The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge

1. The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles

I find it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy
day towards the end of March in the year 1892. Holmes had
received a telegram while we sat at our lunch, and he had
scribbled a reply. 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. Suddenly he turned upon me with a
mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

"I suppose, Watson, we must look upon you as a man of letters,"
said he. "How do you define the word 'grotesque'?"

"Strange--remarkable," I suggested.

He shook his head at my definition.

"There is surely something more than that," said he; "some
underlying suggestion of the tragic and the terrible. 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. Think of
that little affair of the red-headed men. That was grotesque
enough in the outset, and yet it ended in a desperate attempt at
robbery. Or, again, there was that most grotesque affair of the
five orange pips, which let straight to a murderous conspiracy.
The word puts me on the alert."

"Have you it there?" I asked.

He read the telegram aloud.

"Have just had most incredible and grotesque experience. May I
consult you?

"Scott Eccles,
"Post Office, Charing Cross."

"Man or woman?" I asked.

"Oh, man, of course. No woman would ever send a reply-paid
telegram. She would have come."

"Will you see him?"

"My dear Watson, you know how bored I have been since we locked
up Colonel Carruthers. 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. Life is commonplace, the papers are sterile;
audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the
criminal world. Can you ask me, then, whether I am ready to look
into any new problem, however trivial it may prove? But here,
unless I am mistaken, is our client."

A measured step was heard upon the stairs, and a moment later a
stout, tall, gray-whiskered and solemnly respectable person was
ushered into the room. His life history was written in his heavy
features and pompous manner. From his spats to his gold-rimmed
spectacles he was a Conservative, a churchman, a good citizen,
orthodox and conventional to the last degree. But some amazing
experience had disturbed his native composure and