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The air was cool and crisp. Birds sang in the clear, coloured sky. I ascended toward my ruin, and the spray of the water came in droplets upon my face.
“So, great detective,” said the army coach, less derisively than I had expected. “Have you any regrets?”
I suppose that, when confronting one’s nemesis, one does not expect much in the manner of long conversation; but when faced with mutual destruction, even the most hateful of men are given to philosophy.
“None.”
“Not Openshaw?” he queried. “Nor Melas and Kratides? Not even Irene Norton?”
“I see you have taken an interest in my exploits.”
“Your friend makes them pleasurable reading. They entertained me on the train.”
“I fear my friend has a turn for the sensational.”
“Sentimental, perhaps,” mused Moriarty. “Though he does not shy away from your faults - ”
“Of which there are many,” I continued, faintly amused. “It is true that I have blundered, and blundered spectacularly; but on the whole, I examine my past with pride. I have done my duty well as London’s bloodhound. It is a worthy badge to bear.”
I turned to the man beside me, who had since doffed his hat to take in the view.
“And you?”
“There is nothing I find worthy of regret.”
“Nothing?”
“No. I have no need for it, regardless. You are aware how this will end for you?”
“I believe we are both aware.”
Moriarty said nothing to that.
“Cigar?” he offered, after a quiet moment.
“You are too kind,” I said, and took it.
The silence expanded as we partook in them, engulfing us. The bestial roar of the falls seemed as distant as the tendrils of smoke curling into the clouds.
“I imagine a last request would be in vain.”
My companion of ills swayed his head from side to side; and I sensed that I was a man perceived.
“You and I,” he said, after an exhalation of white, “stand on a precipice. The cobra and the mongoose, snapping and weaving at the edge of the black abyss. But we are more civil than animals, are we not?”
He alighted calmly upon a rock, weathered flat and smooth from wind and spray and rain, and gave me a dismissive gesture.
“Go and write your letter. I have matters of my own to attend to.”
And he drew pen and paper from the satchel on his person, and began to do the same.
“I did not take you for the sort of man to have those who would care to hear your final words.”
“There is much you do not know about me,” he answered coolly, “and there is much you never will.”
Even reptiles, I supposed, had mates and broods; and so, too, must Moriarty. I did not wonder. It was not my place.
One slip of paper in a mahogany cigar case; another in a cigarette case of burnished silver. They were laid out beside our stocks, remnants of a world we no longer persisted in.
“I find it rather a shame that it ended this way,” said Moriarty, adjusting his eyeglass. “You would have done well to leave me be.”
I thought of my dear brother, surely reclining at the Diogenes in his worn and comfortable chair, awaiting our Saturday appointment for lunch.
“…Perhaps I would have.”
Watson would return soon, I imagined. The Swiss lad’s missive was a clever hoax, set to pluck the strings of my friend’s tender heart; and yet he was no fool. He would rush back to me, reckless, as he was in all things - moved by those great and confounding passions that bid him remain by my side.
“But to erase you from this world, Moriarty, is much greater than myself.”
It had been cowardice to let him go. Yet I did not have the courage to die before him.
“Then let us get on with it, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.” My opponent took up a pugilist’s stance. “Time is wearing thin.”
The air was cool and crisp. Birds sang in the clear, coloured sky. I stood fast before my ruin, and the spray of the water came in droplets upon my face.
My dear Watson.
I think of you, and I have no regrets.