The Empty House Return Story

Death was not the end—for Sherlock Holmes, it was merely a disguise. He returns from the shadows of Reichenbach to hunt the hunter who survived his fall.

"The Adventure of the Empty House" is the Arthur Conan Doyle story in which Sherlock Holmes returns after his apparent death at the Reichenbach Falls. Holmes had survived his encounter with Professor Moriarty, faked his fall and spent the next few years travelling and dismantling the remnants of Moriarty's gang. Watson, visiting the scene of the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair, runs into an elderly book collector who turns out to be Holmes in disguise.

Quick Facts

Detective: Sherlock Holmes
Narrator: Dr. John H. Watson
Primary antagonist: Colonel Sebastian Moran
Publication year: 1903
Collection: The Return of Sherlock Holmes

Lore & Background

That evening Holmes and Watson enter Camden House, an abandoned building whose front room overlooks Baker Street. A lifelike waxwork bust of Holmes stands in the window of his own room across the street. At about midnight a sniper takes the bait and hits the dummy with a specialised air gun. Inspector Lestrade arrests the gunman, Colonel Sebastian Moran, who was Adair's whist partner and his murderer.

Reader's Guide

The story was published in Collier's in the United States on 26 September 1903 and in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in October 1903, and was collected in The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Public pressure had compelled Doyle to bring the detective back. Holmes describes Moran as having been the second most dangerous man in London while Moriarty was alive, and speculates that Adair had caught Moran cheating at cards.