The Pursuit of the House-Boat Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill THE SEARCH-PARTY IS ORGANIZED "WELL, Mr. Holmes," said Sir Walter Raleigh, after three rousing cheers, led by Hamlet, had been given with a will by the assembled spirits, " after this demonstration in your honor I think it is hardly necessary for me to assure you of our hearty co-operation in anything you may venture to suggest. There is still manifest, however, some desire on the part of the ever-wise King Solomon and my friend Confucius to know how you deduce that Kidd has sailed for London, from the cigar end which you hold in your hand." "I can easily satisfy their curiosity," said Sherlock Holmes, genially. " I believe I have already proven that it is the end of Kidd's cigar. The marks of the ' THREE ROUSING CHEERS, LED BY HAMLET, WERE GIVEN " teeth have shown that. Now observe how closely it is smoked?there is barely enough of it left for one to insert between his teeth. Now Captain Kidd would hardly have risked the edges of his mustache and the comfort of his lips by smoking a cigar down to the very light if he had had another ; nor would he under any circumstances have smoked it that far unless he were passionately addicted to this particular brand of the weed. Therefore I say to you, first, this was his cigar; second, it was the last one he had ; third, he is a confirmed smoker. The result, he has gone to the one place in the world where these Connecticut hand-rolled Havana cigars?for I recognize this as one of them?have a real popularity, and are therefore more certainly obtainable, and that is at London. You cannot get so vile a cigar as that outside of a London hotel. If I could have seen a quarter- inch more of it, I should have been able definitely to locate the hotel itself. The wrappers unroll to a degree that variesperceptibly as between the dif...Read More