Project Gutenberg's The Adventure of the Devil's Foot, by Arthur Conan Doyle

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Title: The Adventure of the Devil's Foot

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

Posting Date: October 23, 2008 [EBook #2349]
Release Date: October, 2000

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The Adventure of the Devil's Foot

By

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

In recording from time to time some of the curious experiences and
interesting recollections which I associate with my long and intimate
friendship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have continually been faced by
difficulties caused by his own aversion to publicity. To his sombre
and cynical spirit all popular applause was always abhorrent, and
nothing amused him more at the end of a successful case than to hand
over the actual exposure to some orthodox official, and to listen with
a mocking smile to the general chorus of misplaced congratulation. It
was indeed this attitude upon the part of my friend and certainly not
any lack of interesting material which has caused me of late years to
lay very few of my records before the public. My participation in some
if his adventures was always a privilege which entailed discretion and
reticence upon me.

It was, then, with considerable surprise that I received a telegram
from Homes last Tuesday--he has never been known to write where a
telegram would serve--in the following terms:

Why not tell them of the Cornish horror--strangest case I have handled.

I have no idea what backward sweep of memory had brought the matter
fresh to his mind, or what freak had caused him to desire that I should
recount it; but I hasten, before another cancelling telegram may
arrive, to hunt out the notes which give me the exact details of the
case and to lay the narrative before my readers.

It was, then, in the spring of the year 1897 that Holmes's iron
constitution showed some symptoms of giving way in the face of constant
hard work of a most exacting kind, aggravated, perhaps, by occasional
indiscretions of his own. In March of that year