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 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 fact that there are
points in connection with it which never have been, and probably
never will be, entirely cleared up.

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
adventure of the Paradol Chamber, of the Amateur Mendicant
Society, who held a luxurious club in lower vault of a
furniture warehouse, of the facts connected with loss of the
British barque "Sophy Anderson", of the singular adventures of
Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa, and finally of
Camberwell poisoning case. In the latter, as may be remembered,
Sherlock Holmes was able, by winding up dead man's watch, to
prove that it had been wound up two hours before, and that
therefore deceased had gone to bed within that time--a
deduction which was of the greatest importance in clearing up
case. All these I may sketch out at some future date, but none of
them present such singular features as strange train of
circumstances which I have now taken up my pen to describe.

It was in the latter days of September, and equinoctial gales
had set in with exceptional violence. All day the wind had
screamed and rain had beaten against the windows, so that
even here in heart of great, hand-made London we were forced
to raise our minds for the instant from routine of life and
to recognise the presence of those great elemental forces which
shriek at mankind through bars of