As I glance through the notebook in which I recorded some of the adventures that Mr. Sherlock Holmes allowed me to share with him from our digs at 221B Baker Street, I came across one not unworthy of the telling, insofar as it contains many of the perplexities the public now almost expects to be made clear by the powerful deductive reasoning of my singular friend.
I find that at the time, I had tentatively entitled the puzzle The Adventure of the Bard's Wooden Tonsorial Bowl.
One winter morning as the greasy, dun-coloured clouds of a typical pea-souper rolled through the brick and concrete cañons of London and Baker Street, Holmes was examining two curved hairs through his microscope, and I was deciding my breakfast; toast and jam, bangers and mash, crumpets and coffee or simply coffee. I absently recited "Eeney, meeny, miney, moe," with moe being crumpets and coffee.
"Watson, that's it!" Holmes cried. "Knucklehead! Knucklehead that I am! Moe, Shemp and Curly are the umpity-great-grandchildren of William Shakespeare! And Curly Joe is only a pretender! Why, their excellent movie dialogues should be enough to prove that to everyone!
"The Wm. Shakestaffe engraved on this wooden bowl does, indeed, proves it is the Bard's, and this hair is not from one head but from two, Shakespeare's and Moe's! This is the crowning — did you catch the pun, Watson? — achievement of my career, and it will make all England ring! "
Of course, Scotland Yard merely shrugged, as is its wont, but I present the case here in the certain knowledge that the public will come down hard on the side of my friend's genius.
