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hundred Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the
opposite wall with a patriotic V. R. done in
bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the
atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved
by it.

Our chambers were always full of chemicals and of
criminal relics which had a way of wandering into
unlikely positions, and of turning up in the
butter-dish or in even less desirable places. But his
papers were my great crux. He had a horror of
destroying documents, especially those which were
connected with his past cases, and yet it was only
once in every year or two that he would muster energy
to docket and arrange them; for, as I have mentioned
somewhere in these incoherent memoirs, the outbursts
of passionate energy when he performed the remarkable
feats with which his name is associated were followed
by reactions of lethargy during which he would lie
about with his violin and his books, hardly moving
save from the sofa to the table. Thus month after
month his papers accumulated, until every corner of
the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which
were on no account to be burned, and which could not
be put away save by their owner. One winter's night,
as we sat together by the fire, I ventured to suggest
to him that, as he had finished pasting extracts into
his common-place book, he might employ the next two
hours in making our room a little more habitable. He
could not deny the justice of my request, so with a
rather rueful face he went off to his bedroom, from which
he returned presently pulling a large tin box behind
him. This he placed in the middle of the floor and,
squatting down upon a stool in front of it, he threw
back the lid. I could see that it was already a third
full of bundles of paper tied up with red tape into
separate packages.

"There are cases enough here, Watson," said he,
looking at me with mischievous eyes. "I think that if
you knew all that I had in this box you would ask me
to pull some out instead of putting others in."

"These are the records of your early work, then?" I
asked. "I have often wished that I had notes of those
cases."

"Yes, my boy, these were all done prematurely before
my biographer had come to glorify me." He lifted
bundle after bundle in a tender, caressing sort of
way. "They are not all successes, Watson," said he.
"But there are some pretty little problems among them.
Here's the record of the Tarleton murders, and the
case of Vamberry, the wine merchant, and the adventure
of the old Russian woman, and the singular affair of
the aluminium crutch, as well as a full account of
Ricoletti of the club-foot, and his abominable wife.
And here--ah, now, this really is something a little
recherché."

He dived his arm down to the bottom of the chest, and
brought up a small wooden box with a sliding lid, such
as children's toys are kept in. From within he
produced a crumpled piece of paper, and old-fashioned
brass key, a peg of wood with a ball of string

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