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forced to tend to the detective’s thousands of fans—many of whom sent letters addressed to Holmes, requesting his help in solving real crimes. In a 1935 essay entitled “Sherlock Holmes the God,” G. K. Chestertonobserved of Sherlockians, “It is getting beyond a joke. The hobby is hardening into a delusion.”
    Several actors who played Holmes were also haunted by him, the American said. In a 1956 autobiography, “In and Out of Character,” Basil Rathbone, who played the detective in more than a dozen films, complained that because of his portrayal of Holmes his renown for other parts, including Oscar-nominated ones, was “sinking into oblivion.” The public conflated him with his most famous character, which the studio and audience demanded he play again and again, until by the end he, too, lamented that he “could not kill Mr. Holmes.” Another actor, Jeremy Brett, had a breakdown while playing the detective and was eventually admitted to a psychiatric ward, where he was said to have cried out, “Damn you, Holmes!”
    At one point, the American showed me a thick book, which he had brought to the pub. It was part of a multivolume history that he was writing on the Baker Street Irregulars and Sherlockian scholarship. He had started the project in 1988. “I thought if I searched pretty assiduously I’d find enough material to do a single hundred-and-fifty-page volume,” he said. “I’ve now done five volumes of more than fifteen hundred pages, and I’ve only gotten up to 1950.” He added, “It’s been a slippery slope into madness and obsession.”
    As he spoke of his fascination with Holmes, he recalled one of the last times he had seen Green, three years earlier, at a symposium at the University of Minnesota. Green had given a lecture on “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” “It was a multimedia presentation about the origins of the novel, and it was just dazzling,” the American said. He repeated the word “dazzling” several times (“It’s the only word to describe it”), and as he sat up in his chair and his eyes brightened I realized that I was talking not to Green’s Moriarty but to his soul mate. Then, catching himself, he reminded me that he had a full-time job and a family. “Thedanger is if you have nothing else in your life but Sherlock Holmes,” he said.
    I n 1988, Richard Green made a pilgrimage to Reichenbach Falls to see where his childhood hero had nearly met his demise. Conan Doyle himself had visited the site in 1893, and Green wanted to repeat the author’s journey. Standing at the edge of the falls, Green stared at the chasm below, where, as Watson noted after he called out, “My only answer was my own voice reverberating in a rolling echo from the cliffs around me.”
    By the mid-nineteen-nineties, Green knew that he would not have access to the Conan Doyle archive until Dame Jean died—presuming that she bequeathed the papers to the British Library. In the meantime, he continued researching his biography, which, he concluded, would require no less than three volumes: the first would cover Conan Doyle’s childhood; the second, the arc of his literary career; the third, his descent into a kind of madness.
    Relying on public documents, Green outlined this last stage, which began after Conan Doyle started using his powers of observation to solve real-world mysteries. In 1906, Conan Doyle took up the case of George Edalji, a half-Parsi Indian living near Birmingham, who faced seven years of hard labor for allegedly mutilating his neighbors’ cattle during the night. Conan Doyle suspected that Edalji had been tagged as a criminal merely because of his ethnicity, and he assumed the role of detective. Upon meeting his client, he noticed that the young man was holding a newspaper inches from his face.
    “Aren’t you astigmatic?” Conan Doyle asked.
    “Yes,” Edalji admitted.
    Conan Doyle called in an ophthalmologist, who confirmed that Edalji’s malady was so severe