The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (21 page)

I inched towards him, hugging the cliff-wall. The rock was wet and treacherous from the spray hurled up by the water plunging to destruction in the abyss below. The noise was terrific. I had approached within six feet of
Holmes before some intuition of my presence caused him to look up. As soon as his eyes met mine I felt all my mastery ebbing away. I had counted on everything but that terrible look. How utterly mistaken I had been in thinking it would be possible to discountenance Sherlock Holmes! One might sooner have hoped to surprise the Sphinx. The next moment my ankle had given way, causing me to lurch towards the brink of the precipice. I recovered my balance just as Holmes started towards me, his hand outstretched in aid. At once I produced my revolver, and flourished it in his face.

‘Back! Back, I say! Another step and I shoot! I mean it, Holmes! Keep your distance. If you come at me, I will not hesitate to fire! This is fair warning. I am in deadly earnest. Stay exactly where you are!’

‘Very well, Doctor. I think you have made your point.’

We both had to shout in order to be heard above the howling of the liquid inferno. Holmes stood still, a mocking smile playing on his lips. He made to reach into his coat.

‘If we are just going to stand here, you can have no objection if I take a pinch of snuff?’

‘Leave it be! Leave it alone!’

I was barely able to hold the gun up. The rock at my feet seemed to be attracting the metal with some magnetic force against which I had constantly to struggle. My reason was hopelessly confused, and my senses prey to delusions of ever-increasing potency. I seemed to hear human voices calling to me from the abyss. With an effort I pulled myself together.

‘It’s all over, Holmes! I’ve been in the empty house. I know everything.’

My voice had faded to a whisper. Holmes cupped his ear.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I said, I know everything!’

He smiled indulgently.

‘Come my dear fellow, no one knows everything! Not even me.’

The two sides of the waterfall had now parted company. They were swaying in different directions, as if the rock walls were two bones and the water a strip of gristle holding them together. Banshee voices were calling to me from out of the abyss, trying to pass on some vital message which I could not understand since they were speaking it backwards.

‘It’s no use, Holmes, I’ve found the evidence. The jars! The papers! I know you killed them.’

‘Which? The jars? Or the papers? Or both, perhaps?’

As I gazed up at that urbane and untroubled countenance, I felt my last grip on reality loosening. Could it possibly be true? Could the man standing before me
conceivably
be Jack the Ripper? What hideous mistake had I made? Where had I gone wrong? Was Moriarty even now watching from the other side of the falls, laughing sardonically? At once, sardonic laughter filled the air. It seemed, though, to be coming from Holmes. But then, of course, Holmes
was
Moriarty!

‘Might I trouble you to speak up, Doctor? I can hardly hear you. It would be a pity if your apothegms were to go for nothing.’

A wave of delirium swept through me. In a few moments it would overpower me completely. I raised my voice in desperation.

‘Would you still deny it? What’s the point? I tell you I know. I know! I know! I know! I watched you butcher Mary Kelly and I’ve read your unspeakable verses on the subject. The game is up! Try to understand! You are a homicidal maniac! A deranged killer!’

To my horror, Holmes’s response to this was one of amusement. His laughter was long and unforced.

‘Ah! Do forgive me,’ he cried at last. ‘It is really too
funny for words! Put yourself in my shoes for a moment. Ever since we left London, my companion has been injecting himself thrice daily with ever larger quantities of cocaine. Today he invents a transparently specious excuse to return alone to Meiringen, thus establishing an alibi. On his return he corners me on a dangerous path, produces a pistol, and threatens to shoot me down. Finally – wild-eyed, hysterical, muttering to himself, and generally exhibiting all the symptoms of a drug addict deprived of his dose – he staggers before me, brandishing his weapon, and accuses me of being a deranged killer. Now is my disordered reason misleading me or is there something fundamentally incongruous in this scene?’

‘Shut up, Holmes! Shut up! Just shut up! Words, words, words! You can’t talk your way out of this. I know what I know. So do you, don’t you?’

Holmes shook his head pityingly.

‘Say it Holmes! Let me hear it from your own lips!’

‘What is it you want me to say?’

‘Say you killed them!’

‘You killed them.’

‘In thirty seconds from now I am going to shoot you! You are about to die. Make your confession, man, and go with some show of remorse, at least. Have you none? Those poor helpless women! Do you want to spend
eternity
listening to them wail and whine at you from out of the pit? And what about me? Am I never to know the truth? Have a little mercy, Holmes, for Christ’s sake!’

He crossed his arms on his chest.

‘You’re mad, Doctor, and your drivel disgusts me. Pull the trigger and be damned to you!’

I think I was only able to do it finally because he had commanded me. I fired. The shot missed him. I steadied myself, but somehow the second bullet also went astray. I fired again. This time I was sure the gun was on target, but the projectile did not strike him. I wondered if the
barrel was blocked. I took a step towards that
maddeningly
invulnerable figure, and fired twice more. Without effect! I felt the hairs on my scalp rising. What manner of witchery was this? From the appalling gulf rose a clammy vapour, and with it the shrieks of the damned. In that arena, sealed off by walls of sound, I stood impotent and alone with a mocking murderer. With a cry of sheer
desperation
I hurled myself forward, pressed the muzzle of my pistol into his body, and jerked the trigger again and again. The gun fired one last time and fell silent. I plunged headlong into a well of black exhaustion.

‘Snuff?’

I was lying on my side in a puddle of mud. Holmes stood before me, holding out the horn snuffbox. I stared blankly up at him. He inhaled deeply, and gave a grunt of satisfaction.

‘Well, now you have had your say we can get down to business. Tell me, when did you kill Watson?’

I continued to stare vacantly at Holmes. For a while he began to sprout a multitude of limbs, like an Oriental deity, but that did not last. Hours later, it seemed, a
question
formed in my shattered brain.

‘Why aren’t you dead?’

‘Ah, you find that puzzling, do you? Let’s see if we can throw some light on it. As two of the finest minds in Europe I shall be surprised if we cannot manage something between us.
Prima facie
there seem to be but three possible explanations: you missed; I am superhuman; there were no bullets. The first, I think you will agree, can be dismissed at once. Even the worst shot in the world, with a head as addled as yours, could hardly have failed with that last attempt. The second – alas! – must also be rejected. It follows then, does it not, that someone must have replaced the live cartridges in your revolver with blanks. I would not be above suspecting myself, quite honestly. All right? Good. Then let us
return to the matter in hand. I repeat, when did you kill Dr Watson?’

There were now clearly two Holmeses. One stood talking to me on the path, while the other hovered a few feet away in the spray above the falls, and said nothing.

‘Look Moriarty, this will have to stop, you know. No one could be a greater admirer of your skills than myself, but this really isn’t the time or place. Your impersonation of my friend is quite first-rate, agreed. The boards of the West End are yours for the asking, always assuming you manage to leave here alive. Nevertheless, good as you were, you weren’t quite good enough! Mind you, the task was formidable. I knew my Watson very well indeed, and your performance – though enormously talented – just failed to convince, in the final analysis. Your externals could hardly be bettered, and you even managed to limp with the correct leg this time, but where was the spirit? Sadly lacking! Where was that air of dog-like devotion so characteristic of my dear friend? Where was his obedient good-nature, his ready sympathy, his generous emotion, his well-meant if blundering initiatives? In whatever may be measured and calculated, Professor, you excelled, like the great mathematician you are. But you are no artist, and the soul of the man eluded you utterly. However you disguised your features, you could not disguise that sense of your own destiny, that knowledge of your power which informs everything you do. The difficulties you faced were perhaps greater than even you had realised. How much easier it is for a dullard to ape the trappings of genius than for a brilliant man successfully to put on mediocrity!’

The infernal choir was now echoing every word Holmes spoke. In vain I shook my head and beat my temples. The inexorable voice ground on.

‘To be fair, though, my suspicions were aroused right from the beginning, when I found you stealthily returning
my keychain that morning in Kensington. Why would Watson need my keys? And if he had, would he not take them openly? From that moment I was on my guard. When I asked the maid to fetch a cab she mentioned a letter you had just given her to post. I relieved her of it, and was amused to find a note to the police, accusing me of the Whitechapel murders! I don’t imagine your absurd charges and trumped-up evidence would get much of a hearing at Scotland Yard, but to save myself needless bother I simply brought the thing away with me.’

He produced a long slim envelope from his pocket. With a cry of utter despair I recognised the extent of my failure.

‘Too bad, isn’t it?’ agreed Holmes. ‘But how like you, Moriarty, to hedge your bets! Even if I got the better of you in person, you were counting on posthumous revenge!’

With a careless gesture he flicked the envelope out into the void.

‘Shortly thereafter,’ he continued, ‘I discovered your bottle of cocaine, and finally – it was in Brussels – I was able to observe you actually injecting the drug into your arm. From that moment, of course, I had no further doubts. If any two things in this life may be taken as absolutely certain, they are that Dr Watson is as incapable of adopting such a habit as Professor Moriarty is of abandoning it. By the same token, you were from that moment completely in my power. I had only to prevent you from obtaining more of the drug, which you could not buy openly without revealing your true identity, and eventually, as happened this morning, the exigencies of your addiction would force your hand. Knowing when the blow would fall, I could take my precautions to parry it effectively. Incidentally, it may interest you to know that the snuff in this box derives its virtues from
Erytkhoxylon coca
rather than
Nicotiana tabacum
. A pinch
a day, as the saying goes, keeps the doctor at bay. How many hours is it now since you took your medicine, Moriarty? I hope you don’t mind me saying that you look a trifle peaky.’

The blood in my veins, it seemed, had turned to lice,
‡
whose pulsating passage through my body was making my skin crawl. The voice, meanwhile, continued to come at me from all sides.

‘The only point on which I am still uncertain is just when you did away with my faithful Watson. I assume it was during that night when in a moment of criminal weakness I allowed myself to indulge my exhaustion, and when he – poor innocent man – put me to bed instead of ruthlessly turning me out of doors, as he should. Was that the occasion, Moriarty? You would have had no difficulty in getting into the house, and Watson would have been clay in your hands! You might have killed me too, as I slept, but that would not have satisfied your devious and diseased genius. Instead, having murdered my friend, you had the brilliant notion of taking his place. How you must have laughed at my attempts to shake off a man who all the while was seated at my side! Yes indeed, that must have diverted you no end. But once I was sure of you, I too had my fun! It has been a pleasure, I assure you, dragging you out of bed in the small hours, pulling you through windows and pushing you off trains! How maddening for you it must have been, knowing it was all a farce. And then your growing realisation that our route was exactly the same as in 1888, when it was I who followed you. But you could hardly mention that, either! How very frustrating! And now this
boul-eversement
on top of everything else! I fear it has not been your week, Professor. But have you nothing to say, now you can speak freely? Still this unwonted silence? As you
will! You shall shortly be silent indeed. As silent as the grave. Oh yes, no fear of your returning from the dead this time! For this occasion, if you permit it, I intend to take a tip from the master himself.’

From the depths of his coat, Holmes produced a thin packet wrapped in oil-cloth. He undid the string and unrolled the cloth. A gasp of sheer mortal terror escaped me as he lifted from its bindings a six-inch post-mortem knife.

‘Recognise it, do you? I took the liberty of visiting your little hideaway in Baker Street before I called on Watson. I brought this away with me, concealed in the lining of my coat. Since we are to have justice at last, it might as well be poetic.’

‘But Holmes! You –’

His voice cut across my stutterings like a whiplash.

‘
Mister
Holmes, if you please. Let us preserve the proprieties.’

‘But this is me, Holmes! Watson! I am Watson!’

‘You just don’t give up, do you? Admirable trait under normal circumstances of course, but in questionable taste for one who is but seconds away from meeting his Maker.’

Raising his dreadful weapon, he stepped towards me. There was no question of me defending myself. Even under normal conditions Holmes was more than a match for me. In my present state there could be no contest. In a few moments I would be lying at the bottom of the falls with my throat cut, and Jack the Ripper would be free to resume his interrupted career.