Free The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories by Otto Penzler

manuscript to Conan Doyle in 1911 with the hope that it be published as a collaboration between himself and the famous author. Adrian, obviously, refused his suggestion, but did send Whitaker a check for ten guineas. To prove the authenticity of his claim, Whitaker produced a carbon copy of the manuscript and, after a brief threat of legal action, the Conan Doyle family finally accepted that Whitaker was the true author of the pastiche.

THE CASE OF THE MAN WHO WAS WANTED
Arthur Whitaker
    DURING THE LATE autumn of ’ninety-five a fortunate chance enabled me to take some part in another of my friend Sherlock Holmes’s fascinating cases.
    My wife not having been well for some time, I had at last persuaded her to take a holiday in Switzerland in the company of her old school friend Kate Whitney, whose name may be remembered in connection with the strange case I have already chronicled under the title of “The Man with the Twisted Lip.” My practice had grown much, and I had been working very hard for many months and never felt in more need myself of a rest and a holiday. Unfortunately I dared not absent myself for a long enough period to warrant a visit to the Alps. I promised my wife, however, that I would get a week or ten days’ holiday in somehow, and it was only on this understanding that she consented to the Swiss tour I was so anxious for her to take. One of my best patients was in a very critical state at the time, and it was not until August was gone that he passed the crisis and began to recover. Feeling then that I could leave my practice with a good conscience in the hands of a
locum tenens
, I began to wonder where and how I should best find the rest and change I needed.
    Almost at once the idea came to my mind that I would hunt up my old friend Sherlock Holmes, of whom I had seen nothing for several months. If he had no important inquiry in hand, I would do my uttermost to persuade him to join me.
    Within half an hour of coming to this resolution I was standing in the doorway of the familiar old room in Baker Street.
    Holmes was stretched upon the couch with his back towards me, the familiar dressing gown and old brier pipe as much in evidence as of yore.
    “Come in, Watson,” he cried, without glancing round. “Come in and tell me what good wind blows you here?”
    “What an ear you have, Holmes,” I said. “I don’t think that I could have recognized your tread so easily.”
    “Nor I yours,” said he, “if you hadn’t come up my badly lighted staircase taking the steps two at a time with all the familiarity of an old fellow lodger; even then I might not have been sure who it was, but when you stumbled over the new mat outside the door which has been there for nearly three months, you needed no further announcement.”
    Holmes pulled out two or three of the cushions from the pile he was lying on and threw them across into the armchair. “Sit down, Watson, and make yourself comfortable; you’ll find cigarettes in a box behind the clock.”
    As I proceeded to comply, Holmes glanced whimsically across at me. “I’m afraid I shall have to disappoint you, my boy,” he said. “I had a wire only half an hour ago which will prevent me from joining in any little trip you may have been about to propose.”
    “Really, Holmes,” I said, “don’t you think this is going a little
too
far? I begin to fear you are a fraud and pretend to discover things by observation,when all the time you really do it by pure out-and-out clairvoyance!”
    Holmes chuckled. “Knowing you as I do it’s absurdly simple,” said he. “Your surgery hours are from five to seven, yet at six o’clock you walk smiling into my rooms. Therefore you must have a
locum
in. You are looking well, though tired, so the obvious reason is that you are having, or about to have, a holiday. The clinical thermometer, peeping out of your pocket, proclaims that you have been on your rounds today, hence it’s pretty evident that your real