Holmes had reseated himself with that supercilious look of the type he assumed when he thought he had tied up all the loose ends.
“Hogan was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Fenians. He had ingratiated himself into your employ, Sir Gibson, and was told to wait for orders. The diabolical plot ivas to use the murder of His Eminence to bring about the fall of your government.”
“And we know the name of the man who lured the cardinal here,” Watson intervened importantly, speaking almost for the first time in the entire investigation. “We should be able to track him down and arrest him.”
Holmes looked at his acolyte with pity. “Do we know his name, Watson?”
“Why, indeed! He overlooked the fact that he left his card behind. T. W. Tone. Remember?”
“T. W Tone — Theobald Wolfe Tone is the name of the man who led the Irish uprising of 1798,” Sir Gibson intervened in a hollow voice. Watson’s face was red with chagrin. Sir Gibson glanced at Holmes. “Can we find out who the others were in this plot, Mr. Holmes?”
“That will be up to the Special Branch,” Holmes replied, almost in a dismissive fashion. “I fear, however, that they will not have much success. I suspect those who were involved in this matter are already out of the country by now.”
“Why did Hogan remain?”
“I presume that he thought himself safe or that he remained to report firsthand on the effects of the plot.”
Glassford crossed to Holmes with an outstretched hand.
“My dear sir,” he said, “my dear, dear sir. I… the country… owe you a great debt.”
Holmes’s deprecating manner was quite nauseating. Gallagher told me that he found his false modesty was truly revolting.
It is true that when the government released the facts of the plot, as Holmes had given it to them, the case of the death of Cardinal Tosca became a cause celebre. Holmes was even offered a small pension by the government, and he refused, perhaps more on account of its smallness than any modesty on his part. He even declined a papal knighthood from the grateful Bishop of Rome.
Sickening, my dear “Wolf Shield.” It was all quite sickening.
But, as you well know, the truth was that Holmes did not come near to resolving this matter. Oh, I grant you that he was able to work out the method by which I killed Cardinal Tosca. I admit that I had thought it rather an ingenious method. I had stumbled on it while attending a lecture in my youth at Trinity College. It was given by Dr. Robert MacDonnell, who had begun the first blood transfusions in 1865. MacDonnell had given up the use of the syringe because of the dangers of embolism or the air bubble which causes fatality when introduced into the bloodstream. My method in the dispatch of the cardinal was simple, first a whiff of chloroform to prevent struggle and then the injection.
My men were waiting, and we transferred the body in the method Holmes described. Yes, I’ll give him credit as to method and means. He forced Hogan to disclose himself. Hogan was one of my best agents. He met his death bravely. But Holmes achieved little else…. We know the reason, my dear “Wolf Shield,” don’t we?
Well, now that Holmes has gone to his death over the Reichenbach Falls, I would imagine that you might think that there is little chance of the truth emerging? I have thought a great deal about that. Indeed, this is why I am writing this full account in the form of this letter to you. The original I shall deposit in a safe place. You see, I need some insurance to prevent any misfortune befalling me. As well you know, it would be scandalous should the real truth be known of who was behind the death of Cardinal Tosca and why it was done.
With that bumptious irritant Sherlock Holmes out of the way, I hope to lead a healthy and long life. Believe me-
Sebastian Moran (Colonel)
Having read this extraordinary document I questioned Holmes about whether he had any doubts as to its authenticity.
“Oh, there is no doubt that it is in Moran’s hand and in his style of writing. You observe that I still have two of his books on my shelves? Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas and Three Months in the Jungle.”
I remembered that Holmes had purchased these volumes soon after the affair of “The Empty House.”
“Moran was many things, but he was no coward. He might even have been a patriot in a peculiar and perverted way. His family came from Conamara and had become Anglicans after the Williamite Conquest of Ireland. His father was, in fact, Sir Augustus Moran, Commander of the Bath, once British Minister to Persia. Young Moran went through Eton, Trinity College, Dublin, and Oxford. The family estate was at Derrynacleigh. All this you knew about him at the time of our encounter in the affair of ‘The Empty House.’ I did not mean to imply that he was without faults when I said Moran was no coward and a type of patriot. He had a criminal mind. He was a rather impecunious young man, given to gambling, womanizing, petty crime, and the good life.
“He bought himself a commission in the India Army and served in the First Bengalore Pioneers. He fought in several campaigns and was mentioned in dispatches. He spent most of his army career in India, and I understand that he had quite a reputation as a big-game hunter. I recall that there was a Bengal tiger mounted in the hall of the Kildare Street Club, before he was expelled from it, which he killed. The story was that he crawled down a drain after it when he had wounded it. That takes iron nerve.”
I shook my head in bewilderment. “You call him a patriot? Do you mean he was working for the Irish Republicans?”
Holmes smiled. “He was a patriot. I said that Moran had criminal tendencies but was no coward. Unfortunately the talents of such people are often used by the State to further its own ends. You have observed that Moran admits that Inspector Gallagher kept him informed of our every move in the case. Unfortunately Gallagher was killed in the course of duty not long after these events, so we are not able to get confirmation from him. I think we may believe Moran, though. So why was Moran kept informed? Colonel Moran was working for the Secret Service.”
I was aghast. “You don’t mean to say that he worked for our own Secret Service? Good Lord, Holmes, this is amazing. Do you mean that our own Secret Service ordered the cardinal to be killed? That’s preposterous. Immoral. Our government would not stand for it.”
“If, indeed, the government knew anything about it. Unfortunately, when you have a Secret Service, then it becomes answerable to no one. I believe that even behind the Secret Service there was another organization with which Moran became involved.”
“I don’t follow, Holmes.”
“I believe that Moran and those who ordered him to do this thing were members of some extreme Orange faction.”
“Orange faction? I don’t understand.” I threw up my hands in mystification.
“The Orange Order was formed in 1796 to maintain the position of the Anglican Ascendancy in Ireland and prevent the union of the Dublin colonial parliament with the parliament of Great Britain. However, the Union took place in 1801, and the Orange Order then lost support. Its patrons, including royal dukes and titled landowners, quickly accepted the new status quo, being either paid off with new titles or financial bribes. The remaining aristocratic support was withdrawn when the Order was involved in a conspiracy to prevent Victoria inheriting the throne and attempting to place its Imperial Grand Master, His Royal Highness, the Duke of Cumberland, on the throne instead. The failure of the coup, Catholic Emancipation 1829, the removal of many of the restrictions placed on members of that religion, as well as the Reform Acts, extending more civil rights to people, all but caused the Orange Order to disappear.