The appeal was one which could not be ignored. It wasimpossible to refuse the request of a fellow-countrywoman dyingin a strange land. Yet I had my scruples about leaving Holmes. Itwas finally agreed, however, that he should retain the young Swissmessenger with him as guide and companion while I returned toMeiringen. My friend would stay some little time at the fall, hesaid, and would then walk slowly over the hill to Rosenlaui, whereI was to rejoin him in the evening. As I turned away I saw Holmes,with his back against a rock and his arms folded, gazing down atthe rush of the waters. It was the last that I was ever destined tosee of him in this world.
When I was near the bottom of the descent I looked back. Itwas impossible, from that position, to see the fall, but I could seethe curving path which winds over the shoulder of the hill andleads to it. Along this a man was, I remember, walking very rapidly.
I could see his black figure clearly outlined against the greenbehind him. I noted him, and the energy with which he walked buthe passed from my mind again as I hurried on upon my errand.
It may have been a little over an hour before I reachedMeiringen. Old Steiler was standing at the porch of his hotel.
“Well,” said I, as I came hurrying up, “I trust that she is noworse?”
A look of surprise passed over his face, and at the first quiver ofhis eyebrows my heart turned to lead in my breast.
“You did not write this?” I said, pulling the letter from mypocket. “There is no sick Englishwoman in the hotel?”
“Certainly not!” he cried. “But it has the hotel mark upon it. Ha,it must have been written by that tall Englishman who came inafter you had gone. He said——”
But I waited for none of the landlord’s explanations. In a tingleof fear I was already running down the village street, and makingfor the path which I had so lately descended. It had taken me anhour to come down. For all my efforts two more had passed beforeI found myself at the fall of Reichenbach once more. There wasHolmes’s Alpine-stock still leaning against the rock by which Ihad left him. But there was no sign of him, and it was in vain thatI shouted. My only answer was my own voice reverberating in arolling echo from the cliffs around me.
It was the sight of that Alpine-stock which turned me cold andsick. He had not gone to Rosenlaui, then. He had remained onthat three-foot path, with sheer wall on one side and sheer dropon the other, until his enemy had overtaken him. The young Swisshad gone too. He had probably been in the pay of Moriarty, andhad left the two men together. And then what had happened?
Who was to tell us what had happened then?
I stood for a minute or two to collect myself, for I was dazedwith the horror of the thing. Then I began to think of Holmes’sown methods and to try to practise them in reading this tragedy.