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A year later, in spite of everyone's entreaties, the amazingly prolific but very impulsive author decided to get rid of Sherlock Holmes.

During a trip to Switzerland, he found the spot where his hero was to come to his end. In The Final Problem, published in December 1893, Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty plunged to their deaths at The Reichenbach Falls. As a result, twenty thousand readers cancelled their subscriptions to The Strand Magazine. Now liberated from his medical career and from a fictional character who oppressed him and overshadowed what he considered his finer work, Conan Doyle immersed himself into even more intensive activity. This frenzied life may explain why the former physician didn't notice the serious deterioration of his wife's health.

By the time he finally became aware of how sick she was, Louisa was diagnosed with Tuberculosis. Although she was given only a few months to live, her husband' s belated ministrations kept her alive well into the New Century. Writing incessantly, looking after Louisa, no longer a wife, but a patient, then losing his father, deeply troubled Conan Doyle. It may well have been his resulting depression which caused him to become more and more fascinated by "life beyond the veil". He had long been attracted to Spiritualism, but when he joined the Society for Psychical Research, it was considered to be a public declaration of his interest and belief in the occult. As Sherlock Holmes said to Watson, "Work is the best antidote to sorrow…" Conan Doyle accepted to go to the United States to give a series of lectures.

He sailed for New York, with his younger brother Innes, in September of 1894, and was booked to give talks in more than thirty cities. The tour was a huge success, judging by an article in the Ladies Home Journal. "Few foreign writers who have visited this country have made more friends than A. Conan Doyle. His personality is a peculiarly attractive one to Americans because it is so thoroughly wholesome…" The author got back to England, in time for Christmas, as well as for the publication in The Strand Magazine, of the first of the "Brigadier Gerard" stories, which was an instant hit with the readers. Continued...