Sherlock Holmes and The Adventure of The Cold-Served Revenge

XVI: Professor Moriarty’s Legacy

In those few seconds I aged a few years.

As I stood in the entrance to the dining room, pointing the revolver at the Darringfords and their murderous assistant, I realised that my desire to save Holmes from the clutches of our enemies had prevailed over common sense. My rash conduct was of little help to the detective. Indeed, I had put myself in danger and risked returning the documents which we had obtained so laboriously.

Then the suffragette Veronica resolved my dilemma of which of the three targets to take aim at first.

She ripped open the hem of her skirt and leapt with a terrible roar onto the fully laid table. She kicked aside the decorative placemats and ran across the table.

Her outstretched hands with their sharp fingernails and her bared saliva-coated teeth were rapidly approaching me.

I later often wondered about and regretted my actions, but at that moment my fingers responded instinctively.

Veronica was moments from hurling herself at me.

But the second-to-last chamber in the revolver was the deadly one.

It went off in my hands and the shrapnel projectile left the barrel with a loud roar. It hit Veronica in the face. The bullet immediately shattered and made her already ugly face even uglier. In short, it ceased to exist. It turned into mincemeat, just as Rupert had said.

Her body hit the floor with a thud, followed by shreds of skin and flesh. One of the dead woman’s size five shoes, which in Venice had put us on her trail, flew off and landed near Holmes’s chair. Alice’s brother laughed madly, but did not move. I opened my mouth and lowered the weapon.

Alice’s hand fell limp and the hammer dropped to the floor. Holmes alertly kicked it out of her reach. The noise brought her back to her senses and forced her to act. She shuddered and pushing past the seated detective crossed the dead body of her servant with disgust and jumped right in front of me. I was too surprised by what I had done to be able to resist, but fortunately she did not want to fight.

She shoved me contemptuously and wrestled away the tube containing the documents.

“Who is this scarecrow we have here?” she laughed.

I was powerless to stop her. She took the precious tube from me as though I were a small child. Then she took the documents that were under my waistcoat. She hissed something and ran away.

“Stop her! She must not get away!” cried Holmes attempting to rise from the chair. He clutched his paralysed hand to his body and stumbled after her.

“Rupert, take care of them!” Alice cried, while she feverishly searched for the pistol behind the wardrobe.

Rupert leapt out of his chair, growled like a wild animal, and blocked our path. He turned up the sleeves of his shirt, clenched his fists and assumed a boxer’s stance.

My friend and I formed a phalanx around him, hoping that our numerical superiority could overcome his massive fists.

But this was not the case.

Though we hurled ourselves at him it was like two bugs going after an elephant. While I jabbed weakly at his face and dodged his mighty swings, Holmes jumped on him from behind and tried with his good hand to lock him in a half nelson. As this made him a greater danger to Rupert than my pitiful thrusts, the lord diverted his attention from me and turned to the detective.

Alice had meanwhile located the gun, but she did not dare fire while we were wrestling with her brother. Instead she ran off with the documents and disappeared among the columns in the hallway.

Our struggle continued with undiminished intensity. There was a lot at stake. Rupert reached for Holmes with his great paw and flung him lightly over his head.

The detective flew forward and fell between me and the nobleman, stomach first on the ground. He tried to break his fall, but landed heavily on his crushed finger. He groaned and almost fainted from the pain.

Rupert bent towards him, flipped him over on his back and grabbed him by his sweater like a rag doll. He tossed him in the air and flung him onto the table. The breakfast dishes came crashing to the floor as the detective slid across the whole length of the table to the other side, where his body collided with the wall and fell again on the floor.

He no longer even groaned. I was worried that he did not get up.

His lordship roared like an animal and slowly turned towards me. I backed away from him gingerly, but to no avail. This blue-blooded mountain of man lurched at me horribly like a wild buffalo. I stumbled on Veronica’s corpse, rolled back and fell in a puddle of blood. I wanted to regain my footing, but my hands and feet slid in the darkening sticky fluid.

What could a man entering the autumn of life do against a hulk of forty in his prime?

But the Lord works in mysterious ways.

I felt like a beetle lying on its back, powerlessly waving its legs while a predator descends upon it. But behind the predator there appeared a shadow with the profile of an eagle.

It was Holmes!

Despite a severe contusion in his hand he was clutching a knight’s shield which he had removed from the wall. I would have selected the axe, but the detective never wanted to kill his opponents, just deliver justice.

Darringford was in such a frenzy that he did not notice him.

The detective grimaced as he raised the shield over his head and brought it down on Rupert’s bull neck.

For a moment he stood motionless, as though thinking about what had just happened. Then eyes bulging, he staggered and began to fall. He almost fell right on top of me, but Holmes shoved him so that he toppled to the side.

“That was close,” I said.

He tossed aside the shield and helped me get up. My shirt was covered in Veronica’s blood and stuck to my body. Holmes rubbed his crippled hand and wiped the blood. I took a look at it. The tip of the index finger was crushed and the rest of the fingers were badly bruised.

“By attempting to save me you have proved your friendship,” he said. “At the same time you have jeopardised everything that we have worked for!”

“Forgive me,” I said.

There was nothing more I could say.

“Do not apologise. We must act. She cannot have gotten far!”

We headed for the hall where we had last seen Alice. From there the doors leading to the courtyard in front of the castle were wide open.

It was already light outside. The sky was filled with clouds and it looked like it would rain.

The yard was full of Moriarty’s legacy: heavy machinery produced by the leading munitions factories of Europe, prototypes of weapons for which the owners had paid with their lives. Under wooden scaffolding stood a tank and to the side was a yellow two-seater triplane armed with machine guns. There were also cannons, howitzers and guns of every size and type imaginable, war machines that could plunge the world into catastrophe. These prototypes were waiting here for Tankosić, displayed in all their monstrous glory.

I remembered what Holmes had told me when he collected me at the break of dawn at the side door of the castle. He had been absolutely right.

To the left of where we stood were several low outbuildings.

On our right was a castle gate, enclosed from within by a lattice. When we ran out into the courtyard the gate screeched as it lifted.

There were gunshots. Two bullets dug into the trampled grass in front of us.

Alice’s old Model-T Ford burst out from among the vehicles parked at the gate, which included Rupert’s Silver Ghost under a canvas. Holmes and I jumped to either side. While I hid behind the open doors of the castle the detective ran towards the outbuildings.

“We don’t have a weapon!” he shouted at me. “Watson, you must find one!”

From where he was he had no chance of finding anything to counter her pistol. Once again I was our only hope. I waited until Holmes reached a position of relative safety behind the windows of the building adjacent to the castle. He crouched forward along the wall and as he climbed through the window, avoiding another round of gunfire, I dashed into the castle.

Alice fired at each of us again, but she was saving her ammunition.

“Hold on!” I called and returned to the hall where I had earlier seen a closet full of rifles.

The closet was open. The long racks held Rupert’s revolvers and rifles, some with special and to me incomprehensible modifications. I picked the one that seemed the most ordinary.

A sight consisting of several pieces of glass was mounted on the barrel. When I put it to my eye I realised that it was actually a telescope, permitting one to aim and shoot much farther than a conventional rifle.

Gripping the massive wooden handle of the rifle I felt a lot more secure. The bottom drawer contained boxes with bullets. I picked up a handful and quickly stuffed them in my pockets.

As I closed the glass door of the armoury I perked up. Something was wrong.

In the reflection in the glass I saw the dining room and the dead body of the headless suffragette. Except that where the unconscious Darringford should have been there was nothing. Our tussle and his defeat were marked by only a few bloody streaks.

I tightened my grip on the rifle and tiptoed into the dining room. The shield, the empty revolver, the broken dishes and overturned chairs, everything was where it should be. Except for Rupert. His bloody footsteps led to the corridor and the staircase.

I continued the search. The deadly silence did not reveal where the madman was hiding.

Monstrous ideas crept into my mind. All around me loomed high walls. Was he hiding behind a column waiting to ambush me? I cocked the rifle. The click of the lock gave off an eerie echo. Even the servants from the kitchen had disappeared upon hearing the first shots, apparently via the side entrance.

But I did not have time to waste on this degenerate lummox. Holmes was outside in a desperate situation and was waiting for my help. I prayed that Rupert had run off to his room and would leave us alone.

I backed out of the corridor and ran through the dining room to the entrance.

Cautiously I peered outside. The main gates were open, the latticework pulled back. The escape route appeared clear. But both cars were still standing in the courtyard.

Alice was sitting in her Model T and was trying to start it while keeping a watchful eye on the building where the detective was hiding. But the car would not budge. She did not notice me. She was frowning at the hood of the coughing vehicle and hitting the steering wheel.

Then I spied Holmes through one of the windows.

I motioned to him that I intended to follow her, but he waved his hand to indicate that I should not. His face was suddenly even paler. I wondered whether he had lost too much blood.

He pointed behind him and then to the countess. I understood that he was telling me that the building contained more than just buckets of feed and straw.

The detective had apparently decided to instead attempt to get back to me. But he could not do this without attracting Alice’s attention. I had to cover him. I waited until he was ready and when he jumped from the window and ran across the courtyard towards me I fired in the air. Alice was startled and ducked her head. Then she took cover behind the car and fired back blindly. This was perhaps even more dangerous to us than had she taken aim. Her bullets forced Holmes to rush for cover behind the tank.

He caught his breath and motioned for me to sneak behind him. I counted Alice’s shots and it seemed that she must have to reload her gun. I jumped from behind the door and with several hurried steps found myself again by the side of my friend.

“There is an entire laboratory filled with chemicals inside that building,” he said. “There is enough destructive power to decimate half of Europe! We must destroy it!”

He looked at the gun in my hand and scratched his chin thoughtfully.

There was not much that we could destroy with only one rifle.

Suddenly we heard angry shouting from the window on the first floor of the castle. We turned in the direction of the sound and Alice, who also turned, cried out from her hiding place.

“Rupert, no!”

Lord Darringford stood in the window, looking like a madman. In one hand he held a stick of dynamite and in the other a lit match. He lit the fuse, laughed maniacally and threw it at us. The dynamite arched and landed near us.

It exploded and everything around us shook. A shower of clay, sand and turf fell on our heads.

“Stop you fool!” Alice yelled. “You will ruin everything!”

He heard, but did listen. He pulled out another stick of dynamite.

This one landed right near the tank. The scaffolding swayed and started to collapse. The boards rained down upon us.

Holmes coughed up dust.

“I have an idea! We must get to that tank!”

We tossed aside the boards and were soon behind the tank. We quickly found the door and opened it. Inside there was room for a two-man crew.

Rupert, infuriated that we were still alive, sought to gain a better position and view. He then noticed what I had seen earlier. The roof of the outbuilding that contained the laboratory was adjacent to the wall of the castle, making it relatively easy to attain from the window in which Darringford stood. He only needed to swing across a ledge and jump several feet below.

While he shoved sticks of dynamite into his belt and Alice yelled at him furiously from below, Holmes and I enclosed ourselves in the tank.

We gladly discovered that it was a fully functional prototype. The barrel was loaded with one shot. The controls consisted of a relatively simple system of levers.

The detective grasped them and started the tank with his good hand.

The engine roared and began to run. Alice’s eyes widened and she jumped out of the car. With the tube of plans pressed closely to her breast, like a beloved child, she again started shooting at us. The bullets bounced harmlessly off the tank. From the narrow slit I saw how she turned numb.

For the first time she looked helpless.

Holmes shifted the levers and the tank slowly rumbled. The heavy truck easily dug out of the rubble of the fallen scaffolding and lurched forward.

By that time Rupert had attained the roof of the laboratory, from where he could see the whole courtyard. He lit another stick of dynamite and threw it at the tank.

At the same moment Holmes shifted the levers and drove towards Alice.

She screamed and ran to hide, but the tank ploughed into her Ford. We felt the front of the armoured vehicle lift. Through the slit the walls of the castle fell away and we saw the cloudy sky. The tracks crushed the Ford beneath them as though it were paper. Holmes then turned the tank and headed back to the laboratory.

But the madman on the roof was already lighting another stick of dynamite.

We could not wait. The detective pursed his lips and placed his hand on the cannon controls.

He aimed it at the laboratory building, on top of which the villain stood, and fired.

A gigantic projectile flew from the barrel of the tank and hit the building with incredible force. There was an enormous roar and stones cascaded in all directions. Rupert, still holding the burning explosive, yelped with surprised as the roof gave way under his feet and he fell down.

But our cannon did not kill Lord Darringford. That was accomplished by his own dynamite and the explosives which he still had in his belt.

A few seconds after he vanished into the demolished laboratory there was a large explosion followed by a series of smaller ones. We heard glass shattering, metal twisting, wood breaking and stone grating. From the ruins a fiery geyser erupted, throwing everything high into the air.

There was no way Alice’s brother could have survived the blast.

An enormous black cloud of stinking gas formed above the collapsed and burning building. The hidden chemicals burned. Had they been properly mixed, even more damage would have been done. But now they simply burned and dispersed harmlessly into the air.

The courtyard was now a blackened ruin covered with splinters of wood, burning tar, grit and dust. The fire erupted, accompanied by crackling noises.

Alice was knocked to the ground by the force of the explosion.

“Rupert?” she gasped.

Fire is a good servant, but a bad master. Alice had lost her power over it.