Sherlock Holmes Moriarty's Heir: A Resurgent Mystery

High in Switzerland's Bernese Oberland you will find a thundering waterfall. This is Reichenbach, and it drops the better part of a thousand feet, into a jagged chasm. It was here that Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty were believed to have met their deaths. This was the end of the story for me, but then one of the professor's surviving brothers, a Colonel, attempted to stir up trouble. The public, however, knew better, and even as my friend returned incredibly from the dead, during the case of "The Empty House," the now-infamous Colonel Moriarty was forced to retire from public life, scorned. If you go to the falls today, you will find a plaque which reads, "At this fearful place, Sherlock Holmes vanquished Professor Moriarty, on 4 May 1891." The book was thus closed on Professor Moriarty, but after several years he was thrust upon us once again. He came in the form of a nephew, the son of a former stationmaster in the west of England. "My uncle is dead, killed at Reichenbach, the Colonel is a broken man, and my father, an honorable man, is an anathema in the village where he was once esteemed, all because of you, Mr. Holmes! Then there is my sad tale," said he, "my only crime being the name I bear." "So," Holmes replied, "your uncle, Professor Moriarty, bears no blame for what has befallen your family?" "My uncle is dead," the man said, "and now I take up my burden...to kill you, Mr. Holmes." So began one of the most bizarre cases of our career.