...we had not gone to the end of the path, and the Alpine-stock marked the place where we had stood. The blackish soil is kept forever soft by the incessant drift of spray, and a bird would leave its tread upon it. Two lines of footmarks were clearly marked along the farther end of the path, both leading away from me. There were none returning. A few yards from the end the soil was all ploughed up into a patch of mud, and the branches and ferns which fringed the chasm were torn and bedraggled. I lay upon my face and peered over with the spray spouting up all around me. It had darkened since I left, and now I could only see here and there the glistening of moisture upon the black walls, and far away down at the end of the shaft the gleam of the broken water. I shouted; but only the same half-human cry of the fall was borne back to my ears.
Or maybe not: we know that Doyle later "revived" Holmes and set him on to further adventures. Conventional wisdom says that Doyle "intended" "The Final Problem" to be the final Holmes story, but this strikes me as disingenuous. The story on its face appears to be so crafted as to allow for a miraculous resurrection. The directors and staff here at Underbelly Central hope the good folk at Mierengen -- in Bern, Switzerland, the real-life scene of the fictional adventure--are enjoying (or did enjoy) a profitable day, with the support of the Swiss Tourist Board.
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