by Barry Day
Then out of the corner of my eye I sensed a rapid movement. I turned to see the young man running straight at Moriarty and his prisoner. The manoeuvre was so unexpected that Moriarty was momentarily nonplussed. And then Alicia played a master stroke that only a woman could think of. Twisting in her captor’s grip, she screamed into his face with all her might. I could see Moriarty flinch at the noise and at that very moment our young friend threw himself bodily at Alicia in a sort of improvised rugby tackle and bore her to the ground out of Moriarty’s arms, leaving him standing there disoriented and temporarily defenceless.
I heard Holmes cry—“Now, Watson!” and I loosed off a couple of rounds, one of which took Moriarty in the shoulder, causing him to drop his gun. Before I had the chance to fire again, he had spun on his heel and disappeared into the darkness of the passage behind him.
“Give me your revolver, old fellow, and look after Alicia and the young man. I must finish this alone.” And with that Holmes began to run down the passage after his old nemesis.
By the time I reached them they were both on their feet, shaken but apparently little the worse for their ordeal. The first thing I did was to shake Alicia’s saviour warmly by the hand. “That was one of the bravest acts I’ve seen on the battle field or off it,” I said. “I’d like to think I’d have had the presence of mind—let alone the courage—to do the same at your age but I’m not so sure that I would.”
“I know you would, John,” said Alicia, reasserting a woman’s true priorities by doing her best to rearrange a dress that was looking distinctly the worse for wear, “I have not the slightest doubt about it.” Which made me feel distinctly better.
Our mutual admiration society was cut short by two other gun shots echoing back down the corridor. Without exchanging another word, we all three began to run.
How far we ran I have no idea. Like the corridors in Alice this one seemed endless. Around the corners, down steps and through doors that had been left ajar we ran. We passed the discarded cable Moriarty’s men had flung aside in their flight. At one point we came across the surrealistic sight of Lestrade’s coat and bowler hat. By the accident of the way they had fallen, it looked as though the Inspector had fallen face forward on the ground and then somehow deflated.
At regular intervals there were splashes of blood, confirming my feeling that at least one of my bullets had found its mark. But what of the other shots we had heard? Did the Professor have another weapon? Had his associates waited and had Holmes found himself in an ambush? Were the Houses of Parliament to be a substitute for the Reichenbach Falls?
We burst out of this seemingly endless corridor through one last door and found ourselves on a river walkway. There was the great city, bathed in moonlight, going about its nocturnal business quite unaware of how close it had been to disaster. It was a vista fit for the brush of a Turner but I had eyes only for the tall figure poised on the river wall and looking down into the dark water below.
“Holmes,” I cried, “thank God you’re safe!” A moment later we were all at his side, as he climbed down to the safety of the path.
“Yes, old fellow, safe to fight another day. Though let us hope this particular battle is over at last.”
Then he told us of the events that had taken place after that pursuit beneath the seat of Government.
“As I have mentioned to you more than once in the past, old fellow, I have often observed that there is a perverse streak in the greatest criminals, amounting almost to a need to be caught. They are almost begging for someone to put an end to their crimes. And as Moriarty and I were alone in that dark passage way, I had the strongest sense that it scarcely mattered which of us was in pursuit of the other. We were locked, as ever, in some pre-determined struggle over which neither of us had any control and the whole outcome was somehow already determined. There must come a time when the fox wishes to be caught and the whole bloody business over with. Until then it is forced to run and run.”
“And what happened to the fox?” I asked gently, for I could sense he was in a strange and highly charged mood.
“It was the most curious thing, Watson,” he replied pensively. “I burst out of that door just as you did, having seen the trail of blood along the way. And then I saw him. Realising that the path led nowhere but to those iron gates which, in his weakened condition, he could not possibly scale, he had climbed on to the parapet where you found me …”
He indicated the spot. In my mind’s eye I could see that baleful figure, backlit by the lights of the metropolis, clutching his shoulder but still dignified in defeat.
“‘Come, Holmes,’ my friend was speaking again and I could hear the voice of Moriarty, ‘surely you are enough of a gentleman to administer the coup de grâce?’ I raised your revolver—the revolver I have so often bidden you carry—and fired—twice. But I freely confess I could not bring myself to fire at him. Then, as if on cue, Big Ben began to toll midnight. He stood there for a moment longer and then he said quietly, almost sadly—‘The question is which is to be master—that’s all. Humpty Dumpty, Holmes—Humpty Dumpty.’ Then he seemed to let himself fall. By the time I reached the spot there was no sign of him.”
“Humpty Dumpty had a great fall …”
It was our young friend speaking the words that were in all our minds. Alicia looked down into the dark swirling waters carried in on the evening tide. “And I doubt whether all the King’s horses and all the King’s men could put him together again.”
I looked at the four of us, as bedraggled a bunch as one could hope to see this side of Limehouse. We had survived so much these past few hours and now, when we had so much in which to rejoice, we stood there with a distinct air of anti-climax in the air.
“Well, Holmes,” I said with an air of forced jolity, “you’ve settled the oldest score of all.” My friend looked at me sombrely.
“So I have, old fellow, so I have.”
Then, like a host at a party suddenly remembering his manners, he turned to our young friend, who looked as though he were ready to embark on the whole affair all over again, and said quietly—“And you, sir, we are greatly in your debt. If ever you are in need, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson will be at your service.”
“Indeed, indeed,” I added heartily. “But my dear fellow, we don’t even know your name?”
The young man pushed back an errant strand of fair hair and boyishly stood to attention.
“Churchill, sir. Winston Churchill. And I promise you, you will hear from me.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“You will forgive my saying so, Holmes, but your demeanour these past few days has hardly been that of a man who has pulled off the biggest coup of his career.”
My friend and I were strolling along the Embankment, having spent the past several hours at Scotland Yard. The day was bright and clear as London went about its daily business, quite unaware—and not for the first time—of the debt it owed to the man at my side.
“You might fool all the people most of the time, as I believe one of those American Presidents was fond of saying,” I continued, “but I know you too well.”
“Good old Watson,” Holmes gave me a brief smile, which was soon replaced by a frown.
“No, I must confess that like Hamlet—since we seem to be exchanging quotations—in my heart there was a kind of fighting that would not let me sleep. I have always felt Moriarty as an elemental force and the vibrations should have stopped, but they singularly fail to do so. How do you explain that, good Doctor?”
“But for heaven’s sake, Holmes,” I riposted, “we’ve just seen the man’s body.”
“We’ve just seen a cadaver that has been formally identified as Moriarty’s body. Conveniently washed up at high tide, wearing clothing of the kind he was wearing, to be sure. Inconveniently so damaged about the head that the face was unrecognisable.”
“Probably bumped against the pilings or perhaps a passing boat?” I suggested. “A few days in the water does nothing for a
fellow’s complexion. I’ve seen enough of them in my time to know that.”
“Possibly, Watson, possibly. And yet …”
“And yet—what?”
“I feel we have been thrown a bone, old fellow. Our techniques are still so crude. Some day a pathologist will be able to identify a body without possibility of error by something as small as a single fingerprint, a drop of blood—even its teeth. In some ways we are still groping through the Middle Ages.”
As he spoke I had the image of the second gruesome sight we had seen that morning. Steel’s corpse had been washed up a day or so earlier much further down river and that contorted face, frozen in a smile of eternal fear, was one I should recall to the end of my days. The denizens of the water had already begun their grim work. Holmes, I noticed, had give the body only a cursory glance. For him Steel was a footnote to history—a fact to be filed in his commonplace book. I wondered which of us had his priorities right.
Then I realised that he was still talking about Moriarty’s remains. “But did you not spot the one thing that should give us pause?”
“And what was that, pray?”
“The bullet wound in the shoulder.”
“Well, there you are, Holmes, my point precisely. You saw me hit him in that accursed passage way and this morning you saw the medico remove a bullet of exactly the same gauge from the wound. QED.”
“Quod non erat demonstrandum, I’m afraid. I have never doubted that an Eley’s No. 2 was an excellent argument, but the bullet we saw just now was fired from a point considerably nearer than yours. The burn marks on the flesh tell that much. But, more to the point, it was fired after death.”
Before I could argue, he continued: “You may remember my telling you that in my student days I gained a certain notoriety for conducting experiments which some of my colleagues considered somewhat macabre. They consisted of ascertaining the degree of bruising one could inflict on the corpse. I can assure you the answer is—very little. No, old fellow, this bullet was fired into the arm of a dead man and I very much doubt that his name was Moriarty.”
“But why didn’t you say something, if you’re so sure?”
The cold grey eyes left mine and appeared to be searching for something just over the horizon. Whatever it was he sought, I had the clear impression that he saw nothing in between. “This game, whatever it is, is Moriarty’s and mine and must be played out as the pieces chance to fall. You are the one person, Watson, I can expect to understand that.”
“We have gained the world a breathing space, no more. The forces of unrest that Moriarty sought to tap will not vanish on the breeze. They will find their voice and it will be a harsh voice, I fear—one that will seem to shout down reason for a time. I fear our world has taken its values too much for granted and there are those all too ready to put them to the test. If our way of life prevails—which I hope and pray it shall—it will be stronger and purer for having gone through the flame.”
Then, as so often, his mood changed abruptly.
“However, we have achieved something for our efforts, old fellow. We have taken this hand, at least, and Moriarty must think again. The Clarion is muted—for good, I suspect Did you notice the newspaper stand we passed a few minutes ago? Every paper but our friend’s seditious medium.”
“I should think so, too.” I interjected, remembering the scandal of a day or two earlier, when the police had impounded the Clarion’s entire morning edition for November 5th with the headline: ‘PARLIAMENT RISES! HUNDREDS OF MP’S DIE IN NEW GUY FAWKES BLAST! CHAOS GRIPS CAPITAL!’ “Tower of London’s the place for those fellers.”
“Yes, I’m afraid our friend did o’erleap himself a little there.”
We walked a little further in companionable silence, then Holmes said—“I suppose it must be admitted that the case was not without its points of interest or, indeed, amusement. The sight of Lestrade tucked away in the cleaning cupboard with a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign around his neck will occur to me now every time I see him. At least he retrieved his hat unscathed. That is his one great consolation. And I suppose the fact that, once again, I have allowed the world to believe he solved the case. And I have a feeling that you found at least one other, did you not, Watson?” In someone else his covert glance would have amounted to teasing.
“Do you know, Holmes,” I said, straightening my back and pulling in my stomach before I could stop myself, “I do believe I did.”
The previous day I had seen Alicia off from King’s Cross. In all the publicity surrounding the recent events—in which the other newspapers had selfrighteously gone out of their way to castigate Moxton and the Clarion—the involvement of a beautiful woman had hardly gone unnoticed. One result of their attention had been a telegram from a woman in Harrogate identifying herself as the estranged sister of Alicia’s late mother and now anxious to bind up old wounds. Alicia was to stay with her for a few weeks to regain her health and strength.
As I stood by the closed carriage door, having loaded her with more of everything than she could possibly read or consume on the journey, she leaned out of the open window.
“Dear John, I can never thank you enough, so I am not going to even try. I feel like the little girl in that book who has had the strangest of adventures and then woken up to find that everything is really all right after all. Can you understand that?”
I nodded for I had no words.
“May I ask you one more favour? When I return—for I shall return—I must start my life again. While I am deciding what to do, I have a fancy to try my hand at writing an account of our exploits. I thought I might call it Alicia’s Adventures Under Ground. You’re a writer, John. Will you be my literary advisor?”
“Delighted,” I managed to say.
“I should warn you, I’m a slow writer. It may take some time.”
And with that she smiled. As the train drew slowly away, it was the smile that remained with me, like that of the most beautiful and benevolent Cheshire Cat in the world. Holmes interrupted my reverie.
“Well, old fellow, what do you say to a spot of lunch at Rule’s before you visit your bookmaker?”
“But how …?”
“Watson, when a man has a copy of the Pink ‘Un, otherwise known as The Sporting Times stuffed in his overcoat pocket, the deduction is hardly a difficult one. However, I do advise you most seriously not to wager heavily on the horse you have selected for the 3:30.”
“How can you possibly know what I intend to back in the 3:30?” I demanded. “The small snort over your Earl Grey at breakfast indicated that you had seen something that intrigued you and when I took the opportunity to glance over your shoulder, I could not help but notice that one of the runners was called The Snark. It seemed to me unlikely in the extreme that, in view of our recent involvement with the works of the late Lewis Carroll, you would be able to resist the coincidence of the reference to The Hunting of the Snark …”
“By Jove, Holmes, you’ve read my mind exactly,” I declared. “But the horse has got real form. What makes you think it won’t win?”
“It cannot win for the simple reason that it doesn’t exist.” And he began to declaim …
He has softly and suddenly vanished away—For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.
“Now, if there happens to be a horse called Boojum, I give you full permission to bet for both of us!”
As we continued walking, his repeated cries of “Come to my arms, my beamish boy! Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” caused several passers-by to turn and look at him as though he were demented.
And at times like these, I sometimes wonder myself.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagi
nation or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1998 by Barry Day
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1652-0
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