by Bill Peschel
And then the slightest of slips, and the most slender of clues, gave him the opportunity. Slowly and patiently he followed up the faint traces, fencing hard at every turn with a strong, unseen opponent who parried, thrust, and evaded with silent energy at every attack. At last came the complete unveiling of this Napoleon of crime, and yet without the actual damning proof that would close the condemned cell upon him. At the end of the silent contest Holmes had shot the last bolt. The criminal gang were about to fall into the net of justice. He had planned his escape from their infuriated chief with the most minute care. And now this same malign being was relating to him with cold, incisive logic, and sarcastic emphasis, how completely he had foreshadowed his plans and checkmated his moves. Holmes’ face was set in the complete immobility of a Red Indian, and I could not gather from his eyes whether he was angry or indifferent to the story. Nevertheless he was slowly observing every detail of Moriarty’s gestures and person, as I subsequently found.
“You put yourself to an infinite trouble,” he said, when Moriarty paused for a moment. “You might easily have ended my inconvenient existence during the passage of the boat to Dieppe.”
Moriarty shook his head slowly. “You have never fully appreciated the instincts aroused by our University system, Mr. Holmes. I have always recognised in you an intellectual capacity equal to my own. The old feeling of the University code of honour was aroused in me. I felt that a personal encounter upon equal terms could alone terminate our long, and I may add, interesting contest.”
“My dear Watson,” said Holmes languidly, “you may make a note to the effect that there are unsuspected benefits to be gained from our antiquated system of education.”
“You may laugh, Mr. Holmes, but you were seldom out of range of my revolver during that journey, and I am not accounted a bungler with the weapon. At Strassburg, a flimsy curtain alone parted us in the boxes of the opera house. At Geneva we sat back to back, at adjoining tables, in a restaurant. We admired the charming scenery of the Rhone Valley, practically in company. My friend Moran had, by this time, joined me; you were never out of the sight of one or the other, and we had numerous agents, only too willing to offer prompt assistance, had we desired your assassination. When you put up at the Englischer Hof, on the 3rd of May, Moran and I had rooms in the Du Sauvage. You had wandered into the part of Switzerland with which I was most familiar. I had completed the settlement of my affairs, the evidence which would connect me with those agents who had been seized by the police was safely destroyed. I could have exterminated you secretly and returned openly to London. A few suspicions had been aroused. I was strong enough to laugh them down. But I was more than ever determined on a personal revenge of those affronts I had suffered at your hands.
“Having seen you set off in company for the Reichenbach Falls, the idea struck me that here, at last, was a fitting place for our final discussion. Moran and I followed leisurely in your rear, taking with us some ropes and mountaineering impedimenta. Peiffer also had joined us with a young Swiss companion.”
“One moment,” said Holmes, reaching up suddenly for one of his scrapbooks, and rapidly turning the leaves. “Ah! here we are. I thought I had your young friend among my little collection of biographies. Fritz Peiffer, born at Grindelwald, 1868. Noted for his unaided ascent of the Schreckhorn, and rescue of the tourist Godkin in 1889. Fled from Switzerland on being connected with a bank robbery in Altdorf. Subsequently suspected of the Perdue jewel theft in Paris, the Parr Street murder in London, and the Welch forgery. Successfully evaded the police; whereabouts unknown. Medium height, exceedingly muscular, swarthy complexion, white scar on left temple, last joint of left little finger missing. You are happy in the selection of your acquaintances, Prof. Moriarty,” he added drily, replacing the book.
“Poor Peiffer,” continued Moriarty, “he had a certain daring originality in his amusements, and I owe much to his muscular powers, subsequent to my rather rapid exploration of Reichenbach. When we reached the top of the cliff, above the fall, and cautiously looked down at the path cut in the rock, half-way round the precipice, beside the fall, we saw you both standing on it. I despatched Peiffer’s young Swiss with a note to Dr. Watson, urgently demanding his services for a mythical English lady, struck down with sudden haemorrhage, at the Englischer Hof. The ruse was successful, and we had the satisfaction of seeing the doctor striding rapidly down the hill with truly professional eagerness. I descended to the beginning of the rock path, and walked slowly round the cliff. Mr. Holmes was standing, his back to the rock, his arms folded, gazing at the plunging waters.
“‘So we meet again, Professor,’ he said without lifting his head. ‘I fear my friend will feel hurt when he discovers that I allowed him to be deceived by your somewhat transparent appeal for his professional services.’
“‘We are both tired, Mr. Holmes,’ I said, ‘of this affair. Differing as we do, there is not room enough in the world for us both, there is even less on this ledge; it is a fitting opportunity to terminate our contest.’
“Mr. Holmes expressed his willingness to accede to my arrangements, and I permitted him to write a short note of explanation to you, Dr. Watson. This we placed below his cigarette case on a rock with his alpenstock beside it. We then walked to the end of the path. It was an impressive theatre, and fitting that such a drama as we were engaged upon should be concluded there. Below was a profound abyss, at the bottom of which a bowl of frothing, tumultuous, seething fury was ever lashed into new rage of spouting convulsions. At the edges, the stream spumes out again, and shoots onward over jagged rocks in a welter of foam. Above, the torrent, narrowed by the stone jaws of its interrupted bed, projects itself in a prodigious spout of dark green water swollen by the melting snow of the upper slopes. And the great column thunders down between the glistening shafts of coal-black rock, amid a never-ceasing mist of spray that rises in a fine smoke from the abyss even to the precipitous ledge above.
“We stood side by side for a moment looking down at the impressive chaos of nature below. The ledge was barely three feet wide. Behind was the precipitous cliff up which Mr. Holmes subsequently climbed to delude the world into a belief that he had not returned along that narrow way, but had accompanied me to the depths of the fall.
“‘As you are determined on playing Scylla to the Charybdis of the fall, Prof. Moriarty,’ he said, ‘you had better let the play begin. The diapason of the abyss has rendered an impressive overture, the drama you have arranged is not deficient in its orchestration.’
“In that moment, when the many checks and affronts, the many impediments and failures I had met with through Mr. Holmes, all combined to fill me with rage at the man who had exposed my career, immolated my confederates, and foiled my ambitions, I could not but admire his coolness in face of the terrific death that faced him. It was the very triumph of an intellectual giant. He waited my attack with a faint cynical smile. I flung myself upon him determined that we should be ground to pieces together in the conflict of rock and water below. For a breathless minute we twisted and tore and wrenched with tense sinews upon the narrow ribbon of rock. Then suddenly he succeeded in getting me powerless with an unexpected lock grip, which I afterwards recognised as a Japanese wrestling trick. I was violently flung away, I swayed for an instant upon the brink of the chasm. Grasping wildly at the air, I turned over into empty space. Striking a projecting rock I bounded into the centre of the shaft. Then with a shriek of fury at my baffled revenge, for even in that terrible moment my brain kept clear and no fear of my own destruction was present, I plunged down, down, ever down through a stinging hail of mist and spray. The deafening, wailing boom of imprisoned air escaping up the gigantic organ pipe, and forced back by the weight of descending water, filled my ears. I was breathless and choked by the rush of air and spray. Down with deadly swiftness I plunged through the inferno of water and uproar, and then swept tangentially into the tremendous column of icy water that flung its majestic curve with infinite force into the fathom
less cup below.”
When Moriarty had first appeared, I confess to having doubted for a moment that Holmes had really thrust him over the ledge. It seemed so utterly and wildly improbable that any ordinary being of flesh and bone could escape after that terrific fall and the grinding chaos of the rocky torrent below. Holmes had been characteristically modest in his account of the interview. But I now recognised with admiration how coolly, and with what determined courage, my friend had forced the contest, willing that his own life should be the price paid to rid society of this most dangerous and capable criminal. Moriarty had paused for a moment and was looking reflectively at the photograph of the fall over the fireplace. Holmes had seen the shade of doubt upon my face and spoke with a faint touch of amusement in his voice:
“You will confess, Watson, that there was absolutely no deception, and that the Professor has not only to be congratulated upon a record in rapid transit, but also on his doubtless ingenious return under discouraging circumstances. He is a very material proof that my theory of the fall being negotiable is correct.”
Moriarty took a slow survey of my person and bewildered expression, and shook his head significantly.
“You are right, Mr. Holmes, in considering that an escape is not altogether impossible. Yet had you been in my position I should not have speculated hopefully on your return. To the slightest elements of chance, and my most happy selection of friends, I owe my present existence. However successful Dr. Watson has proved as a Boswell, you cannot attribute to him the adaptability of a Lecoq. I am convinced that had I proved superior on the ledge you would have discovered your inefficiency in the chasm. Your histrionic duplicate on the stage executes some original manoevres with the aid of a cigar. I flatter myself that the latter would not be less extinguished than yourself had he to execute his absurd melodrama beneath the cataract.”
“I fear you have been irritated by Watson’s efforts to delineate your character; but remember I have suffered also. However, there appear two probable exits. Either, after having your fall broken by the water of the pool into which the cascade pours, you scrambled down the rocky bed of the stream, or you were drawn up by your mountaineering friends above.”
“In the matter of practical hydrostatics, Mr. Holmes, your experience is faulty. Had I fallen into that swirling cataclysm outside the descending stream, I should not now be enjoying your fire and tobacco. Your skill and undoubted strength would have proved ineffectual to stem the raging torrent that escapes from the fall.”
Even Holmes seemed to have his imperturbable calm ruffled by this extraordinary genius, who was demolishing all his arguments. For myself, I could find no room for any feeling other than an intense thankfulness that Holmes had not been compelled to perish through my insufficient aid in such a notable predicament. Moriarty gave way to a momentary smile of superiority, his manner became even more didactic. It was the mathematical tutor about to complete the solution of an intricate problem on the blackboard that confronted us.
“To the thinker on the mysteries of life, nothing is so fascinating as the study of those trivial incidents that determine each swing of the balance in every momentous issue. Your first clue to my existence, Mr. Holmes, was the slight accident of my being shaved in a strange barber’s. Your purchase of a railway guide ended in my pursuit of you to the continent. My striking a rock during my fall substituted the fracture of two ribs for the complete dissolution of my body between the upper and nether millstones of torrent and rock. Not less curious is the assertion of a man’s idiosyncrasies during the vital moments of his career. In you the element of observation predominates; with me circumstances tend to shape themselves as a mathematical problem. From the slipping of my feet, upon the edge of the path, till the brief instant of my transition into the depths of the chasm was over, my mind was the calm, precise, rigidly working machinery of the mathematical scholar. All the nature of the fall, and the type of my projection seemed to materialise in my brain. I became to myself merely a problem of falling bodies, an exposition of hydrodynamics.
“But let me use some homely illustrations to explain my wonderful immunity from disaster. You have both, I presume, frequently mounted a moving tramcar. Naturally you leap in the direction of the car’s progress, you thus equalise your speed to that of the car, and neutralise the effect of its momentum upon your less strongly built person. The deviation of my course, due to striking a rock, caused me to sweep into the huge column of descending water. We had both fallen from the same height. The torrent became, as it were, my tramcar. The enormous momentum of its vast volume was powerless to crush me. I was a passive occupant of this tremendous and irresistible vehicle. Within its grasp I careered with incalculable energy, and sped towards a profound cup filled with a similar medium, that had been scooped and polished by untold ages of falling water and the constant attrition of sandy particles borne by the stream. To fall into placid water from such a height would have been in itself fatal. Here, however, I had a vast strength before me furrowing the depths with a powerful current, behind me the same energy followed. I was an integral part of this current, with it to be gradually slowed in the eddies of the abyss.
“I fear I must insult you with another simple illustration to make my subsequent passage comprehensible. During your bachelor existence you have doubtless at some time or other poured your tea into one of those rather broad bowl-shaped teacups, intended to quickly cool that refreshing infusion. Should the descending spout of tea from the elevated teapot—for does not a bachelor hold his teapot with an unfeminine disregard for splashing?—strike the side of the cup farther from the pourer, then the stream of descending tea has its course determined by the curved side of the cup. A current is produced; an eddy rises at the opposed end of the diameter. The higher the teapot the more violent the eddy, and the swifter the two reflux currents round the side of the cup.”
“One moment,” said Holmes, and reached over for the soda syphon. He drew a porcelain evaporating dish from the debris in the fender, and proceeded to follow up Moriarty’s description in a practical manner. The result was entirely conclusive, though somewhat disastrous to the carpet. He flung the brimming dish back into the fender, and subsided languidly again.
“You are an admirable tutor, Professor; it would be an undeniable pleasure to benefit from your teaching.”
Moriarty bowed grimly and proceeded: “Such then, on a grand and terrorising scale, was my descent into that tumultuous maelstrom. In the centre of that superb jet from this gigantic teapot of the hills I was projected at a speed equivalent to its own. The vast pipe of water piercing the pool, and lashing it into indescribable fury, caused a great current to pass in a retrograde circle shaped by the surface of the bowl. In its sublime porterage I curvetted through the inky depths, and again mounted, borne in the welling up of a gigantic eddy, that spouted several feet above the surface of the bowl close to the edge of the precipice below the fall. For a moment I was poised in a state of unstable equilibrium upon the dead centre of the upheaval that broke into opposite streams and hurried round the bowl, to reunite in the spuming fury of rock and water beyond the fall. With a despairing kick I spurned the uplifting waters, and, aided by the momentum of my shooting upwards, I succeeded in clutching the rocky ledge above the furious whirlpool. In a turmoil of spray and broken water, with the thundering clangour of the fall intensified in the narrow space and confusing every sense, I tore and hauled with bleeding fingers at the broken rocks.
“Little by little I drew myself out of immediate danger, and shrunk in close to the precipice. There was comparatively less spray behind the fall, why I shall subsequently explain, and I was able to gasp in the welcome air to my exhausted lungs. This was the one way of escape that was possible from immediate annihilation. My unique trajectory had occupied scarcely more than a minute. Yet years seemed to have been drawn into that tiny interval. I had calculated the probable course of the current, and had proved my solution correct. During the swift exploration of the dept
hs I had anticipated this crucial moment, and I had benefited by it.
“The explanation of the space behind the fall, which enabled me to escape its clutches, and breathe for the moment in safety, was simple.
“The falling water was not only acted on by gravity, but had the horizontal force of its projection. As a result, the fall described a parabolic course, which took it away from the face of the precipice. Also, as so often happens, the Reichenbach Fall is the result of one of those volcanic cleavages that sear the surface of our globe with stern wrinkles and ineradicable scars. Above, the unyielding strata of rock projected somewhat, where the stream narrowed between the opposed walls of the cleft. And the curve of water fell from this adamant lip to its further bed of tumbled rocks far below. I was therefore at the bottom of a great roofed-in pit. On one side the walls were composed of ragged clefted rocks, torn with fantastic fractures, and splintered by volcanic energy in the depths of time into every variety of niche and projection. On the other was the dazzling rush of icy water in a green, twisting intricacy of kaleidoscopic bewilderment and diopteric variation. Behind this rush of water the air was comparatively free from spray, as I have already mentioned. This was due partly to the centrifugal force acting on the minor spurts and jets of the waterfall, and causing them to shoot outwards from the main body. Partly also because towards the precipice the water fell directly into the depth of the pool, and thus avoided being disintegrated into spray, as it was on the rocky brim of the basin. Moreover, a tremendous pressure of air, drawn down by the rush of water, whistled in a mighty blast through the long tube of the cavity. This formed a huge siren that sang and shrieked with a boom of canorous saltation amid the chaos of the cataract and the recesses of the rock. The reverberating echoes of the blast deafened and stunned me, but its force beat down the rising spray.
