“Both of us, Holmes and I, had a weakness for Turkish baths. And when, in a pleasant languor, we smoked in the drying room, I found him less restrained and more humane than anywhere else. In the upper floor of this establishment on Northumberland Avenue there is a secluded corner where two couches stand side by side, and it was on these that we lay on September 3, 1902, when my story begins. I asked him if anything was coming up, and in response, he released a long, thin, nervous hand from the sheets that enveloped him and pulled out an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket hanging next to him...”