Sherlock Holmes Week

Next week is Sherlock Holmes Week, an occasion created by MX Publishing to draw attention to efforts to save Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Undershaw. (Please like the Save Undershaw Fan Page to show your support.)

Dozens of events to mark the week are taking place in eight countries. The tireless Steve Emecz at MX lists some of them on the MX blog.  To find more, or to get an activity of your own listed, go to Sherlock Holmes Week.

Members of the Tankerville Club in Cincinnati are extending our celebration by attending en masse a performance of The Hound of the Baskerviles three-man play on Aug. 12.

For me the highlight of the week will be Friday, Aug. 2. That's the perfect day to sit in my library and read my favorite story, but one that begins . . .

It was nine o'clock at night upon the second of August--the most terrible August in the history of the world.  One might have thought already that God's curse hung heavy over a degenerate world, for there was an awesome hush and a feeling of vague expectancy in the sultry and stagnant air.  The sun had long set, but one blood-red gash like an open wound lay low in the distant west.  Above, the stars were shining brightly, and below, the lights of the shipping glimmered in the bay. The two famous Germans stood beside the stone parapet of the garden walk, with the long, low, heavily gabled house behind them, and they looked down upon the broad sweep of the beach at the foot of the great chalk cliff in which Von Bork, like some wandering eagle, had perched himself four years before.  They stood with their heads close together, talking in low, confidential tones.  From below the two glowing ends of their cigars might have been the smouldering eyes of some malignant fiend looking down in the darkness.

Of course, that would be "His Last Bow."