It
is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which
I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes
was distinguished. In an incoherent and, as I deeply feel, an entirely inadequate
fashion, I have endeavoured to give some account of my strange experiences in
his company from the chance which first brought us together at the period of the
"Study in Scarlet," up to the time of his interference in the matter
of the "Naval Treaty" -- an interference which had the unquestionable
effect of preventing a serious international complication. It was my intention
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 dispatch
in the English papers on May 7th, and finally the recent letters 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 investigations, 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.
|
