The Case of the "Flitterbat Lancers"

In none of the cases of investigation by Martin Hewitt which I have / as yet recorded had I any direct and substantial personal interest. / In the case I am about to set forth, however, I had some such / interest, though legally, I fear, it amounted to no more than the / cost of a smashed pane of glass. But the case in some ways was one of / the most curious which came under my notice, and completely justified / Hewitt's oft repeated dictum that there was nothing, however romantic / or apparently improbable, that had not happened at some time in / London.

It was late on a summer evening, two or three years back, that I / drowsed in my armchair over a particularly solid and ponderous volume / of essays on social economy. I was doing a good deal of reviewing at / the time, and I remember that this particular volume had a property / of such exceeding toughness that I had already made three successive / attacks on it, on as many successive evenings, each attack having / been defeated in the end by sleep. The weather was hot, my chair was / very comfortable, the days were tiring, and the book had somewhere / about its strings of polysyllables an essence as of laudanum. Still / something had been done on each evening, and now on the fourth I / strenuously endeavoured to finish the book. Late as it was, my lamp / had been lighted but an hour or so, for there had been light enough / to read by, near the window, till well past nine o'clock.