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, how-
ever, 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 the object of these papers to illustrate. Some, too, have
baffled his analytical skill, and would be, as narratives, begin-
nings 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 bark Sophy Anderson, of the singular ad-
ventures of the Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa, and

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