The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (11 page)

For a minute or two I considered the possibility of invisible inks and suchlike, but I was soon forced to accept that the entire business of the ‘all-important papers’ and my ‘vital mission’ had been nothing but a contrivance to silence my protests at being left behind. Holmes must have known that whatever evidence he had gathered would be useless – indeed perhaps meaningless – to anyone but himself. He had simply staked all on his
ability to outwit the Professor and return in person to conclude the case no one else was equipped to prosecute. But what if he had miscalculated? Supposing Moriarty came off best after all? What was I to do if Holmes did not appear by nine o’clock the following evening? What was I to tell Lestrade? I knew virtually nothing definite about Moriarty, for Holmes had been decidedly reticent when it came to details. He had omitted to say which
university
the Professor had resigned from, for instance, or where he had been living in London. I hardly even knew what he was supposed to look like! Holmes had described him as tall and thin, with deeply sunken eyes and rounded shoulders, pale and ascetic in appearance. It was a striking sketch, but it was hardly a basis for identifying an otherwise unknown man. In short, it was evident that the possibility of failure had never occurred to Holmes, or if it had he had refused to entertain it. All he had gained, and all we stood to lose, he had hazarded on the chance of his returning from Wiltshire in time to forestall Moriarty in the streets of Whitechapel. I could only pray that his confidence might not prove to have been mistaken.

But by dinner hour on Thursday night there was still no sign of my friend. With a heavy heart I ordered Mrs Hudson to send up the roast, of which I partook sparingly. I had no more appetite than a man on the eve of his execution. As the clock struck nine I was toying disconsolately with my pudding when the faintest sound alerted all my senses. I was sitting in my usual place, facing the windows, and the sound I had heard was behind me. Someone was in Holmes’s room! I sprang up from my chair and turned to face the intruder. I do not know whom I expected to see there – Moriarty, perhaps, with Holmes’s blood on his hands and his eyes full of murder. But the sight that greeted me was very different. Lounging against the jamb, resplendent in evening dress, was
the man over whose fate I had been agonising for the past ten days.

‘Sorry to startle you, Watson.’

‘Holmes! I thought you would never get here!’

‘Yes, I fear I have made rather a fetish of punctuality on this occasion. I meant to be with you sooner, but the catch on my window proved unexpectedly intransigent.’

‘But won’t you eat something? You must be famished.’

‘No, thank you. I had a late lunch at the Diogenes Club. But I’ll smoke a cigar with you, while we wait for Lestrade.’

‘Lestrade! But he has refused to work with you again. He as good as said so last week!’

My friend settled himself before the fire.

‘My dear Watson, Inspector Lestrade may fancy himself a free agent, but in practice he is a paid employee and does exactly what his superiors tell him to do. On this occasion he has been ordered to assist me in any way I direct. I sent him his instructions late last night and I expect our good George here in person on the stroke of ten.’

‘Last night? But surely then you were –’

‘If you insist on the Socratic method,’ said Holmes, as he lit his cigar, ‘this is going to take an intolerable time. Will you not settle for a simple narrative, with a period for questions at the end?’

I nodded.

‘I suppose I should begin by apologising for my abrupt departure from the theatre on Monday night. To be honest, my real motive in going there was to facilitate my departure from London. I should have liked to tell you what I was about, but it would never have done. You cannot dissemble, my dear fellow! It is one of your chief charms. Moriarty would have known at once that something was afoot, and with such a pugilist one cannot afford to telegraph one’s punches. He followed us to the
Oxford, of course, but I was able to lose him in the crowd, though one of his agents must have spotted me at the door. I left at a quarter to nine, taking a cab to
Paddington
, where I was just in time to catch the last train to the West of England. Moriarty was not to be put off so easily, however. He immediately commanded a special, which was speedily prepared, the lines being clear at that hour. My train made but four or five stops, and Moriarty observed the same itinerary, enquiring at each station whether a man of my description had alighted there. By this simple process he soon discovered that my destination had been Chippenham. He was barely an hour behind me.

‘Chippenham does not offer such a wealth of options to the weary traveller that Moriarty had much trouble in determining at which inn I had put up. But fortunately for myself, and the other inhabitants of that historic pile, the landlord is not used to receiving guests in the small hours. It was only by long and loud resort to the bell that Moriarty gained entrance, and by then both I and my suspicions had been aroused. I dressed hurriedly and left by way of the roof. That incident set the style for all our subsequent encounters. For eight days, Watson, we have played at cat and mouse over Salisbury Plain and the Vale of Pewsey. Imagine if you can a chess game between two masters, such that each must not only plan his every move but execute it too, in person, and on a board the size of an English county. Such is the game with which
Moriarty
and I have been passing the time since you last saw me. It has proved highly diverting. For instance, if you have been wondering why I chose to climb in through my bedroom window this evening, instead of making a more conventional entrance, the answer is that I wished first to satisfy myself that you were indeed Dr Watson.’

I must have given Holmes a very strange look at this, for he smiled wryly.

‘Don’t worry, old fellow, the strain of the past week has not unbalanced my mind. But that inn at Chippenham is not the only one I have been obliged to quit at short notice. There was also the occasion of your interesting appearance in the little village of West Lavington.’

‘But this is absurd!’ I cried. ‘I have not been out of London all week!’

‘Therein lies the interest. I was awakened at dawn with the news that a Dr Watson was come from London with an urgent communication from Scotland Yard. I was naturally suspicious, and positioned myself so as to have a clear view of the stairway. Down went the boy, and a moment later who should appear but – you! I was surprised and delighted, and my immediate impulse, of course, was to go and greet you. Had I yielded, it is very doubtful whether I should ever have left that picturesque hamlet, save perhaps in a coffin.’

‘Good God!’

‘It was Moriarty. But he had you to the life, my dear Watson! In fact I should assuredly be gathered to the collective bosom of my forebears by now, had he not made one trivial error.’

‘What?’

‘Your gammy leg.’

‘My leg!’

‘Yes, Watson, if you are ever again tempted to curse the
jezail
bullet which shattered your heel, ended your military career, and can seriously incommode you even today – pause and consider that but for that wound Sherlock Holmes would be no more.’

‘But I don’t see how –’

‘You do not need me to remind you that it was your left heel which the bullet struck. The Watson who came to meet me at that village inn limped to perfection, but it was his right leg he favoured. I spotted it just in time, and slammed the door in his face. I then leapt from the
window and melted away into the twilight of the Plain. But you will appreciate that after that I have become somewhat sceptical of appearances.’

‘By Jove, Holmes! If the fellow had got away with his dastardly plot, I would have been charged with your murder!’

‘Precisely. Professor Moriarty is by no means devoid of a certain macabre sense of humour, although it is only to be had at a price most people would consider too dear by half.’

The bell sounded below-stairs, and Holmes leapt to his feet. He rushed over to the door and turned the key in the lock.

‘Fetch your revolver, Watson!’ he whispered urgently. ‘This may well be another of his jests.’

I had barely time to get the weapon out of my desk when someone rapped loudly on the panel of the door.

‘Who’s there?’ cried Holmes, standing well to one side.

‘Inspector Lestrade.’

Hearing the familiar nasal voice, I at once relaxed. Holmes, however, made no move to unlock the door.

‘Do you recall the St Simon wedding case, Lestrade?’

There was a brief silence before the official answered.

‘Mr Holmes, I haven’t come all this way to play at –’

‘Now, now! Do you recall it or not?’

‘Of course I recall it. It was only last month.’

‘Then you will remember discovering the bride’s clothing in the Serpentine, and informing me that you were dragging for her body.’

‘I do, but what the devil ‘

‘Now listen carefully, for this is very important. Can you recall my reply?’

Once again there was a brief silence. Holmes tensed perceptibly.

‘I’m not likely to forget any of your little jibes, Mr Holmes,’ the voice returned bleakly. ‘I believe you said
that I would do as well to drag the basin of the Trafalgar Square fountain.’

My friend at once stepped forward and threw open the door.

‘Come in, Lestrade. I must apologise for the challenge, but it was a necessary precaution. We have had a bad case of foes posing as friends just recently.’

‘Trouble with imposters, is it?’ enquired the policeman, stepping warily into the room. ‘It sounds to me as if you need protection, Mr Holmes. I should get in touch with the police if I were you.’

Holmes smiled thinly.

‘I fear I am totally incapable of conceiving any circumstances in which you might be me, Inspector. Besides, I have every hope that following our operations tonight the problem will cease to exist.’

Lestrade raised his eyebrows and returned Holmes’s smile.

‘So you still believe the murderer is going to show up, eh? Regular as the almanac, eh Mr Holmes?’

‘If you were slightly less obtuse you would be able to see it yourself. That latest letter of his explicitly admits what I stated at the time – that he had been on the point of committing another outrage when he was disturbed by our patrols. What were his words? “Just as I was going to draw me knife along her blooming throat them curses of coppers spoilt the game.” It is over a month since our man last tasted blood. He will be at work tonight, you may be sure of that. The only question is, will we be ready for him? I take it, Lestrade, that the arrangements you were instructed to make have in fact been seen to?’

‘You’ll have nothing to complain of on that score. Everything has been done as you directed.’

‘Then let us delay no longer. Come, gentlemen! We must not keep Jack the Ripper waiting!’

It was a cold and blustery night, and we pulled our coats close about us as the four-wheeler Lestrade had brought rolled eastwards through the emptying city. The bleak prospect on every side seemed in complete accord with the nature of our business. The only signs of activity, indeed, were the gangs at work sweeping and sanding the streets for the Lord Mayor’s procession the following morning. Holmes pointed out these festal preparations.

‘There is yet another reason for feeling confident we shall see our man tonight. You must have remarked how he craves publicity. How could he pass over the chance to steal the Lord Mayor’s show with a bloodbath in Whitechapel? Every newspaper in the world would put out a special edition for such a story!’

Lestrade grunted contemptuously.

‘To hear you talk, anyone would think the killer was a friend of yours. You seem to know his mind better than he does himself.’

‘“
Humani nil a me alienum puto
,”’ replied Holmes sententiously. ‘As long as you continue to believe, along with Tom, Dick, and Harry, that this affair is merely an English translation of
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
, so long are you going to remain in the dark. The secret of my success is simply that while everyone else has been wasting their time searching for a gorilla in human form, I have been looking for a man who for reasons of his own has chosen to assume a gorilla costume.’

‘Your success!’ cried the Scotland Yarder harshly. ‘That’s a good one, I’m sure. Another success like your last one will cost me my job! Don’t talk to me of your success! I don’t want to hear about it, or your gorillas either! I just wish I had a relative in Whitehall to square things with the bigwigs. Then you might see a thing or two, Mr Sherlock Holmes, and never mind your blessed gorillas!’

By the end of this speech the little man was almost incoherent with rage. Holmes regarded him icily.

‘I really don’t know that that is any way to speak to a superior officer, Lestrade,’ said he.

Our drive was completed in silence. We alighted at the same police station in Commercial Street which had been the scene of our vigils a fortnight earlier. The building was once more a hive of activity. A fire was roaring in the grate, and Holmes and I made haste to warm ourselves after the draughty cab ride. Lestrade, however, pointedly took himself off to join his fellow detectives at the other side of the room. This group ignored the two of us from the moment we entered the room, although the resident constabulary were friendly enough and pressed mugs of tea on us. But Lestrade’s pique in being forced to cooperate with the hated amateur was obviously shared by his colleagues from the Yard. Holmes took not the slightest notice of their display of ill-feeling.

‘I am here to catch a murderer,’ said he, ‘not to fraternise with a class of individuals whose conversational resources generally begin and end with the injunction that anything one says may be taken down and used in evidence.’

On one wall of the room was posted a large plan of the district, marked with a great number of different coloured lines representing patrol routes, and circles with various symbols corresponding to the specified timings at given points. All this Holmes explained to me as we studied the system he had drawn up. I was enormously impressed by the thoroughness and skill with which the complicated web had been woven. Truly, nothing seemed to have been left to chance.