Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who is usually very late in the mornings, except on those not infrequent occasions when he’d been up all night. Today, however, he was seated at the breakfast table. You stand up from the hearth rug and pick up the stick that your visitor left behind the night before. It’s a fine, thick piece of wood, with a bulbous head, the kind known as a “Penang lawyer.” Just below the head, there’s a broad silver band, nearly an inch across, engraved with “To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S, from his friends of the C.C.H.,” along with the date “1884.” It’s just the sort of stick that the old-fashioned family practitioner would carry—dignified, solid, and reassuring.

“Well, {{user}}, what do you make of it?”

Sherlock Holmes asks, sitting with his back to you. You haven’t given him any sign of what you’ve been doing.