I know I don’t cut a particularly dashing figure. I’m just not a strong-jawed, big-chested, blue-eyed, smashing sort of fellow. (Oh, sometimes… to be American, even for a minute…) Yet, I did my utmost to appear heroic and intimidating. It was my only chance. I needed contrast, you see. The joke relied upon contrast.
A burning pain tore my arm as bone stripped away from my humerus, radius and ulna. And then—lit by the savage silver moon and the rippling sheets of green and purple light—my soul blade appeared in my hand.
Well… I say hand…
Really, it appeared between my thumb and forefinger, which I had pinched together. Couldn’t really hold it in my hand, could I? I’d cover the whole thing. There, blazing in the supernatural light, was the bony toothpick that represented all my hate, fear and wrath.
I saw Moriarty start in surprise. His eyes widened, then squinted. The corners of his mouth twitched up. It was coming: the laugh. In the next heartbeat, I’d be at him.
But I was three heartbeats too late.
The moment I thrust my hand upwards, Holmes curled his good leg underneath him and thrust himself straight towards Moriarty. It wasn’t much of a charge—more a series of angry hops. Holmes’s left leg was useless; if he’d trusted his weight to it, he’d surely have fallen. Yet Holmes was a large man and even at a battle-hop, it does not take much time for a fellow with such long limbs to cover fifteen feet. Moriarty howled with rage and fear. He raised the Webley and fired, sending another bullet crashing into Holmes’s torso—I couldn’t see exactly where, but I saw him stagger.
Stagger. Not falter.
Still Holmes came on. Moriarty took a step back, dropping the Fasces box. Holmes was on him now. Normally, Holmes’s physical strength was enough to overmatch my own and—I was sure—Mary’s. But then, he’d just been shot rather badly. Twice. His grip closed over Moriarty’s right wrist, but I could tell he was shaky and feeble. He yanked Mary to the edge of the path, trying to force her over, and I cried out in protest. Funny, that. I’d intended quite the same, but to see it happen… well… it was a horrible sight. I didn’t care much for Mary, but she’d never done anything to deserve such a fate.
Yet Holmes was too weak to inflict it. Moriarty twisted away from the edge and, I think, nearly managed to get his wrist free of Holmes’s grasp. In this, at least, he was frustrated. Holmes hung on resolutely, but his face was pale in the moonlight. Moriarty lost his grip on the Webley, which clattered against the side of the mountain, before falling onto the muddy path. That is not to say he’d been disarmed, however.
“Kullek!” Moriarty shouted, and the silver blade appeared in his other hand. He jammed it deep into Holmes’s side. Holmes gave a cry of pain and protest, but refused to let go. Moriarty rewarded his tenacity by yanking his blade out, then plunging it in again, just beside the first cut.
And then—it would seem—the weak and faltering Holmes came to the same conclusion I had: that too much thought for self-preservation would doom all hope. He clasped his right elbow down over Moriarty’s sword arm; the pair were now entangled on both sides. Then, with a final effort, Holmes gave a mighty, one-legged push.
I was already running forward by that time. And if I’d started a moment sooner, who knows how things might have gone? My outstretched fingers felt just the whip of fabric as Holmes’s greatcoat brushed them.
How horrible Moriarty’s scream was! Because, of course, it was really Mary’s.
And how vexingly overconfident were Holmes’s final words to me. As he plunged into that black and churning chasm, he croaked, “Don’t worry, Watson! I’ll be right baaaaaaaaaaaa—”
Sixty or seventy feet down, Holmes and Moriarty dashed against the rocks on the far side and Holmes’s voice stopped. In the darkness, against the white spray of the falls, I could just see their forms careen back and—I think—collide with the rocks on the closest side.
Then… no more.
No sound but the rush of the falls as thousands of gallons of water fell and fell and fell into that churning cauldron that had just swallowed my friend, my wife, and our nemesis.
Don’t worry, Watson! I’ll be right baaaaaaaaaaaa—
Nothing to see but strange, ethereal light rippling over the path and one confused London doctor, staring down into a chasm.
I couldn’t believe it.
Or, no. I didn’t believe it.
I mean, I knew they had fallen in. And I knew Mary was never coming out. Holmes and my betrayal of Mary was now complete. She’d come to us for help, as had so many before her. We had failed her, utterly. We never recovered the treasure she’d engaged us to find. I’d mocked and mistreated her. Holmes had bound her soul to a fellow she didn’t care for. I’d robbed her of a chance at matrimonial happiness. And now, due to a struggle she’d never taken an interest in, she was dead.
If there were such a thing as divine justice, I knew Holmes and I must answer heavily for what we had done to Mary Morstan.
But Holmes, you know! I really thought Holmes would be all right. I expected to find him climbing up the rocky side any minute—and me reaching down with a smile on my face to help him scrabble up the last few feet. Or he’d come levitating up out of the spray, brushing a bit of dirt off his sleeve and explaining that the idea his powers could be stripped from him had been laughable from the start. Because… because he was just so impossibly hard to kill. By God, the things I’d seen that man survive…
And Moriarty, too. I was certain I’d see him. I knew only too well what happened to the spirit of James Moriarty when
