I groaned, pen hovering indecisively over the still blank page before me. Since Holmes's return, my fingers had been itching to take up the pen once again. Now, however, I was painfully reminded of why I had not, as of yet, resumed chronicling our cases for the public. My last story, nearly three years ago, had recorded the consulting detective's death. How was I ever going to come up with a credible retraction of that account? I could hardly release the whole truth about the reasons for my friend's absence and miraculous return!
"Trouble, Watson?" Holmes asked innocently behind the newspaper he sat reading before the fire.
I sighed. "I cannot find where to begin, Holmes," I confessed. "I told my readers you were dead."
"Tell them you were sadly mistaken," he said acerbically around his pipe, turning the page of his paper.
"I told them you fell over the Reichenbach with Moriarty. How do you propose I write you out of the depths of a river below a 200-foot falls?" I demanded, exasperated.
"Tell them I was never in it," he enunciated blithely.
"'You were never it in?'" I repeated in disbelief. "Holmes, people will never expect such a bald claim as that. They will demand an explanation."
"Watson, as ever, you seek to overcomplicate matters with your storytelling," Holmes said, finally doing me the honor of addressing me rather than his newspaper. He removed his pipe and pointed its stem at me accusingly. "Your readers are clearly quite gullible and as easily carried away by flights of fancy as yourself. Give them the simple detail and allow them to fill in the rest for themselves."
I glared half-heartedly back at my amused companion. Pressing my lips together to stifle a rude response, I began to write.
"My dear chap, I am overjoyed to see you. Sit down and tell me how you came alive out of that dreadful chasm."
…"Well then, about that chasm. I had no serious difficulty in getting out of it, for the very simple reason that I was never in it."
"You were never in it?"
"No, Watson, I was never in in."
-The Empty House
Author's Note: I always thought this a rather silly way for Sir Arthur to resurrect his character after penning him a heroic and tragic death.