- Moriarty: If you are clever enough to bring destruction on me, rest assured, I shall do as much for you.
- Sherlock Holmes: You have paid me several compliments, Mr. Moriarty. Let me pay you one in return when I say that if I were assured of the former eventuality, I would, in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept the latter.
- Moriarty: I can promise you the one, but not the other.
- Sherlock Holmes: Now I am ready to close on him.
- Dr. John Watson: If he doesn't close upon you first.
- [first lines]
- Dr. Watson: [voiceover] When I returned to Baker Street from a short holiday in the spring of 1891, I had seen little of Holmes for some time. I saw in the papers that he had been engaged by the French Government upon a matter of supreme importance, but I could hardly foresee that it would have so violent a consequence. It lies with me now to tell for the first time what took place between Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty in that fateful year.
- [last lines]
- Dr. Watson: It's with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was distinguished. I shall ever regard him as the best and the wisest man I have ever known.
- Dr. John Watson: You didn't write this? There is no sick Englishwoman at the hotel?
- Herr Steiler: No, but it has the hotel mark. Of course! There was a tall old Englishman who came here after you had gone. He said...
- [Watson realizes it was a trap and runs back, horrified]
- Sherlock Holmes: [voiceover] I had not been back in Baker Street more than half an hour when...
- Mrs. Hudson: [Holmes places French Legion of Honour medal in his desk drawer as he hears Mrs. Hudson outside his rooms] But you cannot go up there, sir!
- Moriarty: [Holmes then takes a small pistol from the desk drawer moments before Moriarty bursts in through his door] You have less frontal development than I should have expected.
- [notices Holmes' hand in his pocket]
- Moriarty: It is a dangerous habit to finger loaded firearms in the pocket of one's dressing-gown.
- [Holmes slowly removes the small pistol from his pocket, cocks it, and carefully places it on the table in front of him]
- Dr. John Watson: [Holmes signals Watson to let him in through a window to their quarters at 221B Baker Street, gestures for silence, then quickly makes his way to a corner near the front windows] What is it?
- Sherlock Holmes: Airguns. A rather special airgun, in fact. Watson, would you have any objection to drawing the blinds, casually, as if you were alone in this room?
- Sherlock Holmes: Watson, I think you know me well enough to understand that I am by no means a nervous man, but it is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.
- Sherlock Holmes: This robbery has been carefully planned over months, even years, by a master criminal.
- Director of the Louvre: But what professional criminal would want to own the Mona Lisa? That is madness; he can't sell it.
- Moriarty: [Moriarty suddenly thrusts his hand inside his coat, prompting Holmes to reach for his pistol, but Moriarty only pulls out a small notebook to read from it] You frustrated me in the affair of the French gold.
- Sherlock Holmes: Ah, so it *was* you behind "The Red-Headed League." A very ingenious and well-contrived idea.
- Moriarty: High praise, from you. You crossed my path first on the fourth of January. By the middle of February I was seriously inconvenienced by you and at the end of March I was absolutely hampered in my plans. And now with this last business in France, you have placed me in such a position by your continual persecution that I am in positive danger of losing my liberty. The situation is becoming an impossible one.
- Sherlock Holmes: Have you any suggestion to make?
- Moriarty: You must drop it, Mr. Holmes. You really must, you know.
- Moriarty: I am quite sure that a man of your intelligence will see that there can be but one outcome to this affair. It is necessary that you should withdraw. You have worked things in such a fashion that we have only one resource left. It has been an intellectual treat to me to see the way in which you have grappled with this matter, but I say, unaffectedly, that it would be a grief to me to be forced to take an extreme measure.
- [Holmes smiles slightly]
- Moriarty: Oh, you smile, sir, but it really would, I do assure you.
- Sherlock Holmes: Danger is part of my trade.
- Moriarty: This is not danger. It is inevitable destruction. You stand in the way not merely of an individual but of a mighty organization, the full extent of which, even you, with all your cleverness, have been unable to realize. You must stand clear, Mr. Holmes, or be trodden under foot.
- Dr. John Watson: Won't you stay the night?
- Sherlock Holmes: No, it's too dangerous for you if I stay here.
- Sherlock Holmes: [while disguised] My dear Watson, you haven't even condescended to say good morning to me.
- Sherlock Holmes: [voiceover as his last letter to Watson] Goodbye, and good luck, and believe me to be, my dear fellow, very sincerely yours, Sherlock Holmes.