The evening world. Newspaper, April 22, 1905, Page 11

FICTION SUPPLEMENT, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL22190, (Copyright fae by tse Prevy Publishing Company.) The Dog Turned Out of the Main Road Into a Grass-Grown Lane. No. 11 OF THE SERIES, MYSTERY MIssING 2 'THREE- @ QUARTER By Sir A. Conan Doyle. Author of “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,’’ “‘The Hound of the Bas- kervilles,” “The Adventures of Brig- adler Gerard,” ‘The Sign of the Four,” “A Study in Scarlet,’? &c (Copyright, 1904, by A, Conan Doyle and Collier's Weekly.) (Copyrigit, 1905. by McClure, Phillips & Co.) E were fairly accustomed to re- ceive weird telegrams at Baker street, but I have a particular ollection of one which reached us on a gloomy Feb- ruary morning some seven or eight y ago and gave Mr. Sherlock Holmes a_ puzzled quarter of an hour, It was addressed to him and ran thus: “Please await me. Terrible misfortune, Right wing three- quarter missing, indispensable to-morrow, OVERTON,” nd postmark and despatched 10.36,” said Holmes, ading it over and over. “Mr. Overton was evidently considerably excited when he sent it, and somewhat in- coherent in consequence. Well, well, he will be here, I dare by the time I have looked through the Times, and then we shall know all about it. Even the most in cant problem would be welcome in these stagnant daj Things had indeed been very slow with us, and I had learned to dread such periods of inaction, for I knew by experience that my companion’s brain was so abnormally active that it was dangerous to leave it without material upon which to work, For years 1 had gradually weaned him from that drug-mania which had threatened once to check his remarkable career, Now 1 knew that under ordi- nary conditions he no longer craved for this artificial stim- ulus, but I was well aware that the fiend was not dead, but sleeping, and I have known that the sleep was a light one and the waking near when in periods of idleness I have seen the drawn look upon Holmes’s ascetic face and the brooding of his deep-set and inscrutable eyes. Therefore | blessed this Mr. Overton, whoever he might be, since he had come with his enigmatic message to break that danger- ous calm which brought more peril to my riend than all the storms of his tempestuous life. As we had expected, the telegram was soon followed by its sender, and the card of Mr, Cyril Overton, Trinity College, Cambridge, announced the arrival of an enormous young man, sixteen stone of solid bone and muscle, who spanned the doorway with his broad shoulders and looked from one of us to the other with a comely face, which was ! rd with anxiety, “Mr, Sherlock Holines?” My comp.nion bowed “I've been down to Scotland Yard, Mr. Holmes. | saw Inspector Stanley Hopkins. He advised me to come to you, He said the case, so f s he could see, was more in your line than in that of the regular police “Pray sit down and tell me wha he matte wful, Mr. Holmes—simply awful! ( wonder my