The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle




1. The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles



I find it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy
day towards the end of March in the year 1892. Holmes had
received a telegram while we sat at our lunch, and he had
scribbled a reply. He made no remark, but the matter remained in
his thoughts, for he stood in front of the fire afterwards with a
thoughtful face, smoking his pipe, and casting an occasional
glance at the message. Suddenly he turned upon me with a
mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

"I suppose, Watson, we must look upon you as a man of letters,"
said he. "How do you define the word 'grotesque'?"

"Strange--remarkable," I suggested.

He shook his head at my definition.

"There is surely something more than that," said he; "some
underlying suggestion of the tragic and the terrible. If you
cast your mind back to some of those narratives with which you
have afflicted a long-suffering public, you will recognize how