IN HIS LIFETIME a standout chemist and metals engineer, Dr. James Bliss Austin (1904–1988) today is celebrated for his two exceptional hobbies: preserving historic Japanese block prints and being one of the most prominent Sherlockians of his generation. Austin was in the first group of fifteen ever to receive an investiture in the Baker Street Irregulars (1944). Like several other early members of the BSI, he became a noted collector of Conan Doyle’s signed first editions and foreign translations.
Today, Austin’s own byline is eagerly sought by modern-day students of Sherlock Holmes. For more than forty years he was a frequent contributor to anthologies, magazines, and limited-edition pamphlets about the great detective. Among the gems he produced were “What Son Was Watson?” (1944), “Thumbing His Way to Fame” (1946), “The Atomic Holmeses” (1947), “On the Writing of Some of the Most Remarkable Books Ever Penned” (1978), and “William Gillette on the Air” (1982). Though he preferred literary criticism and writing about manuscripts as cultural objects, Austin also wrote Sherlockian poetry and historical retrospectives. Only on rare occasions did he venture into the world of short fiction.
Austin prepared the present story for an Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine detective genre contest. More than eight hundred entries were received, with the top fifteen stories published in book form as The Queen’s Awards. By way of a prank, Austin’s protagonists were also the contest’s judges and his Sherlockian cronies: Christopher Morley, Howard Haycraft, as well as Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, who jointly were Ellery Queen. The quartet enjoyed the joke so much that they awarded Austin a surprise honorable mention and placed “The Final Problem” at the caboose-end of the anthology as a “dividend and bloodhound bonus” for their readers.
“The Final Problem” was first published in The Queen’s Awards (Boston, Little, Brown, 1946).