THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES by ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

[obi/Doyle/Return]
This text is in the Public Domain.

The Adventure of the Empty House
The Adventure of the Norwood Builder
The Adventure of the Dancing Men
The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist
The Adventure of the Priory School
The Adventure of Black Peter
The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton
The Adventure of the Six Napoleons
The Adventure of the Three Students
The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez
The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter
The Adventure of the Abbey Range
The Adventure of the Second Stain

             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 inexplica-
ble circumstances. The public has already learned those particu-
lars of the crime which came out in the po]ice 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 do 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only withdrawn upon the third of last month.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 prob-
lems which came before the public. And I even attempted, more
than once, for my own private satisfaction, to employ his meth-
ods 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 un-
known, 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 ene-
mies 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
of 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.