to vex us with their conundrums."

My friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a very
capable performer, but a composer of no ordinary merit. All the afternoon
he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving
his long thin fingers in time to the music, while his gently smiling face
and his languid, dreamy eyes were as unlike those of Holmes the
sleuth-hound, Holmes the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal
agent, as it was possible to conceive. In his singular character the dual
nature alternately asserted itself, and his extreme exactness and
astuteness represented, as I have often thought, the reaction against the
poetic and contemplative mood which occasionally predominated in him. The
swing of his nature took him from extreme languor to devouring energy;
and, as I knew well, he was never so truly formidable as when, for days on
end, he had been lounging in his armchair amid his improvisations and his
black-letter editions. Then it was that the lust of the chase would
suddenly come upon him, and that his brilliant reasoning power would rise
to the level of intuition, until those who were unacquainted with his
methods would look askance at him as on a man whose knowledge was not that
of other mortals. When I saw him that afternoon so enwrapped in the music
at St. James's Hall, I felt that an evil time might be coming upon those
whom he had set himself to hunt down.

"You want to go home, no doubt, doctor," he remarked, as we emerged.

"Yes, it would be as well."

"And I have some business to do which will take some hours. This business
at Saxe-Coburg Square is serious."

"Why serious?"

"A considerable crime is in contemplation. I have every reason to believe
that we shall be in time to stop it. But to-day being Saturday rather
complicates matters. I shall want your help to-night."

"At what time?"

"Ten will be early enough."

"I shall be at Baker Street at ten."

"Very well. And, I say, doctor! there may be some little danger, so kindly
put your army revolver in your pocket." He waved his hand, turned on his
heel, and disappeared in an instant among the crowd.

I trust that I am not more dense than my neighbors, but I was always
oppressed with a sense of my own stupidity in my dealings with Sherlock
Holmes. Here I had heard what he had heard, I had seen what he had seen,
and yet from his words it was evident that he saw clearly not only what
had hap