The Return of Sherlock Holmes | Page 3

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-------------------------------------------------------------- This edition of The
Return of Sherlock Holmes rholm10a.txt is based on the PG etext
rholm10.txt (prepared by Charles Keller [email protected] from a
1905 Doubleday-Collier edition) and proof-read so as to duplicate the
original publication of these stories (using facsimiles) in The Strand
Magazine by Joanne Brown [email protected], Frank
Sadowski [email protected], & Roger Squires
[email protected]. Thanks also to The Hounds of the Internet
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THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. By ARTHUR CONAN
DOYLE.
I. -- 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by a positive prohibition from his own lips, which was only withdrawn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