Chronicles of the Lost Years (The Sherlock Holmes Series) (32 page)

“I am replying to your letter in person,” I replied. An appalling consideration had struck me. Did Sullah know about Elizabeth’s disappearance? It was not the sort of news one gave within seconds of greeting the other.

But Sullah was examining me with his perceptive, wise eyes. So I fell to a half truth. “I needed a holiday, too.”

•ï¡÷¡ï• •ï¡÷¡ï• •ï¡÷¡ï•

We were at Sullah’s home before I found the privacy and the moment to break the news, if news it was, to Sullah. He had not mentioned either Holmes or Elizabeth throughout our short journey and I wondered if that was because the majority of his household still believed Holmes was a Norwegian called Sigerson.

So I held my tongue. On the first day after our arrival, however, I got my chance.

Sullah found me at sunset, sitting on a flat rock, facing east. “Holmes used to sit there contemplating Tibet from afar.”

I nodded. “I guessed it was this one.”

Sullah gathered his sticks in one hand and lowered himself to the rock. “You’re troubled.”

“I came to talk to you of Elizabeth, Sullah. But I do not know how to break the news.”

He sighed. “There is no need. I know. Tayisha wrote to me.”

“Is that why you have avoided mentioning their names for two days?”

“Partly. And I sense, old friend, that they are very much on your mind. If you are truly here for rest, then it would be an unkindness for me to stir the memories.” But I heard a note of query in his tone.

I had come thousands of miles to explain myself and ask the question that Sullah was giving me the opportunity to ask. Yet it took all my self-will to state it aloud. I hesitated. Finally I jumped in with both feet and bad grammar, letting it tumble out how it would, from the beginning; Beatrice O’Connor, Moran, the child Elizabeth and Wiggins, Elizabeth’s tutelage and admonition of lost opportunities, Holmes’ failure. And finally, my new hopes:

“She was happiest here—where she had perfect freedom. It was important to her. I suspect, in the end, more important than Holmes was to her. I thought…if she were still alive, she would return here.”

After a long moment, Sullah said softly; “Perhaps. If she were alive.”

“Then she hasn’t.”

Sullah remained silent.

I studied him. “Your first loyalty is to Elizabeth, of course,” I said slowly.

“Someone must watch out for her.”

“I thought I was.”

Sullah gazed at the ground for a long moment. Finally he spoke softly and with pure kindness. “I believed your loyalty was to Holmes.”

“It was. It is.”

“Then why are you here, my friend? Holmes believes her dead. Have his skills deteriorated to the point where you no longer trust him as you once did?”

I could find no answer to this.

“What if he needs you? You are here, on a mission which could only bring hurt to both of you, no matter what its outcome. A friend does not do this thing.”

•ï¡÷¡ï• •ï¡÷¡ï• •ï¡÷¡ï•

I searched out Sullah tonight after evening prayers and gave him a copy of this chronicle. “You can consider it yours, Sullah,” I explained. “But if ever….”

Sullah nodded. “I understand.”

We said our good-byes then, for neither of us pretended that Sullah would ever make the trip to England again. I didn’t need to call on my medical skills to know that he would barely last the year out. Sullah is aware of his body’s betrayal, but he has made his peace.

I, too, intend to make mine. Tomorrow I am going home.

J.H. Watson, M.D.

Mashhad, Persia

March, 1904

• Footnote •
_________________________

•ï¡÷¡ï•

IT IS A MATTER of record that Sherlock Holmes wrote two stories for
The Strand
magazine, and they were among the last cases ever published. The stories that followed were written by Watson, but they were all reports on earlier cases.

Shortly after Holmes wrote his stories for
The Strand
, he retired to the Sussex Downs to study bees. The year was 1903.

The friendship between Watson and Holmes was restored, although it probably never regained its old glory. However, it worked well enough for the two to operate together on the eve of World War I to outwit and defeat Von Bork, a spy from the German Emperor’s army.

When hostilities between England and Germany became formal, Watson returned to his old regiment, the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. No records exist of Sherlock Holmes’ war service, but given his talents it is probably a safe assumption that his work was solitary, covert and exemplary.

However, that is another story….

More of Sherlock Holmes by Tracy Cooper-Posey

It is 1917 and the Great War has been raging for three long years.

Mycroft Holmes grows suspicious of one of his agents in
Constantinople
. Naturally, he wants to send a man to investigate who knows the language, the people and has an exemplary war record, including fourteen months posing as a German officer in
Berlin
. But Sherlock Holmes proves to be, for once, stubbornly unwilling to fulfill his older brother’s request.

When Mycroft is shot and left for dead, Holmes is forced to
Constantinople
to uncover the man behind the deed. Unfortunately, before he was assaulted Mycroft failed to communicate which agent was the turncoat.

So begins Holmes’ reluctant return to the
Near East
. Not only does the adventure provoke a bagful of memories both bitter and sweet but the hunt for the agent who betrayed them unravels with breath-robbing surprises that even Holmes with all his skills could never have anticipated.

Look for
The Case of the Reluctant Agent
—available soon!

• The Final Problem •
_________________________

•ï¡÷¡ï•

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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. In an incoherent and, as I deeply feel, an entirely inadequate fashion, I have endeavored to give some account of my strange experiences in his company from the chance which first brought us together at the period of the “Study in Scarlet,” up to the time of his interference in the matter of the “Naval Treaty”—an interference which had the unquestionable effect of preventing a serious international complication. It was my intention to have stopped there, and to have said nothing of that event which has created a void in my life which the lapse of two years has done little to fill. My hand has been forced, however, by the recent letters in which Colonel James Moriarty defends the memory of his brother, and I have no choice but to lay the facts before the public exactly as they occurred. I alone know the absolute truth of the matter, and I am satisfied that the time has come when no good purpose is to be served by its suppression. As far as I know, there have been only three accounts in the public press: that in the
Journal de Geneve
on May 6th, 1891, the Reuter’s despatch in the English papers on May 7th, and finally the recent letter to which I have alluded. Of these the first and second were extremely condensed, while the last is, as I shall now show, an absolute perversion of the facts. It lies with me to tell for the first time what really took place between Professor Moriarty and Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

It may be remembered that after my marriage, and my subsequent start in private practice, the very intimate relations which had existed between Holmes and myself became to some extent modified. He still came to me from time to time when he desired a companion in his investigation, but these occasions grew more and more seldom, until I find that in the year 1890 there were only three cases of which I retain any record. During the winter of that year and the early spring of 1891, I saw in the papers that he had been engaged by the French government upon a matter of supreme importance, and I received two notes from Holmes, dated from Narbonne and from Nimes, from which I gathered that his stay in France was likely to be a long one. It was with some surprise, therefore, that I saw him walk into my consulting-room upon the evening of April 24th. It struck me that he was looking even paler and thinner than usual.

“Yes, I have been using myself up rather too freely,” he remarked, in answer to my look rather than to my words; “I have been a little pressed of late. Have you any objection to my closing your shutters?”

The only light in the room came from the lamp upon the table at which I had been reading. Holmes edged his way round the wall and flinging the shutters together, he bolted them securely.

“You are afraid of something?” I asked.

“Well, I am.”

“Of what?”

“Of air-guns.”

“My dear Holmes, what do you mean?”

“I think that you know me well enough, Watson, to understand that I am by no means a nervous man. At the same time, it is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you. Might I trouble you for a match?” He drew in the smoke of his cigarette as if the soothing influence was grateful to him.

“I must apologize for calling so late,” said he, “and I must further beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave your house presently by scrambling over your back garden wall.”

“But what does it all mean?” I asked.

He held out his hand, and I saw in the light of the lamp that two of his knuckles were burst and bleeding.

“It is not an airy nothing, you see,” said he, smiling. “On the contrary, it is solid enough for a man to break his hand over. Is Mrs. Watson in?”

“She is away upon a visit.”

“Indeed! You are alone?”

“Quite.”

“Then it makes it the easier for me to propose that you should come away with me for a week to the Continent.”

“Where?”

“Oh, anywhere. It’s all the same to me.”

There was something very strange in all this. It was not Holmes’s nature to take an aimless holiday, and something about his pale, worn face told me that his nerves were at their highest tension. He saw the question in my eyes, and, putting his finger-tips together and his elbows upon his knees, he explained the situation.

“You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?” said he.

“Never.”

“Aye, there’s the genius and the wonder of the thing!” he cried. “The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That’s what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime. I tell you, Watson, in all seriousness, that if I could beat that man, if I could free society of him, I should feel that my own career had reached its summit, and I should be prepared to turn to some more placid line in life. Between ourselves, the recent cases in which I have been of assistance to the royal family of Scandinavia, and to the French republic, have left me in such a position that I could continue to live in the quiet fashion which is most congenial to me, and to concentrate my attention upon my chemical researches. But I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged.”

“What has he done, then?”

“His career has been an extraordinary one. He is a man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty. At the age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon the Binomial Theorem, which has had a European vogue. On the strength of it he won the Mathematical Chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all appearances, a most brilliant career before him. But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers. Dark rumors gathered round him in the university town, and eventually he was compelled to resign his chair and to come down to London, where he set up as an army coach. So much is known to the world, but what I am telling you now is what I have myself discovered.

“As you are aware, Watson, there is no one who knows the higher criminal world of London so well as I do. For years past I have continually been conscious of some power behind the malefactor, some deep organizing power which forever stands in the way of the law, and throws its shield over the wrong-doer. Again and again in cases of the most varying sorts—forgery cases, robberies, murders—I have felt the presence of this force, and I have deduced its action in many of those undiscovered crimes in which I have not been personally consulted. For years I have endeavored to break through the veil which shrouded it, and at last the time came when I seized my thread and followed it, until it led me, after a thousand cunning windings, to ex-Professor Moriarty of mathematical celebrity.