The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls

by King, John R.

  I look to my two young companions, but they drowse on a couch, their chins resting on their chests. I am left to these books, these faded memories.

  I start at the beginning, reading Dr. James Watson’s none-too-complimentary assessment of my knowledge base. He seems to think it a character flaw not to know whether the earth revolves around the sun but to care deeply about the different varieties of tobacco ash.

  Does the earth truly revolve around the sun? What difference does it make?

  Of course … what difference does tobacco ash make? In a world with Mozart, with Tesla, with Kilamanjaro, what sort of fool would spend his time poking about in ash?

  My sort of fool, apparently.

  Even as the thought is forming, I am up from my seat, wandering among the reading tables, following the smoke signals. I gather the three nearest ashtrays, bring them back to my spot, and set them before me. The gentlemen who were using them seem put out, but when one of the men approaches my station and sees me rubbing ash between my thumb and forefinger, he retreats to find a different tray.

  I inspect the ashes, noting the colors, the flakiness, the lingering scents of oil and tar. “Yes—this is India btack—a cigarette tobacco, and this is Cuban maduro, and, unless I miss my guess, from a somewhat stale Upmann.” A quick glance at two of the men demonstrates that I am right. “And this—it is not tobacco at all, but a burned paper note.” I find one small, fragile remnant that bears the tops of the letters l, o, v, and e, written by a woman’s hand—a distraught hand, judging by the tremulous marks and the jag atop the o. Again, it takes but a glance at the weepy-eyed man who had surrendered the tray to confirm my suspicions.

  “How strange!” I exclaim, evincing scowls from patrons nearby. Yes, how strange. How strange I am, to care about such things. Ashes and the composition of soil and the variations in bootblack … While other men filled their minds with planetary declinations and the properties of comets, I do idiot auguries in ash. It seems I have not lost my knack—though what good is such a knack? It’s just a parlor trick, just deduction, when what I really need is memory.

  I read on, learning of my considerable abilities on the violin; my left hand twitches, awakening to the notes that reside in these long fingers of mine. And then I read of my mastery of disguises; I can almost feel the thousand false beards and mustaches and fake noses and brows and improvised moles and boils that I have affixed to my face. And then I read of my addiction to cocaine, that white devil that comes in through the veins and pervades heart and soul and all; I need only roll back my sleeve to see its mark on me.

  How strange a man I am! Oh, to remember … I’m getting glimpses, but my memory is shot through with holes.

  “Thomas?” I say, glancing over to where he and Anna slouch. “Thomas!”

  He startles awake and stares blearily at me. “What? What is it? Moriarty?”

  “No,” I reply, lifting the volumes in my arms. “Let’s find a flat somewhere, some garret we can rent for cheap, where Anna can sleep and you and I can work through something.”

  He sits forward and rubs his hands on his face. “Work through what?”

  “I need that electrical contraption of yours.”

  Thomas shakes his head slowly. “Are you insane? Last time it drove the soul right out of your body.”

  “But you said it had been used to aid in restoring memory. The brain is, after all, an electric system. Perhaps my brain simply needs a shock to get it primed and firing again.”

  “At best, it’s quackery, Site—I mean, Holmes.” Thomas groans. “At worst, it’s a form of execution.” Anna stirs beside him, and he looks at her. “But one thing’s sure—we could use a place to rest—”

  “Come along then. Pick up that lady fair of yours and your electric box and let’s find a corner to operate in.”

  35

  BEING THE GREAT MAN

  If there is any city that welcomes a weary young man with a weary young woman clinging to his shoulders and a weary old man ruminating about “not being the man I once was” as they walk down the street, that city is Paris.

  It was almost pleasant, to be a walking divan for Anna. She was half asleep, languidly leaning on me. From the other side, Holmes was leaning on me, too—but in a different way.

  “Do you honestly believe I could be the great man Sherlock Holmes?”

  Hand catching Anna’s waist as she stumbled in exhaustion, I looked him in the eye and said, “I know you’re Sherlock Holmes.”

  My friend nodded vacantly and said, “He was a great man.”

  “He is a great man,” I replied.

  “We shall see.”

  36

  CHASING THE THUNDERBOLT

  We’ve found the perfect flat—one room with two gables and a tattered Indian screen that will allow Anna to sleep in privacy while Thomas and I pursue our experiments. I take a moment to analyze the contraption—a box with a crank on one end and black wires extending from the sides, each ending in a large alligator clip.

  “Peculiar gadget,” I say as I set the thing on a small table beside the chair in which I sit. “Part science and part magic.”

  “That’s the whole issue. Bad science and black magic,” Thomas replies dubiously. He is wetting a rag with a bit of red wine—which I’d purchased in part as anesthetic and in part to aid the conductivity of the skin. Thomas wipes the rag on each clip and on my fingertips, toes, and earlobes. “The current turns you into a five-pointed star, like the five points of the Celtic pentacle. The Finns used to create a similar pattern with lightning rods. It was a sort of shaman-generator—or an exorcism device.”

  I take a swig of the wine—ah, good French wine—and set it aside for the experiment. Holding two of the clips in one hand, I idly turn the crank. A stinging jolt leaps from clip to clip. Then, I reverse the motion of the crank, and the electrical sensation is altogether different—smooth and soothing. “Perhaps it’s not a matter of voltage, but of polarity.”

  “What?”

  “Which way did you turn that crank, my boy?”

  “What do you mean? Clockwise, I suppose, being right-handed.”

  “Try it counterclockwise this time, and let’s see if we gain a different effect.”

  Thomas’s face is a study in annoyance, but he dutifully sets the clips on my toes and hands and ears. The metal bites into my skin, and red wine weeps down as if from wounds. “Counterclockwise,” he says heavily.

  “Yes, and slowly.”

  Thomas takes hold of the crank, mentally traces a clock’s path, and then gently begins to turn the device. A warm buzz begins in my every extremity, propagating itself out across my skin. The sensation tingles, like ants marching up my legs and arms and down my neck. I feel as if I am faintly glowing. Still, though, my mind remains dark. “A little faster.”

  Thomas increases the speed of the revolutions.

  The energy feels hot now, arcing out of the electrodes and into my muscles. Legs and arms flex, neck and jaw clench, and some of the stray bolts jag through my mind. Still, it is not enough. “More!”

  Thomas spins the crank vigorously.

  My skin snaps tight across my skeleton, and my hair sizzles. I shudder.

  Next moment, I cannot feel a thing. I only see:

  A MAN sits alone in a train compartment—a large man, though he is curled in on himself and seems small. His brow is graven with grief. He stares down at a blank sheet of paper that lies on a board on his lap. Opening a jar of India ink, the man pokes a pen within, lifts it, and begins to write:

  It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was distinguished.

  This is not a hallucination. Nor is it a memory. It is an out-of-body vision. This train compartment truly exists somewhere, and this man truly sits within it, writing just those words.

  I move toward him—though I have no body. I am only a location in space, a consci
ousness. I reach out to touch the man’s shoulder.

  He starts, looking toward me. A bead of sweat creeps its way down his temple. “Holmes?”

  “Watson,” I say.

  Somehow, he hears me, and he stands. His eyes dart about the compartment, but then he blinks, flustered, and sits back down. “Only a phantasm … a dream.”

  “Watson.”

  His mustaches bristle, but he shakes his head. “Some stray memory from Baker Street.”

  Suddenly, the portals of memory open in my mind.

  I remember the book-lined drawing room with the wingback chairs by the grate and the pipe and the violin.

  I remember Irene Adler, the opera star who bested me at my own game—the only person ever to see through one of my disguises.

  I remember the speckled adder used to murder the rightful owners of a mansion in Stoke Moran.

  I remember the beryl coronet and the young man accused of breaking off a portion of it, though in truth he wished only to save the honor of a lady without any.

  I remember the great black hound that haunted the family Baskerville in their lonely house on the moor.

  But most of all, I remember Moriarty, that Napoleon of crime. I remember how I drew my web tight around him, and how I escaped his henchmen only to be cornered by the man himself at the Reichenbach Falls.

  I remember writing the letter that Watson even now draws from his breast pocket and unfolds in trembling hands and reads yet again:

  My Dear Watson:

  I write these few 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 … .

  He draws a shuddering breath, and lifts bloodshot eyes toward the ceiling. “Holmes.”

  “I’m still alive, Watson. I’m still alive.”

  SUDDENLY, I am once again slumping in a chair in a garret apartment in Paris. Little acrid coils of smoke rise from my hair.

  Thomas lets out a yelp, releases the crank, yanks a tablecloth from an end table, and pats down my smoking head. “Sorry, Silence—I mean, Holmes. I mean … What happened … ? I couldn’t tell if … it seemed almost as it …”

  “I went wandering, Thomas.”

  “Wandering?” he asks as he drags the singed cloth away.

  “I saw my old friend Dr. Watson. I saw his grief, and I spoke some small comforts to him.”

  He shakes his head. “I knew it. Driven mad!”

  “No. I am not mad,” I say. “For the first time in days, I am myself. I remember, Thomas. Many things. Piece by piece, I’m becoming Sherlock Holmes.”

  37

  TRAP

  When Anna awoke on their second morning in Paris, everything had changed. Beyond the Indian screen, the boys had made the garret into a war room. They had laid a large map of London across the floorboards and dotted the map with scraps of paper pierced by pushpins. Each scrap held some scrawled epithet such as orange pips or engineer’s thumb. Beside this cluttered schematic lay another map: the streets of Paris with similar scraps—articles clipped from a newspaper.

  The sound of slicing newsprint directed Anna’s attention to Holmes—who reclined in a ragged divan and used Thomas’s dirk to cut another article from Le Temps. The moment the article fell from the page, he caught it in dexterous fingers and sent it spinning through the air like a snowflake.

  With an air of bleary annoyance, Thomas snatched the article from the wind and said, “Where does this one go?”

  “Montmartre,” Holmes said without looking up.

  Anna stepped from behind the screen and stretched. “Where’d you get the maps?”

  Thomas shot her a weary look as he pinned the latest article to Montmartre. “Mr. Holmes awoke me at three this morning so that we could be at the paper seller’s when the first edition of Le Temps arrived.”

  “And the paper seller happened to have maps for lost travelers,” Holmes interjected offhandedly.

  “He wanted to plot his cases on the map of London, and now, on the other map, he’s plotting the last forty-eight hours of crime in Paris.”

  “Patterns,” Holmes said loftily from behind Le Temps. “Water follows the lowest course and so erodes canyons. Crime does the same. Thomas and I”—he flung another snowflake of villainy across the room, causing Thomas to dance to snatch it—“have simply been mapping those waterways of crime. When your father—Professor Moriarty—arrives in Paris, we may need this map to track him down.”

  “May?” Thomas exclaimed. He had just spiked the newest article to the map and now looked up with the watchfulness of a meerkat. “You said this was vital—absolutely essential to catching him.”

  “Absolutely essential if our first plan fails,” Holmes said smoothly. He glanced to the window. “But we’ll have to put Plan B aside for the nonce. We have only seventy-one minutes left.”

  Both Thomas and Anna stared blankly at Holmes, but Thomas was the first to speak. “Seventy-one minutes until what?”

  “Seventy-one minutes until the next express from Bern arrives, the train that, no doubt, Professor Moriarty will be aboard.” Cupping a hand to his mouth, Holmes leaned confidentially toward Anna and said, “Le Temps also has the train schedules.”

  “We haven’t a clock or pocket watch,” Thomas said. “How do you know the time?”

  “Our window faces due south.”

  “So?”

  “When we arrived last evening, I received the precise time from the proprietor, counted the number of seconds we took to climb the stairs, and scratched a single line on the windowsill to mark the sun’s shadow at 8:42 P.M. I marked the shadow also at sunset, which Le Temps indicated would be at 9:14 P.M. Well, from there it is a simple bit of math to calculate minutes of arc. Then, I needed merely wait for sunrise—according to Le Temps at 6:18 A.M.—to mark the shadow and calculate the arc that would represent 7:38 A.M.—when we must enact our Plan A.”

  Thomas laughed aloud. “And yet you just wasted three of your seventy-one minutes describing your cleverness.”

  “I allowed four extra minutes—three for me to describe my cleverness and one for you two to stand in awe.” Holmes let the eviscerated Le Temps fall from his fingers to the floor and levered himself up. “But enough awe. We really must be going if we are to catch your father.”

  “To Gare Saint-Lazare!” Thomas proclaimed

  “No,” Holmes replied. “To the Orpheum Theater.” He swung open the door and stepped out.

  Thomas clapped shut his dangling jaw and followed. Anna brought up the rear. They descended four flights of switchback stairs, walked down a long hallway, and at last came out on the bustling streets of Paris. Thomas strode up on one side of Holmes, and Anna stepped up along the other, each of them risking an occasional glance his way, waiting for an explanation … .

  At last, Anna could take it no longer. “How do you know my father will be at the Orpheum Theater?”

  “He won’t,” Holmes replied flatly.

  Thomas actually growled. “Then why are we going there?”

  “Because they’re preparing the French premiere of A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen.”

  Thomas and Anna chorused together. “So?”

  Holmes glanced at each of them and said, “I’m Henrik Ibsen.” With that, he rounded the street corner and strode up to the front of a grand vaudeville house with a marquee that read, “La Comedie Française presente Une Maison de Poupee par Henrik Ibsen.”

  Holmes stepped to the front door and pounded solidly on it. An angry shout came from within, muffled but clearly meaning to repel unwanted visitors. Holmes knocked only th
e louder. More shouts resulted, growing nearer behind the door. Holmes rapped again.

  A bolt shot back, and the door of the theater swung open. A little old man stood in the gap, his spectacles magnifying bloodshot eyes and white hairs standing like electric discharges across his pate. “Au nom de Dieu, pourquoi me réveillez-vous de cette façon?” Holmes turned to Anna serenely and said with a thick Norwegian accent, “Would you please tell this man that I am Henrik Ibsen, come to inspect the theater where my play will be performed?” He then lifted a picture of himself, cut from Le Temps that morning. Trying to hide her smile, Anna translated Holmes’s message.

  As she spoke, the old man’s eyes grew wide with excitement and alarm. He responded in French, and Anna translated for him: “Forgive my foolishness. I didn’t recognize Mr. Ibsen without his muttonchops.”

  Holmes replied, “Facial hair is a friend to bandits and renegades. When a man has a play like A Doll’s House, though, he must shave so as to be noticed.”

  After Anna’s translation, the proprietor responded in French: “Mr. Ibsen. Forgive me! What an honor. Come in! Come in!”

  Holmes nodded with the air of a man utterly deserving of the deference given him.

  The proprietor led them through the theater, pointing out the somewhat frowsy foyer, the auditorium with its curved seats, the boxes and balconies that ringed all … .

  “The stage, man! The stage!” Holmes cried.

  The little man scuttled on, leading the group onto the apron and the proscenium, into the wings, and backstage. Holmes made a show of checking the flies and the lines that secured them before saying, “Thank you, my good man, but I need time to meditate, to explore.” Anna translated even as Holmes went on: “Please get back to your other duties so that I may commune with the place.”

  With a grateful bow, the proprietor backed away.

  Once he was gone, Thomas hissed, “What’s all this for? Moriarty will be arriving at Gare Saint-Lazare in thirty minutes.”