The Return of Sherlock Holmes, A Collection of Holmes Adventures
by
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
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 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withdrawn upon the third of last month.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
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 willful 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 {sic}
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 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 banknotes 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, he would indeed be
a remarkable shot who could with a revolver inflict so deadly a
wound. Again, Park Lane is a frequented thoroughfare; 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
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