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The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
February, 1995 [Etext #221B]
Project Gutenberg's Return of Sherlock Holmes [Magazine Edition]
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--------------------------------------------------------------
This edition of _The Return of Sherlock Holmes_ rholm12b.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 (
[email protected] for more info) for their assistance and encouragement.
--------------------------------------------------------------
THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES.
By ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
{EMPT, Rev 4, 1/17/96 rms, 4th proofing}
{The Adventure of the Empty House, by Arthur Conan Doyle}
{Source: The Strand Magazine 26 (Oct. 1903)}
{Etext prepared by Roger Squires
[email protected]}
{Braces({}) in the text indicate textual end-notes}
{Underscores (_) in the text indicate italics}
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 th
e 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