Over the course of a long and illustrious career, my friend Sherlock Holmes proved instrumental in preventing many an egregious miscarriage of justice. Through deductive reasoning, close observation, and the application of scientific principles, he was able to demonstrate the guilt of the actual perpetrators of crimes for which others had fallen under suspicion—or worse, been falsely accused—thereby not only preserving the reputations of the innocent, but in many instances saving them from the gallows.

Perhaps the most curious of the cases which fall into this category—I might venture to say, the most outré—was that to which I have given the title “The Adventure of Bouncing Betty.” What made the case unusual was not the nature of the crime—although that in itself was shocking—nor in Holmes’s methods in solving it (he considered the case “elementary,” hardly worthy of my recording it)—but rather Betty herself.

“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,” wrote Shakespeare in one of his sonnets. It was early in the morning of a blustery day in May that the adventure had its beginning. Holmes and I were in our rooms at 221B Baker Street comfortably seated before the gas fire, Holmes smoking his pipe, I a Havana cigar, bestowed upon me by a grateful patient for the painless removal of a boil.

Only the day before, Holmes had brought to a satisfactory completion his investigation of a particularly baffling crime, the murder of a wealthy stockbroker in a locked room. He was, therefore, in what, for him, was a jovial mood. That is to say, he was not nervously biting his nails or restlessly pacing the room, as was his wont following periods of prolonged inactivity.

In fact, he now sat with his eyes closed, as if asleep, although I was not deceived. The contraction of his brow, his pursed lips, the briar pipe clenched firmly between his teeth, betrayed deep concentration—presumably on some abstract problem of interest only to him, or perhaps to his brother Mycroft.

Finding the brume from the smoke insufferable, I rose from my chair and went to the windows, opened one, and leaned out to take in the fresh air. It was then that I spotted him: a florid, corpulent man, outlandishly attired in a red-and-black checkered suit, and sporting a green and yellow bowtie, holding on to his hat as he came running down the street.

“Unless I am much mistaken, Holmes,” I said, “we are about to be visited by a man in great distress. Such a look of terror on a man’s face I have seldom seen since my return from Afghanistan.”

Opening his eyes, Holmes removed the ash from his pipe and dumped it into the human half-skull that served as ashtray. “Let us hope he brings with him a problem worthy of my attention. Today I have little patience for the mundane.”

“I believe that you will find our visitor to be anything but mundane,” I said, in reference to the checkered suit and striped bowtie, as I went to the door to leave it ajar.

Moments later we heard Mrs. Hudson’s cries of protest, followed by heavy footsteps upon the stairs. Our visitor fairly burst through the door, with such force that he nearly tumbled across the room. Catching his balance, he caught sight of The Great Detective.

“You must save her, Mr. Sherlock Holmes!” he exclaimed. “You are my only hope.” He wrung his hands in anguish. “Oh, Mr. Holmes, you must save her, I beg of you.”

“Save whom? Pray tell,” Holmes said calmly.

The man, his bowtie askew, his hat lying topsy-turvy on the floor where it had fallen upon his precipitous entrance, his flaxen hair pointing in all directions, glanced about the room in the manner of a man who, for the life of him, cannot remember how he came to be in such a place. Tears welled in his eyes, and his cheeks flushed redder than the checks on his suit.

“Do sit down, sir. Do sit down.” Holmes indicated a chair across from himself. “Watson, be so kind as to fetch the brandy and pour this gentleman a generous quantity.”

Still wearing a look of utter bewilderment, our visitor sank into the chair as if shoved by an invisible hand, and accepted the proffered brandy, which he quaffed in one gulp.