helper to everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout three continents, you

are brought in contact with all that is strange and bizarre. But

here”—I picked up the morning paper from the

ground—“let us put it to a practical test. Here is the first

heading upon which I come. ‘A husband’s cruelty to his wife.’

There is half a column of print, but I know without reading it that it is all

perfectly familiar to me. There is, of course, the other woman, the drink, the

push, the blow, the bruise, the sympathetic sister or landlady. The crudest of

writers could invent nothing more crude.”


“Indeed, your example is an unfortunate one for your argument,”

said Holmes, taking the paper and glancing his eye down it. “This is the

Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up some

small points in connection with it. The husband was a teetotaler, there was no

other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the

habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them

at his wife, which, you will allow, is not an action likely to occur to the

imagination of the average story-teller. Take a pinch of snuff, Doctor, and

acknowledge that I have scored over you in your example.”


He held out his snuffbox of old gold, with a great amethyst in the centre of

the lid. Its splendour was in such contrast to his homely ways and simple life

that I could not help commenting upon it.


“Ah,” said he, “I forgot that I had not seen you for some

weeks. It is a little souvenir from the King of Bohemia in return for my

assistance in the case of the Irene Adler papers.”


“And the ring?” I asked, glancing at a remarkable brilliant which

sparkled upon his finger.


“It was from the reigning family of Holland, though the matter in which I

served them was of such delicacy that I cannot confide it even to you, who have

been good enough to chronicle one or two of my little problems.”