Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson

As he passed a hand over his eyes, I recalled the he could not have slept more than twenty hours in the last seven days. For the first time since I had known him, Sherlock Holmes appeared to be exhausted by work rather than inaction. "Because if I am right," he murmured, "I haven't the first idea what to do.

More accurately, on the bed and on the table lay various pieces of what had once been a body. Holmes was leaning with his back against the wall, his countenance deathly white. "The door was open," he said incongruously. "I was passing by, and the door was open." "Holmes," I whispered in horror. "The door was open," he said once more, and then buried his face in his hands.

Besides, Watson,” he added, with a glint of humour in his grey eyes, “you, after all, are a man of the world. We must put your skills to use, for there is no greater tragedy on God's green earth than that of untapped talent.

I am pleased beyond words you aren’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere.

The door flew open, revealing a wrinkled, forward-thrusting face wreathed with a nimbus of wispy white hair, a face resembling nothing so much as a mole emerging from its burrow. Her spectacles were so dirty that I could hardly see the use of them. She peered at us as if at two scabrous street dogs and tightened her grasp on her cane. "What do you want? I don't let rooms, and if you've business with my sons or my husband, they work for a living.

I looked up in curiosity. Behind us stood the Brown and Eagle Wool Warehouse and Schneider's Cap Factory, both constructed with that wholehearted devotion to industry that sullied the word architecture.

Tell Mrs. Hudson there will be five for supper. If I am not back by eight, I will have no doubt been arrested. In that case, of course, there will be four.

Fourth, a telegram from brother Mycroft: ‘Will visit at earliest possible convenience—great uproar in Whitehall. Mend quickly; your death would be most inconvenient at this time.

We must put your skills to use, for there is no greater tragedy on God’s green earth than that of untapped talent.

Come now, my dear fellow. Expertise is none the less admirable for being of an unsavoury variety.

What if," replied Inspector Fry in the same maddeningly curteous tone, "we were all to construct daisy chains and drape them so as to shield the words from public view?

I believe it is the sole business of government to invent elaborate impediments to swift action,

No, no, Watson, it is all wrong. These certainly are my ts, ys, and ms, and the capital A is very good, but what on earth induced you to obey a note with such a manifestly inaccurate q?

Watson, if the newspapers could be punished for speculation, every publication in England would soon enough be bankrupted.

And I maintain, Detective Halse,” said Inspector Fry doggedly, “that the civil unrest which allowing this message to remain in view would foment is against the principles of conscience and of British decency. Are you against the principles of British decency, Detective?

An argument could be made that the ultimate desecration of the human body is to end its earthly usefulness, which would imply that all murderers share equally that specific charge.

My friend opened a small box which Lestrade had produced. Inside lay a beautiful silver cigarette case monogrammed with Holmes's initials, underneath which ran the words, "With the Respects of Scotland Yard, November 1888." Sherlock Holmes sat with his lips parted, but no sound emerged. "Thank you," he managed at length.