Professor Rathe

Professor Rathe is a lecturer at London's prestigious Brompton Academy and a friend of his student Sherlock Holmes. Secretly, he is also the leader of Rame Tep, a dangerous cult that conducts human sacrifices.
== Biography ==
Long ago, a group of English businessmen were working together to build a great hotel in Egypt. However, they came across the Tomb of five Egyptian princesses and having them excavated, they angered the natives. Fearing for their lives, the gentleman called in the British Army (as Egypt was a British Colony at the time). The soldiers massacred many of the natives and burned the village to the ground. However, two members of the cult Rame Tep survived: one Anglo-Egyptian native boy named Eh Tar and his sister were staying with their grandfather in England at the time. They swore vengeance on the men and promised to replace the five Egyptian Princesses.
Eh Tar later worked at prestigious Brompton Academy under the name Rathe (which is Eh Tar merged and backwards) and was a professor mainly teaching fencing to students. He developed a friendship with Sherlock Holmes, but despite that they were frequent rivals in chess and fencing, with Rathe usually winning.
When the people responsible for massacre of Rame Tep started dying at the hands of the renewed cult, now residing in London, Holmes quickly got involved because one of them was a friend, an old schoolmaster Rupert T. Waxflatter. It doesn't take very long for him to find out that Rame Tep, a cult which practices human sacrifices is responsible. Holmes also interrupts one of the sacrifices.
To complete the sacrifice, Rathe captures (via hypnosis) Waxflatter's daughter and Holmes's love interest Elizabeth, planning to make her the fifth and final "princess". After Rathe's plans were yet again interrupted and the cult was defeated, Rathe tried to shoot Holmes but Elizabeth saved him, receiving a bullet wound herself. Holmes duelled Rathe in a long battle which progressed from sword-fighting (Holmes finally got the upper hand, scarring Rathe's face) to hand-to-hand combat on the thin ice of the River Thames. Losing controls over his emotions, Eh Tar broke the ice with an misjudged punch, apparently killing himself by drowning.
However, it is later revealed that Rathe survived. He travelled to Switzerland and stayed in a hotel under a new name - Moriarty.
== Personality and skills ==
Eh Tar was highly intelligent. He was arrogant and self-confident believing himself unbeatable, but simultaneously refused to underestimate his enemies. He was delusional, fanatically devoted to the Rame Tep and was a malicious sadist who showed no remorse for the sacrifices he performed during the rituals of the cult.
Eh Tar was extremely enigmatic, calm and exceedingly difficult to predict. He used psychological warfare in dealing with his enemies, to terrifying ends. However, his total devotion to the Rame Tep became his weakness: When Sherlock Holmes taunted him that he had lost everything, including his own sister, to his beliefs, Eh Tar lost control completely and Sherlock was finally able to beat him.
Eh Tar was highly skilled with a rapier and was a good marksman. He also used his trademark hypnotic ring to dazzle his opponents.
==Gallery ==
== Notes ==
* This role made Anthony Higgins the first actor to portray both Sherlock Holmes (which he did twice: in 1983 in a stage production "The White Glove" and ten years later in a television film 1994 Baker Street: Sherlock Holmes Returns) and Professor Moriarty (a version of whom Rathe was revealed to be in this film).
* Rathe is not only very skilled in fencing, hand-to-hand combat and criminal strategy but also a hypnotist, which is a rare skill for any version of Professor Moriarty.
== External links ==
* A page on Young Sherlock Holmes on a Russian fan-site of Anthony Higgins, which is available in both English and Russian.
Category:Characters: Young Sherlock Holmes
Category:Versions of James Moriarty
Category:Villains
Category:British characters