As there were none, our group disbanded towards our respective assignments. Holmes and I made for the eatery, where, our faces muffled by our scarves, we took seats in the darkest corner. Although the place was crowded with men who originally hailed from Japan, there were enough westerners that we did not immediately appear out of place. From the looks of these non-Japanese clients, it seemed that most were sailors who had made their way up from the docklands to sample the unique cuisine served in this establishment. Holmes and I were perhaps somewhat overdressed, but no one seemed to take especial notice of us.
A woman appeared to take our order and Holmes asked for several exotic-sounding items, the names meaning little to me. But I was never to learn what precisely the words signified, for before any food could arrive, Holmes pulled his out his pocket-watch and glanced at it. Holmes turned to me and smiled. “Now, Watson, we’ll just take our luck together, as we have occasionally done in the past.”
I nodded my agreement, and rose to follow Holmes. He pushed past a pair of startled waiters and made his way towards the back of the building, where we found a set of stairs heading downwards into the earth. Taking the steps two at a time, he bounded down them, and I endeavored to do the same, careful to ensure that my old-war wound did not flare at such an inopportune time. At the bottom, Holmes followed a brick-line passageway about fifteen feet, which ended at a door. This proved to be barred by a stout Chubb’s lock, but that was little match for Holmes’ quick pick-work. The door swung open, but Holmes caught it before it could make any sound. The corridor behind was lined with wooden panels, a change which made it clear that we had left one building and had proceeded into the cellar of the adjoining one, where Holmes believed our nemesis made his lair. Finally, the corridor ended at another door, this one unlocked. There was no way to see what might lay behind it. I tightly gripped my Webley Mark III .380 caliber pocket revolver, which more than once had been a good friend in need. Holmes nodded in approval and holding his own pistol, he pushed open the door.
We stepped into a large, vault-like room, with rough masonry walls and vaulted ceiling. Overhead, several electric bulbs flooded the chamber with a harsh light. It appeared to have been converted from the cellar of a warehouse into a fairly comfortable office, though the long-ago white-washed masonry was now old, stained, and grimy. There were no windows, of course, but rather the walls were covered by an admixture of Old Master paintings and maps of England, France, Germany, and Russia. Notably, there was also a heavily-marked map of London and many charts of buildings, with their floor plans, as well as diagrams of possible tunnels. Finally, the room contained many improvised shelves, which sagged under the weight of innumerable books. I noted, with a strange mix of pride and dismay, that my own modest works were prominently situated within arm’s grasp of the owner of this illicit head-quarters.
Robert Moriarty himself was seated at a large circular desk facing us. He had been looking over a pile of letters, telegrams, and other assorted papers, but set them aside at the sound of our footsteps. Now that I had finally put a face to our mysterious adversary, I found him to be utterly unremarkable. He was a middle-aged man, but without any of the distinctive features that once marked his evil brother. There was no domed forehead, or deep-sunken eyes, or curious reptilian manner. It was in short, not a face full of character. Rather than the man of great intellectual force, the Professor’s brother looked like little more than a mild grocery clerk.
With me in close pursuit, Holmes strode forward, his pistol trained upon the man. “Ah, there is your missing Greuze, Watson. And is that a Raphael I see?”
The man behind the desk looked up and smiled. To my consternation, his eyes betrayed no surprise. He appeared little upset by the sight of our guns. “Welcome, Sherlock, you don’t mind if I call you that, do you?” he said. “And you too, John. There should be no formality between such old friends. As you may have deduced, I have been expecting you.” His manner was as cool as ice, his voice silky and as soothing as a fashionable consultant, and as poisonous as a cobra. But the dead black of his eyes possessed all the cruelty of the grave.
Holmes seemed briefly startled at Moriarty’s lack of alarm, but quickly recovered his composure. “It is a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Maurice.”
It was with some surprise that I belatedly recognized the face of the man we had met in the Threadneedle Street vault in the form of the man before us. “The adjutant to the police commissioner!”
“Of course, Watson. How else do you think Colonel Moriarty acquired access to so many of my former enemies? The criminal fraternity that once belonged to his brother had been irretrievably fractured. However, using his official connections as the commissioner’s assistant, he clandestinely recruited James Windibank, Parker, Beppo, John Clay and Archie, the Beddington brothers, Victor Lynch, Holy Peters, and Killer Evans. Promised a chance of revenge for their imprisonments, they all joined his scheme willingly, though I suspect that few of them knew exactly what Colonel Moriarty had planned for them. Certainly, Sebastian Moran was not expecting your master stroke.”
Moriarty shrugged. “Moran was my brother’s creature, not mine. He already failed my brother twice, first at the falls, and again at Camden House. I offered him one more chance to eliminate you himself. But after a third attempt faltered, there was little advantage to keeping him around. And Moran was a cunning soul, with a mercenary streak as wide as the Channel. He knew much about me and my plans. I did not wish to risk the possibility of him deciding that he would have more to gain by selling his knowledge to you or to Scotland Yard.”
“So you used his niece to deliver the deadly package?” I exclaimed.
The man smiled cruelly. “Some women are overly impressionable, Dr. Watson. Do you not recall how readily Lady Frances Carfax fell under the spell of Dr. Shlessinger and his wife? Similarly, it took little effort to bend Patience Moran to my will, and I knew he would never suspect her to be the handmaiden of his doom.”
“And your unnatural youth must have assisted you in that matter,” said Holmes, dryly.
Moriarty chuckled. “Do you know that for a fact, Sherlock, or are you merely guessing?”
“I never guess. It is an appalling habit,” replied Holmes. “I knew that Löwenstein had at least one other client in England, and I suggested to the Doctor that he cut off future supplies of his extract.”
“Which he eventually did,” said Moriarty, shrugging. “But even that turned out to be a blessing in disguise, so I must thank you, Sherlock. You see, the youth and strength imbued from the Anthropoid extract have remained, while some of the more violent, animalistic tendencies have faded with time.”
“Not from where I am sitting,” I said, heatedly. I shook my head at the vast scope of his conspiracy against Holmes. “But such a scheme must have taken years to plan!” I exclaimed.
Moriarty smiled cruelly at me. “Oh, yes, John. When I first heard of my brother’s murder at the hands of Sherlock here, my soul cried out for revenge. To think of it, my brilliant brother, slain by some inferior in mind, only because he possessed a slight advantage in physical strength! It was monstrous. What have you ever given the world, Sherlock? Where is your Dynamics of an Asteroid? No, you are merely the envious little assassin of a superior man. That is when I decided that revenge was a dish best served cold.”
“The old sweet song," said Holmes. "How often have I heard it in days gone by! It was a favorite ode of your late lamented brother and of Colonel Moran. Brooks and Woodhouse have also been known to hum it. And yet I live and keep bees upon the South Downs.”
“So you did, Sherlock, so you did. But I do not think that you will be tending your apiary again after today.”
“And the point of it all?” I interjected, exasperatedly. “The pharaoh’s curse? The problem at Threadneedle Street?”
The man’s eyebrows rose up on his forehead. “The point? Why, John, surely even you, the lesser partner of the Firm, has managed to deduce that by now! The point is
Sherlock’s death. Not some quiet death of old age, happily puttering with his beehives, but a death worthy of a celebrated man like Sherlock Holmes. He needed to be coaxed back to London with a case that was impossible to resist, then kept here by a series of ongoing mysteries, until I could set the stage for his funeral pyre.”
I stared at him with some revulsion. He was like a madman – indeed I think he was a madman, subtly mad with the deep power of deception which insane people may have. He had so raging a hatred of Holmes in his heart that he could no longer be considered human.
Holmes merely yawned. “And yet, here you sit, alone and facing down the barrels of two guns. Your men have all been dispatched, your schemes foiled.”
“Have they?” said he, laughing enigmatically. “Did you not come to me, Sherlock? Is not the very first rule of war to choose the site of the battle? He who controls the ground typically wins.” With the barest flick of his wrist, he pulled upon a lever and the room was suddenly plunged into darkness. I immediately fired my gun, as did Holmes at my side, the shots ringing out deafeningly in the enclosed space of the underground room. However, there was no cry of pain to signal that our shots had struck home. Instead, I thought I heard a noise like a heavy iron door creaking open, but I could not be certain of anything in the disorienting blackness of the room.
Moments later, the gloom was broken by the piercing glare shining from a tungsten torch, which Holmes must have had concealed in his pocket.
“Where has he gone?” I cried.
But Holmes had already sprung to the spot behind the desk where Moriarty had been sitting. He was plainly inspecting the wall for the secret mechanism though which Moriarty must have fled.
“By Jove, Watson! He had one last escape route prepared.”
“Can you open it?” I exclaimed. “What of the lever?”
Holmes shook his head, a motion I could barely make out in the dim wavering light. “That only appears to have dimmed the lights, Watson. I fear that the door is controlled by another mechanism.”
“Could he have locked it from behind? Is he trying to trap us in this room?”
“To what end?”
“Poison gas, perhaps?”
Again Holmes shook his head. “No, Watson, Robert Moriarty is no Amberley. He wants to witness my demise, not see me slowly suffocate.”
I threw the lever and brought the lights of the room to bear upon our problem. “Then he must want us to follow him wherever this door leads.”
“Very good, Watson,” said Holmes dryly, still examining the wall in hopes of finding some pressure point that might open the hidden door.
I looked about the room, focusing my attention upon the desk where Moriarty had been sitting. The various papers could wait, though I was certain that they contained a bounty of information on his criminal enterprises. There was a strange hollow tube leading up through the ceiling, which I finally decided that he used to communicate with his lackeys in the warehouse above. And then there was a foot and a half-high wooden frame, from which was suspended a bronze gong. “Holmes!” I exclaimed, pointing at it.
“What is it, Watson?”
“Is that not a Tibetan gong?”
Holmes stopped what he was doing and turned to look at it. “It is indeed,” said he, quietly.
“Moriarty knew that you spent two years in Tibet after the events at Reichenbach Falls.”
“Without a doubt, Watson!” Holmes became animated at this realization. “Everything he has done has been orchestrated to lead me back to that happy day, when a terrible blight upon society was finally brought low.”
I picked up the wooden hammer, and tapped lightly upon the gong. The sound was quiet, so much so that our shots must have masked it previously. But immediately, the same creaking sound was heard as a crack appeared in the wall near where Holmes was standing. He reached out and pushed the iron door fully open.
Dropping the hammer, I joined him and gazed into the black maw that lay behind the secret door. At first I thought that within all was absolute silence and darkness. But then I made something out, sounding as if it was echoing from a great distance. “Is that water that I hear, Holmes?”
Holmes listened for a moment and then nodded grimly. “I fear that it is. This building must have been built over some covered tributary, perhaps even the Fleet itself. Now it has become part of the sewer system.” He shook his head, plainly irritated. “I should have expected this, given his use of the sewers under Threadneedle Street.”
“What are we to do?”
“There is only possible option for me at this time, Watson. I am going in.”
“Then I am going with you, Holmes.”
He shook his head. “Are you certain, Watson? You have almost died on multiple occasions. Your luck can only be pressed so far.”
“The same can be said of you, Holmes, but you continue to do your duty.”
He smiled. “Indeed. Well, we have not yet met our Waterloo, Watson, but this may be our Trafalgar.” He reached out his hand.
I clasped it in silence, and the die was cast.
§
Before we entered the foreboding doorway, Holmes paused and reached into his pocket. He drew forth an envelope and handed it to me. “The endgame draws nigh, Watson. Should anything happen to me, should we become separated for some reason, I want you to open this immediately.”
“I suggest that we avoid becoming separated down there, Holmes.”
“I completely concur, Watson, but one must prepare for all eventualities. I need not remind you to keep your powder dry. You have already shown a steady hand when you were faced with the terrible threat of Killer Evans. But Robert Moriarty makes Evans look like a schoolboy by comparison.”
“I understand, Holmes. I once swore an oath to preserve lives, but not all lives are worthy of that oath. Moriarty is something less than human.”
Holmes nodded tightly and stepped through the doorway. Once inside, our path lit only by the frail rays sent off from his torch, I felt a crushing sense of claustrophobia unlike anything I had ever experienced before, as if the world above had ceased to exist. But this had the opposite effect upon Holmes, who was clearly invigorated by the challenge. All other extraneous players had exited the stage. Much like that terrible day above Meiringen, it was now just the two adversaries fated to meet in a struggle from which could emerge but one victor. However, Holmes had one advantage. Unlike that fateful day in 1891, this time I would not be lured from his side by some despicable ruse. I was in it until the end.
We found that the passage was entirely bricked; it’s walls stained with damp and slime. It sloped downwards until we found ourselves in the curved tunnel of a sewer proper, a hazy, foul-smelling miasma lying over the water. In addition to the steady flow of the waste-laden water, I thought I could hear the skittering feet of the innumerable rats which I knew to haunt these warrens. After a moment’s hesitation, as he determined the route taken by Robert Moriarty, Holmes followed the ankle-high current downstream, our feet soaked and slipping upon the wet stone. It was nigh impossible to gage distance in that malodorous underground hell, but I sensed that we had travelled at least half a mile, ignoring several side passages along the way. Holmes paused at each, but even I could easily determine that Moriarty had not passed through any of them, for the sludge piled at the junctions was thick and undisturbed. Finally, Holmes pointed towards a narrower tunnel that led off to the left. Stooping, so as to not brush our heads on the bilious green-stained bricks of the ceiling, he carefully entered it. The water was now rushing faster past our knees, and the sound level rising in the smaller space such that a herd of elephants could have been waiting for us at the end and we would have never known. Instead it would prove to be something far more terrible. Suddenly, Holmes stopped, as the tunnel opened into a far larger chamber.
“What is it, Holmes?” I whispered.
In response, Holmes shone his torch about. I could see that it was a fearful place, the subterranean equivale
nt to that torrential fall high in the Swiss Alps. I estimated from the sudden increase in whirling clamor that at least eight shafts identical to the one where we stood all came together here. Their combined burdens rushed down into a tremendous chasm. The glistening brick-lined shaft narrowed into a boiling pit of incalculable depth. I felt a terrible sense of déjà vu as I stood near the edge and peered down into the blackness below, the place from which Robert Moriarty surely intended that Holmes would never return.
A rusting metal bridge beckoned us forward over the abyss, but Holmes’ torch could not throw its pale light over the entire length, such that the other side was lost in the gloom of the large chamber. If we crossed it, we would be fully exposed to anyone waiting upon the other side.
“We must turn back, Holmes,” I protested, shouting above the din. “We must assume that Moriarty has a gun. This is the perfect place for him to ambush us.”
Holmes did not answer at first. His pale, eager face had suddenly assumed that tense, far-way expression which I had learned to associate with the supreme manifestation of his genius. “Of course it is, Watson. That is why we must move forward. I will go first, and you will follow directly behind, your revolver trained over my right shoulder. If you see anything move on the other side, that is where you must train your aim.”
The Falling Curtain (The Assassination of Sherlock Holmes Book 3) Page 10
