"His shoulders are rounded from much study, and his face protrudes forward, and is for ever slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion."
Holmes describes Moriarty in reptilian terms, as if his lack of humanity can be discerned in his physical makeup.

"'You have less frontal development than I should have expected,' said he at last."
In the 18th-century pseudo-science, phrenology, frontal development was believed to indicate great intelligence. This idea, like other phrenological beliefs, eventually found its way into the anthropology of the time, which used racial characteristics as an indicator of evolutionary advancement. Moriarty's remark is meant as an insult to Holmes's brain capacity; Moriarty's own skull "domes out in a white curve," as Holmes himself notes.

"'You hope to place me in the dock. I tell you that I will never stand in the dock.'"
At British trials, the accused stands on a small platform surrounded by a railing--the dock.

"...I went out about midday to transact some business in Oxford Street. As I passed the corner which leads from Bentinck Street on to the Welbeck Street crossing a two-horse van furiously driven whizzed round and was on me like a flash."
These are the names of actual London streets. Holmes is just a few blocks from the foot of Baker Street when he is attacked.

	The area where Holmes was attacked can be found in the upper left-hand corner of this map, and Mortimer Street, on which Watson's back garden faces, appears at the upper right

"…but as I walked down Vere Street…."
Vere Street turns into New Bond Street on the south side of Oxford Street.

"I took a cab after that and reached my brother's rooms in Pall Mall, where I spent the day."
Sherlock hides out at his brother Mycroft Holmes's lodgings, across the street from his club, the Diogenes, where speaking to another member can be cause for expulsion. Both Mycroft's apartment and the Diogenes Club are located near many other prestigious clubs, somewhere along Pall Mall, which runs horizontally across the bottom of the map, above right.

"…and you will drive to the Strand end of the Lowther Arcade…."
The Lowther Arcade is a small, covered shopping bazaar, specializing in toys, located between two buildings across The Strand from Charing Cross Station. The roof is studded with glass domes that provide natural light in the daytime.

Dear Lowther Arcade! Offtimes have we wandered agape among thy enchanted palaces…. I have heard that thou art vulgar, but I cannot see how, unless it be that tattered children haunt thy portals, those awful yet smiling entrances to so much joy. To the Arcade there are two entrances, and with much to be sung in laudation of that which opens from the Strand yet I on the whole prefer the other as truly romantic, because it is there the tattered ones congregate….