Project Gutenberg's The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge, by Arthur Conan Doyle

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Title: The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

Posting Date: October 23, 2008 [EBook #2343]
Release Date: October, 2000

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ADVENTURE OF WISTERIA LODGE ***

Produced by David Brannan

The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge

by

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

CONTENTS

1. The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles
2. The Tiger of San Pedro

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