"Bang!"
The deafening gunshot shattered Schumann's beautiful piano music and completely drowned out the thunderous crash of the door collapsing.
A bullet charged with overwhelming kinetic energy pierced Milverton's brain with unmatched precision.
Scandals capable of ruining dozens of noble families, that arrogant haughtiness, and the so-called invisible empire of Appled—all of it turned, with the muffled sound of a skull cracking, into a meaningless heap of red-and-white corpses.
The ghost that had plagued London's upper society was finally brought down by the cheapest and most brutal of brass bullets.
Milverton's body was flung violently backward as though it were a toy suddenly yanked on a string. The crystal goblet slipped from his hand and shattered into fragments on the Persian carpet. The amber liquid mixed violently with the spreading dark-red pool, filling the still-warm suite with a nauseatingly sweet and pungent odour.
Almost at the same instant the gunshot rang out, the suite's heavy carved oak door was kicked open with tremendous force; the brass fittings flew apart in pieces. Cold wind rushed in through the broken door frame, making the wall lamps flicker wildly.
"Scotland Yard! Drop your weapon!"
Lestrade gripped a police revolver in both hands and led a fully armed squad of officers into the room like a tidal wave.
Yet the moment he saw the scene inside, the warning he had been about to shout stuck in his throat; even the gun barrel that had been as steady as rock trembled slightly against his will.
On the floor lay a vivid pool of blood, and in the middle of it Milverton's corpse. In the centre of his forehead was a fatal black hole.
Everything was far too real, undeniable, and left no room for argument. There was not the slightest possibility of a third-party frame-up or staged accident.
The young man whose face was half-covered by a mask still held the Webley revolver; the barrel was faintly warm and emitted a thin trail of smoke.
"You…" Lestrade opened his mouth, staring at Russell with eyes full of disbelief and pain.
This was nothing like the Hannigan case. There was no possibility of a wrongful accusation, no excuse of self-defence, no room for a gang feud. Openly executing an apparently innocent gentleman at gunpoint in front of high-ranking British government officials and Scotland Yard crossed an absolute line that the law could never tolerate.
"Why?! Do you realise what you've done?!"
He roared, yet it was less anger than a cry of deep despair born from an irreversible situation. Lestrade clenched his teeth, raised his pistol again, and aimed at the young man in front of him.
"Drop the weapon, put both hands up, and surrender!"
Hearing this, Russell turned his face slightly so that he could meet Lestrade's furious gaze. He gave a small smile, then without hesitation loosened his grip. The heavy Webley revolver slipped from his hand and fell with a dull thud onto the Persian carpet soaked in blood and wine.
Russell even went so far as to playfully kick the murder weapon toward Lestrade with the tip of his boot.
Even with more than a dozen black police pistols pointed at him, he neither panicked nor raised his hands. Instead, he slowly took a clean dark handkerchief from his coat pocket, lowered his head, and wiped the residual gunpowder from his leather gloves finger by finger.
Mycroft Holmes followed right behind and walked step by step to Lestrade's side. He leaned on his trademark long-handled black umbrella and, with ash-blue eyes of the same origin as Charlotte's yet deeper and colder, first stared fixedly at Milverton's corpse. Then his gaze moved downward and rested on the mountain of paper scraps that had spilled from the leather briefcase onto the carpet.
Finally, those eyes that always seemed so calm turned toward Russell.
A complex nuance of emotion that only he could decipher flashed through Mycroft's pupils.
It was true that Milverton had leaked information to him, yet the theft of state secrets had been a lie. Only an hour earlier, Mycroft had actually discovered that an intruder had entered the study he had never allowed anyone to peek into. The safe drawer had been opened, yet nothing was missing. Only a pure-white card had been left behind, bearing a single word:
[Appled]
Without exchanging a single word, Mycroft instantly understood what the young man intended to do. He had wanted to completely destroy this Pandora's box that even the British government hesitated to touch.
At that moment Mycroft's emotions were extremely complicated. He himself could scarcely believe that a single person had been able to destroy the bomb that had plagued Military Intelligence for so long. Yet after hearing a brief explanation from Charlotte and Mary of what had happened downstairs on the way here, Mycroft suddenly grasped the full picture.
He was deceived by that damned blackmailer.
Thanks to the deductive power of the invisible brain of the British government, a single 0.5-second still frame was enough for him to reconstruct the entire match that had just taken place in the suite.
There was no cross-border telegraph network, no absolutely safe death system. The core of Appled was Milverton's own brain.
The young man standing before him had, by the most outrageous yet astonishingly effective method in all of London—an extremely cheap bullet—decisively shattered the Sword of Damocles that had hung over the Cabinet for ten years.
Violent and direct, yet remarkably efficient.
A complex emotion passed through Mycroft's eyes. It contained the fierce anger of one who sought to maintain order, the relief that the problem had been completely resolved, and the sense of powerlessness one feels when facing a problem.
The heavy rain had stopped, yet it left behind a muddy mess impossible to clean up.
Whatever the original intention, the law of the British Empire firmly forbade murder in a public place. If Russell surrendered now, the moment he stood in the dock, his so-called identity as "Moriarty" would be torn apart by those sharp-nosed reporters like a mad dog.
In any case, the law of the British Empire would never allow anyone to act recklessly in front of Scotland Yard and high-ranking government officials.
"Moriarty, you are surrounded."
Mycroft's voice rang out, drowning the sound of the raging snow outside the window and carrying unmistakable authority. He leaned on his trademark long black umbrella and coldly regarded Russell standing in the centre of the suite.
"Abandon resistance and surrender."
In the room filled with the smell of blood, the two men stared at each other in silence. In that brief moment—so short that even a heartbeat could not be felt—they had already completed a wordless negotiation.
Abandon resistance and smoothly hand the case over to Whitehall's back-room dealings. The government, considering the elimination of Appled from the political world, would grant him some form of protection to shield him from the public eye.
Mycroft's eyes spoke of the British government's final compromise. This was the maximum concession he could make for the sake of order.
Russell tilted his head slightly and shifted his gaze past the tense Scotland Yard officers' shoulders to the recessed corridor beyond the door.
Behind the police cordon, forced to remain quiet, stood Mary and Charlotte. The corridor outside was already packed with a tide of reporters. These hyenas holding notebooks and large flashlights had clearly been arranged in advance by Milverton as spectators.
If Russell raised both hands here and had his wrists bound by cold handcuffs, Moriarty would no longer be an urban legend but a real prisoner. By then the politicians following the trail would easily be able to expose Mary Morstan's fabricated aristocratic lineage with a little effort. The world-famous detective Charlotte Holmes would also meet her end on this Persian carpet stained with wine and blood under the scandal of "conspiring with a thief."
Only a few hours earlier they had been sitting by the fireplace on Baker Street, blushing as they discussed his Christmas present. How could he allow that beautiful future filled with the warmth of youth to be buried together with him?
Tonight, in order for every clue to collapse and every evil and threat to disappear together with Milverton's brains, not a single professor who set foot in the Tower of London could be allowed to survive. Every fairy tale needs an old-fashioned villain.
"I'm sorry, Lestrade."
Russell's voice was soft, yet it miraculously pierced the howling wind blowing in from the door and reached everyone's ears clearly.
"I have no plans to drink tea at Scotland Yard tonight."
"Don't do anything stupid, kid. Outside is swarming with our men. Every exit of the Savoy Hotel is sealed. There is no escape."
Lestrade's voice trembled slightly. He knew all too well the madness felt by men driven into desperate situations. The man had gone mad, yet he was still trying to cling to a soul falling into the abyss.
Russell finally wiped away the last traces of gunpowder remaining on his gloves. He casually tossed the expensive darkish handkerchief beside Milverton's corpse as though covering this ridiculous blackmail farce with a merciless fig leaf.
Then he turned, exposing his unprotected back to more than a dozen gun muzzles, and strode with long steps toward the floor-to-ceiling windows.
"Don't move! I said don't move!"
Lestrade's nerves instantly stretched to the limit. His finger was pressed firmly against the trigger, yet he simply could not pull it.
Immediately afterwards, Russell suddenly raised the right hand he had been casually dangling at his side.
"Crash!"
With an ear-splitting sound like glass shattering on ice, the silence of the top floor of the Savoy Hotel was completely broken.
The blizzard that had been smouldering for three days on the verge of explosion was like a fierce beast that had finally found an escape. It swept ice shards and pale snow with unreasonable force into the warm suite.
The sudden change in air pressure instantly extinguished several gas wall lamps inside the room. The wind blew away the letters, account books and negatives that Milverton's people had once regarded as murder weapons, yet they were now completely worthless. The scattered pieces of evidence spun violently in the air like absurd, ironic funeral banknotes, instantly blocking every police officer's vision.
"Don't shoot! Damn it, I said don't shoot! Take him alive!"
In the chaos, Lestrade covered his face with both arms and forced his way forward against the raging wind. He lacked the courage to give the order to fire. He feared that in the poor visibility a stray bullet might accidentally injure a comrade, and even more he feared simply watching that young man fall into an abyss from which there was no return.
Standing in the relatively safe area of the corridor at the very back of the crowd, Mary and Charlotte understood the man's intention almost at the same moment the wind and snow began to rage.
Mary gripped the door frame so tightly that her fingertips turned pale. The emerald-green eyes that had always radiated elegance and composure now trembled slightly, unable to suppress emotion. She fully understood the present situation. As long as Russell stood there, Moriarty's guilt would be completely confirmed. In order to block the police investigation and protect the honour of the Morstan family and Charlotte's innocence, he had no choice but to use this identity to escape in an extremely shocking and unconventional way.
Charlotte took half a step forward; anxiety and shock floated in her ash-blue eyes. She managed only to pronounce the syllable "Ru" in her throat before swallowing it. Yet she was blocked by the thick wall of officers standing in front of her and could not utter a single word; she could only watch helplessly as the figure in the black coat walked toward the edge of the cliff.
Even in the midst of the chaos and uproar of battle, Russell remained astonishingly calm. He quietly stepped onto the wide windowsill already covered with frost and faced the cutting wind that could freeze a person in an instant.
Behind him stood the officers of Scotland Yard and the cabinet ministers who symbolised the highest power of the British Empire. At his feet, dozens of feet below, stretched a bottomless abyss. Further ahead, the Thames was being assaulted by a violent black blizzard.
He stopped at the brink of danger and slowly turned around.
The hem of his black trench coat fluttered like a battle flag in the storm; the night wind disordered his black hair, perfectly highlighting the danger and mystery of a ruler of the underworld.
His gaze pierced the paper scraps dancing in the damp air, passed Lestrade's anxious face and the crowd of reporters desperately trying to take photographs. He first looked at Mary standing by the door and gave a faint, reassuring smile. Then his gaze settled on Charlotte. There was a somewhat apologetic air in that expression, yet at the same time an inexplicable confidence could be felt.
Finally, Russell shifted his gaze beyond the gun muzzles and stared straight at Mycroft, who remained motionless while leaning on his long black umbrella in the wind and snow.
The invisible brain of the British government made no attempt to stop him. He simply stood there, observing everything with a cold yet rational gaze. In Mycroft's deduction room, a skilled criminal who shouldered every crime and disappeared with the night wind tonight was far safer than an acquaintance sitting in the dock—an acquaintance who might at any moment expose countless hidden and complicated problems.
This was Russell's final dignified action, an act in which he sacrificed his own life for Whitehall, for Charlotte, and for the others.
"If you want to put Moriarty in the dock…"
Russell leaned back, letting his heels hang completely off the edge of the top floor of the Savoy Hotel. Behind him stretched the endless snow and London's long night.
He looked at the officers in front of him—officers who appeared to be facing a formidable enemy—then at Lestrade's pale face, and finally turned toward Mycroft, lightly bowed his head, and performed a perfect British hat-removal salute.
The white mask danced and swirled in the night sky. Echoing across London's winter night sky was the phantom thief's final declaration of war against the whole of London.
"Catch me if you can."
…