launching an attack on one of them. Luckily, Holmes' martial arts skills and quick-thinking disarms the murderous Count -- and his impressive moves put Downey Jr.'s cinematic take on the character to shame.
But those aren't the only muscles the detective flexes during the episode. Off-shore, Holmes sidles up to Moriarty as the ship's passengers disembark to inform him that he suspects this was no "ordinary crime." Using his pathology skills (acquired during his time in forward-thinking France), the sleuth worked out from the rigor mortis that had already set in that Enders had been stabbing a corpse on stage, though from his shouted confession, he'd been led to believe this wasn't the case; therefore, a third party had to be involved.
Holmes admits he has no evidence to back up this "wild" claim, but "when you eliminate every other possibility then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Clearly, Moriarty has won this round: leaving almost no detectable trace of his crime behind for a great mind like Holmes to discover. His cover in-tact, Moriarty even comments on how much Sherlock appears to be enjoying himself, which the latter compares to a mathematician's love of solving similarly complex problems -- that being Moriarty's chosen profession.
Though it's conceivable that Holmes simply wanted to bounce his wacky theory off of someone he considered an intellectual equal, it's far more likely he suspects a crime carried out so meticulously well could only have been done by said individual. And so, it's safe to say, the game is well and truly afoot.
