Malingering is a subject upon which I have sometimes thought of writing a monograph. — Arthur Conan Doyle

"Am dining at Goldini's Restaurant, Gloucester Road, Kensington. Please come at once and join me there. Bring with you a jemmy, a dark lantern, a chisel, and a revolver. S. H."

It was a nice equipment for a respectable citizen to carry through the dim, fog-draped streets.

Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.

Some fumes which are not poisonous would be a welcome change.