tion to have stopped there,
and to have said nothing of that event which has created a void in my
life which the lapse of two years has done little to fill. My hand
has been forced, however, by the recent letters in which Colonel James
Moriarty defends the memory of his brother, and I have no choice but to
lay the facts before the public exactly as they occurred. I alone know
the absolute truth of the matter, and I am satisfied that the time has
come when no good purpose is to be served by its suppression. As far as
I know, there have been only three accounts in the public press: that
in the Journal de Geneve on May 6th, 1891, the Reuter's despatch in the
English papers on May 7th, and finally the recent letter to which I have
alluded. Of these the first and second were extremely condensed, while
the last is, as I shall now show, an absolute perversion of the facts.
It lies with me to tell for the first time what really took place
between Professor Moriarty and Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

It may be remembered that after my marriage, and my subsequent start in
private practice, the very intimate relations which had existed between
Holmes and myself became to some extent modified. He still came to me
from time to time when he desired a companion in his investigation, but
these occasions grew more and more seldom, until I find that in the year
1890 there were only three cases of which I retain any record. During
the winter of that year and the early spring of 1891, I saw in the
papers that he had been engaged by the French government upon a matter
of supreme importance, and I received two notes from Holmes, dated from
Narbonne and from Nimes, from which I gathered that his stay in France
was likely to be a long one. It was with some surprise, therefore, that
I saw him walk into my consulting-room upon the evening of April 24th.
It struck me that he was looking even paler and thinner than usual.

"Yes, I have been using myself up rather too freely," he remarked, in
answer to my look rather than to my words; "I have been a little pressed
of late. Have you any objection to my closing your shutters?"

The only light in the room came from the lamp upon the table at which I
had been reading. Holmes edged his way round the wall and flinging the
shutters together, he bolted them securely.

"You are afraid of something?" I asked.

"Well, I am."

"Of what?"

"Of air-guns."

"My dear Holmes, what do you mean?"

"I think that you