sketchbook - the golden pince nez part 2

Huge news! My husband ND’s new novel, SCARLET MORNING, is out today. It’s been so cool to be there as he’s worked on it for the last five years - receiving random facts about salt, trade history, and astrophysics over dinner, hearing him clack away on one of three vintage typewriters (he assures me they all have a different use), finding his office floor covered in ominous ink drawings of underwater creatures that I sincerely hope exist only in the imagination…anyway please go to your local bookstore and get this book! Besides turning my husband into a mad scientist, it’s also really, really good.

and here is your regularly scheduled Watson’s Sketchbook, part 2 of the Golden Pince-Nez. (part 1)

It was young Stanley Hopkins, a promising detective, in whose career Holmes had several times shown a very practical interest.

"It was a splendid chance of putting your theories into practice, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. There was really nothing wanting.” “Except Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said my companion, with a somewhat bitter smile.

Holmes smiled. “I am a connoisseur,” said he, taking another cigarette from the box—his fourth—and lighting it from the stub of that which he had finished.

I may have remarked before that Holmes had, when he liked, a peculiarly ingratiating way with women, and that he very readily established terms of confidence with them.

“You must let me speak,” said the woman, in an imperative voice.