"I think that I shall have a whisky and soda and a cigar after all this cross-questioning.

I had formed my conclusions as to the case before our client came into the room." "My dear Holmes!" "I have notes of several similar cases, though none, as I remarked before, which were quite as prompt.

My whole examination served to turn my conjecture into a certainty.

Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example." "But I have heard all that you have heard." "Without, however, the knowledge of pre-existing cases which serves me so well.

There was a parallel instance in Aberdeen some years back, and something on very much the same lines at Munich the year after the Franco-Prussian War.