🚪 The Return (1894)
An elderly bookseller in Watson's study straightens up into a dead man; Watson faints for the only time in his life. That night the wax bust, the empty house, and Moran's air-gun close both the hiatus and the Moriarty organization's last account.
“I owe you a thousand apologies. I had no idea that you would be so affected.”
The dead man in the study
A doddering, spillage-selling old bookseller collides with Watson in the street, follows him home, and — as Watson turns his back — straightens into Sherlock Holmes, alive. Watson, who has faced Afghan bullets and Dartmoor hounds without flinching, faints for the only time in the canon.
The night that closes every account
That same evening Holmes springs his last trap on Moriarty's organisation: a wax bust of himself in the Baker Street window, shifted every quarter-hour by Mrs Hudson under the sniper's very sights, draws Colonel Moran and his air-gun into the empty house opposite. Moran is taken; the Adair murder is solved; the Hiatus ends; and Baker Street, against all hope, is open for business again.