I was sitting alone in my room at 10.29 on the night of the 14th of last November. I had been doing a good deal of work lately, and I was tired. Moreover, I had had more than one touch of that old Afghan fever, which always seemed to be much more inclined to touch than to go. However, we can't have everything here to please us; and as I had only the other day attended two bankers and a Lord Mayor for measles, I had no real cause to complain of my prospects. I had drawn the old armchair in which I was sitting close to the fire, and, not having any bread handy, I was occupied in toasting my feet at the blaze when suddenly the clock on the mantelpiece struck the half hour, and Picklock Holes stood by my side. I was too much accustomed to his proceedings to express any surprise at seeing him thus, but I own that I was itching to ask him how he had managed to get into my house without ringing the bell. However, I refrained, and motioned him to a chair.
"My friend," said this extraordinary man, without the least preface, "you've been smoking again. You know you have; it's not the least use denying it." I absolutely gasped with astonishment, and gazed at him almost in terror. How had he guessed my secret? He read my thoughts, and smiled.
"Oh, simply enough. That spot on your shirt-cuff is black. But it might have been yellow, or green, or blue, or brown, or rainbow-coloured. But I know you smoke Rainbow mixture, and as your canary there in the corner has just gone blind, I know further that bird's-eye is one of the component parts of the mixture."
"Holes," I cried, dropping my old meerschaum out of my mouth in my amazement; "I don't believe you're a man at all—you're a devil."
"Thank you for the compliment," he replied, without moving a single muscle of his marble face. "You ought not to sup——" He was going to have added "pose," but the first syllable seemed to suggest a new train of thought (in which, I may add, there was no second class whatever) to my inexplicable friend.
"No," he said; "the devilled bones were not good. Don't interrupt me; you had devilled bones for supper, or rather you would have had them, only you didn't like them. Do you see that match? A small piece is broken off the bottom, but enough is left to show it was once a lucifer—in other words, a devil. It is lying at the feet of the skeleton which you use for your anatomical investigations, and therefore I naturally conclude that you had devilled bones for supper. You didn't eat them, for not a single bone of the skeleton is missing. Do I make myself clear?"
"You do," I said, marvelling more than ever at the extraordinary perspicacity of the man. As a matter of fact, my supper had consisted of bread and cheese; but I felt that it would be in extremely bad taste for a struggling medical practitioner like myself to contradict a detective whose fame had extended to the ends of the earth. I picked up my pipe, and relit it, and, for a few moments, we sat in silence. At last I ventured to address him.
"Anything new?" I said.
"No, not exactly new," he said, wearily, passing his sinewy hand over his expressionless brow. "Have you a special Evening Standard? I conclude you have, as I see no other evening papers here. Do you mind handing it to me?"
There was no deceiving this weird creature. I took the paper he mentioned from my study table, and handed it to him.