Now, Suss is a pain in the neck to some people, but despite his personal press, he has an undisputed knack for picking ponies that run like bats out of hell. Accordingly, I removed my top hat, pulled out my stethoscope, and whirled it around and around my head like a bolas. Taking careful aim, I let fly and conked him smartly on the noggin, thus gaining his undivided attention.

"Watson!" he yelped, "That one rattled my bridgework!"

"Suss, my dear fellow!" I cried, ducking "The Pink `Un" and reaching avidly for my wallet. "Who do you fancy in the third tomorrow?"

Bleedin' me for info again, Doc?" he said, pointedly.

I raised the stethoscope once more in a meaningful manner.

"Ok," he sighed. "This time out, put all your wound pension on—"

Just then, a terrible howl arose, like a child sobbing in a chimney. The vampire, astonished to hear noise like a sound effect from "The Five Orange Pips", flapped off, posthaste. I struck a match, lighted the torch I had ripped from the hand of a passing peasant, and peered down the chimney from whence the howls emanated.

"From whence the howls emanated, Watson?" queried Greenhough Smith, reading proof at my elbow.

"Yes," I replied. "It raises the tone."

"Who's there?" I continued desperately, ducking the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or possibly Tonga, as it was one of those nights, on one of those rooftops, that alter and illuminate our times.

"Eeeow!" said a voice. "Get that light out of my eyes and get me out of here! Who do you think you are? Father Christmas?"

"My dear child," I said, tenderly. "Aren't you in the wrong story?

"Never mind that," she said. "I'm sending a monkey up there with my sash. Tie a knot in it, will ya, and haul me out of here!"

Accordingly, a small grey spider monkey clambered up the chimney, popped out, and led me a merry chase for about forty minutes until I craftily flattened him with an unsportsmanlike manouver.

"What a cunning little fellow!" I wheezed, as I recaptured my lungs. "Sorry about those eight broken legs, though! It reminds me of a contortionist we ran into once in the 'Adventure of the—'"

"Tie a knot in it!" she said. "OW! Did I say drop it? I wasn't ready!"

"Sorry." I braced the armchair against another chimney and held the sash tight, as she climbed out, hand over hand. As the rising moon disclosed her ripe, superb figure, I saw that the ravishing creature, whom I had taken to be but a child, was fully 18 years old.

"Well, hello," I insinuated, standing to attention like the gentleman I sometimes pretend to be. "Whose little girl are you?

Just then, the monkey shrieked. I lost my footing and fell.

When I awoke, Holmes was bending over me. His evening coat was missing and his collar was undone. I had the instant, terrible impression that he had been licking my nose.

Then I noticed Toby.