Ten days later, one of three bodies surfaced but not the revolver to match the wound; the Swiss police clucked sympathetically and whispered that the poor Doktor had been driven to despair.

Nine hours later, Mycroft Holmes read the latest foreign news, and found that for the first night in twenty-five years he could not sleep.

Eight days later, Mary Watson alone suspected but could not prove the ghastly truth, and sold the Agra pearls to see that her child could visit two gravestones.

Seven months later, Sebastian Moran ensured the old newspaper account found a fugitive buried in France; revenge assumed more forms than revolver bullets fired from air-guns.

Six days later, a grief-stricken Sherlock Holmes arrived in London and re-wrote his will before trapping a tiger.

Five hours later, Inspector Lestrade wondered sorrowfully how a brilliant man like Mr. Holmes could be foolish enough to sit in the window seat himself rather than use an effigy.

Four hours later, Mycroft Holmes chiseled his features in granite and removed his mourning from the mothballs for the second, and final, time.

Three weeks later, Sebastian Moran was indicted for succeeding where Professor Moriarty had failed.

Two years later, Mary Watson published the last Sherlock Holmes adventure and saved the revenues with Sherlock Holmes's assets; her son would need the money someday to purchase his own medical practice.

One decade later, Colonel Moran died in prison, complacent in the knowledge that he had cheated the hangman over not one murder, but two.