The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

by Arthur Conan Doyle

“Good! What are you going to take, Mr. Phelps—curried fowl or eggs, or will you help yourself?” “Thank you. I can eat nothing,” said Phelps. “Oh, come! Try the dish before you.” “Thank you, I would really rather not.” “Well, then,” said Holmes, with a mischievous twinkle, “I suppose that you have no objection to helping me?” Phelps raised the cover, and as he did so he uttered a scream, and sat there staring with a face as white as the plate upon which he looked. Across the centre of it was lying a little cylinder of blue-grey paper. He caught it up, devoured it with his eyes, and then danced madly about the room, passing it to his bosom and shrieking out in his delight. Then he fell back into an arm-chair so limp and exhausted with his own emotions that we had to pour brandy down his throat to keep him from fainting. “There! there!” said Holmes, soothing, patting him upon the shoulder. “It was too bad to spring it on you like this, but Watson here will tell you that I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.”