The Return of Sherlock Holmes

The man in the dressing-gown turned upon us with a most melancholy face. "It's an extraordinary thing," said he, that all my life I have been collecting other people's news, and now that a real piece of news has come my own way I am so confused and bothered that I can't put two words together. If I had come in here as a journalist, I should have interviewed myself and had two columns in every evening paper. As it is, I am giving away valuable copy by telling my story over and over to a string of different people, and I can make no use of it myself. However, I've heard your name, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and if you'll only explain this queer business, I shall be paid for my trouble in telling you the story."

Holmes sat down and listened.

"It all seems to centre round that bust of Napoleon which I bought for this very room about four months ago. I picked it up cheap from Harding Brothers, two doors from the High Street Station. A great deal of my journalistic work is done at night, and I often write until the early morning. So it was to-day. I was sitting in my den, which is at the back of the top of the house, about three o'clock, when I was convinced that I heard some sounds downstairs. I listened, but they were not repeated, and I concluded that they came from outside. Then suddenly, about five minutes later, there came a most horrible yell -- the most dreadful sound, Mr. Holmes, that ever I heard. It will ring in my ears as long as I live."

Vocabulary:

Melancholy: Sad
Bothered: Worried and confused
Copy: A journalist's word for writing in a newspaper
Den: A place to work or relax undisturbed in a house