The Adventure of the Empty House: Part Two

"Very good?"

"This style is very good."

"That's a whole lot." "Cool, what did you say?"

“"Stiff-dome-warrant-est computer-built, focus-man-each-chip-financed-teb-such-teb-was-out."”

"Mega, but this is top-best-complet-fied." "Eww, just a few photos of the lone-steuer-b-shiny-gong-mach-and-fartig." "Kling, very good." "It's very good." "Hold your money, sir."

"With this style."

Welcome to Sherlock Holmes' short stories.

I'm Hugh Bonneville, and from the Noise of Podcast Network. This is the Adventure of the Empty House, part two. Last time, Sherlock Holmes returned to London three years after disappearing in Switzerland. Reports of his death, not least those published by Watson, having turned out to be somewhat exaggerated.

“Watson fainted at the sight of his old friend alive and well,”

and marveled at Sherlock's description of how he cheated death at the hands of Professor Moriarty and his confederates. Now, the two of them are hot on the trail of a new case, the so-called Park Lane Mystery. Young aristocrat Ronald Adair has been found dead in a locked room. His brains blown out by an expanding revolver bullet,

but with no gun anywhere to be seen. All of London is perplexed by this seemingly insoluble mystery, but Sherlock thinks he may have a lead. This is the Adventure of the Empty House, part two. 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 and 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 flume, bowded little good for the object of our quest. I had imagined that we were bound for Baker Street, but Holmes stopped the cab at the corner of Cavendish Square. I observed that, as he stepped out, he gave a most searching glance to right and left,

and at every subsequent street corner he took the utmost pains to assure that he was not followed. Our route was certainly a singular one. Holmes' knowledge of the byways of London was extraordinary, and on this occasion he passed rapidly and with an assured step

through a network of mues and stables, the very existence of which I had never known.

We emerged at last into a small road, blind with old gloomy houses which led us into Manchester Street and so to blend foot street. Here he turned swiftly down a narrow passage,

“passed through a wooden gate into a deserted yard, and then opened with a key”

the back door of a house. We entered together and he closed it behind us. The place was pitch dark, but it was evident to me that it was an empty house. Our feet creaked and crackled over the bear thanking and my outstretched hand touched a wall from which the paper was hanging in ribbons. Holmes is called thin fingers closed round my wrist and led me forwards down a long hall until I dimly saw the murky fan glide over the door.

Here Holmes turned suddenly to the right and we found ourselves in a large square empty room, heavily shadowed in the corners, but faintly lit in the center from the lights of the street beyond. There was no lamp near and the window was thick with dust so that we could only just discern each others figures within. My companion put his hand upon my shoulder and his lips close to my ear. Do you know where we are? He whispered. Surely that is Baker Street. I answered,

staring through the dim window. Exactly, we are in Camden House, which stands opposite to our own old orders. But why are we here? Because it commands so excellent of you of that picturesque pile. Might I trouble you, my dear Watson, to draw a little nearer to the window, taking every precaution not to show yourself and then to look up at our old rooms. The starting point to so many of our little adventures. We will see if my three years of absence

window. As my eyes fell upon it, I gave a gas and a cry of amazement. The blind was down and a strong

“light was burning in the room. The shadow of a man who was seated in a chair within was thrown”

in hard black outline upon the luminous screen of the window. There was no mistaking the poise of the head, the squareness of the shoulders, the sharpness of the features. The face was turned half round and the effect was that of one of those black silhouettes which our grandparents loved to frame. It was a perfect reproduction of homes. So amazed was I that I threw out my hand

to make sure that the man himself was standing beside me, he was quivering with silent laughter.

Well, said he, "What heavens, I cried. It is marvelous. I trust that age does not

“wither nor custom-stale my infinite variety," said he. And I recognized in his voice the joy”

and pride which the artist takes in his own creation. "It really is, rather like me, is it not?" "I should be prepared to swear that it was you." The credit of the execution is due to Monsieur Oscar-Mernier of Grenoble, who spent some days in doing the molding, it is a bust in wax, the rest I arranged myself during my visit to make a street this afternoon. But why? Because my dear Watson, I had the strongest possible reason for wishing certain

people to think that I was there, when I was really elsewhere. And you thought the rooms were watched. I knew that they were watched. By whom? By my old enemies, Watson, by the charming society whose

“leader lies in the right-and-back fall. You must remember that they knew and only they knew that I”

was still alive. Sooner or later they believed that I should come back to my rooms, they watched them continuously and this morning, they saw me arrive. How do you know? Because I recognized their Sentinel when I glanced out of my window. He is a harmless enough fellow, Parker, by name, a garota by trade, and a remarkable performer upon the mouth harp. I cared nothing for him, but I cared a great deal for the much more formidable person who was behind him, the bosom friend of Moriati.

The man who dropped the rocks over the cliff, the most cunning and dangerous criminal in London. That is the man who is after me tonight Watson and that is the man who is quite unaware that we are after him.

John Obil, the man of Balina Maurer. You know the story of this story, but you have always

wanted to know more about it? My name is David Nathan, and I'm the photographer of a short story about it. Every week we meet in the first row in the arena of the Gladiators. In the Palorian city of Patra, with worldwide different kinds of experts who are the ones who are in the world. From the pre-cultures of the podcast network, Nöyser, they look after a short story about where they are able to get to the podcast and follow us on every day of the new episode.

From this convenient retreat, the watchers were being watched and the trackers tracked. That angular shadow up yonder was the bait, and we were the hunters. In silence, we stood together in the darkness and watched the harrying figures who passed and reparsed in front of us. Homes was silent and motionless, but I could tell that he was keenly alert, and that his eyes were fixed intently upon the stream of passes by.

It was a bleak and boisterous night and the wind whistled shrilly down the long street. Many people were moving to and fro, most of them muffled in their coats and crevats,

two men who appeared to be sheltering themselves from the wind in the doorway of a house,

“some distance up the street. I'd tried to draw my companions attention to them,”

but he gave a little exclamation of impatience and continued to stare into the street. More than once he fidgeted with his feet and tapped rapidly with his fingers upon the wall. It was evident to me that he was becoming uneasy, and that his plans were not working out all together as he had hoped. At last, as midnight approached and the street gradually cleared, he paced up and down the room in uncontrollable agitation. I was about to make some remark to him

when I raised my eyes to the lighted window, and again experienced almost as greater surprise as before. I clutched Holmes' arm and pointed upwards. That the shadow has moved, I cried. It was, indeed, no longer the profile, but the back, which was turned towards us.

“Three years had certainly not smoothed the asperities of his temper, or his impatience with”

the less active intelligence than his own. "Of course it has moved!" said he. "Am I such a fasical bungalow Watson that I should erect an obvious dummy and expect that some of the sharpest men in Europe would be deceived by it? We have been in this room two hours, and Mrs Hudson has made some change in that figure eight times, or once in every quarter of an hour she works it from the

front so that her shadow may never be seen." "Ah!" He drew in his breath with a shrill, excited intake.

In the dim light I saw his head thrown forward, his whole attitude rigid with attention. Outside, the street was absolutely deserted. Those two men might still be crouching in the doorway, but I could no longer see them. All was still and dark. Save only that brilliant yellow screen

“in front of us with the black figure outlined upon its center. Again, in the utter silence I heard”

that thin, sibilant note which spoke of intense, suppressed excitement. An instant later he pulled me back into the blackest corner of the room and I felt his warning hand upon my lips.

The fingers which clutched me were quivering. Never had I known my friend more moved and yet the

dark street still stretched lonely and motionless before us. But suddenly I was aware of that which his keener senses had already distinguished. A low stealthy sound came to my ears, not from the direction of Baker Street, but from the back of the very house in which we lay you concealed. A door opened and shut. An instant later, steps crept down the passage, steps which were meant to be silent but which reverberated harshly through the empty house.

Homes crouched back against the wall and I did the same, my hand closing upon the handle of my revolver. Beering through the gloom, I saw the vague outline of a man, a shade blacker than the blackness of the open door. He stood for an instant and then he crept forward crouching, menacing into the room. He was within three yards of us this sinister figure and I had braced myself to meet his spring before I realized that he had no idea of our presence. He passed close

beside us, stole over to the window and very softly and noiselessly raised it for half a foot. As he sank to the level of this opening, the light of the street no longer dimmed by the dusty glass fell full upon his face. The man seemed to be beside himself with excitement. His two eyes shone like stars and his features were working convulsively. He was an elderly man with a thin projecting nose a high ball for it and a huge grizzled moustache. An opera hat was pushed to the

back of his head and an evening dress shirt front gleamed out through his open overcoat. His face was gaunt and swore they scored with deep savage lines. In his hand, he carried what appeared to be a stick but as he laid it down upon the floor it gave a metallic clang. Then from the pocket of his overcoat he drew a bulky object and he visited himself in some task which ended with a loud sharp click. As if a spring or boat had fallen into its place. Still kneeling upon the

floor he bent forward and threw all his weight and strength upon some lever with the result

himself then and I saw that what he held in his hand was a sort of gun with a curiously

“mischapened butt. He opened it at the breach put something in and snapped the breach block.”

Then crouching down he rested the end of the barrel upon the ledge of the open window and I saw his long moustache droop over the stock and his eye gleam as it appeared along the sides. I heard a little sigh of satisfaction as he cuddled the butt into his shoulder and saw that

amazing target. The black man on the yellow ground standing clear at the end of his foresight.

For an instant he was rigid and motionless. Then his finger tightened on the trigger. There was a strange loud whizz and a long silvery tinkle of broken glass. At that instant homes sprang like a tiger onto the marksman's back and hold him flat upon his face. He was up again in a moment and with convulsive strength he seized homes by the throat. Had I struck him on the head with the butt of my revolver and he dropped again upon the floor. I fell upon him and as I held him my

comrade blew a shrill call upon a whistle. There was the clatter of running feet upon the

pavement and two policemen in uniform with one plain closed detective rushed through the front entrance

and into the room. "That you all are strad?" said homes. "Yes Mr. Holmes. I took the job myself.

“It's good to see you back in London, sir." Now I think you want a little unofficial help.”

Three undetected murders in one year won't do a strad, but you handled the mostly mystery with less than your usual, that's to say you handled it fairly well. We had all risen to our feet. Our prisoner, grieving hard, with a stalwart constable on each side of him. Already a few loiterers had begun to collect in the street. Oams stepped up to the window, posed it, and dropped the blinds. The strad had produced two candles and the policemen had uncovered their

lanterns. I was able at last to have a good look at our prisoner. It was a tremendously virile and yet sinister face, which was turned towards us. With the brow of a philosopher above and the jaw of a sensualist below, the man must have started with great capacities for good, or for evil. But one could not look upon his cruel blue eyes with their drooping cynical lids or upon the fierce aggressive nose and the threatening deep-lined brow without reading nature's

plainest danger signals. He took no heed of any of us, but his eyes were fixed upon homes his face with an expression in which hatred and amazement were equally blended.

"You've failed." He kept on muttering you. "Never, never, fiend."

"Ah, Colonel," said Holmes, arranging his rumpled collar. "Jurn his end in lovers meetings," as the old play says. "I don't think I've had the pleasure of seeing you since you favored me with those attentions, as I lay on the ledge above the right and back fall." The Colonel still stared at my friend like a man in a trance. "You're cunning, cunning, fiend." Was all that he could say.

"I have not introduced you yet," said Holmes. "This gentleman is Colonel Sebastian Moran, once of her Majesty's Indian army, and the best heavy game shot that our eastern empire has

“ever produced." I believe I am correct, Colonel, in saying that your bag of tigers still remains”

unrivaled. The fierce old man said nothing. But still, clear, did my companion. With his savage eyes and bristling mastars, he was wonderfully like a tiger himself. "I wonder that my very simple strategyem could deceive so older," said Holmes. "It must be very familiar to you. Have you not tethered a young kid under a tree, laying above it with your rifle and waited for the bait to bring up your tiger?"

"This empty house is my tree, and you, my tiger, who have possibly had other guns in reserve in case there should be several tigers, or in the unlikely supposition of your own aim, failing you. These," he pointed around. "Are my other guns? The parallel is exact."

The fury upon his face was terrible to look at.

"I confess that you had one small surprise for me," said Holmes. "I did not anticipate that you would yourself make use of this empty house and this convenient front window. I had imagined you as operating from the street where my friend Lestrade and his merry men were awaiting you. With that exception, all has gone as I expected." Colonel Moran turned to the official detective. "You may or may not have just caused for arresting me," said he. "But at least there can be no

reason why I should submit to the jibes of this person. If I am in the hands of the law, let things be done in a legal way." "Well, that's reasonable enough," said Lestrade.

“"Nothing further you have to say, Mr Holmes, before we go?" Holmes had picked up the powerful”

air gun from the floor and was examining its mechanism. "An admirable and unique weapon," said he, "noiseless and of tremendous power. I knew von Hörder the blind German mechanic who constructed it to the order of the late Professor Moriarty. For years I have been aware of its existence,

though I have never before had the opportunity of handling it. I commend it very specially to your

attention, Lestrade, and also the bullets which fit it." "You can trust us to look after that, Mr Holmes," said Lestrade, as the whole party moved towards the door. "Anything further to say, only to ask what charge you intend to prefer?" "What charge, sir? My of course, the attempted murder of Mr Sherlock Holmes, not so Lestrade. I do not propose to appear in the matter at all. To you and to you only, belongs the credit of the remarkable arrest which you have

affected." "Yes, Lestrade, I congratulate you with your usual happy mixture of cunning and audacity. You have got him. Got him? Got whom, Mr Holmes." The man that the whole force has been seeking in vain, Colonel Sebastian Moran, who shot the honorable Ronald Adair with an expanding bullet

from an air gun through the open window of the second floor front of number 427 Park Lane upon the

30th of last month. "That's the charged, Lestrade." "And now, what's and if you can endure the

“draft from a broken window, I think that half an hour in my study over a cigar may afford you some”

profitable amusement." "Our old chambers had been left unchanged through the supervision of mycroft Holmes and the immediate care of Mrs Hudson. As I entered, I saw it is true and unwanted tidiness. But the old landmarks were all in their place. There were the chemical corner and the acid stained deal-topped table. There upon a shelf was the rower for medieval scrapbooks and books of reference which many of our fellow

citizens would have been so glad to burn. The diagrams, the violin case and the pipe rack, even the person's slipper which contained the tobacco, all met my eyes as I glanced around me. There were two occupants of the room, one Mrs Hudson who beamed upon us both as we entered. The other

“the strange dummy which had played so important apart in the evening's adventures. It was a wax-colored”

model of my friend so admirably done that it was a perfect facsimile. It stood on a small pedestal table with an old dressing gown of Holmes's so draped rounded that the illusion from the street was absolutely perfect. "I hope you preserved all precautions Mrs Hudson," said Holmes. "I went to it on my knees so just as you told me, excellent, you carried the thing out very well. Did you observe where the bullet went?" "Yes sir, I'm afraid it has spoiled your beautiful

bust for it passed right through the head and flattened itself on the wall. I picked it up from the carpet. Here it is." Holmes held it out for me. A soft revolver bullet as you perceive Watson, there's genius in that, for who would expect to find such a thing fired from an air gun. "All right Mrs Hudson, I am much obliged for your assistance. And now Watson, let me see you in

He had thrown off the C.D. Frog coat, and now he was the Holmes of old in the mouse-colored dressing

gown which he took from his effigy. "The old Chicago's nerves have not lost their steadiness, nor his eyes, their keenness," said he with a laugh, as he inspected the shattered forehead of his bust. "Plum in the middle of the back of the head and smack through the brain. He was the best shot in India, and I expect that there are few better in London. Have you heard the name?" "No,

“I have not. Well, well, such is fame, but then if I remember a right you had not heard the name”

of Professor James Moriarty, who had one of the great brains of the century. Just give me down my index of biographies from the shelf." He turned over the pages, lazily, leaning back in his chair and blowing great clouds from his cigar. "My collection of M's is a fine one," said he. Moriarty himself is enough to make any letter illustrious, and here is Morgan, the Poisoner, and medidue of a bonnetball memory, and Matthews knocked out my left canine in the waiting room at

chairing cross, and finally, here is our friend of tonight. He handed over the book, and I read,

Moran, Sebastian Colonel, and employed, formerly first bengalore pioneers, born London 1840,

“son of Sir Augustus Moran, CB, once British minister to Persia, educated Ethan and Oxford,”

served in Joaquie campaign, Afghan campaign, Sharassiab, dispatches Sherpa and Kabul, author of heavy game of the Western Himalayas, 1881, three months in the jungle, 1884, a dress conduit street, clubs the Anglo-Indian, the tank of ill, the Bagatelle card club. On the margin was written in homes his precise hand, the second most dangerous man in London. "This is astonishing," said I, as I handed back the volume, the man's career is that of an honourable soldier. "It is true,"

Holmes, aunsen, up to a certain point he did well. He was always a man of iron,

nerve, and the story is still told in India how he crawled down a drain after a wounded man-eating tiger. There are some trees Watson which grow to a certain height, and then suddenly developed some unsightly eccentricity. You will see it often in humans. I have a theory that the individual represents in his development the whole procession of his ancestors, and that such a sudden turn to good or evil stands for some strong influence which came into

the line of his pedigree. The person becomes as it were the epitome of the history of his own family. No, it is surely rather fanciful. Well, I don't insist upon it. Whatever the course, Colonel Moran began to go wrong. Without any open scandal he still made India too hot to hold him, he retired, came to London and again acquired an evil name. It was at this time that he was sought out by Professor Moriati. To whom for a time he was chief of the staff.

Moriati supplied him liberally with money and used him only in one or two very high-class jobs which no ordinary criminal could have undertaken. You may have some recollection of the death of Mrs. Stewart of Lorda in 1887? Not? Well, I am sure Moran was at the bottom of it, but nothing could be proved. So cleverly was the Colonel concealed that even when the Moriati

“gang was broken up we could not incriminate him. You remember at that date when I called upon”

you in your rooms, how I put up the shutters for fear of air guns? No doubt you thought me fanciful and you exactly what I was doing. For I knew of the existence of this remarkable gun and I knew also that one of the best shots in the world would be behind it. When we were in Switzerland he followed us with Moriati and it was undoubtedly he who gave me that evil five minutes on the Reichenbach ledge. You may think that I read the papers with some attention

during my sojourn in France on the lookout for any chance of laying him by the heels. So long as he was free and London my life would really not have been worth living. Night and day the shadow would have been over me and sooner or later his chance must have come. What could I do?

a magistrate. They cannot interfere on the strength of what would appear to them to be a wild suspicion.

“So I could do nothing. But I watched the criminal news knowing that sooner or later I should get him.”

Then came the death of this Ronald Adair. I chance had come a classed. Knowing what I did was it not certain that Colonel Moran had done it. He had played cards with the lad. He had followed him home from the club. He had shot him through the open window. There was not a doubt of it. The bullets alone are enough to put his head in a noose. I came over at once. I was seen by the Sentinel who would I knew direct the Colonel's attention

to my presence. He could not fail to connect my sudden return with his crime and to be terribly alarmed. I was sure that he would make an attempt to get me out of the way at once and would bring round his murderous weapon for that purpose. I left him an excellent mark in the window and having warned the police that they might be needed, by the way, what's new spotted their presence in that doorway with unearling accuracy. I took up what seemed to me to be a judicious

post for observation never dreaming that he would choose the same spot for his attack.

Now, my dear Watson. Does anything remain for me to explain? Yes, said I. You have not made

“it clear what was Colonel Moran's motive in murdering the honorable Ronald Adair?”

Oh, my dear Watson, there we come into those realms of conjecture where the most logical mind may be at fault. Each may form his own hypothesis upon the present evidence and yours is as likely to be correct as mine. You have formed one then. I think that it is not difficult to explain the facts. It came out in evidence that Colonel Moran and young Adair had between them one a considerable amount of money. Now, Moran undoubtedly played foul of that I have long been

aware. I believe that on the day of the murder Adair had discovered that Moran was cheating. But he likely, he had spoken to him privately and had threatened to expose him unless he voluntarily

“resigned his membership of the club and promised not to play cards again. It is unlikely”

that a youngster like Adair would at once make a hideous scandal by exposing a well-known man so much older than himself. Probably he acted as I suggest. The exclusion from his clubs would mean ruin to Moran who lived by his ill-gotten card gains. He therefore murdered Adair, who at the time was endeavoureding to work out how much money he should himself return since he could not profit by his partner's foul play. He locked the door, lest the ladies should surprise him and insist upon

knowing what he was doing with these names and coins. Will it pass? I have no doubt that you have hit upon the truth. It will be verified or disproved at the trial. Meanwhile, come what may, Colonel Moran will trouble us no more. The famous air gun of Von Hörder will embellish the Scotland Yard Museum. And once again, Mr. Sherlock Holmes is free to devote his life to examining those interesting little problems which the complex life of London so plentifully presents.

Next time on Sherlock Holmes' short stories, Holmes and Watson are drawn away to the countryside in the adventure of the Sussex Vampire. Robert Ferguson believes his wife has attacked their infant son and were still that she may be a vampire. The evidence is damning, bite marks on the child's

neck and the mother found with blood on her lips. But Holmes has never been one to accept the supernatural

and his eyes even the strangest mystery has a rational explanation if one only looks closely enough. That's the next time. Can't wait a week until the next episode, well listen to it right away by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions for more information or click the link in the episode description.

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