It was hypnotic, and then it was unsettling, and finally I became aware of another entity in my universe, sitting on the shore two hundred yards away, smoking a pipe.

It was hypnotic, and then it was unsettling, and finally I became aware of another entity in my universe, sitting on the shore two hundred yards away, smoking a pipe.

That's what tears are for, you know, to wash away the fear and cool the hate.

Ma'alesh; no matter; never mind; what can you do but accept things as they are? Ma'alesh, your pot overturned in the fire; ma'alesh, your prize mare died; ma'alesh, you lost all your possessions and half your family. The word was the everyday essence of Islam - which itself, after all, means "submission.

The period after the First World War was an extremely different time, so that Sherlock Holmes would have been a different person following 1918 than he was during the Victorian era.

Impossibility is a log thrown on the fires of love.

I undid the wrappings with great curiosity, for Holmes did not normally give gifts. I opened the dark velvet jewller's box and found inside a shiny new set of picklocks, a younger version of his own. "Holmes, ever the romantic. Mrs. Hudson would be pleased.