1. The Singular Experience of Mr.
John Scott Eccles
I find it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day
towards the end of March in the year 1892. Holmes had received a
telegram while we sat at our lunch, and he had scribbled a reply. He made
no remark, but the matter remained in his thoughts, for he stood in front of
the fire afterwards with a thoughtful face, smoking his pipe, and casting an
occasional glance at the message. Suddenly he turned upon me with a
mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
"I suppose, Watson, we must look upon you as a man of letters," said
he. "How do you define the word \'grotesque\'?"
"Strange--remarkable," I suggested.
He shook his head at my definition.
"There is surely something more than that," said he; "some underlying
suggestion of the tragic and the terrible. If you cast your mind back to
some of those narratives with which you have afflicted a long-suffering
public, you will recognize how often the grotesque has deepened into the
criminal. Think of that little affair of the red-headed men. That was
grotesque enough in the outset, and yet it ended in a desperate attempt at
robbery. Or, again, there was that most grotesque affair of the five orange
pips, which let straight to a murderous conspiracy. The word puts me on
the alert."
"Have you it there?" I asked.
He read the telegram aloud.
"Have just had most incredible and grotesque experience. May I
consult you?
"Scott Eccles, "Post Office, Charing Cross."
"Man or woman?" I asked.
"Oh, man, of course. No woman would ever send a reply-paid
telegram. She would have come."