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Along with his powers of observation and deduction, my friend has a remarkable memory for details. Holmes’s memory is sufficiently vast that it enables him to store his papers, evidence, and various paraphernalia in a manner that seems entirely disorganized to anyone else. Random piles of documents, crammed shelves, his overflowing desk – all part of his storage scheme.
Such a method only works with a memory like Holmes has – and if nothing is moved. What his method overlooked was the existence of other lodgers, the advent of open windows and drafty doorways, unsteady or clumsy clients, and a landlady whose patience could only be tried so far.
After the fourth incident in a month where Holmes could not immediately find an item he wanted (and made a terrible mess in searching for it), he conceded that his current method was not suitable for 221B. We invested in some additional shelves and an experimental bit of furniture assembled by a former client. The plans came from an American correspondent of Holmes, a precursor of the invention eventually universally known as a filing cabinet. The new system worked extraordinarily well. The chaotic piles were largely relegated to picturesque details in the pages of my writing except in the most complex and taxing of cases.
Which is how I knew, when I returned from a few days away visiting a patient, that Holmes must have some new and very weighty matter before him. For not only was the sitting-room filled with pipe-smoke, but his chair was surrounded by stacks of papers, and fully half the room was cluttered with seemingly random bric-a-brac.
“You return just in time,” Holmes greeted me from the depths of his chair. “We are approaching the crisis.”
I looked around again. The evidence was indeed plain. “So I see.”