The Final Problem

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 endeavored 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"--and 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 on 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 sow, 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