The cab slowed down in the snowy length of Baker Street.
“In the circumstances,” I said, “I think this must be one of our adventures that does not see the light of day.”
We had pulled up outside our rooms. Sherlock Holmes looked up at them through the window of the cab with something like affection but also as if he were seeing them for the first time in the frosty lamplight. Then he turned and favoured me with the same resigned and rather weary smile.
“Let us say, Watson, that I should not dream of preventing you putting pen to paper in one of your little mysteries. However, I should be obliged if you would withhold this one from the world—as you have withheld certain others—until the day when it can no longer matter to me.”
In that, at least, I have respected the wishes of my wayward but greatest friend.
*“Charles Augustus Milverton” in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Return of Sherlock Holmes.