The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter

We were fairly accustomed to receive weird telegrams at Baker
Street, but I have a particular recollection of one which
reached us on a gloomy February morning, some seven or eight
years ago, and gave Mr. Sherlock Holmes a puzzled quarter of an
hour. It was addressed to him, and ran thus:

Please await me. Terrible misfortune. Right wing three-quarter
missing, indispensable to-morrow.
OVERTON.

"Strand postmark, and dispatched ten thirty-six," said Holmes,
reading it over and over. "Mr. Overton was evidently
considerably excited when he sent it, and somewhat incoherent in
consequence. Well, well, he will be here, I daresay, by the time
I have looked through the TIMES, and then we shall know all
about it. Even the most insignificant problem would be welcome
in these stagnant days."

Things had indeed been very slow with us, and I had learned to
dread such periods of inaction, for I knew by experience that my
companion's brain was so abnormally active that it was dangerous
to leave it without material upon which to work. For years I had
gradually weaned him from that drug mania which had threatened
once to check his remarkable career. Now I knew that under
ordinary conditions he no longer craved for this artificial
stimulus, but I was well aware that the fiend was not dead but
sleeping, and I have known that the sleep was a light one and
the waking near when in periods of idleness I have seen the
drawn look upon Holmes's ascetic face, and the brooding of his
deep-set and inscrutable eyes. Therefore I blessed this Mr.
Overton whoever he might be, since he had come with his enigmatic
message to break that dangerous calm which brought more peril
to my friend than all the storms of his tempestuous life.

As we had expected, the telegram was soon followed by its
sender, and the card of Mr. Cyril Overton, Trinity College,
Cambridge, announced the arrival of an enormous young man,
sixteen stone of solid bone and muscle, who spanned the doorway
with his broad shoulders, and looked from one of us to the other
with a comely face which was haggard with anxiety.

"Mr. Sherlock Holmes?"

My companion bowed.

"I've been down to Scotland Yard, Mr. Holmes. I saw Inspector
Stanley Hopkins. He advised me to come to you. He said the case,
so far as he could see, was more in your line than in that of
the regular police."

"Pray sit down and tell me what is the matter."

"It's awful, Mr. Holmes--simply awfull I wonder my hair isn't
gray. Godfrey Staunton--you've heard of him, of course? He's
simply the hinge that the whole team turns on. I'd rather spare
two from the pack, and have Godfrey for my three-quarter line.
Whether it's passing, or tackling, or