THE YELLOW FACE
IN PUBLISHING THESE SHORT SKETCHES BASED UPON THE NUMEROUS CASES IN which my companion’s singular gifts have made us the listeners to, and eventually the actors in, some strange drama, it is only natural that I should dwell rather upon his successes than upon his failures. And this not so much for the sake of his reputation—for, indeed, it was when he was at his wit’s end that his energy and his versatility were most admirable—but because where he failed it happened too often that no one else succeeded, and that the tale was left forever without a conclusion. Now and again, however, it chanced that even when he erred the truth was still discovered. I have notes of some half-dozen cases of the kind, the adventure of the Musgrave Ritual and that which I am about to recount a
