Many people enjoy Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about the famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his friend, Dr Watson. But who now remembers that Holmes and Watson were real people? Everyone has forgotten that they lived before Conan Doyle gave them life in his books.
Dr Watson died in 1926. He was seventy-three. He left behind him a locked box, and orders that it must not be opened for fifty years.
For fifty years the box lay hidden in a dark room below a bank. Years came and went, and the world changed in a thousand ways.
In 1976 the box was opened. It contained a packet of papers. They tell a terrible story. Some people say it cannot be true. They say Watson was lying, or that he was sick when he wrote it. After so many years we cannot be sure. We have checked all the facts that we can. All we know is that the story could be true. It is possible. We think it is probable. Now you must read it and decide for yourself.