But it was destined that I should after all have a last word of
greeting from my friend and comrade. I have said that his
Alpine-stock had been left leaning against a rock which jutted on to
the path. From the top of this bowlder the gleam of something bright
caught my eye, and, raising my hand, I found that it came from the
silver cigarette-case which he used to carry. As I took it up a
small square of paper upon which it had lain fluttered down on to the
ground. Unfolding it, I found that it consisted of three pages torn
from his note-book and addressed to me. It was characteristic of the
man that the direction was as precise, and the writing as firm and
clear, as though it had been written in his study.
My dear Watson [it said]:
I write these few lines through the courtesy of Mr. Moriarty, who
awaits my convenience for the final discussion of those questions
which lie between us. He has been giving me a sketch of the methods
by which he avoided the English police and kept himself informed of
our movements. They certainly confirm the very high opinion which I
had formed of his abilities. I am pleased to think that I shall be
able to free society from any further effects of his presence, though
I fear that it is at a cost which will give pain to my friends, and
especially, my dear Watson, to you. I have already explained to you,
however, that my career had in any case reached its crisis, and that
no possible conclusion to it could be more congenial to me than this.
Indeed, if I may make a full confession to you, I was quite
convinced that the letter from Meiringen was a hoax, and I allowed
you to depart on that errand under the persuasion that some
development of this sort would follow. Tell Inspector Patterson that
the papers which he needs to convict the gang are in pigeonhole M.,
done up in a blue envelope and inscribed "Moriarty." I made every
disposition of my property before leaving England, and handed it to
my brother Mycroft. Pray give my greetings to Mrs. Watson, and
believe me to be, my dear fellow,
Very sincerely yours,
Sherlock Holmes
A few words may suffice to tell the little that remains. An
examination by experts leaves little doubt that a personal contest
between the two men ended, as it could hardly fail to end in such a
situation, in their reeling over, locked in each other's arms. Any
attempt at recovering the bodies was absolutely hopeless, and there,
deep down in that dreadful cauldron of swirling water and seething
foam, will lie for all time the most dangerous criminal and the
foremost champion of the law of their generation. The Swiss youth
was never found again, and there can be no doubt that he was one of
the numerous agents whom Moriarty kept in his employ. As to the
gang, it will be within the memory of the public how completely the
evidence which Holmes had accumulated exposed their organization, and
how heavily the hand of the dead man weighed upon them. Of their
terrible chief few details came out during the proceedings, and if I
have now been compelled to make a clear statement of his career it is
due to those injudicious champions who have endeavored to clear his
memory by attacks upon him whom I shall ever regard as the best and
the wisest man whom I have ever known.
THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
THE ADVENTURE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE
It was in the spring of the year 1894 that all London was interested,
and the fashionable world dismayed, by the murder of the Honourable
Ronald Adair under most unusual and inexplicable circumstances. The
public has already learned those particulars of the crime which came
out in the police investigation; but a good deal was suppressed upon
that occasion, since the case for the prosecution was so
overwhelmingly strong that it was not necessary to bring forward all
the facts. Only now, at the end of nearly ten years, am I allowed to
supply those missing links which make up the whole of that remarkable
chain. The crime was of interest in itself, but that interest was as
nothing to me compared to the inconceivable sequel, which afforded me
the greatest shock and surprise of any event in my adventurous life.
Even now, after this long interval, I find myself thrilling as I
think of it, and feeling once more that sudden flood of joy,
amazement, and incredulity which utterly submerged my mind. Let me
say to that public which has shown some interest in those glimpses
which I have occasionally given them of the thoughts and actions of a
very remarkable man that they are not to blame me if I have not
shared my knowledge with them, for I should have considered it my
first duty to have done so had I not been barred by a positive
prohibition from his own lips, which was only withdrawn upon the
third of last month.
It can be imagined that my close intimacy with Sherlock Holmes had
interested me deeply in crime, and that after his disappearance I
never failed to read with care the various problems which came before
the public, and I even attempted more than once for my own private
satisfaction to employ his methods in their solution, though with
indifferent success. There was none, however, which appealed to me
like this tragedy of Ronald Adair. As I read the evidence at the
inquest, which led up to a verdict of wilful murder against some
person or persons unknown, I realized more clearly than I had ever
done the loss which the community had sustained by the death of
Sherlock Holmes. There were points about this strange business which
would, I was sure, have specially appealed to him, and the efforts of
the police would have been supplemented, or more probably
anticipated, by the trained observation and the alert mind of the
first criminal agent in Europe. All day as I drove upon my round I
turned over the case in my mind, and found no explanation which
appeared to me to be adequate. At the risk of telling a twice-told
tale I will recapitulate the facts as they were known to the public
at the conclusion of the inquest.
The Honourable Ronald Adair was the second son of the Earl of
Maynooth, at that time Governor of one of the Australian Colonies.
Adair's mother had returned from Australia to undergo the operation
for cataract, and she, her son Ronald, and her daughter Hilda were
living together at 427, Park Lane. The youth moved in the best
society, had, so far as was known, no enemies, and no particular
vices. He had been engaged to Miss Edith Woodley, of Carstairs, but
the engagement had been broken off by mutual consent some months
before, and there was no sign that it had left any very profound
feeling behind it. For the rest the man's life moved in a narrow and
conventional circle, for his habits were quiet and his nature
unemotional. Yet it was upon this easy-going young aristocrat that
death came in most strange and unexpected form between the hours of
ten and eleven-twenty on the night of March 30, 1894.
Ronald Adair was fond of cards, playing continually, but never for
such stakes as would hurt him. He was a member of the Baldwin, the
Cavendish, and the Bagatelle card clubs. It was shown that after
dinner on the day of his death he had played a rubber of whist at the
latter club. He had also played there in the afternoon. The evidence
of those who had played with him--Mr. Murray, Sir John Hardy, and
Colonel Moran--showed that the game was whist, and that there was a
fairly equal fall of the cards. Adair might have lost five pounds,
but not more. His fortune was a considerable one, and such a loss
could not in any way affect him. He had played nearly every day at
one club or other, but he was a cautious player, and usually rose a
winner. It came out in evidence that in partnership with Colonel
Moran he had actually won as much as four hundred and twenty pounds
in a sitting some weeks before from Godfrey Milner and Lord Balmoral.
So much for his recent history, as it came out at the inquest.
On the evening of the crime he returned from the club exactly at ten.
His mother and sister were out spending the evening with a relation.
The servant deposed that she heard him enter the front room on the
second floor, generally used as his sitting-room. She had lit a fire
there, and as it smoked she had opened the window. No sound was heard
from the room until eleven-twenty, the hour of the return of Lady
Maynooth and her daughter. Desiring to say good-night, she had
attempted to enter her son's room. The door was locked on the inside,
and no answer could be got to their cries and knocking. Help was
obtained and the door forced. The unfortunate young man was found
lying near the table. His head had been horribly mutilated by an
expanding revolver bullet, but no weapon of any sort was to be found
in the room. On the table lay two bank-notes for ten pounds each and
seventeen pounds ten in silver and gold, the money arranged in little
piles of varying amount. There were some figures also upon a sheet of
paper with the names of some club friends opposite to them, from
which it was conjectured that before his death he was endeavouring to
make out his losses or winnings at cards.
A minute examination of the circumstances served only to make the
case more complex. In the first place, no reason could be given why
the young man should have fastened the door upon the inside. There
was the possibility that the murderer had done this and had
afterwards escaped by the window. The drop was at least twenty feet,
however, and a bed of crocuses in full bloom lay beneath. Neither the
flowers nor the earth showed any sign of having been disturbed, nor
were there any marks upon the narrow strip of grass which separated
the house from the road. Apparently, therefore, it was the young man
himself who had fastened the door. But how did he come by his death?
No one could have climbed up to the window without leaving traces.
Suppose a man had fired through the window, it would indeed be a
remarkable shot who could with a revolver inflict so deadly a wound.
Again, Park Lane is a frequented thoroughfare, and there is a
cab-stand within a hundred yards of the house. No one had heard a
shot. And yet there was the dead man, and there the revolver bullet,
which had mushroomed out, as soft-nosed bullets will, and so
inflicted a wound which must have caused instantaneous death. Such
were the circumstances of the Park Lane Mystery, which were further
complicated by entire absence of motive, since, as I have said, young
Adair was not known to have any enemy, and no attempt had been made
to remove the money or valuables in the room.
All day I turned these facts over in my mind, endeavouring to hit
upon some theory which could reconcile them all, and to find that
line of least resistance which my poor friend had declared to be the
starting-point of every investigation. I confess that I made little
progress. In the evening I strolled across the Park, and found myself
about six o'clock at the Oxford Street end of Park Lane. A group of
loafers upon the pavements, all staring up at a particular window,
directed me to the house which I had come to see. A tall, thin man
with coloured glasses, whom I strongly suspected of being a
plain-clothes detective, was pointing out some theory of his own,
while the others crowded round to listen to what he said. I got as
near him as I could, but his observations seemed to me to be absurd,
so I withdrew again in some disgust. As I did so I struck against an
elderly deformed man, who had been behind me, and I knocked down
several books which he was carrying. I remember that as I picked them
up I observed the title of one of them, The Origin of Tree Worship,
and it struck me that the fellow must be some poor bibliophile who,
either as a trade or as a hobby, was a collector of obscure volumes.
I endeavoured to apologize for the accident, but it was evident that
these books which I had so unfortunately maltreated were very
precious objects in the eyes of their owner. With a snarl of contempt
he turned upon his heel, and I saw his curved back and white
side-whiskers disappear among the throng.
My observations of No. 427, Park Lane did little to clear up the
problem in which I was interested. The house was separated from the
street by a low wall and railing, the whole not more than five feet
high. It was perfectly easy, therefore, for anyone to get into the
garden, but the window was entirely inaccessible, since there was no
water-pipe or anything which could help the most active man to climb
it. More puzzled than ever I retraced my steps to Kensington. I had
not been in my study five minutes when the maid entered to say that a
person desired to see me. To my astonishment it was none other than
my strange old book-collector, his sharp, wizened face peering out
from a frame of white hair, and his precious volumes, a dozen of them
at least, wedged under his right arm.
"You're surprised to see me, sir," said he, in a strange, croaking
voice.
I acknowledged that I was.
"Well, I've a conscience, sir, and when I chanced to see you go into
