Sherlock Holmes: The Return of Sherlock Holmes

Book 0: Sherlock Complete Set

by Arthur Conan Doyle

Genres: General Fiction; Mystery

Synopsis

Ten years after the supposed death of Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls, Doyle bowed to popular pressure and breathed new life into his enduring creation. Holmes and Watson return to Baker Street to tackle such famous cases as "The Dancing Men," "The Solitary Cyclist," and "The Six Napoleons."

Release date: August 4, 2011

Publisher: Audible Studios

Print pages: 272

Sample

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Picardy Place in Edinburgh on 22 May 1859, son of Charles Altamount Doyle and Mary (Foley)
Doyle, and one of seven children who survived to adulthood. The Doyles were an artistic family, the most successful being
Arthur’s uncle ‘Dickie’ Doyle, the noted illustrator for Punch, but his father suffered from alcoholism and later epilepsy, and was eventually committed to a mental hospital. Conan Doyle
maintained a distant relationship with him, but it was his mother, whom he affectionately referred to as ‘the Ma’am’, who
encouraged his love of literature, and he remained close to her throughout his life. The young Arthur was educated at the
northern Jesuit school Stonyhurst, going on to study medicine at Edinburgh, and was an enthusiastic reader and storyteller
from a young age, as well as being an active sportsman.


Conan Doyle incurred the wrath of his rich relations when he announced he was an agnostic. Rejecting their strict Catholicism
and cut off from their patronage, he decided to set up his own practice in Southsea in 1882. There he met his first wife,
Louise Hawkins or ‘Touie’, and the couple were married in 1885, later having two children, a son and a daughter. But in 1897
Conan Doyle met and instantly fell in love with Jean Leckie. They maintained a platonic relationship for ten years and Conan
Doyle struggled with his feelings of guilt and deep affection for his wife and his passion for Jean. When in 1906 Touie died
of consumption, Conan Doyle genuinely mourned her. He finally married Jean in 1907 and they had two sons and a daughter, living
very happily together on their estate in Sussex, Windlesham, until Conan Doyle’s death in 1930.


It was in the year after his first marriage that Conan Doyle began toying with a character called Sherrinford Holmes. This
was to become the first Sherlock Holmes story, his ‘shilling shocker’, A Study in Scarlet, published in 1887. And so the celebrated detective was born, with the faithful Dr Watson at his side. Conan Doyle
consistently gave credit for the character to Dr Joseph Bell, an old tutor of his from Edinburgh University whose precision
and powers of deduction Conan Doyle greatly admired. On the origins of the name, he commented that ‘I made thirty runs [at
cricket] against a bowler by the name of Sherlock, and I always had a kindly feeling for the name’.


But it was in the new, popular literary magazine the Strand that the phenomenon of Sherlock Holmes really took off, with ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ appearing in 1891. It was an instant
hit. Sidney Paget created the distinctive illustrations of Holmes, based on his younger brother Walter, depicted in a deerstalker
(the pipe would come later). This iconic image became etched in the public’s mind and was more glamorous than Conan Doyle
had envisaged: ‘the handsome Walter took the place of the more powerful, but uglier, Sherlock, and perhaps from the point
of view of my lady readers it was as well.’


By this time Conan Doyle had given up practising medicine entirely to write. He yearned to concentrate on his historical novels
and, despite his success, saw Holmes as ‘taking his mind from better things’. So, after only two years, in 1893 he decided
to kill him off in ‘The Final Problem’, where Holmes famously met his end alongside his nemesis Professor Moriarty. The public
outcry was instant: women wept, men donned black armbands and subscriptions to the Strand plummeted by over 20,000, yet Conan Doyle was unmoved: ‘I feel towards him as I do towards pâté de foie gras, of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day.’ It wasn’t until 1901 that Holmes
reappeared in The Hound of the Baskervilles (a story that predated his death) and, with the public clamouring for more, Doyle finally brought him back to life in ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’ (1903). By the beginning of the twentieth
century the fan base for Sherlock Holmes was massive and far-reaching, from a Boston cabby in America to Abdul Hamid II, the
then Sultan of Turkey, and has continued growing to this day. There have been countless stage productions and films, with
Holmes defined by such actors as Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett and Michael Caine. And the stories weren’t merely entertainment;
the investigative methods Conan Doyle used are said to have had a huge influence on police processes at the time.


Although Arthur Conan Doyle’s name will always be synonymous with Sherlock Holmes, his volume of works was huge and wide-ranging,
including historical fiction such as Micah Clarke and The White Company, histories of the Boer War and World War One, as well as the Professor Challenger stories, The Lost World (seen as the inspiration for Michael Crichton’s hugely popular Jurassic Park) and The Poison Belt. Conan Doyle’s fascination with spiritualism very much governed his outlook later on in life and he wrote The Coming of the Fairies in response to the case of the Cottingley fairies. Many fans found it hard to associate the creator of a detective so wedded
to cool logic and fact with this ardent champion of the supernatural, but he never swayed in his beliefs.


Conan Doyle died in 1930 at the age of seventy-one, with his beloved Jean by his side, and was buried in the grounds of Windlesham,
with the headstone inscribed, at his request, ‘Steel True, Blade Straight’. Sir Winston Churchill said, ‘I had a great admiration
for him. Of course I read every Sherlock Holmes story … [they] have certainly found a permanent place in English literature.’




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 realised 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 Robert 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 an 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 £420 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 goodnight, 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 expanded revolver bullet, but no weapon of any sort was to be found in the room. On the table lay two bank-notes
for £10 each and £17 10s. 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 plainclothes detective, was
pointing out some theory of his own, while the others crowded round to listen to what he said. I got as near 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 apologise 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.

I acknowledged that I was.

‘Well, I’ve a conscience, sir, and when I chanced to see you go into this house, as I came hobbling after you, I thought to
myself, I’ll just step in and see that kind gentleman, and tell him that if I was a bit gruff in my manner there was not any
harm meant, and that I am much obliged to him for picking up my books.’


‘You make too much of a trifle,’ said I. ‘May I ask how you knew who I was?’

‘Well, sir, if it isn’t too great a liberty, I am a neighbour of yours, for you’ll find my little bookshop at the corner of
Church Street, and very happy to see you, I am sure. Maybe you collect yourself, sir; here’s British Birds, and Catullus, and The Holy War – a bargain every one of them. With five volumes you could just fill that gap on that second shelf. It looks untidy, does it
not, sir?’


I moved my head to look at the cabinet behind me. When I turned again Sherlock Holmes was standing smiling at me across my study table. I rose to my feet, stared at him for some
seconds in utter amazement, and then it appears that I must have fainted for the first and the last time in my life. Certainly
a grey mist swirled before my eyes, and when it cleared I found my collar-ends undone and the tingling aftertaste of brandy
upon my lips. Holmes was bending over my chair, his flask in his hand.


‘My dear Watson,’ said the well-remembered voice, ‘I owe you a thousand apologies. I had no idea that you would be so affected.’

I gripped him by the arm.

‘Holmes!’ I cried. ‘Is it really you? Can it indeed be that you are alive? Is it possible that you succeeded in climbing out
of that awful abyss?’


‘Wait a moment!’ said he. ‘Are you sure that you are really fit to discuss things? I have given you a serious shock by my
unnecessarily dramatic reappearance.’


‘I am all right; but indeed, Holmes, I can hardly believe my eyes. Good heavens, to think that you – you of all men – should
be standing in my study!’ Again I gripped him by the sleeve and felt the thin, sinewy arm beneath it. ‘Well, you’re not a
spirit, anyhow,’ said I. ‘My dear chap, I am overjoyed to see you. Sit down, and tell me how you came alive out of that dreadful
chasm.’


He sat opposite to me and lit a cigarette in his old nonchalant manner. He was dressed in the seedy frock-coat of the book
merchant, but the rest of that individual lay in a pile of white hair and old books upon the table. Holmes looked even thinner
and keener than of old, but there was a dead-white tinge in his aquiline face which told me that his life recently had not
been a healthy one.


‘I am glad to stretch myself, Watson,’ said he. ‘It is no joke when a tall man has to take a foot off his stature for several
hours on end. Now, my dear fellow, in the matter of these explanations we have, if I may ask for your co-operation, a hard
and dangerous night’s work in front of us. Perhaps it would be better if I gave you an account of the whole situation when
that work is finished.’


‘I am full of curiosity. I should much prefer to hear now.’

‘You’ll come with me tonight?’

‘When you like and where you like.’

‘This is indeed like the old days. We shall have time for a mouthful of dinner before we need go. Well, then, about that chasm.
I had no serious difficulty in getting out of it, for the very simple reason that I never was in it.’


‘You never were in it?’

‘No, Watson, I never was in it. My note to you was absolutely genuine. I had little doubt that I had come to the end of my
career when I perceived the somewhat sinister figure of the late Professor Moriarty standing upon the narrow pathway which
led to safety. I read an inexorable purpose in his grey eyes. I exchanged some remarks with him, therefore, and obtained his
courteous permission to write the short note which you afterwards received. I left it with my cigarette-box and my stick,
and I walked along the pathway, Moriarty still at my heels. When I reached the end I stood at bay. He drew no weapon, but
he rushed at me and threw his long arms around me. He knew that his own game was up, and was only anxious to revenge himself
upon me. We tottered together upon the brink of the fall. I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu, or the Japanese system
of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me. I slipped through his grip, and he with a horrible scream kicked madly for a few seconds and clawed the air with both his hands. But for all his efforts he could not get his balance,
and over he went. With my face over the brink I saw him fall for a long way. Then he struck a rock, bounded off and splashed
into the water.’


I listened with amazement to this explanation, which Holmes delivered between the puffs of his cigarette.

‘But the tracks!’ I cried. ‘I saw with my own eyes that two went down the path and none returned.’

‘It came about in this way. The instant that the professor had disappeared it struck me what a really extraordinarily lucky
chance Fate had placed in my way. I knew that Moriarty was not the only man who had sworn my death. There were at least three
others whose desire for vengeance upon me would only be increased by the death of their leader. They were all most dangerous
men. One or other would certainly get me. On the other hand, if all the world was convinced that I was dead they would take
liberties, these men; they would lay themselves open, and sooner or later I could destroy them. Then it would be time for
me to announce that I was still in the land of the living. So rapidly does the brain act that I believe I had thought this
all out before Professor Moriarty had reached the bottom of the Reichenbach Fall.


‘I stood up and examined the rocky wall behind me. In your picturesque account of the matter, which I read with great interest
some months later, you assert that the wall was sheer. This was not literally true. A few small footholds presented themselves,
and there was some indication of a ledge. The cliff is so high that to climb it all was an obvious impossibility, and it was
equally impossible to make my way along the wet path without leaving some tracks. I might, it is true, have reversed my boots, as I have done on similar occasions, but the sight of three sets of tracks in one direction
would certainly have suggested a deception. On the whole, then, it was best that I should risk the climb. It was not a pleasant
business, Watson. The fall roared beneath me. I am not a fanciful person, but I give you my word that I seemed to hear Moriarty’s
voice screaming at me out of the abyss. A mistake would have been fatal. More than once, as tufts of grass came out in my
hand or my foot slipped in the wet notches of the rock, I thought that I was gone. But I struggled upwards, and at last I
reached a ledge several feet deep and covered with soft green moss, where I could lie unseen in the most perfect comfort.
There I was stretched when you, my dear Watson, and all your following were investigating in the most sympathetic and inefficient
manner the circumstances of my death.


‘At last, when you had all formed your inevitable and totally erroneous conclusions, you departed for the hotel, and I was
left alone. I had imagined that I had reached the end of my adventures, but a very unexpected occurrence showed me that there
were surprises still in store for me. A huge rock, falling from above, boomed past me, struck the path, and bounded over into
the chasm. For an instant I thought that it was an accident; but a moment later, looking up, I saw a man’s head against the
darkening sky, and another stone struck the very ledge upon which I was stretched, within a foot of my head. Of course, the
meaning of this was obvious. Moriarty had not been alone. A confederate – and even that one glance had told me how dangerous
a man that confederate was – had kept guard while the professor had attacked me. From a distance, unseen by me, he had been
a witness of his friend’s death and of my escape. He had waited, and then, making his way round to the top of the cliff, he had endeavoured to succeed where his comrade had failed.


‘I did not take long to think about it, Watson. Again I saw that grim face look over the cliff, and I knew that it was the
precursor of another stone. I scrambled down on to the path. I don’t think I could have done it in cold blood. It was a hundred
times more difficult than getting up. But I had no time to think of the danger, for another stone sang past me as I hung by
my hands from the edge of the ledge. Half-way down I slipped, but by the blessing of God I landed, torn and bleeding, upon
the path. I took to my heels, did ten miles over the mountains in the darkness, and a week later I found myself in Florence,
with the certainty that no one in the world knew what had become of me.


‘I had only one confidant – my brother Mycroft. I owe you many apologies, my dear Watson, but it was all-important that it
should be thought I was dead, and it is quite certain that you would not have written so convincing an account of my unhappy
end had you not yourself thought that it was true. Several times during the last three years I have taken up my pen to write
to you, but always I feared lest your affectionate regard for me should tempt you to some indiscretion which would betray
my secret. For that reason I turned away from you this evening when you upset my books, for I was in danger at the time, and
any show of surprise and emotion upon your part might have drawn attention to my identity and led to the most deplorable and
irreparable results. As to Mycroft, I had to confide in him in order to obtain the money which I needed. The course of events
in London did not run so well as I had hoped, for the trial of the Moriarty gang left two of its most dangerous members, my
own most vindictive enemies, at liberty. I travelled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhassa and spending some days with the head Llama.
You may have read of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, but I am sure that it never occurred to you
that you were receiving news of your friend. I then passed through Persia, looked in at Mecca, and paid a short but interesting
visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum, the results of which I have communicated to the Foreign Office. Returning to France, I spent
some months in a research into the coal-tar derivatives, which I conducted in a laboratory at Montpellier, in the south of
France. Having concluded this to my satisfaction, and learning that only one of my enemies was now left in London, I was about
to return, when my movements were hastened by the news of this remarkable Park Lane Mystery, which not only appealed to me
by its own merits, but which seemed to offer some most peculiar personal opportunities. I came over at once to London, called
in my own person at Baker Street, threw Mrs Hudson into violent hysterics, and found that Mycroft had preserved my rooms and
my papers exactly as they had always been. So it was, my dear Watson, that at two o’clock today I found myself in my old armchair
in my own old room, and only wishing that I could have seen my old friend Watson in the other chair which he has so often
adorned.’


Such was the remarkable narrative to which I listened on that April evening – a narrative which would have been utterly incredible
to me had it not been confirmed by the actual sight of the tall, spare figure and the keen, eager face which I had never thought
to see again. In some manner he had learned of my own sad bereavement, and his sympathy was shown in his manner rather than
in his words. ‘Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson,’ said he, ‘and I have a piece of work for us both tonight which, if we can bring
it to a successful conclusion, will in itself justify a man’s life on this planet.’ In vain I begged him to tell me more.
‘You will hear and see enough before morning,’ he answered. ‘We have three years of the past to discuss. Let that suffice
until half-past nine, when we start upon the notable adventure of the empty house.’


It was indeed like old times when, at that hour, I found myself seated beside him in a hansom, my revolver in my pocket and
the thrill of adventure in my heart. Holmes was cold and stern and silent. As the gleam of the street-lamps flashed upon his
austere features, I saw that his brows were drawn down in thought and his thin lips compressed. I knew not what wild beast
we were about to hunt down in the dark jungle of criminal London, but I was well assured from the bearing of this master huntsman
that the adventure was a most grave one, while the sardonic smile which occasionally broke through his ascetic