ling 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withdrawn upon the third of last month.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,