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sharing with friends and family really does help thank you for joining us this evening now it's time to relax let your body fall into a comfortable position in your bed and drift gently into a state of total relaxation with tonight's story the adventure of the devil's foot

In recording from time to time some of the curious experiences and interesting recollections which I associate with my long and intimate friendship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have continually been faced by difficulties caused by his own aversion to publicity.

To his sombre and cynical spirit all popular applause was always abhorrent and nothing amused him more at the end of a successful case than to hand over the actual exposure to some orthodox official and to listen with a mocking smile to the general chorus of misplaced congratulation.

It was indeed this attitude upon the part of my friend and certainly not any lack of interesting material which has caused me of late years to lay very few of my records before the public

My participation in some of his adventures was always a privilege which entailed discretion and reticence upon me.

It was then with considerable surprise that I received a telegram from Holmes last Tuesday.

He has never been known to write where a telegram would serve in the following terms.

Why not tell them of the Cornish horror?

Strangest case I have handled.

I have no idea what backward sweep of memory had brought the matter fresh to his mind, or what freak had caused him to desire that I should recount it.

But I hasten, before another cancelling telegram may arrive, to hunt out the notes which give me the exact details of the case and to lay the narrative before my readers.

It was then in the spring of the year 1897 that Holmes's iron constitution showed some symptoms of giving way in the face of constant hard work of a most exacting kind, aggravated, perhaps, by occasional indiscretions of his own.