His Last Bow
Conan Doyle
Chapter 1. The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge
1. The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles
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I find it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day towards the end of March in the year 1892.
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Holmes had received a telegram while we sat at our lunch, and he had scribbled a reply.
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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.
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Suddenly he turned upon me with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
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"I suppose, Watson, we must look upon you as a man of letters," said he. "How do you define the word 'grotesque'?"
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"Strange-remarkable," I suggested.
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He shook his head at my definition.
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"There is surely something more than that," said he; "some underlying suggestion of the tragic and the terrible.
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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.
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Think of that little affair of the red-headed men.
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That was grotesque enough in the outset, and yet it ended in a desperate attempt at robbery.
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Or, again, there was that most grotesque affair of the five orange pips, which let straight to a murderous conspiracy.
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The word puts me on the alert."
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"Have you it there?" I asked.
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He read the telegram aloud.
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"Have just had most incredible and grotesque experience. May I consult you?
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"Scott Eccles,
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"Post Office, Charing Cross."
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"Man or woman?" I asked.
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"Oh, man, of course. No woman would ever send a reply-paid telegram. She would have come."
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"Will you see him?"
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"My dear Watson, you know how bored I have been since we locked up Colonel Carruthers.
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My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built.
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