"Why, Holmes," I cried, "this must be a joke!"

"Of course. It is a joke, Watson," Holmes replied, and then he began to read the message aloud so that Colonel Motherspaw might hear.

"A man and his new bride are taking the train to New Brighton for their honeymoon. A drunk is seated across the aisle from them, and keeps making remarks about just how ugly the man's new bride is. The man calls the conductor who has the drunk move to another car. When things have settled down, the conductor apologizes profusely to the man. `If you'd like to go to the dining car, the railroad will be happy to pay for your meal,' the conductor says. `And if we're really lucky, I think we might even be able to find a banana or two for your monkey.'"

I laughed heartily, having always enjoyed a good monkey joke nearly as much as smacking one of the blighters, something I had much practice in during my recovery on the veranda at Peshawar. Holmes looked at me sternly.

"I'm afraid it's not funny, Watson," Holmes said as he stopped Colonel Motherspaw's naked revolutions. "The story is a true one, designed as one more reminder to the Colonel of his true guilt and shame. The Colonel is a man who likes flowers on his dinner table, you see, and . . . ah, good! Lestrade is here."

"We came in as soon as we saw your signal -- the spinning naked man," the Scotland Yard inspector said, indicating the large windows where the curtains had fallen back down. Colonel Motherspaw grabbed up one of the fallen curtains and wrapped it around himself with all haste, to the jeers of the crowd that had gathered outside.

"Ah, good, my audience is ready," Holmes said. "On with the show . . ."

He turned to the door behind Inspector Lestrade.

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages," Sherlock Holmes announced in his usual dramatic fashion, "allow me to introduce the Cracker sisters, Chee-chee and Violetecia!"

With a flourish of his top hat, and outstretching the arms of his bright red tailcoat, the great detective directed our attention to the eighteen-year-old beauty and the recently crippled monkey. As Inspector Lestrade liked to say, the circus lost its finest ringmaster when Sherlock Holmes entered the field of detection.

Colonel Motherspaw's features were paralyzed and all colour drained from them. After waiting a full minute for his astonished reaction to Holmes's announcement, I jumped to the ready to fill in the dead air:

"BUT HOLMES," I cried, perhaps a bit too loudly in my attempt to make up for the Colonel's missed cue. "Sisters? Chee-chee is plainly a monkey, and Violetecia is very, very obviously an attractive young woman."

"Coooeeee," the monkey sighed, blinking it's big, sad monkey eyes at me. If not for the fact that I had recently injured it, I would have thought it took my words as a compliment.

The beautiful young lady lowered her eyes in shame. "I knew it was plain, despite what our kindly foster mother told me time and again."

"Watson, you scintillate today!" Holmes exclaimed happily. "But then Chee-chee's slight depilatory scars had to attract your keen medical eye. And the facial resemblance between she and the still-furry, and now crippled, Violetecia, is very apparent to the student of primate-shaving. The Tibetan connection, the living stick figures . . . how could it have been any plainer!"

"Buh . . . buh . . . buh . . ." Colonel Motherspaw stammered.

I shot Motherspaw a look of disgust.

"BUT HOLMES!" I filled in the gap in my best Motherspaw impersonation, "Tibet? Stick figures? A beautiful girl who is really a shaved simian with a monkey for a sister? And what of the moose who kidnapped my daughter?"

Holmes grabbed a stick figure that was running up Colonel Motherspaw's sleeve by its tiny head and shook it. The arms fell off, as did the torso, which remained connected to its tiny legs by a little round pelvis. The legs were kicking.

"Behold the rare Tibetan stilt fleas, two of whom can produce a fair semblance of a living stick figure!"

"Tibetan stilt fleas!" I cried out, nudging Colonel Motherspaw, to no avail.

"Yes, Watson, Tibetan stilt fleas. That rarest of tiny vermin, found only on the not-quite-as-rare Himalayan yeti, a beauteous example of which can be seen in this wedding picture from the Cracker family album!"

I turned and stared at Motherspaw. "Dammit, man, can you not come up with one simple show of astonishment!"

Holmes raised a calming hand. "Tut, Watson, leave the poor colonel alone. He's feeling rather guilt-stricken right now. You see, he didn't know that his daughter not only knew of his secret perfidy, and had raised the orphans of Private Cracker and his yeti wife, the only two casualties of the Battle of Baklava, killed while picking flowers for the Colonel's dinner table, the dessert for which was, ironically, baklava."

"But however did you learn Cracker's secret Holmes?"

"Step out with me here upon the terrace, Watson, for it may be the last Private talk we shall ever want to have."