When I glance over my notes and records of the Sherlock
Holmes cases between the years '82 and '90, I am faced by so
many which present strange and interesting features that it is no
easy matter to know which to choose and which to leave. Some,
however, have already gained publicity through the papers, and
others have not offered a field for those peculiar qualities which
my friend possessed in so high a degree, and which it is the
object of these papers to illustrate. Some, too, have baffled his
analytical skill, and would be, as narratives, beginnings without
an ending, while others have been but partially cleared up, and
have their explanations founded rather upon conjecture and sur-
mise than on that absolute logical proof which was so dear to
him. There is, however, one of these last which was so remark-
able in its details and so startling in its results that I am tempted
to give some account of it in spite of the fact that there are points
in connection with it which never have been, and probably never
will be, entirely cleared up.
The year '87 furnished us with a long series of cases of
greater or less interest, of which I retain the records. Among my
headings under this one twelve months I find an account of the
adventure of the Paradol Chamber, of the Amateur Mendicant
Society, who held a luxurious club in the lower vault of a
furniture warehouse, of the facts connected with the loss of the
British bark Sophy Anderson, of the singular adventures of the
Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa, and finally of the Camberwell
poisoning case. In the latter, as may be remembered, Sherlock
Holmes was able, by winding up the dead man's watch, to prove
that it had been wound up two hours before, and that therefore
the deceased had gone to bed within that time -- a deduction
which was of the greatest importance in clearing up the case. All
these I may sketch out at some future date, but none of them
present such singular features as the strange train of circum-
stances which I have now taken up my pen to describe.
It was in the latter days of September, and the equinoctial
gales had set in with exceptional violence. All day the wind had
screamed and the rain had beaten against the windows, so that
even here in the heart of great, hand-made London we were
forced to raise our minds for the instant from the routine of life
and to recognize the presence of those great elemental forces
which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilization, like
untamed beasts in a cage. As evening drew in, the storm grew
higher and louder, and the wind cried and sobbed like a child in
the chimney. Sherlock Holmes sat moodily at one side of the
fireplace cross-indexing his records of crime, while I at the other
was deep in one of Clark Russell's fine sea-stories until the howl
of the gale from without seemed to blend with the text, and the
splash of the rain to lengthen out into the long swash of the sea
waves. My wife was on a visit to her mother's, and for a few
days I was a dweller once more in my old quarters at Baker
Street.
"Why," said I, glancing up at my companion, "that was
surely the bell. Who could come to-night? Some friend of yours,
perhaps?"
"Except yourself I have none," he answered. "I do not
encourage visitors."
"A client, then?"
"If so, it is a serious case. Nothing less would bring a man
out on such a day and at such an hour. But I take it that it is
more likely to be some crony of the landlady's."
Sherlock Holmes was wrong in his conjecture, however, for
there came a step in the passage and a tapping at the door. He
stretched out his long arm to turn the lamp away from himself
and towards the vacant chair upon which a newcomer must sit.
"Come in!" said he.
