THE ADVENTURE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE

A Sherlock Holmes Story by Arthur Conan Doyle

Simplified to CEFR B1 Level

Part 1: The Mystery of Ronald Adair

It was in the spring of 1894 that all of London was shocked by the murder of a young man named Ronald Adair. The circumstances were very strange. The public had learned some facts from the police investigation, but many important details were kept secret. Now, almost ten years later, I am finally allowed to tell the full story.

Ronald Adair was the son of the Earl of Maynooth, who was the governor of one of the Australian colonies. (Australia was part of the British Empire at that time, and senior officials called 'governors' were sent there to manage different regions.) Adair's mother had come back to England for an eye operation, and she was living with her son Ronald and her daughter Hilda at 427 Park Lane, in a wealthy area of London.

Ronald was a quiet, pleasant young man. He had no known enemies and no serious problems. He had been engaged to a woman named Edith Woodley, but they had ended the engagement together without any bad feelings. He enjoyed playing card games and was a member of several gentlemen's clubs in London — private social clubs where wealthy men met to eat, drink, and play cards.

On the evening of 30th March 1894, Ronald came home from his card club at ten o'clock. His mother and sister were out for the evening. A servant heard him go into the sitting room on the second floor. She had opened the window earlier because the fireplace was smoking. No sounds were heard from the room.

When his mother and sister came home at eleven-twenty, they wanted to say goodnight to Ronald. But the door to his room was locked from the inside, and nobody answered when they knocked and called out. They got help and forced the door open. Ronald was found lying near the table, dead from a bullet wound to the head. No gun was found in the room.

On the table there was some money — two ten-pound notes and about seventeen pounds in coins — arranged in small piles. There was also a piece of paper with the names of some friends from his card club, and numbers next to the names. It seemed he had been working out how much money he had won or lost at cards.

The mystery was very puzzling. How did the killer get away? The door was locked from the inside. The window was at least six metres above the ground, and there were flowers in a garden bed below — but the flowers and soil were not disturbed. Nobody in the busy street outside had heard a shot. And there was no clear reason why anyone would want to kill Ronald Adair.

Part 2: Watson Tries to Solve the Mystery

I, Dr. Watson, was very interested in this case. My close friend Sherlock Holmes had been dead for three years — or so I believed — and I missed him greatly. I often tried to solve cases in the way Holmes had taught me, though I was not very successful.

One evening, I walked to Park Lane to look at the house where the murder had happened. A small crowd had gathered on the pavement outside, all looking up at the window. A tall, thin man in plain clothes — I thought he was probably a police detective — was explaining his theory to the others. I listened, but his ideas seemed quite wrong to me, so I moved away.

As I turned, I accidentally walked into an old man standing behind me and knocked the books he was carrying out of his arms. I apologised and helped him pick them up. I noticed one book was called 'The Origin of Tree Worship.' The old man seemed very upset about his books. He gave me an angry look, then turned and disappeared into the crowd. He was bent over, had white side-whiskers, and was carrying a large pile of books.

I looked carefully at the house but could not work out how the murderer had escaped. I walked back home to Kensington, still puzzled. A few minutes after I arrived, my servant told me that someone wanted to see me. To my great surprise, it was the same old book-seller.

"You are surprised to see me, sir," he said in a rough, croaking voice.

I said that I was.

"Well, I have a conscience," he said. "When I saw you come into this house, I thought I should come and tell you that I was sorry for being rude earlier, and to thank you for picking up my books. I have a little bookshop on the corner of Church Street. Perhaps you collect books yourself? Here are some fine ones — 'British Birds', 'Catullus', and 'The Holy War.' They would fill that empty space on your second shelf nicely."

I turned to look at the shelf. When I turned back — Sherlock Holmes was standing there, smiling at me across the table.

Part 3: Holmes Returns from the Dead

I stood up and stared at him. Then I fainted — the only time in my life that I have ever done so. When I came back to my senses, Holmes was bending over me with a small bottle of brandy.

"My dear Watson," said his familiar voice, "I owe you a thousand apologies. I had no idea you would be so shocked."

I grabbed his arms. "Holmes!" I cried. "Is it really you? Are you truly alive? Did you escape from that terrible waterfall?"

"Sit down and rest," he said. "I have given you a bad shock with my overly dramatic return."

I was very emotional, but I sat down. Holmes looked thinner than before, and his face was very pale — a sign that his life had not been easy recently. He sat opposite me and lit a cigarette in his calm, relaxed way. The disguise of the old bookseller — the white hair, the bent posture, the croaking voice — lay in a pile on the table.

"We have a difficult and dangerous night's work ahead of us," said Holmes. "Perhaps I should explain everything after that work is done."

"I would much rather hear the explanation now," I said.

"Will you come with me tonight?"

"Whenever and wherever you like," I said.

"Excellent — just like the old days. We have time for a quick dinner first. Now — about the Reichenbach Falls. I had no real difficulty escaping, for a very simple reason: I was never in the water."

He then explained what had really happened three years before. At the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, Holmes had met his great enemy Professor Moriarty — the leader of a criminal organisation — on a narrow path beside a huge waterfall. (The Reichenbach Falls is a famous and very powerful waterfall in the Swiss Alps.)

Moriarty had attacked Holmes. But Holmes had learned a Japanese style of wrestling called 'baritsu', and he used this skill to escape Moriarty's grip. Moriarty lost his balance and fell into the waterfall below.

After Moriarty fell, Holmes realised something important: Moriarty was not the only dangerous person who wanted him dead. Several other members of Moriarty's criminal gang would now want to kill Holmes too. Holmes decided that his only safe option was to let the world believe he was dead. That way, his enemies would stop being careful, and he could eventually catch them.

Holmes had climbed up the rocky cliff face beside the falls — a very dangerous climb — and hidden on a ledge. He had watched from above as I (Watson) and others searched below and concluded that Holmes was dead.

But then something unexpected happened. A large rock came flying past Holmes from above. Someone was throwing rocks at him. It was a member of Moriarty's gang, who had been watching from a distance and had seen Holmes escape. Holmes quickly climbed back down to the path — an even more dangerous climb than going up — and ran away in the dark. He ran about sixteen kilometres over the mountains that night. A week later he was safely in Florence, Italy.

"I had only one person I trusted with my secret — my brother Mycroft," Holmes explained. Mycroft Holmes was a very intelligent man who worked for the British government in a senior position. "I needed money, and Mycroft provided it."

For three years, Holmes had travelled the world in disguise, under the name 'Sigerson.' He visited Tibet, where he spent time at a famous Buddhist monastery in Lhasa (the capital of Tibet). He also visited Persia (modern-day Iran), the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, and Khartoum in Sudan. He did some scientific research in France. All this time, he was waiting until it was safe to return to London.

"I apologise for not contacting you, Watson," said Holmes. "But I was afraid that your feelings for me would make you say or do something that would give away my secret. I could not risk that."

When Holmes finally returned to London, he came first to his old home at 221B Baker Street, where his landlady Mrs. Hudson was so shocked to see him that she became very upset. His brother Mycroft had kept his rooms exactly as they were before.

Part 4: The Plan — The Empty House

After Holmes told me his story, I was full of questions. But he said we had work to do. At half past nine that evening, we got into a horse-drawn taxi (called a 'hansom' in those days) and set off. I had my revolver in my pocket. Holmes was serious and quiet, his face showing deep concentration.

I expected we would go to Baker Street, but Holmes stopped the taxi at Cavendish Square. From there, we walked through a complicated route — down narrow back streets and through yards — clearly to make sure nobody was following us. Holmes knew London's back streets extremely well.

Eventually we came to a small road lined with old, dark houses. Holmes unlocked the back door of one of the houses with a key. We went inside. The house was completely dark and empty. The floors creaked under our feet. The wallpaper was hanging off the walls in strips. Holmes held my wrist in the darkness and led me forward.

We entered a large, empty room. It was dark in the corners, but faint light came in from the street outside. Holmes put his hand on my shoulder and whispered in my ear.

"Do you know where we are?"

"That looks like Baker Street," I said, looking through the dirty window.

"Exactly. We are in Camden House, directly opposite our old rooms."

"But why are we here?"

"Because from here we have a perfect view of those rooms," he whispered. "Look up at our old windows — carefully, and don't let yourself be seen — and you will understand."

I moved carefully to the window and looked across the street at Holmes's old rooms at 221B Baker Street. I was amazed by what I saw. The curtain was down and a bright light was on inside the room. On the curtain, a sharp black shadow showed the outline of a man sitting in a chair. The shape of the head, the shoulders, the features — it was unmistakably the silhouette of Sherlock Holmes.

I turned around in shock. Holmes was standing right beside me, smiling quietly.

"It is marvellous," I said.

"It is a wax model," Holmes explained. "It was made by a French sculptor, Monsieur Oscar Meunier of Grenoble, who spent several days making it. I arranged everything else when I visited Baker Street this afternoon. I needed certain people to think I was in my rooms, while I was actually here."

"You thought the rooms were being watched?"

"I knew they were. By my old enemies — the members of Moriarty's criminal gang who are still free. They knew — only they knew — that I was still alive. They have been watching my rooms, waiting for me to return. This morning, they saw me arrive."

Holmes explained that he had recognised one of the men watching outside his window — a man named Parker, who worked for the gang. But behind Parker was a much more dangerous man: the person who had thrown rocks at Holmes on the Reichenbach cliff. This man was the most cunning and deadly criminal still free in London. Holmes would not yet give me his name.

"That is the man who is after me tonight, Watson. And he has no idea that we are after him."

I began to understand Holmes's plan. From this empty house, we were watching the watchers. The shadow in the window of 221B was the bait. We were the trap.

Part 5: The Trap is Sprung

We stood together in the dark, silent room and watched the street. It was a cold, windy night. People walked past quickly, their coats pulled tight against the wind. Holmes was completely still and focused. I noticed two men who seemed to be sheltering in the doorway of a building further up the street.

Time passed slowly. As midnight approached, the street became quieter. Holmes began to pace the room nervously — it was clear things were not going exactly as he had planned. Then I looked up at the lit window across the street.

"The shadow has moved!" I whispered.

"Of course it has moved," said Holmes. "Do you think I would use a simple, still dummy and expect London's most dangerous criminals to be fooled by it? Mrs. Hudson — my landlady — has been moving the model every fifteen minutes, for the past two hours. She does it on her knees so her own shadow is never seen from the street."

Suddenly Holmes became very tense. He pulled me back into the darkest corner of the room and pressed his hand to my lips to signal silence. His fingers were trembling — I had never seen him so affected.

Then I heard what his sharper ears had already detected: a soft, careful sound — not from the street in front of us, but from behind us, from inside the empty house. A door opened and closed. Slow, careful footsteps came down the hallway.

The dark shape of a man appeared in the doorway of our room. He did not know we were there. He crept forward towards the window. When he crouched down and opened the window slightly, the light from the street lit up his face.

He was an elderly man with a thin, sharp nose, a high bald forehead, and a large grey moustache. He was wearing formal evening dress — the kind of clothes wealthy people wore to dinner parties — under an open overcoat. His face was thin and dark, with deep lines. His eyes were shining with excitement.

He placed what looked like a stick on the floor — it made a metallic clang. Then he took something from his coat pocket and spent some time assembling it, making a series of clicking sounds. When he straightened up, we could see that he was holding a kind of gun, but with a very unusual shape. He opened the back of it (called the breech), put something inside, and closed it with a sharp click.

Then he crouched down, rested the barrel of the gun on the window ledge, and looked carefully along the sights, aiming at the shadow of 'Holmes' in the window across the street. He gave a small sigh of satisfaction as he pressed the gun against his shoulder.

For one moment he was completely still.

Then he fired.

There was a strange, loud hissing sound — not a bang — and the sound of breaking glass from across the street.

At that instant, Holmes leapt onto the man's back like a tiger. The man was knocked flat on the floor. But he was very strong. He jumped up and grabbed Holmes by the throat. I struck the man on the head with the handle of my revolver, and he fell again. Holmes blew a whistle sharply.

Immediately, there was the sound of running feet on the pavement outside. Two police officers in uniform and one plain-clothes detective ran through the front door and into the room.

"Is that you, Lestrade?" said Holmes.

"Yes, Mr. Holmes," said the detective — Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, the main London police headquarters. "It's good to see you back in London, sir."

Part 6: The Villain Revealed

The police officers held our prisoner firmly, one on each side. A few curious people had already stopped in the street outside to see what was happening. Holmes closed the window and lowered the curtain. The police lit their lanterns so we could all see properly.

The prisoner's face was a powerful and frightening one. His blue eyes were cold and cruel, and he stared at Holmes with an expression that mixed hatred and amazement.

"You fiend!" he kept muttering. "You clever, clever fiend!"

"Ah, Colonel!" said Holmes, calmly straightening his collar. "I don't think I have had the pleasure of seeing you since you tried to kill me on the ledge above the Reichenbach Falls."

Holmes then introduced the man to Lestrade and the others: "This is Colonel Sebastian Moran. He was formerly an officer in the British Indian Army and was considered the finest big-game hunter in the British Empire." (At that time, Britain controlled a large empire that included India. Army officers there sometimes hunted large animals such as tigers, leopards, and elephants — this was called 'big-game hunting' and was considered a sign of bravery and skill.)

Moran said nothing, but continued to stare at Holmes with fierce, angry eyes. He truly looked like a tiger himself.

"I am surprised that my simple trick could fool such an experienced hunter," said Holmes. "You must know the method well. Have you not tied a young goat to a tree and waited in the branches above with your rifle, to attract and shoot a tiger? That is exactly what I did here. This empty house was my tree, and you were my tiger. The police waiting in the doorway outside were my other guns, in case I needed them."

Moran was furious. He tried to lunge forward but the police held him back.

Holmes picked up the unusual gun from the floor and examined it carefully. "This is a remarkable weapon," he said. "It fires with air pressure instead of gunpowder, so it makes almost no noise. It was built to order for Professor Moriarty by a blind German engineer named Von Herder. I have known about its existence for years, but this is the first time I have seen it. Please pay special attention to this gun and its bullets, Lestrade."

Lestrade asked what charge he should make against Moran.

"Not the attempted murder of Sherlock Holmes," said Holmes. "I would prefer not to be involved. The credit for this arrest belongs entirely to you, Lestrade. The charge should be the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair — shot through the open window of his room at 427 Park Lane on 30th March."

Part 7: Back at Baker Street — The Full Explanation

After Moran was taken away, Holmes and I returned to his old rooms at 221B Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson, his landlady, had kept everything exactly as it was. The chemistry equipment, the rows of notebooks and reference books, the violin case, the pipe rack — everything was in its place. Even the Persian slipper that Holmes kept his tobacco in was still there.

Mrs. Hudson was smiling happily as we came in. On a small table stood the wax model of Holmes — an extraordinarily lifelike figure, dressed in one of Holmes's old dressing gowns. We could see where the bullet from Moran's gun had passed cleanly through the model's head and flattened against the wall behind it. Mrs. Hudson had found the bullet on the carpet and gave it to Holmes.

"A soft revolver bullet," said Holmes, holding it up. "The clever thing is that nobody would expect to find this kind of bullet fired from an air-gun. Thank you, Mrs. Hudson — you were excellent tonight."

Holmes and I sat down in our old chairs. He had taken off the bookseller's coat and was wearing his old grey dressing gown.

"Tell me, Watson — did you know the name of Colonel Moran before tonight?"

"No," I said.

"Well, fame is a strange thing," said Holmes. "You had not heard of Professor Moriarty either, and he had one of the finest criminal minds of the century."

He took down one of his reference books from the shelf — a personal collection of notes and information about criminals — and turned to the entry for Moran. He read it aloud and then handed the book to me. I read:

Moran, Sebastian, Colonel. Not currently employed. Formerly of the 1st Bangalore Pioneers (a British Indian Army regiment). Born in London, 1840. Son of a senior British diplomat. Educated at Eton (one of England's most famous private schools) and Oxford University. Served in several military campaigns in Afghanistan. Author of two books about hunting in the Himalayas. Address: Conduit Street, London.

In Holmes's own neat handwriting in the margin were the words: The second most dangerous man in London.

"His career looks honourable," I said, handing back the book.

"It was, up to a point," said Holmes. "Moran was brave and capable. There is a famous story in India of how he crawled into a drain pipe to catch a wounded man-eating tiger. But at some point, something went wrong in him. He began to behave badly — nothing openly scandalous, but enough to make life uncomfortable for him in India. He came back to London and developed a bad reputation there too. That is when Moriarty found him. Moriarty paid him well and used him for only the most serious crimes — things that an ordinary criminal could not do."

"So why did Moran kill Ronald Adair?" I asked.

"That is my theory," said Holmes. "Moran was a card cheat — he had been cheating at card games for some time. Young Adair must have discovered this. Adair was an honest young man. He probably spoke privately to Moran and threatened to tell the card clubs unless Moran agreed to stop playing cards and resign from the clubs. He would not have wanted to cause a public scandal.

"For Moran, being banned from his clubs would have been a disaster. He made his money by cheating at cards, and the clubs were where he did it. So he murdered Adair to protect himself. At the time he was killed, Adair was in his room working out how much money he needed to return to other players — money that he and Moran had won dishonestly. He locked the door so his mother and sister would not come in and see what he was doing with all the money and the lists of names."

"That makes perfect sense," I said.

"It will be confirmed — or not — at the trial. In any case, Colonel Moran will trouble us no more. The air-gun of Von Herder will go to the Scotland Yard museum. And Sherlock Holmes is once again free to dedicate himself to those interesting problems which the busy life of London so generously provides."

Cultural Notes for Readers

This story was written by Arthur Conan Doyle and first published in 1903. It is set in London in 1894. Here are some explanations to help you understand the world of the story:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: Holmes is a fictional private detective — a person hired by individuals to investigate crimes or mysteries. Watson is his friend and assistant, a medical doctor who narrates (tells) the stories. Holmes is famous for his brilliant powers of observation and logical thinking. Together they solve many crimes that the official police cannot crack.

221B Baker Street: This is Holmes's famous address in London. He lived there as a lodger (a paying guest) with his landlady Mrs. Hudson. Watson often stayed or visited there too.

The Reichenbach Falls: In an earlier story ('The Final Problem'), Holmes and his great enemy Professor Moriarty both apparently fell to their deaths at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. The public and Watson believed Holmes was dead. This story reveals what really happened.

Gentlemen's clubs: In Victorian England (the period when Queen Victoria ruled, 1837–1901), wealthy and upper-class men often belonged to private social clubs in London. Members could eat, drink, read newspapers, and meet friends there. Card games were very popular in these clubs. Women were not allowed to be members.

The British Empire: In 1894, Britain controlled a vast empire that covered about a quarter of the world's land, including India, Australia, parts of Africa, and many other places. The army had officers stationed throughout the empire. Governors were senior officials who managed individual colonies.

Scotland Yard: This is the headquarters of the London Metropolitan Police (the main city police force). The name comes from the location of the original building. Inspector Lestrade is an official police detective who sometimes works alongside Holmes.

Air-gun: The weapon used in this story fires bullets using compressed air rather than gunpowder. This makes it almost silent — a very unusual and dangerous feature. A normal gun makes a very loud noise when fired.