Conan DoylePART ONE
I visited my friend Sherlock Holmes on the second morning of Christmas. When I arrived he was sitting in front of the fire, wearing his purple dressing-gown. Next to the sofa was a wooden chair, and on the chair was a dirty old hat. A magnifying glass and a forceps were on the chair, so the hat was probably part of one of Holmes' investigations.
'You are busy,' I said. 'Perhaps I interrupt you.'
'Not at all,' he replied, and indicated the hat. 'The problem is very simple, but it is still interesting and maybe even instructive.'
I sat down in an armchair and warmed my hands in front of the fire because it was very cold outside.
'I imagine,' I said, 'that this hat is connected with a terrible crime.'
'No, no. No crime,' said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. 'It is only one of those strange things that happens when four million human beings live within the small area of a city. With so many people, every imaginable combination of events is possible, and sometimes you can find a problem that is striking and strange but not criminal.
'Do you know Peterson, the commissionaire?'
'Yes.'
'This trophy' belongs to him.'
'It is his hat?'
'No, no. He found it. Its owner is unknown. Look at it carefully, and not as a dirty old hat, but as an intellectual problem. It arrived here on Christmas morning together with a good fat goose. That goose is probably cooking at Peterson's house at this very moment.
'These are the facts. About four o'clock on Christmas morning Peterson was returning from a party along Tottenham Court Road. In front of him he saw a tall man carrying a white goose. Then he saw some men attack the tall man. One of the attackers knocked his hat off, so the man lifted his walking stick to defence himself. But when he lifted the stick he broke a shop window by mistake. Peterson ran to help the man, but when the man saw Peterson with his commissionaire uniform, he thought he was a policeman, and he ran away and so did the attackers. Peterson was there all alone with the hat and the goose.'
'Of course, Peterson then returned the goose to its owner,' I said.