Chapter 5 ― The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes (Part 5)

All the while that Mrs. Hudson was speaking, I barely registered the raucous din which surrounded us. It was as though I had been transported from the Criterion Theatre to Holmes’s lodgings at 221B Baker Street. I could picture the destroyed room in my mind’s eye as though I was really there. Here lay the ruins of the furniture beneath the moonlight, and there was the blasted window which admitted the cold air, and at the end of the room stood the figure of Professor Moriarty, wrapped in his black cloak. I peered into his hollow eyes, just as Mrs. Hudson had done, and saw in them the lightless void which comprises the vast gulf between the stars.

“After he had said that, he strode from the room,” said Mrs. Hudson. “But before he did, he gave me this.”

And she placed an invitation to the Black Gala on the table.

“I see,” I muttered. “Now it is all clear to me.”

Sherlock Holmes was the greatest detective in all the long history of man. Not an opponent on earth could fight him, and win—unless that opponent were himself. His battle with Professor Moriarty was in fact a battle with his alter ego for his very own body and soul.

Yet I must have caught on to that fact long ago. I had introduced Professor Moriarty in The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes, to live alongside Holmes and share his suffering, almost as if he were the detective’s own shadow. And the two of them were swallowed up by the Chamber of the East of the East. Perhaps I had, without being conscious of the fact, had realized that the two men were one and the same.

The explosion at Baker Street had deprived Holmes of the place which he could call home. Mrs. Hudson’s frantic efforts had succeeded in shaking him awake, but only for a time. The last stand of Sherlock Holmes―his sudden appearance at my garret window―must have required him to summon every last ounce of energy which remained in him. And once he was forced at Scotland Yard to acknowledge that he had been beaten by Professor Moriarty, he had lost the battle for his soul once and for all.

“Things are quite dire now,” murmured Mrs. Hudson. “We must find a way to stop Mr. Holmes!”

I nodded my assent, whereupon her eyes fluttered closed in relief. The noise hit me all at once then, the sound of hundreds of people getting to their feet, chattering in excitement. It seemed that Professor Moriarty’s Last Lecture was about to begin. Across the room I saw Stamford waving and calling my name.

Irene Adler skated toward me, clad now in a black evening gown. “Allow me to show you to your seat,” she said, placing a hand on my arm, though I suspected that hand was less a gesture of hospitality than a measure to ensure that I wouldn’t try to run.

She led me to a reserved seat directly in front of the stage, which besides the black banners which served as a backdrop was bereft of even a podium or a chair. A bare spotlight shone down on that dusty space. The lonely sight filled me with dread, though it was clear that not another soul in the room shared my unease.

Every seat in the house, from the theatre floor to the highest balconies, was occupied by black-clad adherents of Professor Moriarty. The air buzzed with their chirping; every eye was fixed upon that vacant stage. At last, the prince of darkness, the shadowy ruler of London, was about to reveal himself. I saw in the faces all around me pride at having been selected personally to rule at Moriarty’s side.

Cartwright and Rachel were seated cosily by each other on the balcony. In a box on the right I saw Reginald Musgrave, and beside him the haughty figure of Madame Richborough, peering through a pair of opera glasses. When she spotted me she acknowledged me with a lazy wave of her hand.

Irene Adler seated herself next to me. In her dark gown her pale figure appeared even more aloof from the excited proceedings which surrounded us.

“What were you speaking with Mrs. Hudson about?”

“Nothing of great importance.”

“And yet your conversation lasted for quite a while,” said she, never once removing her gaze from the stage. “If you hold even the smallest inkling of hope for Holmes I suggest you abandon it. There is no chance that he can defeat Professor Moriarty now.”

The theatre lights began to dim, and as the velvet darkness fell the theatregoers all modestly fell silent. In the ensuing hush Irene Adler softly cleared her throat.

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A single beam of light shone on the black curtain, round as the full moon. Presently the curtain began to ripple, and from within a hunchbacked old man appeared in the center of that radiant circle. He wore a black top hat and was wrapped in a black cloak, so that his bloodless, stern face seemed to float out of the darkness. Above his protruding forehead his sparse hair was flecked with white strands, and his lips were compressed severely.

With bated breath the audience awaited the first words of their exalted leader.

“I see many faces here tonight,” said he at last, after a long moment of suspense. “You do not know me. But I know each and every one of you as if you were my own flesh and blood. Merchants, sportsmen, public servants, private tutors, hailing from Covent Garden, Dartmoor, and beyond. In every corner of the earth you have laboured in order that my plan might be realized. You have my gratitude. London—England—the entire world is ripe for the taking. And tonight I have summoned you all here to announce the fulfillment of our great ambition.”

A tidal wave of applause filled the theatre as Professor Moriarty paused momentarily in his speech.

“I have been asked to reveal the facts of my master plan in their entirety: who I am, and what I intend to do, and where I intend to lead you. But in order to do that, I must first pay tribute to an extraordinary man. He was a detective of great repute, who strove fiercely to stop us. He dedicated his life to solving mysteries, and it was this which put us into eternal opposition.”

In the storm of whispers which swept through the arena I heard over and over the name: Holmes.

“My battle with Mr. Holmes was an intellectual delight,” continued Professor Moriarty. “And yet, as accomplished a detective as he was, the power of our organization far surpassed anything he could have imagined. The very moment that Holmes became conscious of my presence in the veil of darkness—he had already lost. With every avenue closed to him, he fled to Switzerland. And there, unable to swallow his crushing defeat, he chose instead to hurl himself from the ledge of the Reichenbach Fall. Never again will he dog our footsteps. The adventures of Sherlock Holmes are finished!”

There was a distinct note of triumph in the Professor’s voice, and his words were met with another swell of furious applause.

In my mind I saw Sherlock Holmes awakening abruptly in the dead of night, staring into the mirror and smearing paint on his face, before donning that black cloak, making his way down the stairs, and slipping through the back door into the darkness of London, there to direct his agents in the commission of unspeakable crimes.

Sherlock Holmes had always been obsessed with solving mysteries. It was his escape from dull routine, his raison d’etre. Nothing was as repugnant to him as the monotony of daily existence. That was why he was always seeking out difficult problems, and cleverly hatched schemes, and adventures which sent his nerves thrilling with excitement—and every one of these desires could be found in the person of Professor Moriarty. He was Holmes’s own creation, his unconsciously created devil twin.

No matter how many cases he solved, Holmes could never unveil the secret of Professor Moriarty’s existence, for it lay within himself. And it was his fascination with that impenetrability which drew him ever deeper into the hunt. Each time he came to the verge of uncovering the Professor’s identity, the Professor would introduce another contrivance to throw him off the trail. Over the course of their protracted cat-and-mouse game the criminal organization, whose original purpose was to spawn mysteries for Holmes to solve, had grown ever larger and more intricate, until eventually it swallowed up Scotland Yard and Whitehall. Thus did the imaginary twin Professor Moriarty usurp the place of Sherlock Holmes, and hurl him down to a fictional end in the abyss of Reichenbach.

“You lie!” I cried, getting to my feet. “Sherlock Holmes has not lost!”

Irene Adler yanked on my arm with a frosty glare. The applause died down, replaced by angry whispers and mutters of disapprovals. I felt a thousand hostile gazes directed at me.

“Mr. Watson,” drawled Moriarty from the stage, “would you care to enlighten us?”

“Sherlock Holmes is alive,” I insisted. “For he is none other than you!”

You could have heard a pin drop in the silence that ensued.

“Wake up, Holmes. ‘Professor Moriarty’ does not and has never existed!”

But Moriarty simply stood there looking at me without the slightest change in his expression, like a wax mannequin. Staring into his hollow eyes was like tossing a rock into a bottomless pit. It was impossible to fathom whether anything I said was reaching Holmes.

“Is that all?” said Professor Moriarty with a smirk, as if he was humouring a particularly dull pupil. “I think it is you who are fettered by illusions.”

A ripple of laughter went through the room. I turned and surveyed the audience. It appeared to me that every one of them—male and female, young and old—was wearing the same pale mask. Whether it was fear or genuine adoration of Professor Moriarty which had brought them here tonight, not one of them comprehended that they were part of a grand production, written, directed, and starred in by Sherlock Holmes. The only one in that sea of snickering faces who was not laughing was Mrs. Hudson. She sat in the very first row of the balcony, looking directly at me with her hands clasped as in prayer.

“My friends, it really is no laughing matter,” said Professor Moriarty after a while. Immediately the laughter died away.

“Mr. Watson,” began Professor Moriarty again, “I understand precisely what it is you are feeling. You once shared the rooms at 221B Baker Street with Sherlock Holmes. It is only natural that his loyal biographer would have some difficulty in accepting the present situation. But is there not a part of you which secretly longed for this to come about? You despised Sherlock Holmes. Is that not why you wrote this book?”

He held out his hands, and in his outstretched hands I saw The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes.

“I have kept a constant watch on you these last six months. For though the death of your wife had brought you to a parting of the ways, your mutual history with Holmes remained, and I could not rule out that you might serve as a useful pawn. But you could not forgive him. During those months of perilous struggle, you never once so much as offered a helping hand. We are connected by our hatred of Sherlock Holmes―we are partners in crime!”

“I will never be a partner of yours!” I spat. “Whatever animosity I held is in the past.”

For a brief moment I saw Professor Moriarty’s expression twitch as though he was suppressing a spasm of agony. But whatever fit had come upon him soon passed, and his face became that impassive mask once again. With a twirl of his cloak he tossed The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes into the crowd, who snatched the whirling papers from the air, hooting and cheering, and soon tore it to shreds which littered the floor like confetti.

I tried to spring forward, but Irene Adler held fast to my arm.

“What are you trying to do?”

“I’m going to save Holmes.”

“And then what?” she pressed me with a mocking smile. “His identity is moot now. The only thing of his which interests us is his power. If he tells us that Holmes is dead―”

But she interrupted herself mid-sentence and frowned.

“What’s that?” she muttered.

A strange rumbling could be felt in the floor of the Criterion Theatre. It was like the demolition of some distant edifice was being transmitted through the ground; I had not felt anything like it before. An uneasy murmuring spread throughout the theatre; the audience exchanged uneasy glances, and on the balcony some leaned over the railings to get a better look downward.

Dust showered down from the ceiling, and the black curtains billowed like waves upon the sea. Yet amidst the commotion Professor Moriarty stood unmoved. In fact, his face bore a satisfied grin.

“I cannot thank you all enough,” he said languidly to the crowd. “It is thanks to your loyal dedication that I have accomplished my mission. I have to come to end the world. I suppose you all believe that you are real people, living real lives. But I tell you that you are mere puppets, brought into existence by an author—supernumeraries, created to populate the world in order for the great Sherlock Holmes to go on his adventures. And now that Sherlock Holmes’s adventures have come to an end, so too has your reason to exist. This world itself is a simulacrum, created solely for the benefit of Mr. Holmes.

“This world is but a shadow of London,” concluded the Professor, and there was a weird note of sympathy in his voice.

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The rumbling in the ground only grew more pronounced as the Professor addressed the crowd. From outside the theatre came a constant thunder like cannonfire, as if London was falling to an invading army. Screams rang out, and there was a small rush to the exits. Yet Professor Moriarty heeded them not, and continued to speak with exultation in his voice, though between the rumbling and shrieking much of what he said was hard to discern.

“It is not God, or love, or material things which we can place our faith in. The only thing we can be sure of in this world is that everything must return one day to the infinite dark. That is the exquisite truth of the universe. And I have come to fulfill it.”

“What is he babbling about?” Irene Adler cried, grabbing my arm. Her face was a rictus of terror.

Just at that moment, a tremendous heave rocked the theatre, hurling people into the air. The entire building was shaken side to side as if it were no more than a dollhouse, and to my right all of the seats crashed to the ground. I was sure that the high-pitched shriek which rent the air came from Madame Richborough, though with the swirling wall of dust I could see nothing. But that was the signal which set off a full panic. The audience leaped over chairs and stampeded into the hallways, trying to escape the theatre. Surely none of them regarded the man standing on the podium as their leader any longer.

I shook off Irene Adler’s hand and bolted for the stage.

“Holmes!” I shouted, but my voice was lost in the din.

Pulling myself onto the stage I ran towards Professor Moriarty. Once I was near him I saw that his bloodless reptilian features and his senescent network of wrinkles were in fact a cleverly done sham. With what great vigour he fought to throw me off! This was no retired academician. After a brief scuffle he sent me spinning away with tremendous force, but not before I had got one of my hands on his nest of white hair first, and from beneath the wig a scruffled mane of dark hair emerged.

The man before me was, without question, Sherlock Holmes.

But the detective was not the man I remembered.

“I am the author’s surrogate!” he hissed at me, with a baleful gleam in his eye. “Sherlock Holmes was only ever a fictional detective, and yet he became so popular that his own creator came to despise him. What had begun as a mere trifle of the pen had grown so far beyond its rightful bounds that the author could never escape its oppressive shadow. Sherlock Holmes stole the spotlight, and he became relegated to a mere biographer. The cart had outstripped the horse. It was an inexpiable act of defiance, and so the author decided that the time had come to free himself from the fetters of this loathsome upstart detective. Thus he dispatched me into this world.”

“For God’s sake, open your eyes, Holmes!” I shouted. “You are blinded by delusion!”

“Delusion? Then how do you explain all this?” he asked, spreading his arms wide. “Or do you suppose that I possess some sort of superpower?”

As I attempted to get to my feet the ground tilted beneath me, sending me staggering. The giant was shaking the dollhouse again. All around me the people in chalky evening wear pushed and shoved one another in terror, unable to escape. Everything was chaos. I had lost sight of them all: Cartwright, Rachel, Mrs. Hudson, Irene Adler. They had been swallowed up into the dust and the crowd.

“Holmes was a proud man,” said Professor Moriarty, “and his pride came from the many cases which his power allowed him to solve. He did not know that his world was but a detective story, with every piece set in place by the author. The moment that his own creator came to despise him, his fate was sealed.”

And with a theatrical flap of his cloak, he exited stage right into the shadows.

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I followed him into the wing, and as the heavy curtain fell to behind me the din of the theatre became muffled and distant.

“Holmes! Where have you gone?” I called, fumbling my way through the gloom. In addition to the incessant rumbling there was a creaking, scraping sound, which reminded me of being in a ship’s cabin buffeted by a storm. I was a little disquieted to see a city street looming around me, before I realized that it was only the stage scenery. The props included armchairs, tables, stoves, window shutters, doors, carriage seats, brick walls crafted from papier-mâché, and each time the theatre tilted to one side all of the objects tumbled to follow, as if I was stumbling through a maze whose walls were eternally shifting to impede me.

This world is but a shadow of London: the idea was clearly absurd. How was one to take the claim that we were all characters in a detective novel seriously? If Professor Moriarty was a delusion which had taken hold of Sherlock Holmes, how much more dangerous must be the delusions which in turn possessed Moriarty.

Yet if that were the case, how then could I explain the omens of doom which seemed almost to have been summoned by the Black Gala? If this world really had been created solely for Sherlock Holmes, then what was I doing here? My adventures with Holmes, the loss of my Mary―was my whole life a lie?

At last I came out of the stage wing and into a narrow plastered corridor, the walls and ceiling cracked and flaking. The electric lights flickered as if they might go out at any second. A little further down I came to a doorway on the left which led to a stairwell, in front of which lay something which appeared like a grey flower on the ground. I picked it up and realized that it was a crumpled up manuscript. Unfurling it beneath the sputtering my eyes raced across the page.

The sky was a deep imperial blue, like the finest imported china, and the riverbank was submerged in a deep aquatic hue. I was alone there; on my left the bare bushes on the embankment stretched along into the distance, and on my right the lights on Shimogamo Boulevard glittered over the dark surface of the water. It had been a long time since the world had seemed so beautiful to me, and I whistled a tune as I strolled north along the river.

After a few minutes, a voice called out to me.

“John Watson!”

I turned around to find Mary standing there.

“Mary! But how long have you been following me?”

“Quite some time, actually.”

Laughing with delight she skipped up to me.

It was a passage from The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes. I saw the twilit Kamo River flowing before my very eyes, felt Mary’s warmth as if she really was at my side, as if it was a real memory. Another violent jolt rocked the building, and the lights died with a sigh, plunging me into darkness.

Yet I was not afraid, because I held *The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes *in my hand. A mere fragment it may have been, and yet the scene was as vivid as a firework bursting before my eyes. I felt something stir within me, like a buried memory struggling to surface.

I reached out for the wall, and made my way up the stairs as the theatre crumbled around me.

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The stairs took me to the roof of the towering theatre. I flung the door open and staggered outside. The floor was heaving like the deck of a ship in a rough sea, and the wind whistled menacingly. I ran to the parapet, where I was greeted with an extraordinary sight.

London was being eaten away. Between the scattered patches of puffy fog, I saw that the streets were punctured with gaping holes, like holes being chewed into a leaf. The mist had cleared around Trafalgar Square; where St. James’s Park had been there was only a void, leaving the row of government offices along Whitehall standing on the edge of a precipice.

As I looked in astonishment, another groaning shudder went through the earth; one after another, church steeples, Scotland Yard, and the whole of Big Ben and Westminster went toppling like so many children’s building blocks. The whole bank of the Thames was bare now, so that it was impossible to tell where the starless sky ended and the void below began.

I sagged down against the railing, staring down into that void.

Infinite dark.

A foul wind rose from the abyss.

Professor Moriarty stood atop the rampart, gazing upon Piccadilly Circus below. His cloak flapped in the wind, making him resemble nothing so much as an enormous bird of prey.

“Now do you see?” he said. “I have come to end the world.”

“And what of all of us?”

“What does it matter?” he cackled. “You never existed in the first place!”

Without another moment’s pause he tossed himself from the rooftop. I dashed over, but my hand grasped only empty air.

Leaning over the railing I saw London transformed. Baker Street, where I had shared so many adventures with Holmes; Kensington, where Mary and I had settled down in matrimony; and Bloomsbury, where I had spent the latest period of my life: all these places were gone now. Black fissures divided pockets of London into lonely islands floating amidst the nothingness, and now the ghastly waves of this empty sea were lapping on the shore of Piccadilly Circus, so that I could look straight down into the void.

Professor Moriarty’s cloak flapped as he plummeted through the air. It’s over, I thought to myself, and just as I did I unexpectedly felt a warmth, as though I was being embraced.

“Come back, my dear,” I heard Mary’s voice say, “Promise me you’ll come back.”

A vision of her face swam before me, glowing in the light of a bonfire, as if it had been summoned by those words. We were in Rakusei, at the Musgrave estate. Reginald and Miss Rachel were watching us anxiously. The manor house moaned, every one of its windows flashing with a cold light. I said my farewells to Mary, and then set off to rescue Holmes and Professor Moriarty from the Chamber of the East of the East—

It dawned on me in a flash: I finally understood why I had written The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes. That book contained the truth of this world: we were all even now trapped in the Chamber of the East of the East. London itself was no more than a nightmare realm created by that room. We all of us—Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty included—had simply forgotten how we had arrived here.

I had thought, when Holmes had whisked me from my garret, that the story was over. But it was still going on. I had written The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes so that I would not forget how to return to our original world.

I mounted the parapet, and threw myself after Professor Moriarty.

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Once I passed through the crack in Piccadilly Circus my eyes were met with a dizzying sight.

Fragments of London fell through the void like snow. The lights still glowed miraculously in shattered segments of the city, as if they were pieces of an electrified model village. I no longer heard the rumbling, and the world itself seemed frozen; if not for the wind moaning in my ears, I would have thought that time was standing still.

As I hurtled downward like a bullet, searching for Professor Moriarty, I passed several pieces of London in my downward journey. I came close enough to those planetoids of brick and mortar that I could even distinguish the faces of the people trapped therein. Here was a drunkard blacked out in the pubs; there was an old woman glancing out longingly from a garret window. I saw waifs covered in ragged shawls roaming the alleys, and drivers nodding drowsily atop their cabs. But not one of them seemed to notice me, or that their world had fallen apart. As I looked on, those tiny worlds floated away into the darkness.

Before me was only the yawning void.

Have I passed the Professor? I fretted, but there was no way to turn back now. The pieces of London twinkled far above me like the stars in the sky.

Presently I felt what seemed to be a light mist or spray of water, and gradually a gigantic waterfall emerged. It was the Thames, frothing and seething as it roared downward like the axis mundi of the ancients. The cataract did not terminate in a pool: there was only the ceaseless darkness of the void, into which the pieces of the world would plummet forever.

As I was beginning to despair, I at last spotted Professor Moriarty, his flapping black cloak skirting the waterfall’s edge. With a desperate effort I got close enough to grab the hem, sending us both whirling like leaves in a gale. The distant pieces of London smeared into blurs as I spun round and round. But I refused to let go.

I pulled him closer until I could wrap him in a protective embrace. The Professor had lost consciousness; his eyes were shut and his mouth was slightly agape, and his complexion had the pallour of a corpse. The spray of the waterfall had partially removed some of his makeup, and the features of Sherlock Holmes were peeking through.

“Holmes!” I shouted. But there was no response. Grasping on tightly, I pleaded with him to open his eyes.

The darkness thickened, until I could hardly see either the waterfall or Holmes. All I could do was hold on to Holmes for dear life as we fell helplessly. I wanted to go home. Familiar scenes sprang to my mind: the crowds on Shijō Bridge; the crimson silhouette of Daimonji at sunset; the woods of Shimogamo in the early morning mist.

“Let’s go home to Kyoto, Holmes,” I gasped. “We can start again, you and I.”

Suddenly I felt Holmes stirring. There was a tiny light now, far below in the sphere of darkness, growing brighter and larger with each second that we fell toward it. I knew what it was, of course. Beyond it was Kyoto, and Mrs. Hudson, and Inspector Lestrade, and Cartwright, and my Mary.

All the people at whose side we belonged were waiting for us.

This is the triumphant return of Sherlock Holmes, I thought to myself.

We were enveloped in the blinding light of morning.

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“Good morning, Watson,” said the voice of Sherlock Holmes, “Isn’t it time you got up? The weather is far too glorious to be lying around all day.”