By Arthur Conan Doyle.
Contents:
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 Grange.
The Adventure of the Second Stain.]
THE STRAND MAGAZINE
Vol. 26 OCTOBER, 1903
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withdrawn upon the third of last month.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
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.