I shall be brief, and yet exact, in the little which remains for me totell. It is not a subject on which I would willingly dwell, and yet I amconscious that a duty devolves upon me to omit no detail.
It was on the 3d of May that we reached the little village of Meiringen,where we put up at the Englischer Hof, then kept by Peter Steiler theelder. Our landlord was an intelligent man, and spoke excellent English,having served for three years as waiter at the Grosvenor Hotel inLondon. At his advice, on the afternoon of the 4th we set off together,with the intention of crossing the hills and spending the night at thehamlet of Rosenlaui. We had strict injunctions, however, on no accountto pass the falls of Reichenbach, which are about half-way up the hill,without making a small detour to see them.
It is indeed, a fearful place. The torrent, swollen by the melting snow,plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like thesmoke from a burning house. The shaft into which the river hurls itselfis an immense chasm, lined by glistening coal-black rock, and narrowinginto a creaming, boiling pit of incalculable depth, which brims over andshoots the stream onward over its jagged lip. The long sweep of greenwater roaring forever down, and the thick flickering curtain of sprayhissing forever upward, turn a man giddy with their constant whirl andclamor. We stood near the edge peering down at the gleam of the breakingwater far below us against the black rocks, and listening to thehalf-human shout which came booming up with the spray out of the abyss.
The path has been cut half-way round the fall to afford a complete view,but it ends abruptly, and the traveler has to return as he came. We hadturned to do so, when we saw a Swiss lad come running along it witha letter in his hand. It bore the mark of the hotel which we had justleft, and was addressed to me by the landlord. It appeared that within avery few minutes of our leaving, an English lady had arrived who was inthe last stage of consumption. She had wintered at Davos Platz, and wasjourneying now to join her friends at Lucerne, when a sudden hemorrhagehad overtaken her. It was thought that she could hardly live a fewhours, but it would be a great consolation to her to see an Englishdoctor, and, if I would only return, etc. The good Steiler assured mein a postscript that he would himself look upon my compliance as a verygreat favor, since the lady absolutely refused to see a Swiss physician,and he could not but feel that he was incurring a great responsibility.
The appeal was one which could not be ignored. It was impossible torefuse the request of a fellow-countrywoman dying in a strange land. YetI had my scruples about leaving Holmes. It was finally agreed, however,that he should retain the young Swiss messenger with him as guide andcompanion while I returned to Meiringen. My friend would stay somelittle time at the fall, he said, and would then walk slowly over thehill to Rosenlaui, where I was to rejoin him in the evening. As I turnedaway I saw Holmes, with
his back against a rock and his arms folded,gazing down at the rush of the waters. It was the last that I was everdestined to see of him in this world.
When I was near the bottom of the descent I looked back. It wasimpossible, from that position, to see the fall, but I could see thecurving path which winds over the shoulder of the hill and leads to it.Along this a man was, I remember, walking very rapidly.
I could see his black figure clearly outlined against the green behindhim. I noted him, and the energy with which he walked but he passed frommy mind again as I hurried on upon my errand.
It may have been a little over an hour before I reached Meiringen. OldSteiler was standing at the porch of his hotel.
"Well," said I, as I came hurrying up, "I trust that she is no worse?"
A look of surprise passed over his face, and at the first quiver of hiseyebrows my heart turned to lead in my breast.
"You did not write this?" I said, pulling the letter from my pocket."There is no sick Englishwoman in the hotel?"
"Certainly not!" he cried. "But it has the hotel mark upon it! Ha, itmust have been written by that tall Englishman who came in after you hadgone. He said--"
But I waited for none of the landlord's explanations. In a tingle offear I was already running down the village street, and making for thepath which I had so lately descended. It had taken me an hour to comedown. For all my efforts two more had passed before I found myself atthe fall of Reichenbach once more. There was Holmes's Alpine-stock stillleaning against the rock by which I had left him. But there was no signof him, and it was in vain that I shouted. My only answer was my ownvoice reverberating in a rolling echo from the cliffs around me.
It was the sight of that Alpine-stock which turned me cold and sick.He had not gone to Rosenlaui, then. He had remained on that three-footpath, with sheer wall on one side and sheer drop on the other, until hisenemy had overtaken him. The young Swiss had gone too. He had probablybeen in the pay of Moriarty, and had left the two men together. And thenwhat had happened? Who was to tell us what had happened then?
I stood for a minute or two to collect myself, for I was dazed with thehorror of the thing. Then I began to think of Holmes's own methods andto try to practise them in reading this tragedy. It was, alas, only tooeasy to do. During our conversation we had not gone to the end of thepath, and the Alpine-stock marked the place where we had stood. Theblackish soil is kept forever soft by the incessant drift of spray,and a bird would leave its tread upon it. Two lines of footmarks wereclearly marked along the farther end of the path, both leading away fromme. There were none returning. A few yards from the end the soil wasall ploughed up into a patch of mud, and the branches and ferns whichfringed the chasm were torn and bedraggled. I lay upon my face andpeered over with the spray spouting up all around me. It had darkenedsince I left, and now I could only see here and there the glistening ofmoisture upon the black walls, and far away down at the end of the shaftthe gleam of the broken water. I shouted; but only the same half-humancry of the fall was borne back to my ears.
But it was destined that I should after all have a last word of greetingfrom my friend and comrade. I have said that his Alpine-stock had beenleft leaning against a rock which jutted on to the path. From the top ofthis bowlder the gleam of something bright caught my eye, and, raisingmy hand, I found that it came from the silver cigarette-case which heused to carry. As I took it up a small square of paper upon which ithad lain fluttered down on to the ground. Unfolding it, I found that itconsisted of three pages torn from his note-book and addressed to me. Itwas characteristic of the man that the direction was a precise, and thewriting as firm and clear, as though it had been written in his study.
My dear Watson [it said], I write these few lines through the courtesyof Mr. Moriarty, who awaits my convenience for the final discussion ofthose questions which lie between us. He has been giving me a sketchof the methods by which he avoided the English police and kept himselfinformed of our movements. They certainly confirm the very high opinionwhich I had formed of his abilities. I am pleased to think that I shallbe able to free society from any further effects of his presence, thoughI fear that it is at a cost which will give pain to my friends, andespecially, my dear Watson, to you. I have already explained to you,however, that my career had in any case reached its crisis, and thatno possible conclusion to it could be more congenial to me than this.Indeed, if I may make a full confession to you, I was quite convincedthat the letter from Meiringen was a hoax, and I allowed you to departon that errand under the persuasion that some development of this sortwould follow. Tell Inspector Patterson that the papers which he needsto convict the gang are in pigeonhole M., done up in a blue envelopeand inscribed "Moriarty." I made every disposition of my property beforeleaving England, and handed it to my brother Mycroft. Pray give mygreetings to Mrs. Watson, and believe me to be, my dear fellow,
Very sincerely yours,
Sherlock Holmes
A few words may suffice to tell the little that remains. An examinationby experts leaves little doubt that a personal contest between the twomen ended, as it could hardly fail to end in such a situation, in theirreeling over, locked in each other's arms. Any attempt at recovering thebodies was absolutely hopeless, and there, deep down in that dreadfulcaldron of swirling water and seething foam, will lie for all time themost dangerous criminal and the foremost champion of the law of theirgeneration. The Swiss youth was never found again, and there can be nodoubt that he was one of the numerous agents whom Moriarty kept in hisemploy. As to the gang, it will be within the memory of the publichow completely the evidence which Holmes had accumulated exposed theirorganization, and how heavily the hand of the dead man weighedupon them. Of their terrible chief few details came out during theproceedings, and if I have now been compelled to make a clear statementof his career it is due to those injudicious champions who haveendeavored to clear his memory by attacks upon him whom I shall everregard as the best and the wisest man whom I have ever known.