Sherlock Holmes and the Plague of Dracula

by Steve Seitz

  “But at last he made a trip - only a little, little trip - but it was more than he could afford, when I was so close upon him. I had my chance, and, starting from that point, I have woven my net round him until now it is all ready to close. In three days - that is to say, on Monday next - matters will be ripe, and the professor, with all the principal members of his gang, will be in the hands of the police. Then will come the greatest criminal trial of the century, the clearing up of over forty mysteries, and the rope for all of them; but if we move at all prematurely, you understand, they may slip out of our hands even at the last moment.”

  “But?”

  “Moriarty surprised me once again by abandoning all pretense of subtlety and visiting me in my quarters not two nights ago.”

  “Extraordinary!”

  O to have been present for that encounter, the meeting of two brilliant and nimble intellects, the one bent in the tenacious pursuit of justice, the other on greed and destruction. We knew his features already, of course; Holmes even photographed him once, but this was insufficient preparation to greet the man in the flesh. Holmes described the good professor as a cornered reptile, a reflection of his black-hearted soul. Holmes places Moriarty’s age at about fifty-five. Almost as tall and thin and pale as Holmes, Moriarty’s prominent skull domes out in a white curve, and his two black eyes are deeply sunken in his head. Ever the mathematics scholar, Moriarty’s shoulders are rounded from much study, and his face protrudes forward and, in an odd trait, his head constantly oscillates from side to side, so that he is always taking in a wide view. During this singular interview, Holmes said, Moriarty left the door open and stood only a step away.

  Holmes quietly slipped his revolver from the drawer and slipped it into his dressing-gown. Moriarty was not fooled; Holmes placed his weapon on the table within instant reach.

  “You have less frontal development than I should have expected,” he told Holmes. “This duel of ours really must end. It can have but one outcome, you see.”

  “And it will play out on Monday.”

  “How long have we been at this, Mr. Holmes? Over and over, your attaque au fer is met with my riposte. I feint, you parry. We have pinked one another too many times.”

  “So you consider yourself ‘pinked’ after the Barings affair? Admirable.”

  “And it is the reason we have come to this crisis. The situation is becoming an impossible one. It is necessary that you should withdraw. You have worked things in such a fashion that we have only one resource left. It has been an intellectual treat to me to see the way in which you have grappled with this affair, and I say, unaffectedly, that it would be a grief to me to be forced to take any extreme measure. You smile, sir, but I assure you that it really would.”

  “I must confess, Professor, that I share a similar admiration. But that pales when I consider how many fortunes lost and lives ruined from your enterprises. The net is drawn and you are ensnared. One way or another in a few days you will lose all.”

  “You hope to place me in the dock. I tell you that I will never stand in the dock. If you are clever enough to bring destruction upon me, rest assured that I shall do as much to you.”

  “If I were assured of the former eventuality I would, in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept the latter,” replied Holmes.

  “I can promise you the one, but not the other,” snarled Moriarty, who then turned his rounded back on Holmes and slithered back to his den.

  Holmes has been on the run since; after our interview, Holmes told me later, they even set fire to 221B, but it was put out before anything of importance was lost. There is now but one way for Moriarty to retain his liberty, and that is with the death of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Two attempts have been made on his life thus far, and my heart filled with fear as the proudest man I have ever known crouched like a frightened fox in the dark shadows of my parlor.

  We laid plans. The difficulty in trying to outthink someone like Moriarty is that you can run circles around yourself trying to anticipate every possibility, in the end inducing intellectual paralysis. One thing we knew for certain: that we were being watched. Rather than try to outfox them here, we decided we would have better luck doing so in unfamiliar surroundings. Let Moriarty believe he has anticipated our every move.

  We laid out an elaborate plan to rendezvous at Victoria Station. Mycroft Holmes was drafted as a cab driver, which caused his brother no small amount of mirth; it may be the first time Mycroft has seen daylight in years. While I followed Holmes’ instructions to the letter, he still managed to surprise me, joining me in the guise of an aged, ailing Italian priest.

  We managed to dodge Moriarty at Canterbury, where we sent our luggage on a fine holiday in Paris, and took ourselves off to Dieppe, and from there to our current location, in Brussels.

  The Strasbourg sun is rising slowly behind my back as I write this, and with it bright rays of hope that by this time tomorrow, Professor Moriarty and his gang will firmly and safely behind bars so that Holmes and I can return to London.

  I can hear Holmes’ impatient and steady tread in the room next door, the air thickening with shag as the hour approaches when Inspector Gregson should be behind his desk, awaiting Holmes’ wire.

  It is only fitting, pitted as we are against the Napoleon of crime, that Holmes and I should find ourselves in Belgium yesterday, spending a fine spring day touring the battlefield at Waterloo, about eleven miles or so south of Brussels. It was here, of course, that the Duke of Wellington with bravery, pluck, and good British common sense outmaneuvered the Emperor Napoleon and forever spared Europe the nightmare of permanent French domination. Future tyrants, I am sure, will look back on this battle and think twice before pulling the British lion’s tail.

  Today, of course, the battlefield is tranquil, rolling green ridges with the countryside dotted with the sienna roofs and whitewashed walls of medieval villages and lazy country farms. Were it not for the war memorials that crop up at random like granite copses all over the battlefield, one might never know this land ever hosted anything more threatening than scarecrows. I hold particular ire for the Lion’s Mount monument to the Dutch Prince of Orange. While I am sure he performed with great courage, the bit of shrapnel he took in the arse did not justify tearing up several acres of the Allied side of the battlefield to put up that gaudy statue, though I must admit I admired the panoramic view from its heights this morning.

  Holmes and I spent the afternoon prowling the farm at Hougoumont, which proved so crucial to Napoleon’s defeat. A crumbling chateau wall brought back to mind some of the decay and disintegration of Castle Dracula, though it is not nearly as old. I ran my palm lightly across the bullet-pocked bricks, wondering whether the original owners had been nobles forced out in the Revolution, or if spots of brave British blood marked the dirty whitewash along the exterior wall, or if those stains were nothing more than the dust and rain of nearly eighty years.

  The bullet holes and monuments, the battle that Holmes and I were quietly engaged in, suddenly brought back memories of Maiwand with great force. I recollect vividly the bloody day the Afghan hordes pushed us back. The Afghans outnumbered us ten to one, intense heat and thirst had drained our spirits, and the bloody, ragtag remnants of the other companies flooded our position in their panicked retreat, obliterating any chain of command and forcing us out into the open, naked to enemy fire. We made for the ravine at Khig, beyond which lay water, medicine, and ammunition. I was too busy for fighting. Our civilian drivers had fled, and it was up to myself, my man Murray, and any soldier I outranked to sling the wounded onto carts and get them off the battlefield.

  To me fell the task of distinguishing who should be taken and who not; to my dying day I’ll not forget the young soldier, perhaps twenty years old at most, lying on his side, his hand outstretched and his features aglow in relief at the sight of a doctor. But his tunic was soaked in oozing bl
ack blood, and I saw a bit of large intestine protruding from the smoldering fabric of his uniform. As I sadly shook my head and passed him by, the very life drained from his pleading brown eyes, and the light faded, a youthful candle snuffed out. Glowing hope had faded to disappointment, horror and shock at the last.

  I could not afford tears at the time, but now the vivid recollection dampened by eyes. At such times I tell myself that it was not I who put them in that position, not I who decided who should live and who should die. That choice was made by Afghan gunners, and I believe I did the very best I could with my poor powers as bullets whizzed past my ears. I blotted out the screams of the dying for the sake of the living.

  But even that was taken from me when a Jezail bullet clipped me soundly in the shoulder; to this day I can’t tell what happened to my leg. Murray pulled me clear and dumped me on a cart before I could protest.

  Later. When I reminisced about this to Holmes (who has made much study of such matters while examining corpses at Bart’s) he told me that as bullets are made of lead, they are not the solid little metal balls we think them to be. Lead bullets are soft and malleable; they fragment on contact sometimes, and on striking bone will ricochet in the body, resulting in some unusual wounds. After taking a look at my scars, Holmes felt it was very probable that the bullet which hit me split on hitting the scapula (most likely on the mass of bone that is the coracoid process), bouncing back out and lodging in my leg. I know there was an operation to remove the bullet later, but I never saw it and don’t know what happened to the bullet. Likely, there are fragments in my body still.

  All this was racing in my mind when Holmes approached me.

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t have come today,” he remarked, handing me a welcome cigarette. “This is supposed to be a pleasant respite, and it’s brought you back to Afghanistan.”

  “How did you-”

  “It’s in your eyes, my dear Watson. Your war memories always register the same expression.”

  “Would that we had a Wellington at Maiwand. Things might have turned out differently. ‘The battle at Maiwand was won on the playing fields of Eton.’ Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

  “The Battle of Waterloo was won not on the playing fields of Eton, but by Belgian insubordination,” said Holmes. “You see, Watson, as at Maiwand, the British thoroughly misread the situation. Wellington always believed in keeping a clear route to the sea open in case retreat was necessary, never mind how far inland his army happened to be. Add to this the fact that his information was roughly half a day behind actual events. Wellington thought the French would advance from the southwest of Brussels, so he gave orders to the Dutch and Belgian forces to concentrate at Nivelles, not knowing Napoleon had the village of Quatre-Bras in his sights.

  “But the Dutch and Belgians, unjustly maligned by you, knew the local terrain quite a bit better and realized that Wellington’s plan put too great a distance between his army and the Prussians under General Blucher. Wellington would have opened the gates wide for Napoleon. So Orange’s generals ignored Wellington’s orders and concentrated their forces at Quatre-Bras, which delayed the French and toppled a distinctly different set of history’s dominoes. Napoleon made a number of mistakes of his own, like putting his brother in charge of the force that kept attacking this farm. But I’ll leave that discussion for another time.”

  “Come Monday we’ll both be in better moods, I expect,” said I. “Is it not fitting, Holmes, that as we tour Waterloo, the Napoleon of crime is about to meet his own?”

  “I am confident, but not fully confident,” admitted Holmes. “We both know what is at stake, and we both know where the blow will fall. I can only hope I have successfully anticipated and parried Moriarty’s every possible counter-move. In the meantime, let us enjoy the sunshine, our repast al fresco, and hope your Wellingtonian metaphor proves to be apt.”

  Later. Once again, everything has changed, and I must be brief. We are in flight for our lives once more.

  Holmes telegraphed Scotland Yard this morning, and we spent the day exploring Strasbourg. We found a reply waiting for us at our hotel on our return in the evening. Holmes tore it open, and then with a bitter curse hurled it into the grate.

  “I might have known it!” he groaned. “Moriarty has escaped! They have secured the whole gang with the exception of him and one or two others. 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.”

  “You already were.”

  “I have taken his fortune, and now his organisation. Moriarty is lost if he returns to London. He has nothing to devote his energies to save 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. Besides, I have reasons of my own to continue. We sat in the Strasbourg salle-a-manger arguing the question for half an hour, but the time has come to pack. Holmes has not told me where we are going; I expect that decision will be made at the station.

  May 3, 1891

  But for the constant glances over our shoulders and the intense scrutiny we pay every falling rock, I believe I would be having one of the finest holidays of my life.

  To-day we settled in at the Englischer Hof in the Swiss Alpine village of Meiringen. Peter Steiler the elder, our landlord, speaks excellent English, having served for three years as waiter at the Grosvenor Hotel in London.

  “What suggestions do you have for a pair of aimless wanderers?” Holmes asked.

  “Springtime is delightful in the Alps, Mr. Holmes,” replied Steiler. “You can spend a day hiking the hills, where you will find the village of Rosenlaui. Getting there will take most of the day if you dawdle and enjoy the view, and the inn is most accommodating.

  “If you don’t mind a short break from your route, you will also pass the Reichenbach Falls, which are never more impressive than at this time of the year. The stream is nearly brimming with melted snow, and I can promise you a spectacular display of nature’s power and beauty.”

  “Just the thing!” Holmes cried with delight.

  After we settled in, we wandered into the village and found a pub serving excellent Swiss beer and hearty Tyrolean cuisine. Holmes seemed content, almost at peace.

  “You’re contemplating retirement, aren’t you?” I said at last.

  “Once Moriarty meets his fate,” said he, “my detecting career will have reached its pinnacle. Without him, much of the challenge will be gone; Lestrade is mastering the rudiments of deduction at last, and passing them to his colleagues; and my labours on the Continent earlier this year have left me well enough off so that I never again need to take a problem to appease Mrs. Hudson.

  “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 cherish those days to the end of my own, Holmes,” said I, and we clinked our mugs together.

  My heart will be heavy on Friday, for I can neglect my practice no longer. Serenity does not come easily to Sherlock Holmes, and his mood tonight will linger with me to the last.

  Chapter Eleven: The Reichenbach Falls

  Dr. Watson’s Journal
r />   May 5, 1891

  O bitterness, failure and despair! Sherlock Holmes is dead, and there is now a great, aching void in my heart, for it is I who am to blame. Without me, Moriarty would never have known where he needed to be, would never have found the ideal spot to work his malevolent will on the fate of Sherlock Holmes.

  Now that it has happened, so much is clear. I realize now that Holmes had foreseen his fate, and resolved to accept it with calm and composure; indeed, it was at the uppermost of his mind as we left London. If only he had shared with me what he knew, given me the chance to talk him out of it, maybe all might yet be well.

  But Holmes himself planted the seed when he quoted Moriarty as using the words “inevitable destruction” to finish their battle. All along, he had known it would end this way.

  How many times have I seen it? How many dying patients have had that same air of peaceful calm as their mortal days wane, and their work on earth is done? How many have shared their pastoral visions of Elysium while their hearts slow, and then stop? How could I have been so blind?

  Now, the happiest holiday I have had since my honeymoon ends with funeral preparations. The bodies were recovered this morning. I personally examined Holmes: his expression slack, his skin cold and pallid, no heartbeat, no breath, likely cause of death a blow to the skull sustained while falling onto the Reichenbach’s rocks; there is a slight indentation behind the left ear. Holmes was dead before he hit the water; this explains the lack of water when I pressed his torso to determine if he had drowned.

  I give not a damn what happens to Moriarty’s body, but Mycroft Holmes telegraphed his instructions this morning, and they shall be carried out to the letter.