“What the deuce is that?” I wondered.
Holmes crept close and laid his hand to it. Despite its size, it tipped easily back and forth with only his casual effort.
“Wood,” he muttered. “It’s very light. Strong, too. Balsa, I think. A perfect sphere of balsa.”
I wrinkled up my brow. “Except, spheres are round,” I pointed out.
“No, he’s quite right,” said a feminine voice from just around the curve of the path behind us. “Before I began concentrating on it—using little bits of magic and my own experience to shape it night by night—it was indeed a sphere.”
The cadence of the voice was vaguely familiar to me, but the voice itself was shockingly so. More than merely familiar, it was actually familial, and let me say, I hadn’t expected to hear it on a mountain path in Switzerland.
“Mary?” I gasped.
“In a way,” said my wife, stepping into view around the bend. She wore a fur coat with a little hat of the same and a warm muff for her hands. It was quite exquisite—of a vaguely Russian style, I thought. Some sort of white-and-blue card protruded from beneath one of the folded-back lapels, but at this distance I could not tell its exact nature. This small defect could not spoil the rest of the ensemble; I would have said Mary looked better than ever, if it were not for a particularly predatory gleam in her eye. For all our domestic discord, Mary had never looked at me like that before.
“Hello, darling,” she added.
“What are you doing here?” I spluttered.
“I am here to end things,” she said, then turned her gaze on my companion. “Warlock Holmes, our threads are long and winding, and too often intertwined. But that all stops tonight. Long have I grappled with my own finality problem. In so doing, I believe I’ve found the answer to yours.”
I think my mind was working a bit slow. I didn’t want to let myself believe it. Yet, the one thing that kept intruding on my stupor was this: I finally understood why I had been able to stay so long away from the soul to which my own had been bound. Not because my soul had been removed or rewritten.
Because hers had.
“Moriarty?” I croaked.
Holmes gave a gasp of surprise—apparently he hadn’t worked it out either. But then, what would you expect? Just at the end of his own gasp, he interrupted it with another gasp, this one gleeful. He threw both hands to the air and cried, “Everybody! Wait! Wait, wait, wait…”
He paused.
“Maryarty.”
The eyes of Holmes’s ancient nemesis—and my current spouse—narrowed with hate. Beneath my breath, I muttered, “Jesus Christ, Holmes.”
“What? Come on, you guys! It’s perfect! Maryarty! It was right there!”
I swear the night air got a few degrees colder. Holmes filled it up with rolls of laughter as Moriarty glared. “Really, James,” said Holmes, wiping tears away from both eyes, “with all your famous powers of logic and foresight, I’m surprised you didn’t figure out I’d call you that.”
Moriarty rolled his eyes, gave a sigh of strained patience, reached up for his lapel, and flicked it forward. Beneath lay one of those abominable little cards Americans wear when they must meet each other in number. Squinting in the strange, shifting light, I could just make out the writing.
“Hello,” it said, “my Name is Maryarty.”
“Oh,” muttered Holmes, a bit sheepishly. “Never mind, then.”
“I have planned long for this evening, Holmes,” Moriarty said, “and you must realize that it is very likely all you have to say to me tonight has already crossed my mind.”
Holmes gave a haughty sniff. “Then possibly all your answers have already crossed mine.”
“Hmmm… No. I shouldn’t think so,” said Moriarty and I, together. Holmes gave us a look.
Moriarty smiled. “I have anticipated almost anything you might try to best me. I even know one or two ways you might succeed. But I came anyway, Warlock, because of the two most important things I know about tonight: I know you won’t. And I know why.”
That was enough to jolt my brain into action. Moriarty, so far as I could tell, was a man who was capable of anything. His intellect was vast. He believed his cause to be absolute and just. There was no act he would shy from to see his plans come to fruition. And there was a reason for what he was doing. That’s what terrified me most: I knew he had a reason. Why would he confront Holmes and I like this? If he knew our destination, why show up alone and outnumbered? He hadn’t had to do that, had he? The man had a virtual army at his disposal. He had tricks I’d never heard of. Why was he standing here, so exposed to danger? He did have a reason. I knew that.
Now, if only I knew what it was…
I began racking my mind, even as Holmes scoffed, “Oh, really now, Jimmy! Are you sure you haven’t got a bit too big for your britches? On your best day, you’re never a match for me. And look: I’ve got Watson here, too.”
“Oh dear,” Moriarty mused. “I hope he isn’t armed.”
He reached Mary’s delicate arm into the deep fur pocket of her coat. It re-emerged, holding my trusty old service revolver. My shoulders sagged.
“Considerate of you to leave it for me,” he noted. “Oh, and do you know something amusing: we actually lost
