somewhere in the vaults of a bank in london is a tin dispatch box with my name on it. it is not to be opened until fifty years after my death.
it contains certain mementos of my long association with a man who elevated the science of deduction to an art -- the world's first, and undoubtedly most famous, consulting detective.
it was august of 1887, and we were returning from yorkshire, where holmes had solved the baffling murder of colonel abernetty.
you may recall that he broke the murderer's alibi by measuring the depth to which the parsley had sunk in the butter on a hot day.
he was the most brilliant man i have ever known -- and i dare say people have envied me for sharing that flat with him in baker street.
i'll grant you he was stimulating -- but he could also be moody, unpredictable, egocentric, and more often than not, completely infuriating -- as our landlady, mrs. hudson, can attest -- bless her kind soul.
naturally, i don't mean to imply that my friend was always on cocaine -- sometimes it was opium, sometimes it was hashish. and once he went one of these dreadful binges, there was no telling how long it would last.
it was not the first not the last time he tricked me like that. normally, i was inclined to forgive him.
but on one occasion, he did something that was so utterly unforgivable, that i would gladly have murdered him -- had it not been for my saintly disposition.
what, indeed, was his attitude toward women? was there some secret he was holding back -- or was he just a thinking machine, incapable of any emotion?
i was not to get the answer until we became involved in what i consider to be the most outrageous case in all our years together.
mr. ashdown!