Of all the problems which have been submitted
to my friend, Mr.Sherlock Holmes, for solution
during the years of our intimacy,there were
only two which I was the means of introducing
to his notice--that of Mr. Hatherley's thumb,
and that of Colonel Warburton's madness.

Of these the latter may have afforded a
finer field for an acute and original observer, but the other was
so strange in its inception and so dramatic in its details that
it may be the more worthy of being placed upon record, even if it
gave my friend fewer openings for those deductive methods of
reasoning by which he achieved such remarkable results. The story
has, I believe, been told more than once in the newspapers, but,
like all such narratives, its effect is much less striking when
set forth en bloc in a single half-column of print than when the
facts slowly evolve before your own eyes, and the mystery clears
gradually away as each new discovery furnishes a step which leads
on to the complete truth. At the time the circumstances made a
deep impression upon me, and the lapse of two years has hardly
served to weaken the effect.

It was in the summer of '89, not long after my marriage, that the
events occurred which I am now about to summarise. I had returned
to civil practice and had finally abandoned Holmes in his Baker
Street rooms, although I continually visited him and occasionally
even persuaded him to forgo his Bohemian habits so far as to come
and visit us. My practice had steadily increased, and as I
happened to live at no very great distance from Paddington
Station, I got a few patients from among the officials. One of
these, whom I had cured of a painful and lingering disease, was
never weary of advertising my virtues and of endeavouring to send
me on every sufferer over whom he might have any influence.

One morning, at a little before seven o'clock, I was awakened by
the maid tapping at the door to announce that two men had come
from Paddington and were waiting in the consulting-room. I
dressed hurriedly, for I knew by experience that railway cases
were seldom trivial, and hastened downstairs. As I descended, my
old ally, the guard, came out of the room and closed the door
tightly behind him.

"I've got him here," he whispered, jerking his thumb over his
shoulder; "he's all right."

"What is it, then?" I asked, for his manner suggested that it was
some strange creature which he had caged up in my room.

"It's a new patient," he whispered. "I thought I'd bring him
round myself; then he couldn't slip away. There he is, all safe
and sound. I must go now, Doctor; I have my dooties, just the
same as you." And off he went, this trusty tout, without even
giving me time to thank him.

I entered my consulting-room and found a gentleman seated by the
table. He was quietly dressed in a suit of heather tweed with a
soft cloth cap which he had laid down upon my books. Round one of
his hands he had a handkerchief wrapped, which was mottled all
over with bloodstains. He