Nicholas Meyer by The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (pdf) Page A

cab pulled up to a small but attractive building on a side street just off a major thoroughfare. Its name, in my preoccupation, I failed to note. The driver by various signs and gestures gave us to understand this was the destination of the gentleman we were seeking.
    We got out and Holmes paid the man, after a brief consultation.
    "We may have been robbed, but it was worth it," he confided in high good humour when the cab had pulled away. We turned our attention to the house itself, and Holmes rang the bell. I noticed, with relief, a small plaque which quietly proclaimed the name of the man we had come to see.
    A moment later the door was opened by a pretty maid, who was only briefly startled by the presence of such a peculiar-looking dog in the company of two visitors.
    Sherlock Holmes informed her of our identities and she responded at once with a smile, and an invitation, couched in broken English, to enter.
    We nodded and followed her inside, finding ourselves in a small but elegant entrance hall with a white marble floor. The house was some kind of Viennese chocolate bread miniature, crammed with Dresden knick-knacks of every description. To one side, a thin black bannistered staircase led up to a charming little balcony that ran in a semi-circle over our heads.
    "Please, this way—come," the maid gestured, still smiling openly, and she ushered us into a cramped study which opened off the vestibule. When we had seated ourselves, she offered to take Toby and find him something to eat. Holmes vetoed this at once, with cold formality, looking at me significantly around the shoulder of the girl, as much as to say, "What sort of meal might we expect to be given our valiant Toby under this particular roof?" But I argued that the professor would never dare any manoeuvre so precipitate.
    "Oh, very well, perhaps you are right," he agreed, considering the matter while smiling icily at the grinning maid, who waited for our decision. I could see that he was tiring again and in need of an injection—or something better. I thanked the maid and handed over Toby's lead to her.
    "Well, Watson, what do you make of it all?" Holmes demanded when she had gone.
    "I can make nothing of it," I confessed, seeking refuge in the familiar response, instead of anticipating events. The doctor, I felt, should have the right to explain the situation in his own way.
    "And yet it is obvious enough—obvious though horribly diabolical," he amended, pacing back and forth and examining the doctor's books, which, though mainly in German, were easily perceived as being of a medical character—at least on the side where I was seated.
    I was on the point of asking Holmes to explain his remark when the door was opened and into the room stepped a bearded man of medium height and stooped shoulders. I took him to be in his early forties though I subsequently learned he was only thirty-five. Through his faint smile I saw an expression of infinite sadness, coupled, as it seemed to me, with infinite wisdom. His eyes were more remarkable than anything else in his face. They were not particularly large, but they were dark and deep-set, shadowed by an over-hanging brow and piercing in their intensity. He wore a dark suit with a gold chain peeping under his jacket and stretched across his waistcoat.
    "Good morning, Herr Holmes," said he, in heavily accented but otherwise perfect English. "I have been expecting you and am glad that you decided to come. And you, Dr. Watson," he added, turning to me with a gracious smile and extended hand, which I shook, briefly, my eyes unable to leave Holmes's face.
    "You may remove that ludicrous beard," he said in the high-pitched voice which he had displayed on the night he burst so melodramatically into my house, and used again the following day when I had visited him in his. "And kindly refrain from employing that ridiculous comic opera accent. I warn you, you'd best confess or it will go hard with you. That game is up, Professor