light of london book 1 darkness

A Cold Night in London Those who have followed my chronicles of the time I spent in the company of the great Sherlock Holmes may be forgiven for imagining that we were constantly about and afoot, hunting this criminal or dogging the heels of that about the foggy streets of London.But, in truth, there were many nights like this one, spent sitting in our rooms on Baker Street with winter in full force outside, and watching a roaring fire surrounded by nothing more sinister than the reminders and relics of the many wrongdoers Holmes had brought to justice.“We should burn these papers of yours.”While I was never less than amazed by the abilities of my good friend, I did find his constant need to surround himself with trophies and reminders a touch wearing: rather like entering the house of a game-hunter who insists on lining his walls with the dead remains of his foes.“We should burn these infernal papers of yours, Holmes. Keep this room warm and put them to some use.”“I see the cold has put you in a foul mood this evening.” He got himself slowly to his feet, and moved over to the fire. “I’ll stoke it up and see if we can’t warm up your usual good spirits.”“You should tidy this place, Holmes.”“You should tidy this place, at least. I should hardly wonder that our new clients might think we are living in a pawnshop or some dreadfully disorganised sorting house.”Holmes resumed his seat, picking his way across the bundled stacks of manuscripts that littered the floor.For such a methodical mind, my friend had a horror of destroying documents, especially those connected with past cases, and yet it was only once a year that he would muster the energy to docket and arrange them.He smiled at me with mischievious eyes. “My dear boy,” he answered. “I have not always had my biographer to tidy up after my work. Plenty of these documents are here to remind me of those many cases I tackled when I worked alone. But I do not need to read them to bring their contents to mind; the simple sight of the pages is enough to recall the details.”“Then you don’t need to keep them.”“Then you don’t need to keep them,” I argued in return. “If you can recall their details.”“My dear Watson, I am employing Cicero’s method of loci, only here, in my own space. I know every document in this room by how it looks and where it is. Where you see disorder, I see quite a serviceable index.”“We shall see about that.”“Well, then,” I replied, lifting a document near by the foot of my chair. “Let us see about that.” The bundle I had chosen was no less than seventy pages of close writing. “Why don’t you tell me the tale of this case in my hand, word for word?”Holmes looked back at me, but his eyes were lost in some distant, inner stare. “Ah, Ricoletti,” he sighed. “That was a singular affair. The man had the most abominable wife; I should tell you the full details about it some time. But of course that document in your hand begins with the details of how I came by the case: from the mis-shaped footprints in the beds at Kew Gardens, which I discovered quite by chance. Then there was the sixpence buried a thumb’s depth below the topsoil...”“Enough.” It is correct, of course.“Enough.” I drop the bundle to the carpet. “You are quite right.”“My dear Watson,” Holmes answered sympathetically, “you could hardly expect me to forget the details of the cases that formed my introduction to my profession and the primary occupation of my life. For me to lose those details would be akin to you forgetting which bones make up the human hand, or the correct way to extract a bullet from a shoulder-wound.”“But those details I have practised since.”“But those details I have practised since,” I replied. “They are the tools of my trade. If you asked me instead to remember the face of each man I have treated when shot; well, then I should have a harder time of it.”“The examples drawn from previous cases are my tools and that is why they must never be burntlike common newspaper, as you so carelessly suggested,” Holmes answered sternly. “A detective must always draw on experience, and reason. Without either of those, he cannot hope to succeed against that most imaginative and creative of beasts, the London criminal.”“Just as you say.”“Just as you say, I’m sure.” I turned my attention to the fire, somewhat tired by his inexhaustible intellect.“My dear man, there’s no need to be so down in the mouth. Here, I know what will interest you. Wait there a moment.” And with a suden burst of energy,quite unlike the state of lethargy in which he had been operating for the last few weeks, he disappeared into the bedroom, to return a moment later pulling a large tin box.“You intend to unpack that here, do you?”“You intend to unpack that here, do you?” I remarked grudgingly. “Perhaps onto your own chair; it is the only free surface in the room.”“Now then, Watson. I would have expected my biographer to show more interest in a box filled with my early works. And this one in particular.”Reaching into the trunk he brought up a small wooden box with a sliding lid such as children’s toys are kept in, and he offered it over to me.Take it from himI took it from him, intrigued.“Well, then?” he declared, with childish excitement. “Open it, and tell me what you make of the contents.” Then he stepped back, grabbed a poker and pushed vigorously at the fresh coals he had previously added, as if by helping them to kindle he was stoking my own enthusiasm for his adventure.I did as instructed and slid back the lid. It contained a crumpled piece of paper, an old-fashioned brass key, a peg of wood with a ball of string attached to it, and three rusty discs of metal.“Well, my boy?” He waved a hand towards the box.“Some kind of game, perhaps?”“Some kind of game?” Taking the string and peg from the box, I began attempting to thread the cord around the discs in some fashion.“No game. Something of far more import, though you could not see it at first glance then, or now.”Sherlock Holmes reached over and lifted the items out of the box one by one, laying them along the edge of the table. Then he reseated himself in his chair and looked them over with a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes.“These,” quoth he, “are all that I have left to remind me of the adventure of the Musgrave Ritual.”“Tell me more.”“Tell me more,” I demanded, leaning forward with sudden interest.“It would be a pleasure,” Holmes replied, spreading his hands to the fire. “When I first came up to London I had rooms in Montague Street, just round the corner from the British Museum, and there I waited, filling in my too abundant leisure time by studying all those branches of science which might make me more efficient. Now and again cases came my way, and that of the Musgrave Ritual was one such case, and it is to that singular chain of events that I trace my first stride towards the position which I now hold.”“Tell me: how did the case begin?”“Tell me: how did the case begin?”“Reginald Musgrave,” Holmes announced. “A man of exceedingly aristocratic type, thin, high-nosed and large-eyed, with languid and yet courtly matters. He was a scion of one of the very oldest families in the kingdom, though his branch was a cadet one which had separated from the northern Musgraves some time in the sixteenth century and had established itself in the Manor House of Hurlstone, perhaps the oldest inhabited building in the country.”“He came to see you.”“He came to see you.”“Indeed, Watson, quite correct. I had known him at college, but not seen him in four years. And then he came to see me. He walked into my room in Montague Street. He had changed little from the way I remembered him, and was dressed like a young man of fashion - he was always something of a dandy. He preserved the same quiet, suave manner which had formerly distinguished him.”“You shook his hand.”“You shook his hand.”“I did. Stood up frm my chair and welcomed him in. ‘How has all gone with you, Musgrave?’ I asked.“He only shook his head.“‘You have proably eard of my poor father’s death,’ quoth he; ‘he was carried off about two years ago. Since then I have of course had the Hurlstone estate to manage, and as I am member for my district as well, my life has been a busy one. But... well, Sherlock, we have had some very strange doings at Hurlstone, and the police have been able to throw no ligh upon the matter.’”“Ah. Now this sounds more like it.”“Ah. Now this sounds more like it.” Going over to the sideboard I poured us both a short tot of brandy to sip by the firelight as we spoke. Holmes accepted his indifferently; he was lost in the telling of his tale.“You can imagine, Watson, with what eagerness I answered him. In my heart, I already believed I could succeed where others had failed, and here, at last, was the opportunity to est myself. ‘Pray let me have the details,’” I cried.“Reginald Musgrave sat down opposite me, almost as you are sitting now, and lit a cigare to begin his tale.” Enchanted Crystal bounus pack by Kaden and you got it boss