plan what we are to do about Moriarty now."
"As this is an express, and as the boat runs in connection with it, I
should think we have shaken him off very effectively."
"My dear Watson, you evidently did not realize my meaning when I said
that this man may be taken as being quite on the same intellectual
plane as myself. You do not imagine that if I were the pursuer I
should allow myself to be baffled by so slight an obstacle. Why,
then, should you think so meanly of him?"
"What will he do?"
"What I should do?"
"What would you do, then?"
"Engage a special."
"But it must be late."
"By no means. This train stops at Canterbury; and there is always at
least a quarter of an hour's delay at the boat. He will catch us
there."
"One would think that we were the criminals. Let us have him
arrested on his arrival."
"It would be to ruin the work of three months. We should get the big
fish, but the smaller would dart right and left out of the net. On
Monday we should have them all. No, an arrest is inadmissible."
"What then?"
"We shall get out at Canterbury."
"And then?"
"Well, then we must make a cross-country journey to Newhaven, and so
over to Dieppe. Moriarty will again do what I should do. He will
get on to Paris, mark down our luggage, and wait for two days at the
depot. In the meantime we shall treat ourselves to a couple of
carpet-bags, encourage the manufactures of the countries through
which we travel, and make our way at our leisure into Switzerland,
via Luxembourg and Basle."
At Canterbury, therefore, we alighted, only to find that we should
have to wait an hour before we could get a train to Newhaven.
I was still looking rather ruefully after the rapidly disappearing
luggage-van which contained my wardrobe, when Holmes pulled my sleeve
and pointed up the line.
"Already, you see," said he.
Far away, from among the Kentish woods there rose a thin spray of
smoke. A minute later a carriage and engine could be seen flying
along the open curve which leads to the station. We had hardly time
to take our place behind a pile of luggage when it passed with a
rattle and a roar, beating a blast of hot air into our faces.
"There he goes," said Holmes, as we watched the carriage swing and
rock over the point. "There are limits, you see, to our friend's
intelligence. It would have been a coup-de-ma顃re had he deduced
what I would deduce and acted accordingly."
"And what would he have done had he overtaken us?"
"There cannot be the least doubt that he would have made a murderous
attack upon me. It is, however, a game at which two may play. The
question, now is whether we should take a premature lunch here, or
run our chance of starving before we reach the buffet at Newhaven."
We made our way to Brussels that night and spent two days there,
moving on upon the third day as far as Strasburg. On the Monday
morning Holmes had telegraphed to the London police, and in the
evening we found a reply waiting for us at our hotel. Holmes tore it
open, and then with a bitter curse hurled it into the grate.
"I might have known it!" he groaned. "He has escaped!"
"Moriarty?"
"They have secured the whole gang with the exception of him. He has
given them the slip. Of course, when I had left the country there
was no one to cope with him. But I did think that I had put the game
in their hands. I think that you had better return to England,
Watson."
"Why?"
"Because you will find me a dangerous companion now. This man's
occupation is gone. He is lost if he returns to London. If I read
his character right he will devote his whole energies to revenging
himself upon me. He said as much in our short interview, and I fancy
that he meant it. I should certainly recommend you to return to your
practice."
It was hardly an appeal to be successful with one who was an old
campaigner as well as an old friend. We sat in the Strasbourg
salle-?manger arguing the question for half an hour, but the same
night we had resumed our journey and were well on our way to Geneva.
For a charming week we wandered up the Valley of the Rhone, and then,
branching off at Leuk, we made our way over the Gemmi Pass, still
deep in snow, and so, by way of Interlaken, to Meiringen. It was a
lovely trip, the dainty green of the spring below, the virgin white
of the winter above; but it was clear to me that never for one
instant did Holmes forget the shadow which lay across him. In the
homely Alpine villages or in the lonely mountain passes, I could tell
by his quick glancing eyes and his sharp scrutiny of every face that
passed us, that he was well convinced that, walk where we would, we
could not walk ourselves clear of the danger which was dogging our
footsteps.
Once, I remember, as we passed over the Gemmi, and walked along the
border of the melancholy Daubensee, a large rock which had been
dislodged from the ridge upon our right clattered down and roared
into the lake behind us. In an instant Holmes had raced up on to the
ridge, and, standing upon a lofty pinnacle, craned his neck in every
direction. It was in vain that our guide assured him that a fall of
stones was a common chance in the spring-time at that spot. He said
nothing, but he smiled at me with the air of a man who sees the
fulfillment of that which he had expected.
And yet for all his watchfulness he was never depressed. On the
contrary, I can never recollect having seen him in such exuberant
spirits. Again and again he recurred to the fact that if he could be
assured that society was freed from Professor Moriarty he would
cheerfully bring his own career to a conclusion.
"I think that I may go so far as to say, Watson, that I have not
lived wholly in vain," he remarked. "If my record were closed
to-night I could still survey it with equanimity. The air of London
is the sweeter for my presence. In over a thousand cases I am not
aware that I have ever used my powers upon the wrong side. Of late I
have been tempted to look into the problems furnished by nature
rather than those more superficial ones for which our artificial
state of society is responsible. Your memoirs will draw to an end,
Watson, upon the day that I crown my career by the capture or
extinction of the most dangerous and capable criminal in Europe."
I shall be brief, and yet exact, in the little which remains for me
to tell. It is not a subject on which I would willingly dwell, and
yet I am conscious that a duty devolves upon me to omit no detail.
It was on the third of May that we reached the little village of
Meiringen, where we put up at the Englischer Hof, then kept by Peter
Steiler the elder. Our landlord was an intelligent man, and spoke
excellent English, having served for three years as waiter at the
Grosvenor Hotel in London. At his advice, on the afternoon of the
fourth we set off together, with the intention of crossing the hills
and spending the night at the hamlet of Rosenlaui. We had strict
injunctions, however, on no account to pass the falls of Reichenbach,
which are about half-way up the hill, without making a small detour
to see them.
It is, indeed, a fearful place. The torrent, swollen by the melting
snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up
like the smoke from a burning house. The shaft into which the river
hurls itself is an immense chasm, lined by glistening coal-black
rock, and narrowing into a creaming, boiling pit of incalculable
depth, which brims over and shoots the stream onward over its jagged
lip. The long sweep of green water roaring forever down, and the
thick flickering curtain of spray hissing forever upward, turn a man
giddy with their constant whirl and clamor. We stood near the edge
peering down at the gleam of the breaking water far below us against
the black rocks, and listening to the half-human shout which came
booming up with the spray out of the abyss.
The path has been cut half-way round the fall to afford a complete
view, but it ends abruptly, and the traveler has to return as he
came. We had turned to do so, when we saw a Swiss lad come running
along it with a letter in his hand. It bore the mark of the hotel
which we had just left, and was addressed to me by the landlord. It
appeared that within a very few minutes of our leaving, an English
lady had arrived who was in the last stage of consumption. She had
wintered at Davos Platz, and was journeying now to join her friends
at Lucerne, when a sudden hemorrhage had overtaken her. It was
thought that she could hardly live a few hours, but it would be a
great consolation to her to see an English doctor, and, if I would
only return, etc. The good Steiler assured me in a postscript that
he would himself look upon my compliance as a very great favor, since
the lady absolutely refused to see a Swiss physician, and he could
not but feel that he was incurring a great responsibility.
The appeal was one which could not be ignored. It was impossible to
refuse the request of a fellow-countrywoman dying in a strange land.
Yet I had my scruples about leaving Holmes. It was finally agreed,
however, that he should retain the young Swiss messenger with him as
guide and companion while I returned to Meiringen. My friend would
stay some little time at the fall, he said, and would then walk
slowly over the hill to Rosenlaui, where I was to rejoin him in the
evening. As I turned away I saw Holmes, with his back against a rock
and his arms folded, gazing down at the rush of the waters. It was
the last that I was ever destined to see of him in this world.
When I was near the bottom of the descent I looked back. It was
impossible, from that position, to see the fall, but I could see the
curving path which winds over the shoulder of the hill and leads to
it. Along this a man was, I remember, walking very rapidly.
I could see his black figure clearly outlined against the green
behind him. I noted him, and the energy with which he walked but he
passed from my mind again as I hurried on upon my errand.
It may have been a little over an hour before I reached Meiringen.
Old Steiler was standing at the porch of his hotel.
"Well," said I, as I came hurrying up, "I trust that she is no
worse?"
A look of surprise passed over his face, and at the first quiver of
his eyebrows my heart turned to lead in my breast.
"You did not write this?" I said, pulling the letter from my pocket.
"There is no sick Englishwoman in the hotel?"
"Certainly not!" he cried. "But it has the hotel mark upon it! Ha,
it must have been written by that tall Englishman who came in after
you had gone. He said--"
But I waited for none of the landlord's explanations. In a tingle of
fear I was already running down the village street, and making for
the path which I had so lately descended. It had taken me an hour to
come down. For all my efforts two more had passed before I found
myself at the fall of Reichenbach once more. There was Holmes's
Alpine-stock still leaning against the rock by which I had left him.
But there was no sign of him, and it was in vain that I shouted. My
only answer was my own voice reverberating in a rolling echo from the
cliffs around me.
It was the sight of that Alpine-stock which turned me cold and sick.
He had not gone to Rosenlaui, then. He had remained on that
three-foot path, with sheer wall on one side and sheer drop on the
other, until his enemy had overtaken him. The young Swiss had gone
too. He had probably been in the pay of Moriarty, and had left the
two men together. And then what had happened? Who was to tell us
what had happened then?
I stood for a minute or two to collect myself, for I was dazed with
the horror of the thing. Then I began to think of Holmes's own
methods and to try to practise them in reading this tragedy. It was,
alas, only too easy to do. During our conversation we had not gone
to the end of the path, and the Alpine-stock marked the place where
we had stood. The blackish soil is kept forever soft by the
incessant drift of spray, and a bird would leave its tread upon it.
Two lines of footmarks were clearly marked along the farther end of
the path, both leading away from me. There were none returning. A
few yards from the end the soil was all ploughed up into a patch of
mud, and the branches and ferns which fringed the chasm were torn and
bedraggled. I lay upon my face and peered over with the spray
spouting up all around me. It had darkened since I left, and now I
could only see here and there the glistening of moisture upon the
black walls, and far away down at the end of the shaft the gleam of
the broken water. I shouted; but only the same half-human cry of the
fall was borne back to my ears.
