Arthur Conan Doyle was the most famous and successful author in the detective story genre. One of the locked-room mysteries he wrote was The Adventure of the Empty House. The story plays in 1894, three years after Holmes's apparent death. Ronald Adair, son of the Earl of Maynooth, a colonial governor in Australia, was killed with a soft-nosed revolver bullet to his head while sitting in his room, working on accounts of some kind. The motive was not robbery since nothing was stolen. Adair's door was locked from the inside and the only window in the room presented a 20-foot drop with no sign of somebody climbing in or out of the window.
We learn how Holmes survived and won against Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls. And then Holmes goes on in his typical manner to solve the mysterious and apparently impossible crime of Ronald Adair's killing.
The Adventure of the Empty House is one of 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories, the sixth most favored story by Arthur Conan Doyle himself. One of 13 stories in the cycle collected as 'The Return of Sherlock Holmes'. This is the first Holmes story set after his supposed death at the Reichenbach Falls, as recounted in The Final Problem. Doyle killed Holmes to be able to focus on other writing projects, but publishers demanded he continue. They were willing to pay high fees which convinced Doyle to revive Holmes and made him also one of the most highly-paid authors during his time.
1st edition 26th September 1903 in Collier's; PDF 17 pages.
word count: 8806 which is equivalent to 35 standard pages of text