“Sherlock Holmes?” Ian asked. “The name sounds familiar.”
Olivier laughed. “It must be because no one has called you by that name for months now – a year even? You’ve been living behind the mask of this Ian fellow for so long that the mask has probably fused to the skin. Of course you’ve forgotten – let me refresh your memory. You got into a struggle with my employer, the brilliant Professor Moriarty, and both of you fell to your deaths into the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Well, the reading public thought that you fell to your death anyway. You should have seen the headlines the following day. Of course, by that time you were on the run and going by a different name, because you knew that we would be hunting you down.”
“I still don’t know who this Mr. Holmes is, but I like the sound of him,” Ian said, trying to sound natural.
“That sounds like something that Holmes would have said. I was told that you have lived your entire life under the assumption that only you could love you, and Moriarty’s plan operated by that one constant.”
“Plan? What plan?” Ian asked, his nerves prickling.
“Ah! And the mask starts to crumble. It was once explained to me that Ponce de León searched for the Fountain of Youth in Florida, never realizing that his four children waiting for him back home in Puerto Rico were his immortality. And while I knew that Moriarty could never bear a child of his own, there is more than one way to have a child. Anyone could make a machine come to life with a few gears and oil, but it takes a true genius to make ideas come to life. And I’m not talking about an idea to build a dam or to declare war on a country – nothing that crude. I’m talking about ideas that evolve on their own, ideas that manipulate and free, ideas that create and destroy, all without their benevolent creator.”
“I don’t like all of this thinking about thoughts,” Ian shrugged. “Show me a metaphysical man, and I’ll show you someone who thinks they’re smarter than they actually are.”
Olivier ignored him and continued. “Moriarty’s ideas were his children, and his children were his immortality. His firstborn son was the idea that Western civilization could be tricked into destroying itself. His plan was so precise that he had the date picked for the final stage: June 24, 1893. And then you killed him.”
“And I’ll do it again too,” Sherlock said, finally dropping all pretense.
“Of course – Moriarty hadn’t expected anything less from you. But like I said, he built his ideas to evolve on their own, and evolve it did. June 24th is no longer the end of times – we have now calculated it to be July 1, 1893. The plan is an orphan now, but it has learned to adapt, and we have watched it with awe.”
“Well, good things aren’t meant to last,” Sherlock pointed out. “It’s why a tumbler of whiskey always mysteriously evaporates when I’m in the room. And it’s why I’ll stop this plan, just like I stopped the one before it.”
Olivier laughed so hard that he almost lowered his revolver. Sherlock growled, “And what’s so funny?”
“It’s just that, until this moment, I never thought that the blasted argument about free will could be so funny. “You talk about stopping the plan as if you can, when the truth of the matter is every action you’ve taken since that night in Switzerland over a year ago had been predetermined by Moriarty himself, long before you got your hands on him.”
“Explain. Impress me.”
“The professor had anticipated a number of outcomes the night you two fought above Reichenbach Falls. In his eyes, the most likely outcome involved his death and your survival, and so he planned accordingly. The moment one of my colleagues saw you clinging to the side of the cliff, and the professor’s body floating in the foam far below, that plan immediately sprang into action. Didn’t you find it odd that when you reached the first tavern you could find, you shared a table with a drunken courier with loose lips concerning Moriarty? The professor knew how curious that mind of yours is, and that you would follow the messenger.”
“And I did – the whole way to Florence,” Sherlock said. “So, you were just toying around with me?” He shrugged. “Not a complete loss. I always wanted to visit the empty tomb honoring Dante Alighieri anyway. A man damned to never return home – I understand the feeling. But I didn’t see the tomb. I did get to stumble upon a guild of assassins who took their marching orders from Moriarty. He seemed to have hated the world so much that his assassins are still killing his enemies to this day. And one of those enemies was…”
“Irene Adler,” Olivier smiled.
Sherlock said with a dangerous note rising in his voice, “If I had known that Moriarty would drag her into this, I would have let him live, but he would have regretted I had.”
“And that was just as he had expected!” Olivier exclaimed. “Don’t you see the immense brain behind Moriarty? He knew you better than you ever would, because if you had known yourself, you would have realized that you were being lured into a trap, and this Adler lady was the bait. You robbed the world of its greatest genius, Mr. Sherlock – you should be ashamed of yourself. But tell me, what all did you learn from the assassins?”
“While I couldn’t find out Ms. Adler’s exact location, I did find that she was on assignment in America for Professor Moriarty and mustn’t be killed until tomorrow’s date. I had my suspicions for some time that Moriarty had blackmailed her into his service, and the letter had only confirmed it.”
Olivier nodded. “It’s true – he had blackmailed her.”
“And how did he blackmail you?” Sherlock wondered out loud. “I’m assuming that’s the only way anyone could ever work with that worm of a man.”
Olivier looked insulted. “He never forced me into his company. I begged myself into his good graces when I had heard what he was capable of. He was a god walking amongst men, and I was his happy servant.”
“You know, I’ve heard vicars talk less glowingly of God than you are talking of Moriarty,” Sherlock said. “Just saying – maybe you should tone it down a bit.”
Sherlock was trying to be a bug under Olivier’s skin, to get him to make a mistake, any kind of mistake, but it wasn’t working. Olivier continued, “But like I was saying, everything you’ve done since that night was possible only through Moriarty. Remember the customs agent in New York City when you landed there? You thought you were clever when you managed to fool him into believing you were an American who was on vacation in Europe. Little did you know that he was working for Moriarty. And then there was that case you solved while in Philadelphia…”
Sherlock remembered that one all too well. He offered to help a kind, old man whose granddaughter who had vanished during her husband’s funeral. The grandfather had hired Sherlock instead of going to the police, afraid that they would find a suicide and the family’s good name being shamed in newspapers across the city. But Sherlock hadn’t found a suicide – instead, he found her in the crypt of the church, buried alive with her husband’s corpse in a coffin meant only to hold one. Sherlock was able to rescue the widow – just barely – after suspecting that the deacon was to blame. The woman had chosen her husband over the godly man years before, and the heartbroken deacon was upset that the woman was still in love with the idea of her husband even after his death, instead of moving on to be with him. With the widow saved and the deacon having run away, the mystery was solved and the grandfather had given Sherlock a substantial reward.
“Let me guess,” Sherlock said sarcastically. “Were they also accomplices of Moriarty’s?”
“And everyone said that you were stupid!” Olivier gushed condescendingly. If Sherlock didn’t feel murderous before, he certainly did now. “Shakespeare had it right when he said that all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. Ever since that fateful night in Switzerland, every person who has given you food and money and clothing and shelter and money, they all have been playing the role of a lifetime.”
“So what you’re saying then is it?
??s my world, and you all are paying rent to live in it?” Sherlock said, finding his footing again in the conversation.
Olivier looked ruffled. “No, that’s not what I’m getting at…”
“And that time in Chicago? When I was arrested for public intoxication?”
Olivier smiled. “That was all you, my friend. We refuse to take responsibility for the fact that you cannot hold your liquor. We did arrange, though, for that daring escape of yours from your jail cell. After all, we needed you to reach your next checkpoint in time…”
“The safe house in Peoria,” Sherlock said.
“Yes. Moriarty suspected that you were uncovering his web of business partners, and that you knew one of his closest associates, Mr. George Morrison, lived in the area. And so you burgled the house, just like we knew you would, and you found the letter tucked away in the right drawer of the desk, just like we knew you would. We watched from a distance, like an ornithologist with his birds, as you made a copy of the letter. You’re too smart simply to take the letter – doing so would arouse suspicion and cause the plan to evolve. And as you copied out the letter, you learned the truth: two assassins were being put on this train with the intent of burying a bullet in Ms. Adler’s brain in Cheyenne. All of that has led up to this moment.”
“What, me having to listen politely as you blabber on?”
“There’s no motive to acting stupid. You fully grasp what I’ve just revealed, that all of the pains you’ve endured in recent months were all a parlor game to teach you a lesson in humility. You have only succeeded because Moriarty wanted you to succeed, and you have lived only because Moriarty wanted you to live – up to this point. The professor’s been playing you from the afterlife like a cheap toy, and he knew he would be bored with you by now. So, Mr. Holmes, how does it feel? How does it feel to realize that not only are you going to die today, but you’re going to die useless? I’m sure there’s nothing worse for a useful man such as you.”
Olivier pulled back the hammer on his gun. “I almost forgot – Moriarty wanted me to pass on one more word of advice…”
“A lot of good it’s going to do me if I’m about to be dead.”
“You may think you’re some angel walking among men, but you were still built up from the clay in the ground, and the clay is dark. Like everyone else in the world, you have a scary past you’re trying to run away from. But no matter how fast you run, the second you stop, your past is there to overwhelm you. For you, your past happens to have an opera singer from New Jersey who has a talent for blackmailing those around her.”
“That doesn’t sound like a very accurate description of my assistant, Dr. Watson.”
“Don’t attempt to throw us off the trail. We know just how little Dr. Watson means to you,” Olivier sneered. Sherlock had to hide a little smile – they had mistaken his respect for Watson as being utter contempt. If he wasn’t going to survive the day, that perception had to. He couldn’t put his only friend in danger.
“Do you feel weak, Mr. Holmes? Do you feel it in your bones, that you’re about to fall off the edge of this world? Do you feel helpless, that you cannot save your love who will be waiting on a train platform for her assassin? All while Moriarty lives forever through the countless plans he set in motion?”
“My curiosity is my hope, and I still have that. I need to know how many of this train’s sins were due to Moriarty’s intervention. Is his ghost responsible for the murders?”
Olivier smiled, and Sherlock could have sworn he saw Moriarty in the smile. The henchman said, “You know, it’s impossible to tell the difference between the professor’s schemes and destiny itself, and that is just the way he would have wanted it. He read Milton’s Paradise Lost just the right number of times, and he saw a world that was growing too big for its gods, and the chaos that ensued. All he ever wanted was to bring us back to order, and if that meant becoming a god, then so be it.”
“I seem to recall the poem very differently. Wasn’t it Satan who refused to bow to mankind, saying that only God deserved the honor?” Sherlock’s face brightened. “Wait, if Moriarty is the Devil in this metaphor, does that make me God? I like where this is going.”
“Silence!” Olivier snapped abruptly, Sherlock having finally gotten to him. “You will not mock the idea. You must not mock the idea.”
“I’ll do more than mock the idea – I’m going to outlive this day and break the idea on the wheel, because I’m such an annoying person when it comes down to it.”
“Enough,” Olivier said, and he pressed down on the trigger. The revolver clicked and there was a thick silence in the train car.
“Well,” Sherlock finally said, “I can’t say this isn’t awkward.”
A little nervous, Olivier pressed the trigger twice more – still nothing.
“Stop it – you’re embarrassing yourself,” Sherlock said.
Olivier took a few steps back, his eyes flitting down as he opened the revolver’s cylinder to check the bullets. This was all Sherlock needed. In one step, he was intimate with his foe and grabbed the barrel of the revolver with his left hand while cracking Olivier in the temple with his right. Olivier melted to the floor, gripping his head as it leaked pain. Sherlock looked curiously at the revolver, tossing it up and down in his hand, feeling the steel like it was the fabric of a jacket.
“It’s freezing,” Sherlock said as he took a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it snugly around the revolver. “I’m surprised you didn’t catch a cold from it. Want to know what I really think of your beloved boss? He planned everything down to the last detail, but he hadn’t considered the possibility that there would be a blizzard, one that would drop the temperatures as low as they are. And you know what happens to steel when it’s cold? It shrinks and causes revolvers to misfire. Moriarty thought he was a god, but he couldn’t even control the weather.”
Olivier was finding his feet when Sherlock suddenly lashed out, whipping Olivier across the face with the barrel of the gun. Olivier folded back down to the floor, moaning, blood oozing down his torn forehead like molasses.
“See?” Sherlock said. “There’s more than one way to use a revolver. You just have to get creative.”
Sherlock dropped the gun to his feet and pulled up Olivier by the collar. Sherlock could see himself in the smoky mirror of Olivier’s eyes, but he didn’t recognize himself.
“And here’s another thing that Moriarty, in all of his genius, couldn’t anticipate,” Sherlock said quietly.