Moriarty Returns a Letter Read Online Free PDF Page A

carrier.
    Now they were done with the protocol.
    “Let’s see it, then,” said Standifer.
    The Royal Mail worker willingly surrendered the letter; Standifer opened it without further ceremony and took a look:
    Dear Mr. Holmes:
    I want you to know, first of all, that I would never had done it if I’d had any choice in the matter. But the bookies were after me for fifty quid, and for another ten every week that I didn’t pay, and those are not blokes you want to mess with, if you understand me.
    And so I did it. I am very sorry for it. But it was only one mistake. Surely you won’t send a young lad like me to Newgate, just for that?
    Well, all right. I know I can’t fool a man like you, the world’s greatest detective, so I won’t even try. I’ll own up to it, right up front: It wasn’t the first time.
    But I truly believe that if only I’d had a better upbringing, I’d never have done any of it at all. I know it must seem to you like a very poor excuse, but Dad left when I was only five, and my mum was always lacking in what they call the maternal instincts. Who can blame me for turning out the way I did?
    Be that as it may. I want you to know that I have reformed. I won’t do any of it ever again. Here’s the twenty quid that I took from the pensioner’s purse on Shaftesbury Street. I hear she’s recovering nicely.
    Please don’t send me to Newgate.
    Yours Truly, An Anonymous Felon
    Oh, what’s the use—my name is Evan Berkshire. You’d only figure it out anyway.
    But please don’t send me to Newgate.

    Yours Truly,
    Evan Berkshire
    “It’s a growing city,” said the inspector to the postal worker now. “One of these days I suppose they’ll expand the Marylebone district a bit, and then there might very well be a two-hundred block in Baker Street. What will you do then?”
    “I’ll deliver the mail to where it’s addressed, sir. If I ever find a Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I’ll deliver it to him. If I ever find a 221B Baker Street, I’ll deliver it there. But since I can find neither—”
    “You deliver it here. Very well,” said Standifer. “Thank you, that will be all.”
    But the letter carrier remained in the doorway.
    “Was there something else?”
    The young man produced another letter from his bag.
    “I hope not, sir. But I fear it.”
    The inspector opened the letter and began to read.
    And then he took a deep breath and sat down.
    With the opened letter still in front of him, he said to the letter carrier:
    “When you pass Sergeant Turner’s desk on the way out, send him over, will you?”
    “Certainly.”
    “And say nothing to anyone else at all about this one.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    The letter carrier exited. The inspector remained seated, staring at the letter, for the next two minutes, until Sergeant Turner arrived in the doorway.
    “What is it, sir?” said the thirty-year-old sergeant.
    “Close the door,” said the inspector, and the sergeant did so.
    The inspector shoved the letter across to the sergeant. The sergeant looked. The letter was handwritten, it was signed with a flourish by someone named Redgil at the bottom, and it read as follows:
    Dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes:
    Some say you are real. Some say you are made up.
    I’ll tell you straight off that I used to be with those in the second camp. But I recently learned otherwise.
    However, as I’m sure you know, The Strand Magazine says that you are now dead. You have plunged over the Reichenbach Falls, which I’m told are a terrible sight, to your doom—along with the legendary Professor Moriarty.
    If it is true, I am glad of it, if you’ll pardon my saying so.
    But if it is not true—and indeed I suspect it is not, because no bodies were recovered, not yours, and not Professor Moriarty’s, and there were no witnesses, just your handwritten note, if indeed it was yours, wedged on a rock on the ledge—so if this is just a clever ruse on your part, and you are even at this moment lurking in London to take advantage of