Michael Kurland - Victorian Villainy

“How do you know this, if you know nothing about them?” Lord Fotheringham asked.

“Alphonse Lamphier told me,” Holmes replied.

“What? How could-oh, I see.”

“Perhaps I should have said attempt to eliminate us,” Holmes continued, “since others have tried, and none have yet succeeded.”

I was amused at Holmes’s inclusion of me in his statement, as he had so often accused me of trying to eliminate him. But I said nothing.

“So what are we to do?” asked Baron van Durm.

“Out of the myriad of possibilities,” said Mycroft, “there are three that appeal more than the others.”

“And they are?” asked Lord Easthope.

“One is to keep my brother and Professor Moriarty visibly at home, to reassure our antagonists, while using others to subvert their plans.”

“Who?” asked Lord Easthope.

“What others?” echoed Baron van Durm.

“I have no idea,” confessed Mycroft Holmes. “The second possibility is to spirit Holmes and Moriarty away without letting the watchers know.”

“How?” asked Lord Fotheringham.

“Perhaps with wax dummies of the two placed in their windows and moved about to achieve a verisimilitude of life.”

“Ridiculous!” said Baron van Durm.

“The third possibility,” said Mycroft, “is for them to leave openly, but in such a fashion as to cause those watching them to conclude that their interest are elsewhere.”

Sherlock looked at his brother. “Brilliant, Mycroft,” he said. “And just how are we to achieve that?”

The possibilities of the situation appealed to me. “I’d suggest, Holmes, that you chase me to the ends of the earth, as you’ve so often threatened to do,” I said, smiling.

Holmes glared at me.

“Perhaps,” Mycroft said, “with a little modification, that is indeed what we should do.” He rubbed his right forefinger along the side of his nose. “If the two of you were to kill each other, nobody who knew you would be surprised. And I think it safe to assume that the watchers would cease watching in that event.”

“Kill each other?” Holmes repeated incredulously.

“How do you propose they do that?” asked Baron van Durm.

Mycroft shrugged. “Somehow and someplace where there can be no suggestion that it was a sham,” he said. “Plunging over the side of a tall building together would suffice. Perhaps the Eiffel Tower.”

Now this was being carried a bit too far. “And how do you propose we survive the fall?” I asked.

Mycroft sighed. “I suppose it should be somewhere less public,” he said, “so you don’t really have to go over the edge.” He sounded honestly regretful. Which of us was he picturing leaping off a precipice, I wondered.

Baron van Durm snapped his fingers. “I know just the place!” he said. “Near the town of Meiringen in Switzerland there is a great waterfall on the Reichenbach river.”

“Reichenbach?” asked Holmes.

“A tributary of the Aar,” van Durm explained. “This spot has but one path leading out to it, and if you were said to have fallen, nobody would expect to find your remains. The river at that point is rapid, deep, and, er, punishing.”

“Why so far from home?” asked Lord Fotheringham.

“It has several advantages,” said Holmes thoughtfully. “Our trip there will give our opponents time to see that we are chasing each other rather than hunting for them, and it will leave us in Switzerland, and a lot closer to Germany and the village of Lindau.”

“Even so,” Mycroft agreed.

“Won’t that make them suspicious, your ending up in Switzerland?” Lord Easthope asked.

I ventured a reply. “They know nothing of our interest in Lindau, and if they believe us dead, it won’t matter anyway.”

“That is so,” Easthope agreed.

“So,” said Lord Fotheringham. “Do you two gentlemen believe that you can put your personal enmity aside long enough to serve your queen?”

I was about to answer with a polite guffaw, or perhaps even a mild snicker, when to my surprise Holmes stood up and drew his shoulders back. “For queen and country,” he said.

All eyes were at that instant on me. I shrugged. “I have nothing on for the next few weeks,” I said.

With a slight change in the original plan, the race across Europe was to be carried out with a verisimilitude designed to convince Watson, as well as any onlookers, that it was genuine. The change was that I was to pursue Holmes rather than the other way around. Mycroft decided that would be more convincing.

Two days later the great chase began. Holmes called upon Watson to tell him that I was trying to kill him (Holmes), and he must flee to Europe. The tale was that my “gang” was about to be rounded up by the police, but until that was accomplished Holmes was in great danger. Watson agreed to accompany him in his flight, and the next day joined Holmes in “the second first-class carriage from the front” of the Continental Express at Victoria Station. Holmes was disguised as a humble elderly prelate, but Watson wore no disguise, and so the watchers had no trouble watching. They saw Holmes and Watson flee in the Express, and watched me engage a Special Train to pursue them. Holmes and Watson appeared to elude me by abandoning their luggage and getting off the Express at Canterbury. They went cross-country to Newhaven, and thence by the paddle steamer Brittany to Dieppe.

Shaking my fist and murmuring “Curses, foiled again!” I went straight through to Paris and lingered about their luggage for several days, apparently waiting for them to come and claim it. When they didn’t show I put the word out among the European underworld that I would pay a substantial reward for information as to the whereabouts of two Englishmen who looked thus-and-so. Eventually word came to me, and I spent several days pursuing them about Europe, followed in turn by several gentlemen who did their best to stay just out of sight.

As planned, I caught up with Holmes and Watson in the village of Meiringen in Switzerland on May 6 ^ th. They had gone after lunch to look at the falls, about a two-hour hike away from the inn, and I sent a boy with a note to Watson designed to lure him back to the inn to care for a mythical sick woman. Holmes was then to write a letter to Watson, put it and some article of clothing on the ledge, and disappear; leaving it to be believed that he and I had gone over the edge in a mighty battle of good and evil. Humph! I would then fade away from the scene and meet Holmes in Lindau in four days.

But it was not to be. Even as the lad scurried off to carry the note to Watson, I was forced to change the plan. I followed and concealed myself behind a boulder when I saw the lad and Watson hurrying back. Then I rushed forward to the ledge, where Holmes had already put the note in his silver cigarette-box, placed it by his alpenstock at the side of a rock, and was enjoying one last pipe of that foul tobacco he smokes before disappearing.

“Aha!” he said, upon spying me approach. “I knew it was too good to be true! So it’s to be an all-out fight to the death, is it professor?” He sprang to his feet and grabbed for the alpenstock.

“Don’t speak nonsense, Holmes,” I growled. “One of the men following us reached the inn just as I sent the lad off with the note. If I didn’t come after you while he watched, he couldn’t possibly be convinced that we both plunged off the cliff.”

“So!” said Holmes. “It seems we must fight after all, or at least leave behind convincing marks of a scuffle, and perhaps a few bits of tattered clothing.”

“And then we must find some way to leave this ledge without going back the way we came. Two sets of footprints returning on the path would give the game away.” I walked over to the edge and looked down. The way was sheer, and steep, and in some places the rock face appeared to be undercut, so that it would be impossible to climb down without pitons and ropes and a variety of other mountaineering gear that we had neglected to bring. “We can’t go down,” I said.