My Dearest Holmes (17 page)

He was not listening to the last few words of my speech. He had raised his eyes and was gazing down the slope to the little village we had just left. The houses, the streets were tiny; it looked like a doll's village. Three figures were walking up the main street to the hotel. I imagined that I could reach down and pick one of them up between my thumb and forefinger.

'--end of my tether,' he murmured. 'Ha! Dead end of the road, and turn round and go back--it's not possible. I must have been right. I have to be right. It was the only thing to do. I couldn't be like that.'

I could not make sense of his mumbling, but it filled me with fear, and the small worm coiled in my stomach began to nuzzle again. I waited, in case he wanted to say more, but he lapsed into silence and stared fixedly and unblinkingly into space, twisting his Alpine-stock round and round in his hands.

At last I laid a hand upon his shoulder, and he jumped as if he had been stung or bitten.

'Holmes,' I said, hastily withdrawing my hand.

'Sorry, Watson.' He was on his feet. 'Must have fallen into a daydream. Come on, or we'll be too late to look at these Falls.'

I rose slowly, and we continued our climb. As we approached the Falls we became aware of the deep booming of the waters, echoing louder and louder, until it obliterated every trace of birdsong. The air became damp and green around us as we neared the place; the light was muted and took on an ominous, apocalyptic quality which added to our sense of awe.

It is, as I described in my published account, 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 upwards, turn one giddy with their constant whirl and clamour.

We walked along the path which reaches half-way round the edge of the abyss. It had been cut from the rock, to afford the observer a complete view, but it curtails abruptly in a dead end, and the traveller has to turn back and retrace his steps in order to continue his journey. Holmes and I stood for some time peering down at the gleam of the breaking water far below us against the black rocks, and listening to the half-human cry which came booming up with the spray out of the abyss. For a while, neither of us spoke. In my weak and frightened state, I found myself quite overcome by the force and majesty of the place; it impressed me with a sense of age--age far greater than mankind; with a sense of animal wilfulness and impartial caprice. It was the abode of the ancient gods of stone and water; it engulfed our petty human concerns and flung them down into its depths.

From beside me, I heard Holmes say quite clearly, 'So it makes no difference in the end, after all. Quite useless. It is intolerable.' How I managed to hear his quiet voice above the roar of the waters, I do not know. I do not think he meant me to hear.

'Come along, Holmes,' I said loudly, after a few minutes' further silence. 'Let us go back now.'

He looked at me blankly.

'It is a dead end,' I shouted above the spray. 'We have to turn back and find the path again.'

He looked about wildly, like one who has just woken from a dream, and then suddenly his gaze fixed upon something over my shoulder. I turned.

A figure was running towards us, along the path, waving something in his hand. We waited, frozen.

At last the boy reached us, red-faced and panting, holding out a folded piece of paper.

'Herr Doktor? Votson?' he said between gasps.

I stepped forward and took the paper. I unfolded it, and saw that it bore the mark of the Englischer Hof.

'What is this?' I said sharply.

'Ein Brief fur Ihnen, Herr Doktor. Herr Steiler hat mir gesagt, dass ich Ihnen zuriick bringen muss. Eine Dame, eine englische Dame, ist todkrank.'

I looked confusedly at the piece of paper.

'He says an English lady is dying,' translated Holmes unnecessarily, and leaned over my shoulder to read the letter with me.

It appeared to be from Herr Steiler himself. An English lady had arrived at the hotel, he said, within a few minutes of our leaving. She was in the last stages of consumption, and was travelling from Davos Platz, where she had wintered, to join her friends at Lucerne. A sudden haemorrhage had overtaken her. It was thought that she could only live a few hours. She was in great distress, asking to see an English doctor. She would not let the Swiss doctor go near her. Herr Steiler did not know what to do. If I would only return, just briefly, perhaps it would calm her. He would look on it as the greatest of favours. He had said that he would try to find an English doctor. Please would I do him this favour, for it was so great a responsibility--and so on.

Holmes and I stared at one another.

'Don't go,' he said. I stared at him in amazement.

'But I must! The lady is dying. Come with me.'

'No.'

'Come with me, Holmes. I don't want to leave you here. I must go to her; I can't refuse my services to a fellow countrywoman.'

We had walked back to the main path. The water roared behind us.

'I don't trust him,' said Holmes. 'How do you know this is not a trap?'

'Don't be ridiculous, Holmes. Why should it be? The poor lady must be desperate.'

'Moriarty is behind it.'

Once again, I stared at him. Surely this was proof of his unstable state of mind.

'How could he be?' I wailed over the din of the water. 'It is me they are asking for, not you. Look, I have to go, Holmes. I could not live with my conscience if I refused such a plea. You stay here, then, and wait for me. No--do not stay here'--for I had developed a nameless fear of the atmosphere of the place--'go on to Rosenlaui. Take this boy with you ... Will you--go on--with this gentleman--to Rosenlaui?' I shouted at the still breathless boy. He looked uncomprehendingly until I repeated the message with gestures, and then he seemed to understand and consent.

'Ja. Ja. Rosenlaui. Gehen wir daruber, mein Herr. Ist nicht so weit.'

He gestured to Holmes along the path. Holmes, whose German was far better than mine, did not offer to help at all with the conversation. He merely stood with folded arms, an indecipherable expression on his face. He made no effort to move.

'Please, Holmes,' I said desperately. I was torn between worry for him, in his present state of mind, and the call of duty. But I could honestly see no reason to take the message at anything but face value. If Moriarty were at the hotel, surely it would be Holmes he would try to lure, and not me? In my confusion, no other possibility occurred to me.

At last he shrugged, and nodded, as though he were past caring. He agreed to go on with the boy to Rosenlaui and wait for me there. I was sure to reach him by the evening. I told him we would have a good dinner.

He took out his watch and checked the time. He smiled, and suddenly clasped my hand.

'In Rosenlaui, then,' he said.

I returned the pressure of his hand, pleased to see him sensible at last, and set off down the road along which we had come. I said to myself that once we were safely installed at Rosenlaui, I would seriously set about persuading him to return to England. I would emphasise to him that I was truly alarmed for his health. I would try to be masterful and take charge of the situation. The idea rather appealed to me. And once back in England, I would see if it could not be arranged that I did not have to leave him so alone. I would speak to Mary. It would be difficult, very difficult, but surely something could be arranged? And if it were my companions rather than my marriage that he objected to, why then I would give up my companions. Good heavens, his friendship was more important to me than anything. If I had known before ... if I had known that he minded, what might have happened? What might still be possible? But no, that was dangerous and unnecessary. But I would speak to him about it. I would tell him that I understood, that I would change the way I lived. I would tell him this evening ...

I turned back twice to look for him. The first time I saw him still standing with his back against a rock and his arms folded, gazing down at the rush of the waters. The second time I had descended too far to see either the Falls or Holmes, but I could see the curving path which wound over the shoulder of the hill. Along this path a man was 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 upon my errand.

It may have been a little over an hour before I reached Meiringen. Steiler was standing at the porch of his hotel. His face brightened when he saw me, and he came forward to meet me.

'Why, Dr Watson,' he said, 'what is this? Where is Herr Holmes?'

'Well, I trust she is no worse?' I was saying simultaneously.

We both stared at one another in surprise. At the first quiver of his eyebrows my heart turned to lead in my breast. I pulled the letter from my pocket and held it out to him with a trembling hand.

'You did not write this? There is no sick Englishwoman in the hotel?'

'Certainly not.'

He took the letter and glanced at it. 'But it has the hotel mark upon it!' he said slowly. He looked up at me in consternation. I caught an uneasy look in his eyes. 'The tall Englishman who came in after you had gone,' he said. 'He must have written it. He said--'

I did not wait to hear what he had said. The explanations could wait. I ran, in a tingle of fear, back to the path which I had just descended.

To run uphill, in fear and anxiety, when one is already exhausted, is not an experience I would wish on anyone. Several times I saw a red curtain shimmering before my eyes, and thought that my heart would burst, and shooting pains stabbed at my weak leg like red-hot needles. But the urgency, the absolute necessity of reaching Holmes before it was too late, drove me on beyond what would normally have been physically possible. It took me twice as long to run back to the Falls as it had taken me to run down.

I have described elsewhere what I found there.

Holmes' Alpine-stock was still leaning against the rock by which I had left him. At the end of the man-made ledge, where the path dovetailed into the sheer rock above the abyss, two lines of footmarks ended in a ploughed mass of mud, fringed with torn ferns and brambles; and the water plunged endlessly down, with its half-human cry and echo absorbing my frenzied shouts.

I found, upon the boulder by his Alpine-stock, his silver cigarette case and a note, which I once again will reproduce in full:

My dear Watson,

I write these lines through the courtesy of Mr Moriarty, who awaits my convenience for the final discussion of those questions which lie between us. He has been giving me a sketch of the methods by which he avoided the English police and kept himself informed of our movements. They certainly confirm the very high opinion which I had formed of his abilities. I am pleased to think that I shall be able to free society from any further effects of his presence, though I fear that it is at a cost which will give pain to my friends, and especially, my dear Watson, to you. I have already explained to you, however, that my career had in any case reached its crisis, and that no possible conclusion could be more congenial to me than this. Indeed, if I may make a full confession to you, I was quite convinced that the letter from Meiringen was a hoax, and I allowed you to depart on that errand under the persuasion that some development of this sort would follow. Tell Inspector Patterson that the papers which he needs to convict the gang are in pigeon-hole M, done up in a blue envelope and inscribed 'Moriarty'. I made every disposition of my property before I left England, and handed it to my brother Mycroft. Pray give my greetings to Mrs Watson, and believe me to be, my dear fellow,

Very sincerely yours,

Sherlock Holmes.

I read the note again and again. The handwriting was meticulous, and unmistakeably his. But what on earth had he meant by it? Even given that Moriarty were waiting as he wrote it, I could not believe that these were his last words to me.

Saying he feared to give pain to his friends--what friends? He knew there was only me. 'Making full confession' that he knew the note from Meiringen was a hoax, when he had asked me at once, oh God, not to go. Instructions issued to Inspector Patterson, his odious brother named as his executor, greetings to 'Mrs Watson'--asking me to believe him to be very sincerely mine--dear heaven, it was impossible, it had to be impossible.

And yet, what other explanation was there? Never in a million years could I believe that he would pay so cruel a trick. It must be as the note said, Moriarty had caught him, he had given him but a few minutes to write, he had threatened him, menaced him, for there were no returning footprints. They had fallen together, locked in a deadly embrace. It was unthinkable--my imagination shrank from it.

I do not know how long I stood there; how many times I read the note; how often I ran to the edge of the path, threw myself down into the mud and howled into the torrent of the waters. I know that eventually I found myself running at full tilt back down the hill to Meiringen; that I collapsed into the arms of Herr Steiler and screamed filthy imprecations at him; that I had to be restrained by two Swiss policemen who eventually supported me along the path when I insisted on returning to the spot with the search party; that a wire was despatched to Rosenlaui and it was confirmed that though our baggage had arrived at the hotel, Holmes had not; that it was late in the evening when we had returned, and the path was bathed in moonlight; and that the Swiss physician was called to attend me, and to administer a sedative, while the grim, blond policeman took down my incoherent statement about Professor Moriarty.