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 surmise than on that absolute logical proof which was so dear to
him. There is, however, one of these last which was so remarkable 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 barque _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 circumstances 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 recognise the presence of those
great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his
civilisation, 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
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