By J. Gombarcik

My friend, Sherlock Holmes, has been known to show a curious and singular prescience in his deductive abilities as of late, due to the increased number of his experience with cases. On one recent such remarkable occasion, he revealed the ultimate (in my mind) example of ratiocination.

Rarely have I seen the great consulting detective display his prowess to such an extent than this one winter’s night in 1899.

It was the evening of New Year's when a disheveled man, cold and wrinkled by snow, who called himself Abernetty and said he was from a government office, entered our flat unexpectedly. Abernetty animatedly confided in us about a business most dreadful.

Returning from his office moments before, the poor man was accosted by an unseemly stranger in a dark hood and large cape who sought to divest our client of a rolled document he was carrying home for safekeeping -- the plans concerning a new secure display for the Crown Jewels themselves -- but who was thwarted when the young man, fighting like one possessed, forced the evil stranger to retreat into the approaching whiteness of a developing blizzard.

Thus saved, our client found his way to Holmes' famous location to ask the question of whom the insidious stranger might be.

"You probably have figured it out already," said the great detective, "since you needed only to take the first of each sentence in Watson’s tale to find the perpetrator of this unseemly attempted crime."