The Secret Notebooks of Sherlock Holmes Read Online Free PDF

artiste who sang comic Cockney songs and performed sketches. Her real name was Matilda Alice Victoria Wood (1870–1922). She first appeared at the Eagle Music-Hall under the stage-name Belle Delmare. Dr John F. Watson.
    12 Dr Watson first met Colonel Hayter in Afghanistan, where he gave him medical treatment. The two men kept in touch and, on Colonel Hayter’s retirement to Reigate, he invited Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes to stay with him. Dr John F. Watson.
    13 Dr Watson’s regiment was the 66th Berkshires. It is not known which regiment was Colonel Hayter’s but he may also have served in the Berkshires. Vide : ‘The Adventure of the Reigate Squire’. Dr John F. Watson.
    14 Kandahar was a strategically important Afghan town situated 155 miles inside the frontier with India, which was captured and garrisoned by a force of 2,500 soldiers, both British and Indian. The siege was raised on 31st August after twenty-four days. Dr John F. Watson.
    15 See footnote 6.
    16 See footnote 2 to Foreword.

THE CASE OF THE ALUMINIUM CRUTCH
    On several occasions in the past, Sherlock Holmes had referred briefly to a former inquiry which he had undertaken before my advent as his chronicler but he had found neither the opportunity nor the inclination to give me a full account of it, although I had pressed him to do so numerous times.
    ‘Oh, that old case!’ he would say dismissively. ‘A singular investigation indeed, my dear fellow. I must tell you about it one of these days. I think you will find it quite interesting.’
    In the event, it was a casual remark made by Inspector Lestrade which at last prompted Holmes to make good his pledge.
    Lestrade had called on him one evening in order to ask his advice on an urgent case with which he was havingdifficulties, that of the missing heir to the Blackstock estate.
    As he rose to take his leave, he added, ‘By the way, Mr Holmes, do you remember Whitey Johnson, the jewel thief?’
    ‘Whitey Johnson!’ Holmes exclaimed. From the kindling expression in his eye, I could tell his interest was immediately aroused. ‘Indeed I do remember him! But I thought he was still in prison. He is surely not up to his old tricks in there?’
    Lestrade chuckled, his sharp, foxy features crinkled up with amusement.
    ‘Not any longer. He died in Pentonville last week; lost his balance going down some stairs and broke his neck, or so the Governor informed me. That aluminium crutch of his was to blame. It slipped out from under him. So you might say it was his downfall in more ways than one.’
    The remark was evidently intended to be humorous, for Lestrade rubbed his hands together with glee as Holmes escorted him to the door.
    On resuming his seat by the fire, my old friend looked across at me with a rueful expression.
    ‘Whitey Johnson dead! I am sorry indeed to hear that. His was one of the first cases that Lestrade asked for my assistance in solving. For a villain, he was, I recall, a very mild-mannered little man.’
    ‘Was he?’ I asked with a touch of asperity. ‘Although you have referred to the case several times over the years and promised me a full account of it, I have not yet had that pleasure.’
    ‘Then you shall have it this very minute, my dear fellow,’ Holmes replied. Pausing only to fill his pipe with tobacco from the Turkish slipper, 1 he lit it and leant back in his chair, his lean features taking on a pensive expression as the wreaths of smoke rose to encircle his head.
    ‘It must have been in the late 1870s when I was still living in Montague Street,’ 2 he began. ‘By that time, my reputation as a private consulting agent was becoming better known and my clientele was spreading beyond the immediate circle of my former Varsity acquaintances and their friends. News of it had even reached as far as Scotland Yard. So it was that one morning Inspector Lestrade 3 called on me to ask for my help with a case which, up to that moment, had defeated the official police. As a force,