“Well, Watson,” said Holmes when our
visitor had left us, “what do you make of
it all?”
“I make nothing of it,” I answered frankly.
“It is a most mysterious business.”
“As a rule,” said Holmes, “the
more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves
to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes
which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace
face is the most difficult to identify. But I must
be prompt over this matter.”
“What are you going to do, then?” I
asked.
“To smoke,” he answered. “It is
quite a three pipe
problem, and I beg that you won’t speak to
me for fifty minutes.”
From “The Red Headed
League”, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1891
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