that the public never found out about. However, I think you may well be right," he said. Just then the door swung open. He turned to me and displayed a thin wire he reattached to his pocket watch chain.
"Shall we, Doctor?"
Before I could get to my feet, Moriarty crossed to the wall and reached into a trash container near a guard post. He rummaged around for a moment and then produced the army service revolver that Murray had given me the night before.
"Moran searched us both for weapons after knocking you out. While he found your gun, his ego wouldn't let him keep a common army issue weapon. I doubt he expected us to be putting it to use quite this quickly." Moriarty passed the gun to me.
The main entrance hall of Druid's Hill was almost empty. I could hear a grandfather clock chiming ten o'clock.
"They're probably making for the carriage house," said Moriarty.
I was already a dozen steps ahead of him toward the door. Unfortunately, we were not fast enough. I had barely cleared the doorway before an open carriage came ripping past the front of the house, horses at full gallop. Whoever had the reins, and it looked to be Moran, was struggling to keep control while defending himself from an attacker who seemed to be trying to push him out of the carriage. It looked like the Prince.
"We'll never catch them," yelled the professor. "Shoot, Watson, shoot!"
I fired three times.
Whatever control Moran had was lost when the animals began to charge headlong into the sharp curve of the drive. The carriage whipped sharply from one side to the other several times before tilting too far in one direction and sending its passengers and the frightened horses sprawling across the grass.
I found Mary a few feet from the wreckage. She tried to rise up on one arm to free herself from the bushes that had cushioned her fall. However, the moment she leaned any weight on her arm, her face contorted in pain.
"I can't be sure," she said. "But I think it may be broken."
It was a clean break, thankfully. Her only other injuries appeared to be cuts and bruises.
"A fair enough trade for my life," she smiled.
We found Moran sprawled on the ground unconscious. The Prince was dead; we found him beneath the overturned wagon, his neck broken. Death had been almost instantaneous.
I did not envy Moriarty the task ahead of him; informing a father and grandfather that the fiction they had invented many years before had now become fact.
"What happened in the carriage to make the Prince attack Moran?" Moriarty asked Mary.
"I can't be sure. Moran said something to the Prince just as we left the barn; he screamed bloody murder and went for Moran's throat. I'm just glad that Moran said whatever he said," Mary replied.
"Whatever the reason, it looks like Jack the Ripper probably saved your life," observed Moriarty.
That was when it occurred to me that I had seen no sign of Holmes since the carriage had overturned.
"His footprints lead off away from the asylum," said Moriarty. "There was some blood, but I lost the trail about a quarter of a mile to the east. I have no doubt that we will be hearing from Mr. Sherlock Holmes again."
"The train is late," I said, snapping the cover on my watch closed. Mary reached out, took my hand and smiled. Her left arm hung in a sling, a reminder of our encounter with the other Holmes.
All right, I admit that I was more than a bit nervous. Frankly, considering what had happened to me over the last few days, I would say that I had every right to be.
This wasn't Victoria Station by any means, but, rather, a country train depot. In fact, it could have been a waiting room in any depot from Liverpool to Glasgow. There were a few people lingering around the waiting area. Professor Moriarty sat with a notebook on his lap, eyes half closed, every so often jotting down a few words or numerical notations. Occasionally I heard the now familiar sounds of the small metal balls clicking together as he rolled them across his palm.
Mary and I had talked for some time, but in the last few minutes both of us had lapsed into a silence, broken only by an occasional reassuring smile.
"I believe that the train is arriving," Mary said.
The familiar sounds of a steam locomotive filled the station. From the west I could see its lights, hear