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that Watson has set up the reader for a classic “locked room mystery” and is inviting the reader to solve the puzzle. However, the narrative then takes a different, and far more dramatic, twist, and soon the Park Lane mystery is all but forgotten.

The old bibliophile

Watson is standing outside Adair’s house on Park Lane, attempting to think like Holmes, and “to find that line of least resistance which my poor friend had declared to be the starting-point of every investigation.” Turning, he accidentally knocks a selection of books from the grasp of a hunched old man—clearly a collector of rare or unusual works— who happens to be standing nearby. Watson picks them up and tries to apologize, but the old man runs off angrily. Watson reaches home soon after, only for his maid to show in the very same old book collector to visit him.

Holmes!… Is it really you? Can it indeed be that you are alive?

Dr. Watson

The wizened old man apologizes for his earlier brusqueness and suggests that Watson might need some books to fill a space on his shelves. Watson turns around briefly to look at the shelf, and when he turns back he sees Sherlock Holmes in front of him, smiling. Out of sheer shock, Watson faints to the ground for the first time in his life.

Poses as Norwegian explorer Sigerson, and publishes accounts of his adventures.

Travels in Tibet for two years, and spends time in the capital city Lhasa, where he meets the “head lama” (the Dalai Lama).

When the doctor comes to, he sees a concerned Holmes bending over him, deeply concerned. “I owe you a thousand apologies,” he says. “I had no idea that you would be so affected.” Watson is overjoyed to see the dear friend he thought dead, and quickly recovers. It is a measure, perhaps, of the depth and trust in their friendship that Watson shows no resentment for the detective’s deception; he simply wants to know how on earth Holmes escaped from the Reichenbach Falls.

Holmes cheats death

It transpires that Holmes knew already that Moriarty was after him when Watson was lured back to the hotel by the fake message in “The Final Problem.” There, on the narrow path above the waterfalls, Holmes and Moriarty encountered each other. Moriarty gave Holmes a brief respite to write the farewell note Watson found later, before

THE ADVENTURE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE 165

Passes through Persia (modern-day Iran).

Looks in at Mecca. Holmes must have been in disguise, because non-Muslims are not allowed to enter Islam’s most holy city.

Visits Khartoum, Sudan, to speak with the Khalifa (leader). It is likely that Holmes was advising the Foreign Office as a British secret agent.

Settles in Montpellier, France, for some months while researching coal-tar derivatives in a laboratory.

1894

Holmes returns to London to investigate the Park Lane Mystery.

launching himself at Holmes. However, Holmes evaded him with a move from the Japanese martial art baritsu, and Moriarty slipped over the precipice to his doom. While the term “baritsu” does not exist, Conan Doyle was probably thinking of “bartitsu,” a martial art devised by British mining engineer Edward Barton-Wright (1860–1951). Barton-Wright had learned jujitsu in Japan, and combined it with other disciplines, including boxing, to create a new self-defense method that he named after himself.

Holmes explains that, as he watched Moriarty fall, he realized how useful it would be for everyone to think that he too had perished. There were at least three other dangerous men who wanted to kill him, and if they believed he was dead, they might become careless, which would enable him to track down and destroy them. Holmes therefore decided to fake his own death. With difficulty, he climbed the steep, rocky wall and hid on a ledge, while Watson and the local police examined the two footprints that led to the edge of the precipice, and reached the conclusion that Holmes had fallen into the deep chasm along with Moriarty.

The Great Hiatus

However, just when Holmes thought he was out of danger, a huge rock tumbled past him. He looked up the cliff to see one of Moriarty’s associates above, trying to kill him.

Holmes escaped, of course, knowing that everyone, bar the rock-hurler, thought him dead. For the next three years, a period Holmesians call the “Great Hiatus,” Holmes traveled the world. He relied on his brother Mycroft, his only confidant, to supply him with money and look after the 221B Baker Street lodgings. Conan Doyle gives the reader such a wealth of intriguing hints about what Holmes was up to in those three years ❯❯

Jeremy Brett plays the great detective in a 1986 television adaptation of “The Empty House.” Here he encounters Watson while disguised as an elderly bookseller.

166 A LEGEND RETURNS

Hunting tigers was a popular pastime for the British Raj in India, and was seen as a badge of British manhood, superiority, and mastery.

that there is enough to fill a whole series of adventure books. Holmes tells Watson that after first going to Florence, Italy, he then spent three years traveling the world. He even posed as a Norwegian explorer called Sigerson—a character probably inspired by the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin, who traveled widely in Central Asia in the 1890s. Holmes mentions several places in Asia— all British imperial hot spots—and implies that he was working as a secret agent for the British government. Despite the story’s historic Victorian setting, Conan Doyle also wove up-to-the-minute global issues into Holmes’s travels.

Both Lhasa and Persia were focuses of the “Great Game”—the name introduced to the British public in Rudyard Kipling’s 1901 novel Kim to describe the long Cold War–like rivalry between the UK and Russia for dominance in Central Asia. Before he met Holmes, Watson had served as a medical officer in the British army in one of the main conflicts in the rivalry, the Second Afghan War (1878–1880). The references Holmes makes to his time in Lhasa surely relate to the spying, exploration, and intrigue in the build-up to the British army’s march into Tibet in December 1903, led by Lieutenant Colonel Francis Younghusband (1863–1942).

Holmes claims to have visited Khartoum, Sudan too—another imperial trouble spot. It was the scene of the defeat of British forces (led by General Charles Gordon) in 1885 by the Mahdiyah—the Sudanese Islamist rebellion. Gordon’s portrait hangs on the wall at 221B, and Conan Doyle himself traveled with the British army to Sudan in 1897, as a journalist, before the decisive Battle of Omdurman. There is no doubt that if Holmes was working in such a dangerous region, he would have done so undercover, making the most of his mastery of disguise.

The house with a view

His undercover work complete, Holmes settled down to conduct chemical experiments in Montpellier, France (see p.165). It was here that he heard of the Adair murder, news that finally brought him back to London. Holmes guesses that the murderer is Moran—the man who hurled rocks at him at Reichenbach—and this is his chance to finally flush him out.

It is a dangerous game, however. To catch Moran, Holmes must first become a target. He has been back in Watson’s life for only a short while before he is again taking his friend on a perilous mission. After tracing a circuitous route through obscure back streets in London, Holmes leads Watson to the back door of an empty house and inside.

Watson is amazed to see that the house fronts on to Baker Street and gives a clear view of their old lodgings. To his even greater astonishment, he can see Holmes himself silhouetted in the lighted upstairs window. Holmes explains

This commemorative coin was issued in 1994 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Holmes’s return. The engraving shows Holmes and Watson overpowering Moran.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE 167

I think you want a little unofficial help. Three undetected murders in one year won’t do, Lestrade.

Sherlock Holmes

that it is a wax decoy, and that Mrs. Hudson, now recovered from the shock of his return, is moving it around so it appears more lifelike.

After several hours waiting in darkness, they hear someone enter the house in which they are hiding. They shrink into the shadows and watch as an elderly gentleman in evening dress stealthily converts a cane into a rifle (the cane gun was a stylish but deadly accessory for Victorian gentlemen), carefully aims it out of the front window, and fires it, hitting the waxwork model of Holmes in 221B. Holmes and Watson grapple the man to the ground and Holmes then blows a whistle, summoning Inspector Lestrade and two other policemen, who quickly take hold of the prisoner. It seems Scotland Yard were also in on Holmes’s plans.

The murderer revealed

With the blinds drawn and the lamps lit, Holmes introduces their captive as Colonel Moran, ex-British army marksman and tiger-hunter in India: “the best heavy-game shot that our Eastern Empire has ever produced.”

“You cunning, cunning fiend!” Moran snarls, but Holmes responds that he is surprised a seasoned shikari (Urdu for hunter) could fall for the old decoy trick. Incensed, Moran challenges Lestrade to name the charges against him. Lestrade answers with “the attempted murder of Mr Sherlock Holmes,” but Holmes has other ideas. He knows that Moran’s cane is the remarkable airgun made for Moriarty by a blind German mechanic called von Herder. (The choice of a German maker for this fiendishly ingenious weapon reflects a growing concern at the time of writing over the threat posed by German expansionism and military technology.) Holmes goes on to explain that what makes von Herder’s airgun so remarkable is that it fires more or less silently, and has been adapted to shoot expanding revolver bullets. Thus Lestrade realizes that he has unwittingly caught the man all of London is looking for: the murderer of Adair. Moran shot Adair with his unique airgun through the open window of Adair’s second-floor sitting room.

The cheat accused

With Moran in safe hands, Watson and Holmes withdraw to 221B, where Holmes explains that he had

Colonel Sebastian Moran

Like Moriarty, Colonel Sebastian Moran is a man who seemed to have everything going for him before he became a criminal. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, then embarked on a military career, during which he fought with distinction in the Second Afghan War (1870–1880), and became a marksman and tiger-hunter in India. But Moran suddenly changed, turning into the man Holmes describes as “the second most dangerous man in London” (after Moriarty).

been unable to move against Moran earlier without exposing and endangering himself. However, Adair’s card-playing link to Moran, and the unique nature of his death, made it plain that the murderer was Moran—and that this was Holmes’s opportunity to move against him.

When Watson asks why Moran killed Adair, Holmes says that he does not know for certain, but that he supposes Adair had realized that he and Moran had been winning only because Moran had been cheating. Adair must have threatened to expose him if he did not promise to stop playing cards, but Moran’s livelihood depended on gambling, and so he killed Adair to keep him quiet. At the time of the murder, Adair was probably trying to work out how much to repay the players they had cheated.

After Holmes has put his theory to Watson, he asks his friend, with unusual deference, “Will it pass?” And Watson replies, “I have no doubt you have hit upon the truth.” Behind this simple exchange lies a touching relief that the two friends are reunited at last, reinforcing the feeling that Holmes’s long absence is truly forgiven. ■

Holmes’s explanation is that Moran is the inevitable product of an evil strand in his ancestors, and Watson describes his appearance as conforming to the “criminal type.” Conan Doyle seemed to embrace this popular explanation of aberrant behavior in earlier stories, but here Watson responds to Holmes’s theory by noting, “It is surely rather fanciful”— an acknowledgement, perhaps, that by 1903, the theory was no longer so widely supported.

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

US: October 1903 UK: November 1903

COLLECTION

The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1905

CHARACTERS

John Hector McFarlane

Young solicitor who seeks Holmes’s help.

Jonas Oldacre Wealthy master builder, believed to have been murdered.

Mrs. McFarlane John McFarlane’s mother.

Inspector Lestrade

Scotland Yard detective.

ALL MY INSTINCTS

ARE ONE WAY

AND

ALL THE FACTS

ARE THE OTHER

THE ADVENTURE OF THE NORWOOD BUILDER (1903)

H

olmes is lamenting how dull London has become since the demise of “the foul spider” Moriarty when action arrives at 221B Baker Street in the form of a “wild-eyed and frantic” young solicitor, John Hector McFarlane. He is being hunted by the police, suspected of having murdered a prosperous builder, Jonas Oldacre, in his villa in suburban Norwood—a setting familiar to Conan Doyle, who lived in the area between 1891 and 1894. Inspector Lestrade then arrives to make the arrest, but first agrees to let McFarlane tell his story.

An unexpected inheritance

McFarlane explains that the day before, Oldacre had come to his office with a draft will. McFarlane was stunned to read that he had been made the sole beneficiary in spite of never having met the man.

Holmes displays his deductive skills to McFarlane

McFarlane’s

untidy attire

suggests he dresses himself.

He is carrying a sheaf of legal papers.

“you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a Freemason, and an asthmatic.”

He breathes

His watch has

heavily as

a recognizable

he enters

charm.

Baker Street.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE NORWOOD BUILDER 169

At Oldacre’s request, he later visited him at his home to finalize the will, before being shown out by Oldacre. Yet the next day police were alerted to evidence suggesting that Oldacre had been murdered, and his body dragged outside, and then burned. Lestrade, typically bull-headed, is sure that McFarlane is guilty of the crime. But to the reader, Holmes’s analysis is more compelling. Holmes deduces that Oldacre only drafted the will on his way to the solicitor’s, on the train from Norwood Junction to London Bridge. The one passage of tidy writing, Holmes suggests, was made at a single station stop, the untidy passages as the train was moving, and the almost illegible passages as it passed over points. Holmes also queries why McFarlane would murder his new benefactor. And if he had, why then seek out Holmes, the one man who can be counted on to find the murderer?

Smoking out the truth

Yet the crime scene also points to McFarlane’s guilt, and the next day when police find McFarlane’s bloody thumbprint on Oldacre’s wall, Lestrade is triumphant. But Holmes can barely contain his glee—from previous observations, he knows the print was not there the day before. A brief scout around is all he needs before indulging his flair for a theatrical “reveal.”