“It is true,” Holmes answered.  “Up to a certain point he did well.  He was always a man of iron nerve, and the story is still told in India how he crawled down a drain after a wounded man-eating tiger.  There are some trees, Watson, which grow to a certain height, and then suddenly develop some unsightly eccentricity.  You will see it often in humans.  I have a theory that the individual represents in his development the whole procession of his ancestors, and that such a sudden turn to good or evil stands for some strong influence which came into the line of his pedigree.  The person becomes, as it were, the epitome of the history of his own family.”

“It is surely rather fanciful.”

“Well, I don’t insist upon it.  Whatever the cause, Colonel Moran began hot to hold him.  He retired, came to London, and again acquired an evil name.  It was at this time that he was sought out by Professor Moriarty, to whom for a time he was chief of the staff.  Moriarty supplied him liberally with money, and used him only in one or two very high-class jobs, which no ordinary criminal could have undertaken.  You may have some recollection of the death of Mrs. Stewart, of Lauder, in 1887.  Not?  Well, I am sure Moran was at the bottom of it, but nothing could be proved.  So cleverly was the colonel concealed that, even when the Moriarty gang was broken up, we could not incriminate him.  You remember at that date, when I called upon you in your rooms, how I put up the shutters for fear of air-guns?  No doubt you thought me fanciful.  I knew exactly what I was doing, for I knew of the existence of this remarkable gun, and I knew also that one of the best shots in the world would be behind it.  When we were in Switzerland he followed us with Moriarty, and it was undoubtedly he who gave me that evil five minutes on the Reichenbach ledge.

“You may think that I read the papers with some attention during my sojourn in France, on the look-out for any chance of laying him by the heels.  So long as he was free in London, my life would really not have been worth living.  Night and day the shadow would have been over me, and sooner or later his chance must have come.  What could I do?  I could not shoot him at sight, or I should myself be in the dock.  There was no use appealing to a magistrate.  They cannot interfere on the strength of what would appear to them to be a wild suspicion.  So I could do nothing.  But I watched the criminal news, knowing that sooner or later I should get him.  Then came the death of this Ronald Adair.  My chance had come at last.  Knowing what I did, was it not certain that Colonel Moran had done it?  He had played cards with the lad, he had followed him home from the club, he had shot him through the open window.  There was not a doubt of it.  The bullets alone are enough to put his head in a noose.  I came over at once.  I was seen by the sentinel, who would, I knew, direct the colonel’s attention to my presence.  He could not fail to connect