The Adventure of the Cardboard Box

In choosing a few typical cases which illustrate the remarkable
mental qualities of my friend, Sherlock Holmes, I have
endeavoured, as far as possible, to select those which presented
the minimum of sensationalism, while offering a fair field for
his talents. It is, however, unfortunately impossible entirely
to separate the sensational from the criminal, and a chronicler
is left in the dilemma that he must either sacrifice details
which are essential to his statement and so give a false
impression of the problem, or he must use matter which chance,
and not choice, has provided him with. With this short preface I
shall turn to my notes of what proved to be a strange, though a
peculiarly terrible, chain of events.

It was a blazing hot day in August. Baker Street was like an
oven, and the glare of the sunlight upon the yellow brickwork of
the house across the road was painful to the eye. It was hard to
believe that these were the same walls which loomed so gloomily
through the fogs of winter. Our blinds were half-drawn, and
Holmes lay curled upon the sofa, reading and re-reading a letter
which he had received by the morning post. For myself, my term
of service in India had trained me to stand heat better than
cold, and a thermometer at ninety was no hardship. But the
morning paper was uninteresting. Parliament had risen.
Everybody was out of town, and I yearned for the glades of the
New Forest or the shingle of Southsea. A depleted bank account
had caused me to postpone my holiday, and as to my companion,
neither the country nor the sea presented the slightest
attraction to him. He loved to lie in the very center of five
millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running
through them, responsive to every little rumour or suspicion of
unsolved crime. Appreciation of nature found no place among his
many gifts, and his only change was when he turned his mind from
the evil-doer of the town to track down his brother of the
country.

Finding that Holmes was too absorbed for conversation I had
tossed side the barren paper, and leaning back in my chair I fell
into a brown study. Suddenly my companion's voice broke in upon
my thoughts:

"You are right, Watson," said he. "It does seem a most
preposterous way of settling a dispute."

"Most preposterous!" I exclaimed, and then suddenly realizing how
he had echoed the inmost thought of my soul, I sat up in my chair
and stared at him in blank amazement.

"What is this, Holmes?" I cried. "This is beyond anything which
I could have imagined."

He laughed heartily at my perplexity.

"You remember," said he, "that some little time ago when I